Lidzba Karen, Ebner Kathina, Hauser Till-Karsten, Wilke Marko
Pediatric Neurology and Developmental Medicine and Experimental Pediatric Neuroimaging, Children's Hospital University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, Radiological Clinic, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
PLoS One. 2013 Dec 23;8(12):e85168. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0085168. eCollection 2013.
Complex visuospatial processing relies on distributed neural networks involving occipital, parietal and frontal brain regions. Effects of physiological maturation (during normal brain development) and proficiency on tasks requiring complex visuospatial processing have not yet been studied extensively, as they are almost invariably interrelated. We therefore aimed at dissociating the effects of age and performance on functional MRI (fMRI) activation in a complex visual search task. In our cross-sectional study, healthy children and adolescents (n = 43, 19 females, 7-17 years) performed a complex visual search task during fMRI. Resulting activation was analysed with regard to the differential effects of age and performance. Our results are compatible with an increase in the neural network's efficacy with age: within occipital and parietal cortex, the core regions of the visual exploration network, activation increased with age, and more so in the right than in the left hemisphere. Further, activation outside the visual search network decreased with age, mainly in left inferior frontal, middle temporal, and inferior parietal cortex. High-performers had stronger activation in right superior parietal cortex, suggesting a more mature visual search network. We could not see effects of age or performance in frontal cortex. Our results show that effects of physiological maturation and effects of performance, while usually intertwined, can be successfully disentangled and investigated using fMRI in children and adolescents.
复杂的视觉空间处理依赖于涉及枕叶、顶叶和额叶脑区的分布式神经网络。生理成熟（在正常脑发育过程中）以及熟练程度对需要复杂视觉空间处理的任务的影响尚未得到广泛研究，因为它们几乎总是相互关联的。因此，我们旨在区分年龄和表现对复杂视觉搜索任务中功能磁共振成像（fMRI）激活的影响。在我们的横断面研究中，健康儿童和青少年（n = 43，19名女性，7至17岁）在fMRI期间执行了一项复杂的视觉搜索任务。针对年龄和表现的差异效应分析了由此产生的激活情况。我们的结果与神经网络效能随年龄增长而增加一致：在视觉探索网络的核心区域枕叶和顶叶皮质内，激活随年龄增加，且右侧比左侧半球更明显。此外，视觉搜索网络之外的激活随年龄减少，主要在左额下回、颞中回和顶下小叶皮质。表现优异者在右侧顶上小叶皮质有更强的激活，表明视觉搜索网络更成熟。我们在额叶皮质中未发现年龄或表现的影响。我们的结果表明，生理成熟的影响和表现的影响虽然通常相互交织，但可以通过fMRI在儿童和青少年中成功区分并进行研究。
