Byeon Kyoungseob, Park Hyunjin, Park Shinwon, Cluce Jon, Mehta Kahini, Cieslak Matthew, Cui Zaixu, Hong Seok-Jun, Chang Catie, Smallwood Jonathan, Satterthwaite Theodore D, Milham Michael P, Xu Ting
Child Mind Institute, New York, NY, United States.
School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, South Korea.
bioRxiv. 2025 Feb 5:2025.02.04.635765. doi: 10.1101/2025.02.04.635765.
The brain undergoes profound structural and functional transformations from childhood to adolescence. Convergent evidence suggests that neurodevelopment proceeds in a hierarchical manner, characterized by heterogeneous maturation patterns across brain regions and networks. However, the maturation of the intrinsic spatiotemporal propagations of brain activity remains largely unexplored. This study aims to bridge this gap by delineating spatiotemporal propagations from childhood to early adulthood. By leveraging a recently developed approach that captures time-lag dynamic propagations, we characterized intrinsic dynamic propagations along three axes: sensory-association (S-A), 'task-positive' to default networks (TP-D), and somatomotor-visual (SM-V) networks, which progress towards adult-like brain dynamics from childhood to early adulthood. Importantly, we demonstrated that as participants mature, there is a prolonged occurrence of the S-A and TP-D propagation states, indicating that they spend more time in these states. Conversely, the prevalence of SM-V propagation states declines during development. Notably, top-down propagations along the S-A axis exhibited an age-dependent increase in occurrence, serving as a superior predictor of cognitive scores compared to bottom-up S-A propagation. These findings were replicated across two independent cohorts (N = 677 in total), emphasizing the robustness and generalizability of these findings. Our results provide new insights into the emergence of adult-like functional dynamics during youth and their role in supporting cognition.
从童年到青春期，大脑会经历深刻的结构和功能转变。越来越多的证据表明，神经发育是分层进行的，其特点是大脑区域和网络的成熟模式各不相同。然而，大脑活动内在时空传播的成熟过程在很大程度上仍未得到探索。本研究旨在通过描绘从童年到成年早期的时空传播来填补这一空白。通过利用一种最近开发的捕捉时间滞后动态传播的方法，我们沿着三个轴描绘了内在动态传播：感觉-关联（S-A）轴、从“任务积极”网络到默认网络（TP-D）轴以及躯体运动-视觉（SM-V）网络，这些网络从童年到成年早期逐渐向类似成人的大脑动态发展。重要的是，我们证明，随着参与者的成熟，S-A和TP-D传播状态的持续时间会延长，这表明他们在这些状态下花费的时间更多。相反，SM-V传播状态的普遍程度在发育过程中会下降。值得注意的是，沿着S-A轴的自上而下传播在发生频率上呈现出与年龄相关的增加，与自下而上的S-A传播相比，它是认知分数的一个更优预测指标。这些发现在两个独立队列（总共N = 677）中得到了重复验证，强调了这些发现的稳健性和普遍性。我们的研究结果为青少年时期类似成人功能动态的出现及其在支持认知方面的作用提供了新的见解。
