BDNF activates an NFI-dependent neurodevelopmental timing program by sequestering NFATc4.

We show that BDNF regulates the timing of neurodevelopment via a novel mechanism of extranuclear sequestration of NFATc4 in Golgi. This leads to accelerated derepression of an NFI temporal occupancy gene program in cerebellar granule cells that includes Bdnf itself, revealing an autoregulatory loop within the program driven by BDNF and NFATc4.