Across development children show marked improvement in their executive functions (EFs), including the ability to hold information in working memory and to deploy cognitive control, allowing them to ignore prepotent responses in favor of newly learned behaviors. How does the brain support these age-related improvements? Age-related cortical gray-matter thinning, thought to result from selective pruning of inefficient synaptic connections and increases in myelination, may support age-related improvements in EFs. Here we used structural MRI to measure cortical thickness. We investigate the association between cortical thickness in three cortical regions of interest (ROIs), and age-related changes in cognitive control and working memory in 5-10 year old children. We found significant associations between reductions in cortical thickness and age-related improvements in performance on both working memory and cognitive control tasks. Moreover, we observed a dissociation between ROIs typically thought to underlie changes in cognitive control (right Inferior Frontal gyrus and Anterior Cingulate cortex) and age-related improvements in cognitive control, and ROIs for working memory (superior parietal cortex), and age-related changes in a working memory task. These data add to our growing understanding of how structural maturation of the brain supports vast behavioral changes in executive functions observed across childhood.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3876892 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2013.07.002 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Subclinical depressive symptoms and job stress differentially impact memory in working and retired older adults.
Sci Rep
January 2025
Department of Psychological Sciences, Rice University, 6100 Main St, Houston, TX, 77005, USA.
Retirement has been associated with cognitive decline beyond normal age-related decline. However, there are many individual differences in retirement that can influence cognition. Subclinical depressive symptoms are common in late life and are associated with general memory decline and a bias towards remembering negative events (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGRAiCE: reconstructing terrestrial water storage anomalies with recurrent neural networks.
Sci Data
January 2025
Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University, New York, USA.
The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and its follow-on (GRACE-FO) missions have provided estimates of Terrestrial Water Storage Anomalies (TWSA) since 2002, enabling the monitoring of global hydrological changes. However, temporal gaps within these datasets and the lack of TWSA observations prior to 2002 limit our understanding of long-term freshwater variability. In this study, we develop GRAiCE, a set of four global monthly TWSA reconstructions from 1984 to 2021 at 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElectrophysiological signatures of the effect of context on exploration: Greater attentional and learning signals when exploration is costly.
Brain Res
January 2025
Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta Canada; Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute Edmonton Alberta Canada; Canada Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) AI Chair, Canada.
Humans are excellent at modifying our behaviour depending on context. For example, humans will change how they explore when losses are possible compared to when they are not possible. However, it remains unclear what specific cognitive and neural processes are modulated when exploring in different contexts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMenstrual cycle characteristics across the reproductive lifespan and cognitive function in midlife women.
Am J Obstet Gynecol
January 2025
Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
Background: Menstrual cycle characteristics are potential indicators of hormonal exposures and may also signal cardiovascular disease risk factors, both of which are relevant to cognitive health. However, there is scarce epidemiological evidence on the association between cycle characteristics and cognitive function.
Objectives: We studied the associations of menstrual cycle characteristics at three stages of a woman's reproductive lifespan with cognitive function in midlife.
Unlabelled: We investigated the impact of participation in post-secondary university education (PSE) on the academic knowledge of adult students with severe intellectual disability and extensive support needs (SIDESN) vs. a similar group of controls who did not participate in PSE. We also examined whether the PSE would result in a "near transfer" to basic crystallized (facts and information) and fluid (problems involving executive functions and working memory) cognitive abilities, the contribution of background characteristics and crystallized and fluid abilities to their academic knowledge, semantic fluency and temporal relations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!