Center for Health Sciences, Neuroscience Program, Biosciences Division, SRI International, Menlo Park, CA, 94025-3493, USA.
Pacific Graduate School of Clinical Psychology, Palo Alto University, Palo Alto, CA, USA.
Brain Imaging Behav. 2020 Aug;14(4):1089-1107. doi: 10.1007/s11682-019-00075-x.
Critical changes in adolescence involve brain cognitive maturation of inhibitory control processes that are essential for a myriad of adult functions. Cognitive control advances into adulthood as there is more flexible integration of component processes, including inhibitory control of conflicting information, overwriting inappropriate response tendencies, and amplifying relevant responses for accurate execution. Using a modified Stroop task with fMRI, we investigated the effects of age, sex, and puberty on brain functional correlates of cognitive and motor control in 87 boys and 91 girls across the adolescent age range. Results revealed dissociable brain systems for cognitive and motor control processes, whereby adolescents flexibly adapted neural responses to control demands. Specifically, when response repetitions facilitated planning-based action selection, frontoparietal-insular regions associated with cognitive control operations were less activated, whereas cortical-pallidal-cerebellar motor regions associated with motor skill acquisition, were more activated. Attenuated middle cingulate cortex activation occurred with older adolescent age for both motor control and cognitive control with automaticity from repetition learning. Sexual dimorphism for control operations occurred in extrastriate cortices involved in visuo-attentional selection: While boys enhanced extrastriate selection processes for motor control, girls activated these regions more for cognitive control. These sex differences were attenuated with more advanced pubertal stage. Together, our findings show that brain cognitive and motor control processes are segregated, demand-specific, more efficient in older adolescents, and differ between sexes relative to pubertal development. Our findings advance our understanding of how distributed brain activity and the neurodevelopment of automaticity enhances cognitive and motor control ability in adolescence.
青春期的关键变化涉及大脑认知成熟过程中的抑制控制，这对于无数成人功能至关重要。随着认知控制的发展，大脑能够更加灵活地整合各个组成部分的过程，包括对冲突信息的抑制控制、覆盖不适当的反应倾向，以及放大相关反应以实现准确执行。我们使用修改后的 Stroop 任务和 fMRI，研究了年龄、性别和青春期对 87 名男孩和 91 名女孩在青春期范围内的认知和运动控制的大脑功能相关性的影响。结果揭示了认知和运动控制过程的分离大脑系统，青少年可以灵活地适应控制需求的神经反应。具体来说，当反应重复促进基于计划的动作选择时，与认知控制操作相关的额顶叶-岛叶区域的激活减少，而与运动技能获得相关的皮质-苍白球-小脑运动区域的激活增加。从中年扣带皮层的激活随着青少年年龄的增长而减弱，对于运动控制和认知控制，由于重复学习的自动性，这种减弱更为明显。控制操作的性二态性发生在参与视知觉选择的外侧纹状体：男孩增强了运动控制的外侧纹状体选择过程，而女孩则更激活了这些区域的认知控制。这些性别差异随着青春期阶段的推进而减弱。总之，我们的发现表明，大脑的认知和运动控制过程是分离的，具有特定的需求，在年龄较大的青少年中更有效，并且相对于青春期发育，性别之间存在差异。我们的研究结果提高了我们对分布式大脑活动和自动性的神经发育如何增强青少年认知和运动控制能力的理解。
