Environmental stimulation modulating the pathophysiology of neurodevelopmental disorders

There are a wide range of neurodevelopmental disorders resulting in neurological and psychiatric symptoms. Each disorder involves a combination of genetic, environmental, and epigenetic factors. The 21st century revolution in human genomics is delivering extraordinary new insights into a wide variety of brain disorders. However, our knowledge of ‘enviromics’ (an individual’s entire environmental exposures across a lifespan) remains in its infancy. Furthermore, there is an urgent need to understand how positive environmental interventions (and associated applications of neurotechnology) can induce beneficial effects in these neuropsychiatric disorders. In this chapter, we will provide a brief overview of the role of the environment in brain development and then focus on the issues around environmental stimulation and its therapeutic effects in preclinical models. We will use two major neurodevelopmental disorders, a monogenic disorder (Rett syndrome) and a common polygenic disorder (schizophrenia), as exemplars. Advances in neurotechnology and brain stimulation promise to deliver novel therapeutic approaches for such neurodevelopmental disorders. However, much more preclinical and clinical progress is needed to elucidate complex aspects of genomics, enviromics, epigenomics, and associated gene-environment interactions, to inform the development of new therapies.