And excessive synaptic pruning during development may contribute to cognitive impairments and schizophrenia (Sekar et al., 2016), and this is potentially linked to desialylation as educational attainment, cognitive ability, maths ability and/or schizophrenia are associated with genetic variants in sialidases Neu1 and Neu2, and sialyl‐transferases ST3GAL2, ST3GAL3, ST6GAL2, ST8SIA1, ST8SIA2 and ST8SIA4 (https://genetics.opentargets.org). Here, ST8SIA1 is linked to schizophrenia.