Cortical Maturation and Verbal Fluency in Childhood, Adolescence, and Young Adulthood

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Cortical Maturation and Verbal Fluency in Childhood, Adolescence, and Young Adulthood

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2009-11

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Neuroimaging studies of normative human brain development indicate that the brain matures at differing rates across time and brain regions, with some areas maturing into young adulthood. High-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) allows for a detailed morphometric analysis of these changes. In particular, changes in cortical thickness may index maturational progressions from an overabundance of neuropil toward efficiently pruned neural networks. Changes in sMRI measures have rarely been examined in relation to neuropsychological functions. In this study, healthy right-handed adolescents completed sMRI scanning and the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT). Age-related associations of task performance and cortical thickness were assessed with cortical-surface-based analyses. Significant correlations between increasing COWAT performances and decreasing cortical thickness were found in left hemisphere language regions, including Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas. Task performance was also correlated with regions associated with intellectual capacity, effortful verbal and working memory processing, as well as performance monitoring. Structure-function associations were not significantly different between older and younger subjects. However, a main effect of sex was significant in left rostral middle frontal gyrus, with the effect driven primarily by younger males. Decreases in cortical thicknesses in regions that comprise the language network likely reflect maturation toward adult-like cortical organization and processing efficiency. The changes in brain structure that support verbal fluency appear to be reached in the early teens but with separate developmental trajectories for males and females, consistent with other studies of adolescent development.

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University of Minnesota Master of Arts thesis. November 2009. Major: Psychology. Advisor: Monica M. Luciana, Ph.D. 1 computer file (PDF); v, 41 pages.

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Porter, James Norby. (2009). Cortical Maturation and Verbal Fluency in Childhood, Adolescence, and Young Adulthood. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/60090.

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