DGCR8 and schizophrenia: Schofield et al. (2011) identified alterations in the electrical properties of layer V pyramidal neurons in the medial PFC of Dgcr8+/- mice, as well as a decrease in the complexity of the basal dendrites and reduced excitatory synaptic transmission. These functional results suggest that precise microRNA expression is critical for the development of PFC circuitry (Schofield et al., 2011), circuitry which has been reported to be altered in schizophrenia patients (Ursu et al., 2011).