Developmental shifts in fMRI activations during visuospatial relational reasoning

摘要: To investigate maturational plasticity of fluid cognition systems, functional brain imaging was undertaken in healthy 8-19 year old participants while completing visuospatial relational reasoning problems similar to Raven's matrices and current elementary grade math textbooks. Analyses revealed that across this developmental age range recruited activations the superior parietal cortices most prominently, dorsolateral prefrontal, occipital-temporal, premotor/supplementary cortices, basal ganglia, insula. There were comparable activity volumes left right hemispheres for nearly all these regions. Regression analyses indicated increasing predominantly lobes with age. In contrast, multiple anterior neural systems showed significantly less age, including ventrolateral paracentral, insula bilaterally, particularly large clusters midline cingulate/medial frontal cortex, middle cingulate/supplementary motor insula-putamen, caudate. Findings suggest neuromaturational changes associated shift from a more widespread fronto-cingulate-striatal pattern childhood predominant parieto-frontal activation late adolescence.