Fig. 3.

Brain organoids as a tool to study neurodevelopmental disorders. (A) Lancaster et al., 2013. used brain organoids to study brain development in a microcephalic patient with a mutation in CDK5RAP2 gene, which causes microcephaly. Organoids produced from the patient were smaller than the control, and had a change in the cleavage plane orientation of the APs, which might contribute to the decreased progenitor pool, and thus to the smaller brain size. (B) Mariani et al., 2015. used brain organoids to study idiopathic autism. Organoids generated from patients showed an increase in GABAergic inhibitory neurons (depicted in green), as compared to the healthy relatives.