Shaping the Brain: Environmental Influences on Neurodevelopmental Conditions

The Winter MRC Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders (CNDD) Symposium 2026 brought together experts to discuss and share new insights into the role of the environment across neurodevelopment and neurodevelopmental conditions. The Symposium also showcased the expertise of our staff and postgraduate students across both preclinical and clinical research focussed around three neurodevelopmental conditions: psychosis, autism and epilepsy.

Following a warm welcome from Professor Cathy Fernandes (King’s College London) on behalf of all the symposium organisers (Professor Gemma Modinos, Amelia Brown, Preslava Todorova, Annie-Rose Nicholas), the symposium kicked off with an excellent talk from the first keynote speaker, Professor Ros John (Cardiff University) on placental programming of maternal caregiving and offspring behaviour. Ros’s talk emphasised the influence of the prenatal period on shaping both maternal and offspring behaviour, and the bidirectional effect of how offspring genetics can impact on the mother. The afternoon session was opened by co-organiser, Professor Gemma Modinos and began with a dynamic talk from the second keynote speaker, Professor Danai Dima (City, University of London and King’s College London) on the interplay between genes and environment in shaping neurodevelopmental trajectories across the lifespan. Danai stressed the need for multi-model approaches and data sharing to make progress in understanding the role of environment in neurodevelopment, and the importance of defining what we consider healthy development.

In addition to the keynote talks, there were three sessions of short talks focussed on specific neurodevelopmental conditions: Psychosis chaired by Dr Thomas Pollak (King’s College London) with speakers Professor Marta Di Forti, Dr Danish Hafeez, Dr Sam Cooke (King’s College London); Autism chaired by Dr Nick Puts (King’s College London) with speakers Professor Emily Jones, Dr Helen Powell, Dr Daphna Fenchel (King’s College London); Epilepsy chaired by Dr Laura Mantoan Ritter (King’s College London) with speakers Dr Paula Rocktäschel (King’s College Hospital), Dr Matthew Bluett-Duncan (University of Manchester), Professor Deb Pal (King’s College London). Key themes emerged from these disorder-focussed sessions including the influence of environments on impacting function and guiding neurodevelopment down different pathways, the significance of considering developmental trajectories across the lifespan and understanding the dynamic complexity of environments and how these interplay with genetics. The need to use comprehensive, robust and relevant phenotyping to assess the impact of environment on neurodevelopmental conditions also was highlighted across the three sessions.

The symposium also included a series of fantastic lightning talks chaired by Preslava Todorova from some of our Centre’s excellent PhD students (Clara Lenherr, Megan Edwards, Ottavia Ollari, Charlie Morris and Zhikun Li) with a prize for the best talk awarded to Zhikun Li for their talk entitled “Exploring epigenetic effects of adolescent cannabinoid exposure in mice”.

The symposium was rounded off with a lively panel discussion, questions from the audience and take-home messages chaired by Amelia Brown with MRC CNDD academics Professor Cathy Fernandes, Dr Nick Puts, Professor Marta Di Forti, and Dr Laura Mantoan Ritter as the panellists.

Take a look at some photos from the day on our LinkedIn or Instagram accounts.

News story written by Prof Cathy Fernandes on behalf of the organising committee.