Progressive increase of frontostriatal brain activation from childhood to adulthood during event‐related tasks of cognitive control

Rubia, Katya; Smith, Anna; Woolley, James; Nosarti, Chiara; Heyman, Isobel; Taylor, Eric; Brammer, Mick · 2006 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1002/hbm.20237

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Summary

This study investigates the neurofunctional development of cognitive control, specifically addressing inconsistencies in prior literature regarding whether brain activation increases or decreases from childhood to adulthood. Previous functional MRI (fMRI) studies often yielded conflicting results, potentially due to small sample sizes or confounds from age-related performance differences in block-design paradigms. To resolve this, the authors employed rapid, randomized, mixed-trial event-related fMRI to examine neural networks mediating three distinct forms of inhibitory control: selective motor response inhibition, cognitive interference inhibition, and attentional set shifting. The study included 52 male right-handed subjects, comprising 23 adults (mean age 28 years) and 29 adolescents (mean age 15 years). Participants performed three tasks: a Go/no-go task for motor inhibition, a Simon task for interference inhibition, and a Switch task for cognitive flexibility. The event-related design allowed for the comparison of only successful trials, thereby controlling for performance differences. Data were analyzed using whole-brain regression to assess age-related changes and between-group comparisons to identify specific activation patterns in adolescents versus adults. The results demonstrated that adults exhibited increased brain activation compared to adolescents in task-specific frontostriatal networks. During the Go/no-go task, adults showed greater activation in the right orbital and mesial prefrontal cortex and caudate. For the Switch task, increased activation was observed in the right mesial and inferior prefrontal cortex, parietal lobe, and putamen. In the Simon task, adults displayed heightened activity in left dorsolateral and inferior frontotemporoparietal regions and the putamen. Whole-brain regression analyses confirmed progressive, age-related increases in these task-specific frontostriatal, frontotemporal, and frontoparietal networks across the entire cohort. These findings suggest that the neural substrates of cognitive control undergo progressive maturation from childhood to mid-adulthood. The study concludes that older subjects utilize more focal and robust activation in frontostriatal circuits for executive functions, supporting the hypothesis that cognitive efficiency improves with age through synaptic pruning and myelination. By using event-related designs and larger samples, this research clarifies that developmental changes in cognitive control are characterized by increased, rather than decreased, recruitment of specific neural networks in adults.

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• executive function