The Concurrence of Cortical Surface Area Expansion and White Matter Myelination in Human Brain Development

Overview

Journal Cereb Cortex

Publisher Oxford University Press

Specialty Neurology

Date 2018 Nov 22

PMID 30462166

Citations 24

Authors

Riccardo Cafiero

Jens Brauer

Alfred Anwander

Angela D Friederici

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The human brain undergoes dramatic structural changes during childhood that co-occur with behavioral development. These age-related changes are documented for the brain's gray matter and white matter. However, their interrelation is largely unknown. In this study, we investigated age-related effects in cortical thickness (CT) and in cortical surface area (SA) as parts of the gray matter volume as well as age effects in T1 relaxation times in the white matter. Data from N = 170 children between the ages of 3 and 7 years contributed to the sample. We found a high spatial overlap of age-related correlations between SA and T1 relaxation times of the corresponding white matter connections, but no such relation between SA and CT. These results indicate that during childhood the developmental expansion of the cortical surface goes hand-in-hand with age-related increase of white matter fiber connections terminating in the cortical surface.

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