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. 2010 Sep 8;2:136. doi: 10.3389/fnsyn.2010.00136

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Copyright © 2010 Garay and McAllister.

This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.

PMC Copyright notice

The relationship between the immune system and nervous system is highly complicated. However, it is now apparent that immune molecules not only cross the blood–brain barrier in times of injury, but are expressed during normal brain development. Recent evidence suggests roles for MHCI and its receptors, complement, and cytokines on the function, refinement, and plasticity of cortical and hippocampal synapses. These functions for immune molecules during neural development suggest that they could also mediate pathological responses to chronic elevations of cytokines in neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and schizophrenia.