bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Nov 4, 2021
The neuroanatomical changes that underpin cognitive development is of major interest in neuroscie... more The neuroanatomical changes that underpin cognitive development is of major interest in neuroscience. Of the many aspects of neuroanatomy to consider, tertiary sulci are particularly appealing as they emerge last in gestation, show a protracted development after birth, and are either human-or hominoid-specific. Thus, they are ideal targets for exploring morphological-cognitive relationships with cognitive skills, such as verbal working memory (WM), that also show protracted development. Yet, the relationship between sulcal morphology and verbal WM is unknown, either in development or more generally. To fill this gap, we adopted a data-driven approach with cross-validation to examine the relationship between sulcal depth in lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) and verbal WM in 60 participants ages 6-18. These analyses identified nine left, but not right, LPFC sulci (of which six were tertiary) whose depth predicted verbal WM performance. Most of these sulci are located within and around contours of functionally defined parcellations of LPFC proposed previously. This sulcal depth model outperformed models with age or cortical thickness. Taken together, these findings contribute to building empirical support for a classic theory that tertiary sulci serve as landmarks in association cortices that contribute to aspects of human behavior that show a protracted development.
Cognitive Control, Semantic Memory, and Priming: Contributions from Prefrontal Cortex
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In a large sample of children spanning ages 6-18 years, this study demonstrates pronounced age-re... more In a large sample of children spanning ages 6-18 years, this study demonstrates pronounced age-related improvements in analogical reasoning between ages 6 and 10, and continued improvement until mid-adolescence. • We used neuroimaging to distinguish among several plausible cognitive accounts of the development of analogical reasoning. • This work demonstrates that the development of analogical reasoning is associated with increased engagement of the left anterior inferior prefrontal cortex (BA 47/45), previously shown to be associated with the ability to select among competing semantic associations. • Improvements over this age range were not observed in brain regions linked to domain-general processes underlying response control or relational thinking. 1 | INTRODUCTION Analogical reasoning, or the ability to find correspondences between individual objects as well as their relationships (Gentner, 1983;
To explore the relationship between memory and early school performance, we used graph theory to ... more To explore the relationship between memory and early school performance, we used graph theory to investigate memory reports from 76 children aged 6-8 years. The reports comprised autobiographical memories of events days to years past, and memories of novel images reported immediately after encoding. We also measured intelligence quotient (IQ) and theory of mind (ToM). Reading and Mathematics were assessed before classes began (December 2013), around the time of report collection (June 2014), and at the end of the academic year (December 2014). IQ and ToM correlated positively with word diversity and word-to-word connectivity, and negatively with word recurrence. Connectivity correlated positively with Reading in June 2014 as well as December 2014, even after adjusting for IQ and ToM. To our knowledge, this is the first study demonstrating a link between the structure of children's memories and their cognitive or academic performance.
The ability to recover episodic associations is thought to depend on medial-temporal lobe mnemoni... more The ability to recover episodic associations is thought to depend on medial-temporal lobe mnemonic mechanisms and frontal lobe cognitive control processes. The present study examined the neural circuitry underlying non-verbal associative retrieval, and considered the consequences of successful retrieval on cognitive control demands. Event-related fMRI data were acquired while subjects retrieved strongly or weakly associated pairs of novel visual patterns in a two-alternative forced choice associative recognition paradigm. Behaviorally, successful retrieval of strongly associated relative to weakly associated pairs was more likely to be accompanied by conscious recollection of the pairÕs prior co-occurrence. At the neural level, right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and hippocampus were more active during successful retrieval of Strong than of Weak associations, consistent with a role in visual associative recollection. By contrast, Weak trials elicited greater activation in right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which may detect conflict between the similarly familiar target and foil stimuli in the absence of recollection. Consistent with this interpretation, stronger ACC activity was associated with weaker hippocampal and stronger right dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) responses. Thus, recollection of relevant visual associations (hippocampus and VLPFC) results in lower levels of mnemonic conflict (ACC) and decreased familiarity-based monitoring demands (DLPFC). These findings highlight the interplay between cognitive control and episodic retrieval.
Sulcal variability in anterior lateral prefrontal cortex contributes to variability in reasoning performance among young adults
Identifying structure-function correspondences is a major goal among biologists, cognitive neuros... more Identifying structure-function correspondences is a major goal among biologists, cognitive neuroscientists, and brain mappers. Recent studies have identified relationships between performance on cognitive tasks and the presence or absence of small, shallow indentations, or sulci, of the human brain. Building on the previous finding that the presence of one such sulcus in the left anterior lateral prefrontal cortex (aLPFC) was related to reasoning task performance in children and adolescents, we tested whether this relationship extended to a different sample, age group, and reasoning task. As predicted, the presence of this aLPFC sulcus—the ventral para-intermediate frontal sulcus—was also associated with higher reasoning scores in young adults (ages 22-36). These findings have not only direct developmental, but also evolutionary relevance—as recent work shows that the pimfs-v is exceedingly rare in chimpanzees. Thus, the pimfs-v is a novel developmental, cognitive, and evolutionaril...
Previous findings show that the morphology of folds (sulci) of the human cerebral cortex flatten ... more Previous findings show that the morphology of folds (sulci) of the human cerebral cortex flatten during postnatal development. However, previous studies did not consider the relationship between sulcal morphology and cognitive development in individual participants. Here, we fill this gap in knowledge by leveraging cross-sectional morphological neuroimaging data in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) from individual human participants (6-36 years old, males and females; N = 108; 3672 sulci), as well as longitudinal morphological and behavioral data from a subset of child and adolescent participants scanned at two timepoints (6-18 years old; N = 44; 2992 sulci). Manually defining thousands of sulci revealed that LPFC sulcal morphology (depth, surface area, gray matter thickness, and local gyrification index) differed between children (6-11 years old)/adolescents (11-18 years old) and young adults (22-36 years old) cross-sectionally, but only cortical thickness showed both cross-sect...
Understanding brain structure-function relationships, and their development and evolution, is cen... more Understanding brain structure-function relationships, and their development and evolution, is central to neuroscience research. Here, we show that morphological differences in posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), a hub of functional brain networks, predict individual differences in macroanatomical, microstructural, and functional features of PCC. Manually labeling 4511 sulci in 572 hemispheres, we found a shallow cortical indentation (termed the inframarginal sulcus; ifrms ) within PCC that is absent from neuroanatomical atlases yet colocalized with a focal, functional region of the lateral frontoparietal network implicated in cognitive control. This structural-functional coupling generalized to meta-analyses consisting of hundreds of studies and thousands of participants. Additional morphological analyses showed that unique properties of the ifrms differ across the life span and between hominoid species. These findings support a classic theory that shallow, tertiary sulci serve as lan...
The relationship between structural variability in late-developing association cortices like the ... more The relationship between structural variability in late-developing association cortices like the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) and the development of higher-order cognitive skills is not well understood. Recent findings show that the morphology of LPFC sulci predicts reasoning performance; this work led to the observation of substantial individual variability in the morphology of one of these sulci, the para-intermediate frontal sulcus (pimfs). Here, we sought to characterize this variability and assess its behavioral significance. To this end, we identified the pimfs in a developmental cohort of 72 participants, ages 6-18. When controlling for age, the presence or absence of the ventral component of the pimfs was associated with reasoning, as was the total surface area of pimfs. These findings show that multiple features of sulci can support the development of complex cognitive abilities and highlight the importance of considering individual differences in local morphology when ...
Development of Executive Function in Middle Childhood: a Large-Scale, In-School, Longitudinal Investigation
This manuscript describes data collection, cleaning, and quality control procedures used in a lar... more This manuscript describes data collection, cleaning, and quality control procedures used in a large-scale, longitudinal, in-school study of executive function skills (EFs) and academic achievement in middle childhood, Project iLEAD (in-school Longitudinal Executive Function and Academic Achievement Database). Assessments were administered in real-world educational settings in a large sample of third through eighth grade students (ages 7 to 14; N = 1,280) over two years, with eight data collection timepoints in group settings. We assessed students with a novel, mobile EF assessment tool Adaptive Cognitive Evaluation (ACE). This battery included 11 tasks that were each designed to adapt to user performance in a trial-wise manner, allowing the same battery of tasks to be used multiple times within the same individual, and across a wide range of ages. Data quality analyses revealed that the adaptive algorithms were successful in equating challenge levels across ages 7 through 14 for 10 ...
There has been extensive discussion about gender gaps in representation and career advancement in... more There has been extensive discussion about gender gaps in representation and career advancement in the sciences. However, psychological science itself has yet to be the focus of discussion or systematic review, despite our field’s investment in questions of equity, status, well-being, gender bias, and gender disparities. In the present article, we consider 10 topics relevant for women’s career advancement in psychological science. We focus on issues that have been the subject of empirical study, discuss relevant evidence within and outside of psychological science, and draw on established psychological theory and social-science research to begin to chart a path forward. We hope that better understanding of these issues within the field will shed light on areas of existing gender gaps in the discipline and areas where positive change has happened, and spark conversation within our field about how to create lasting change to mitigate remaining gender differences in psychological science.
ABSTRACTFormal thought organization obtained from free speech, a key feature for psychiatric eval... more ABSTRACTFormal thought organization obtained from free speech, a key feature for psychiatric evaluations, has been poorly investigated during typical development. Computational tools such as speech graph connectedness (LSC) currently allow for an accurate quantification in naturalistic settings. LSC's typical development is better predicted by years of education than by age. Among beginning readers, the LSC of stories composed of short‐term memory predicted reading independently from IQ. Here we set out to test a longitudinal sample (6–8 years old, n = 45, followed for 2 years) to verify whether the LSC is predictive of various memory measures, and whether such relations can explain the correlation with reading. The LSC was specifically correlated with verbal short‐term memory performance. The results support the notion that the short‐term storage of verbal information is necessary to plan a story. Given the limited sample size, the relationship of this interaction with reading ...
The current study investigated longitudinal change in hippocampal and prefrontal contribution to ... more The current study investigated longitudinal change in hippocampal and prefrontal contribution to episodic retrieval. Functional neuroimaging data were collected during an item-context association memory task for children between the ages of 8 and 14 with individuals scanned 1-3 times over the course of 0.75-3.7 years (Timepoint 1 N = 90; Timepoint 2 N = 83, Timepoint 3 N = 75). We investigated developmental changes in functional activation associated with episodic retrieval (correct item-context > incorrect item-context contrast) and asked whether pubertal changes contributed to developmental changes in pattern of activation. Non-linear developmental trajectories were observed. In the hippocampus, activation decreased with age during childhood and then increased into early adolescence. In the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, activation was largely absent initially, but quickly accelerated over time. Independent of age, changes in pubertal status additionally predicted increases in item-context activation in initially older children, and decreases in initially younger children across both regions and two indicators of puberty: the Pubertal Development Scale and salivary testosterone. These findings suggest that changes in both age and pubertal status uniquely contribute to memory-related activation, and the timing of pubertal onset may play an important role in the neural mechanisms supporting memory retrieval.
The ability to flexibly switch between tasks is key for goal-directed behavior and continues to i... more The ability to flexibly switch between tasks is key for goal-directed behavior and continues to improve across childhood. Children's task switching difficulties are thought to reflect less efficient engagement of sustained and transient control processes, resulting in lower performance on blocks that intermix tasks (sustained demand) and trials that require a task switch (transient demand). Sustained and transient control processes are associated with frontoparietal regions, which develop throughout childhood and may contribute to task switching development. We examined age differences in the modulation of frontoparietal regions by sustained and transient control demands in children (8-11 years) and adults. Children showed greater performance costs than adults, especially under sustained demand, along with less upregulation of sustained and transient control activation in frontoparietal regions. Compared to adults, children showed increased connectivity between the inferior frontal junction (IFJ) and lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC) from single to mixed blocks. For children whose sustained activation was less adult-like, increased IFJ-lPFC connectivity was associated with better performance. Children with more adult-like sustained activation showed the inverse effect. These results suggest that individual differences in task switching in later childhood at least partly depend on the recruitment of frontoparietal regions in an adult-like manner.
Executive functions (EFs) are linked to positive outcomes across the lifespan. Yet, methodologica... more Executive functions (EFs) are linked to positive outcomes across the lifespan. Yet, methodological challenges have prevented precise understanding of the developmental trajectory of their organization. We introduce novel methods to address challenges for both measuring and modeling EFs using an accelerated longitudinal design with a large, diverse sample of students in middle childhood (N = 1,286; ages 8 to 14). We deployed adaptive assessments to equate EF challenge across ages and a data-driven, network analytic approach to reveal the evolving diversity of EFs while simultaneously accounting for their unity. This methodological paradigm shift brings new precision and clarity to EF development, showing number of components stabilizes by age 10, but refinement of component composition continues through at least age 14.
The ability to flexibly switch between tasks is key for goal-directed behavior and continues to i... more The ability to flexibly switch between tasks is key for goal-directed behavior and continues to improve across childhood. Children’s task switching difficulties are thought to reflect less efficient engagement of sustained and transient control processes, resulting in lower performance on blocks that intermix tasks (sustained demand) and trials that require a task switch (transient demand). Sustained and transient control processes are associated with frontoparietal regions, which develop throughout childhood and may contribute to task switching development. We examined age differences in the modulation of frontoparietal regions by sustained and transient control demands in children (8–11 years) and adults. Children showed greater performance costs than adults, especially under sustained demand, along with less upregulation of sustained and transient control activation in frontoparietal regions. Compared to adults, children showed increased connectivity between the inferior frontal ...
The lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is disproportionately expanded in humans compared to non-hum... more The lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is disproportionately expanded in humans compared to non-human primates, although the relationship between LPFC brain structures and uniquely human cognitive skills is largely unknown. Here, we test the relationship between variability in LPFC tertiary sulcal morphology and reasoning scores in a cohort of children and adolescents. Using a data-driven approach in independent discovery and replication samples, we show that the depth of specific LPFC tertiary sulci is associated with individual differences in reasoning scores beyond age. To expedite discoveries in future neuroanatomical-behavioral studies, we share tertiary sulcal definitions with the field. These findings support a classic but largely untested theory linking the protracted development of tertiary sulci to late-developing cognitive processes.
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