Musical training is associated with improved cognitive and academic performance across development. While specific neural mechanisms have been implicated in these associations, the precise relationship between white matter structure and putative cognitive effects of musical training are unclear. The present study examined the relationships between musical training, cognitive performance, and white matter structure in middle childhood. Using a combination of behavioral assessments and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in a sample of 76 preadolescents (38 with musical training and 38 without musical training) between 7-9 years old, cognitive abilities were tested using the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities (WJ III) and the Operation Span Task (OSPAN), while academic achievement was assessed using the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA II). Behavioral results revealed that participants with musical training had higher cognitive scores (F(5, 70) = 2.89, p =.02) and greater academic achievement (F(5, 70) = 4.09, p =.003) compared to those without musical training. DTI results revealed that musical training was associated with higher mode (F(1, 48) = 5.82, p = 0.02) in the right PCG to STGp tract of the arcuate fasciculus (AF), although the relationship was marginally significant following Benjamini-Hochberg correction. Together, these results provide both behavioral and neural evidence for the relationship between musical training and cognition in a sample of preadolescents.
Many neuropsychiatric disorders demonstrate sex-based differences in their prevalence, onset age, and phenotypic presentation. The neuroanatomic and neurophysiologic substrates that underpin these sex differences are not fully understood. Animal studies have demonstrated sex differences in neuronal, dendritic, and glial microstructure. Restriction Spectrum Imaging (RSI) is an advanced diffusion MR technique that delineates the intracellular, extracellular, and free water contributions to diffusion signal, providing unique insights into microstructure. A recent RSI study showed large sex differences in subcortical gray matter structures in young adults, most significantly in the hippocampus, amygdala, and nucleus accumbens, which persist when controlling for age and volume. In this study, we use RSI to examine sex-related developmental trajectories in subcortical gray matter across childhood and adolescence into early adulthood by combining the Human Connectome Project–Development and Young Adult datasets (ages 9–35 years). We observe that sex differences emerge over adolescence, with males showing higher restricted diffusion and lower hindered diffusion than females across all deep gray structures interrogated. We establish sex-stratified MR diffusion based developmental trajectories for subcortical gray matter that will support future neurodevelopmental research.
Adolescence is a unique developmental stage, defined by neural reorganisation and a heightened sensitivity to the social environment. Brain maturation is a prolonged process extending well into the twenties, involving microstructural refinements such as axonal myelination and synaptic pruning, which are partly dependent on environmental input. This period of heightened neuroplasticity coincides with a shift toward peer affiliation and increased susceptibility to risk-taking, particularly in social settings. Consequently, adolescent decision-making should be viewed through a social lens, in which the drive to avoid social exclusion and to secure peer acceptance acts as a powerful motivator of behaviour. This framework underscores the importance of social connections and suggests that, conversely, disruptions to these relationships, and in particular social isolation, can be harmful to adolescent development. Studies have demonstrated that even brief periods of social isolation in adolescence can increase reward seeking and reward learning, heighten threat sensitivity and reduce risk perception. The research reviewed in this paper has implications for how young people are treated in the youth justice system. I argue that justice systems should evolve from punitive approaches toward rehabilitative frameworks and age-appropriate legal thresholds grounded in evidence-based insights into the developing adolescent brain and mind.
BACKGROUND:Theory of Mind (ToM) deficits are a core feature of autism, yet the neural dynamics associated with social-cognitive processing in naturalistic contexts remain unclear. Alpha-band oscillations have been implicated in the regulation of internal attention and may be involved in supporting mentalizing during real-world social interactions. METHODS:Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from 41 autistic children and 34 typically developing (TD) children aged 3-10 years while they passively viewed a nonverbal animated film. Alpha power (6-9 Hz) in the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) and prefrontal cortex (PFC) was examined during Theory of Mind-related scenes and baseline scenes. RESULTS:TD children showed increased alpha-band activity during ToM-related scenes relative to baseline, whereas autistic children showed no clear context-dependent alpha-band modulation. Exploratory ROI-level analyses further suggested associations between rTPJ alpha modulation and individual differences in ToMI-2 and Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) scores, although these associations did not survive FDR correction. CONCLUSIONS:These findings suggest that typical ToM-related processing involves context-sensitive alpha-band modulation supporting social cognition. In autism, reduced modulation may reflect altered neural regulation during social-cognitive processing rather than diminished regional engagement. Naturalistic EEG paradigms may help identify neural indices of individual differences in social-cognitive functioning, pending further validation.
Entropy is a novel brain measure that holds important information about brain flexibility and functioning, with promise for informing brain development in adolescence, as it has been shown to change across the lifespan. However, little is known about how it changes during the critically important phase of pubertal development, which kickstarts a period of broad neural reorganization and restructuring. This proof-of-concept cross-sectional study examined associations between fMRI signal entropy and early pubertal development in a large, diverse sample of children. Data (N = 6838; 49.6% male; ages 8.92-11.08) was drawn from the first wave of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. Sample entropy was calculated on the time series of the resting-state fMRI signals for every grayordinate (i.e., cortical vertex and subcortical voxel). Parent-reported pubertal development (approximated Tanner stage) and salivary hormone levels (dehydroepiandrosterone; estradiol; testosterone) were correlated with sample entropy across the whole brain. The patterns of association between sample entropy and pubertal stage/hormone levels were inspected for males and females separately. Findings indicated pubertal development was associated with higher levels of resting state fMRI signal entropy, specifically in the occipital, parietal, and temporal lobes. Associations were apparent in females across most pubertal metrics. For males the constrained range of pubertal development may in part account for weaker associations observed. Further, adjustment for variables associated with early timing of pubertal development (socioeconomic status, body mass index) reduced the strength of puberty-entropy associations for both sexes. Longitudinal research is needed to confirm the associations between sample entropy and puberty, to evaluate whether stronger associations emerge as more males enter puberty in earnest, and to disentangle potential confounds.
The interval from the fetal period through infancy is critical for the formation and reorganization of large-scale functional brain networks. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) requires no task performance and provides a means of characterizing whole-brain functional organization during this interval. This narrative review synthesizes human rs-fMRI evidence on typical functional network development, prematurity-related differences, associations with maternal and early caregiving environments, and links between early functional connectivity and subsequent neurodevelopmental outcomes. Overall, early functional network development shows a degree of hierarchical organization: primary sensorimotor systems show relatively stable organization earlier, whereas higher-order association systems undergo more prolonged refinement. Local specialization and cross-network integration overlap, with patterns varying by connection distance, brain region, and individual. We further examine associations of prematurity, maternal psychological and social environments, metabolic and immune status, substance and environmental chemical exposures, neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) experiences, and early sensory and social interactions with functional network differences. We also summarize prospective evidence relating fetal, neonatal, and infant connectivity features to later motor, language, cognitive, and socioemotional outcomes, as well as autism spectrum disorder-related risk measures. These findings suggest that early functional connectivity may contain information about developmental vulnerability before behavioral or clinical features become apparent. Finally, we discuss methodological challenges related to scan state (sleep or wakefulness), head motion, brain parcellation, and analytical pipelines, and consider how multisite longitudinal studies, standardized data acquisition, and independent-cohort validation could improve reproducibility and support future clinical translation.
Background Bullying victimization is associated with internalizing and externalizing problems, but whether verbal, physical, and relational victimization are associated with shared or differentiated large-scale network patterns remains unclear. Methods In a community sample of 318 children and adolescents aged 8–18 years, sparse canonical correlation analysis identified multivariate associations between three jointly modeled victimization subtypes and resting-state functional connectivity. Generalized additive models examined cross-sectional age-related variation and overall sex differences in connectivity scores. Mode-specific regressions tested whether these scores moderated concurrent associations between victimization and psychological outcomes. Results Three overlapping but differentiated connectivity modes were identified, each dominated by verbal, physical, or relational victimization. All modes involved the visual, dorsal attention, and control networks but differed in the direction of within-network associations and in cross-network organization. The verbal-dominant mode was positively associated with within-visual and within-dorsal-attention connectivity and negatively associated with within-control connectivity. The physical-dominant mode showed positive associations within the visual, dorsal attention, control, and control–default mode systems, together with negative associations involving the ventral attention, default mode, and control–dorsal-attention systems. The relational-dominant mode showed positive associations within the visual, dorsal attention, control, and default mode networks and negative associations involving somatomotor, control–dorsal-attention, and default–control connectivity. All connectivity scores varied nonlinearly with age. The relational-dominant score was higher in females than males, although age-related patterns did not differ by sex. Connectivity scores moderated selected concurrent symptom associations. Conclusions Bullying victimization subtypes were associated with differentiated but overlapping large-scale connectivity patterns and cross-sectional age- and sex-related variation.
Executive functions (EFs) are heritable higher‑order cognitive abilities, with a common factor (cEF) capturing shared variance across tasks. Whether early brain growth contributes to adult EF (and through which pathways) remains unclear. Using GWAS summary statistics, we applied linkage disequilibrium score regression, bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR), and multivariable MR to investigate the genetically predicted influence of infant head circumference (HC) on adult cEF and the mediating role of cortical morphology. Infant HC, but not birth HC, showed a significant positive genetic correlation and a unidirectional genetically predicted effect on adult cEF. Total and regional cortical surface area (SA) in frontal, cingulate, and temporal regions exhibited significant genetic correlations and genetically predicted effects on adult cEF, with MVMR confirming that these regional effects remained significant after mutual adjustment. Infant HC showed strong genetic correlations and directional associations with the SA of these cEF‑related regions. Two‑step MR mediation analysis indicated that total and regional SA (anterior cingulate, superior frontal, superior temporal) are consistent with a partial mediating role in the genetically informed pathway from infant HC to adult cEF. Reverse mediation analyses further suggested a similar mediating role for infant HC in the pathway from cortical SA to adult cEF. Together, these results point to bidirectional mediation between infant HC and cortical SA, supporting a genetic‑developmental pathway in which early-life HC and cortical structure interact to shape lifelong executive capacity.
Motor development and attentional control are closely intertwined during early childhood, yet the neural basis of this association remains insufficiently understood. Guided by an embodied-cognition framework, the present study examined the association between motor competence and task-based attentional stability and tested whether behavioral differences were accompanied by differences in prefrontal oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO) responses. Sixty-two typically developing children aged 3-6 years completed the motor assessment and cancellation task. Behavioral analyses included all 62 children, whereas usable fNIRS data were available for 61 children after quality control. The results showed that (1) at the behavioral level, higher motor competence was associated with greater attentional stability; the descriptive subgroup pattern appeared more pronounced in the late-preschool group, although the age group × motor-competence level interaction was not statistically significant; and (2) at the neural level, none of the reported ROI regression coefficients for age group, motor-competence level, or their interaction reached statistical significance. Complementary channel-wise analyses revealed different suprathreshold activation patterns across age and motor-competence groups; however, these exploratory patterns did not provide direct evidence of spatial focalization or neural efficiency. The findings are therefore compatible with, but do not establish, a neural-efficiency account. By integrating behavioral and neuroimaging measures, the study provides evidence of an association between motor competence and task-based attentional stability.
Behavioral evidence suggests that visually-guided navigation develops later than scene categorization, yet how this dissociation is reflected in cortical organization remains unknown. In adults, it has been hypothesized that these abilities are supported by the occipital place area (OPA) and the parahippocampal place area (PPA), respectively. Here we tested whether OPA develops later than PPA using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) adaptation in children aged 5-8 years. Specifically, we measured neural sensitivity to length and angle information - features represented in both regions in adulthood - allowing a direct comparison of the developmental emergence of these representations. PPA exhibited robust sensitivity already at age 5, consistent with the earlier development of scene categorization. In contrast, OPA showed no reliable sensitivity at age 5, with robust sensitivity developing only between ages 5 and 8, consistent with later development of visually-guided navigation. Together, these findings reveal a developmental dissociation within scene-selective cortex: sensitivity to shared scene features emerges earlier in PPA than OPA, mirroring the distinct developmental trajectories of scene categorization and visually-guided navigation.
Motor development and attentional control are closely intertwined during early childhood, yet the neural basis of this association remains insufficiently understood. Guided by an embodied cognition framework, the present study investigated how motor development relates to attentional stability, as indexed by a task-based behavioral measure and prefrontal neural activation in preschool children. Sixty-two typically developing children aged 3-6 years completed standardized motor assessments and a cancellation task requiring sustained task engagement, visual scanning, and manual responses while prefrontal oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO) responses were recorded using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The results showed that (1) At the behavioral level, higher levels of motor competence were consistently associated with greater attentional stability, with the strongest differentiation observed in the late preschool period; and (2) At the neural level, these behavioral differences were not accompanied by increased prefrontal activation: ROI-based analyses revealed stable HbO responses across age groups and motor-development levels. Complementary channel-wise analyses further indicated a developmental shift in the spatial organization of activation, from more diffuse patterns in younger children to more focalized patterns in older and higher motor-competence children. Together, these findings suggest that improvements in attentional stability were not accompanied by increased mean prefrontal HbO responses. Exploratory channel-wise patterns were compatible with a more spatially selective organization of task-related activation, although this interpretation remains provisional. By integrating behavioral and neuroimaging evidence, the present study provides support for an embodied account of early cognitive development, suggesting that motor competence is closely associated with attentional regulation through the optimization, rather than amplification, of prefrontal neural resources.
Caregiver-infant physiological synchrony has been proposed as a mechanism through which early caregiving interactions shape regulatory systems and facilitate the transmission of emotional signals within dyads. However, it remains unclear how synchrony interacts with maternal emotional context and developmental timing to influence infant neurophysiological development. Specifically, we examined the effects of maternal anxiety and mother-infant physiological synchrony at 3 months postpartum on infant autonomic regulation and neural function. Infant physiological regulation was indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), and neural function was indexed by aperiodic EEG slope and theta-beta ratio measured at 3 and 9 months. Surrogate control analyses confirmed that physiological synchrony significantly exceeded chance at 3 months. Further, higher maternal anxiety was associated with lower infant RSA and steeper aperiodic slopes across both timepoints. Developmental timing modulated these associations: anxiety effects on RSA and aperiodic slope were stronger at 9 months, whereas the associations of physiological synchrony with RSA and aperiodic slope were age-dependent, with concurrent effects at 3 months that attenuated by 9 months. Finally, physiological synchrony moderated the effect of maternal anxiety on infant RSA in a context-dependent manner - among high-synchrony dyads, greater anxiety predicted lower RSA, while no such association emerged among low-synchrony dyads. Interestingly, there were no main or interacting effects of synchrony or anxiety on theta-beta ratio. Together, these findings highlight the timing- and context-dependent role of physiological synchrony in shaping infant neural and autonomic development, suggesting that synchrony may both support regulation and intensify the transmission of maternal emotional states.
The Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM (ABCD) Study is a landmark study of nearly 12,000 U.S. youth from ages 9-10 through their second decade of life. It aims to unravel the complex interplay of biological, environmental, and social factors on adolescent development. The study collects neuroimaging; cognitive assessments; genetic and other biological information; surveys of substance use, mental health, and other health-related factors; and detailed environmental measures. A cornerstone of the ABCD Study® is its open science model, which facilitates broad data sharing and has spurred over 1600 publications, significantly democratizing scientific inquiry. Findings from the first 10 years of the study have provided critical insights. Sociodemographic and contextual factors have emerged as stronger predictors of early substance use initiation than brain, neurocognitive, or genetic measures alone. Research has also highlighted the significant impact of lifestyle factors and multilayered environmental exposures on youth mental health. The study's diverse cohort has enabled robust examination of health disparities, revealing that while socioeconomic deprivation impacts neurodevelopment, these effects can be moderated by positive supports. Furthermore, the ABCD Study is reshaping developmental neuroscience by establishing new standards for large-scale research, advancing analytical techniques, and underscoring the need for large, diverse samples to ensure reproducibility while also exploring individual variability. As the cohort enters early adulthood, the study is poised to provide deeper understanding of the trajectories of substance use disorders, mental illness, and chronic conditions; identify early risk and protective factors; and reveal developmental windows for early prevention interventions to improve long-term health and well-being.
The Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM (ABCD) Study was funded to investigate adolescent development across 10 + years, assessing multilevel social contexts of influence and adolescent health outcomes. As such, the ABCD study has generated a large body of literature investigating adolescent health outcomes in neurocognition, mental health, physical health and substance use. However, the extent to which family, peer, and community contexts are measured and integrated across these outcomes has not been systematically examined. We synthesized 64 articles, deemed to be of high impact using a variety of metrics, to determine the extent to which measures within the Family, Friends, and Community (FFC) domains, across multi-level contexts of identity and values, family, and peers and community were investigated in relation to adolescent health outcomes. FFC measures were most frequently examined in relation to neuroimaging and neurocognitive outcomes, as well as mental health outcomes, with substantially fewer studies incorporating FFC measures for physical health and substance use outcomes, identifying FFC measures as both risk and protective factors. The ABCD study literature to date underscores the central role of FFC measures in contextualizing neurocognitive development as well as other health outcomes during adolescence, primarily with cross-sectional data. Building on existing use of FFC measures in neuroimaging and neurocognitive studies, future research can leverage longitudinal ABCD data to better understand how proximal social contexts shape neurocognitive development across adolescence.
Live, naturalistic, interactive electroencephalographic (EEG) paradigms have increased over the last 20 years, reflecting a movement towards ecologically valid measurement of the actual stimuli and responses theorized to support human brain and cognitive development. A challenge to this growing field is that many analytic decisions are at researchers' discretion, and there is a lack of clear standards for reporting and justifying decision-making processes, and a lack of understanding how different analytic decisions may affect results. These circumstances threaten study replicability, transparency, and accuracy. Thus, necessary objectives are to bring awareness to this existing analytic variability, empirically evaluate its effects, and ultimately develop guidelines for optimally applying different analytic approaches. The present study takes an important first step toward these objectives. We review studies using live, interactive EEG paradigms published between 2006 and 2026, and identify several analytic approaches that vary widely: 1) analyzing EEG across longer conditions versus shorter, discrete events, 2) considering influence of amount of usable EEG, 3) inclusion of covariates, 4) whether to examine all electrodes across the scalp versus targeted electrodes, and 5) determining appropriate baselines for comparison to target EEG activity. We discuss considerations for these different analytic approaches, and evaluate their effects in 4- to 6-month-old (N = 35) infant EEG data from a novel, live, naturalistic mother-infant interactive task. Results reveal that different, often arbitrarily selected analytic approaches can change EEG results. We recommend standards and best practices in reporting analytic decisions to increase transparency and replicability, and suggest strategies for determining optimal analytic approaches.
Adolescence is a period characterized by exploration, altered risk-taking, and increased vulnerability to mental health disorders. These phenomena may reflect underlying challenges in safety evaluation. Successfully navigating adolescence may therefore be related to the maturation of neural circuits that support safety evaluation, yet how these mechanisms function during development remains unclear. Using 7-Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging, we recorded neural response in 33 adolescents (MAge = 14.88 years, 19 females) during evaluation of threat (external cues that signal potential danger) and protection (resources available to an agent that increase safety). Our findings reveal age-related differences in neural recruitment during accurate estimation of protection, such that younger adolescents (12-14 years) exhibited greater hippocampal engagement, whereas older adolescents (15-17 years) exhibited a more integrated circuit involving the hippocampus and anterior ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Our results also provide insight into how competition between threat and protection is resolved within the visual cortex during adolescent safety evaluation, demonstrating enhanced perceptual sensitivity to protection signals compared to threat. Behavioral analysis across a broader developmental spectrum (N = 63, MAge = 24.18 years, range 12-40 years, 34 females, including adults from prior work) revealed a quadratic association between age and protection estimation accuracy, with lower accuracy in mid-to-late adolescence relative to early adolescence and adulthood. Together, our behavioral and neural results indicate adolescence is an important developmental period for safety processing, particularly with respect to accurately estimating safety.
The scientific success of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM Study (ABCD®) rests on the data collection and analysis efforts of the staff and trainees within the Consortium. To support the critical work carried out by ABCD staff and trainees, the Professional Development Workgroup was launched in 2020 to offer resources and career guidance to better support the Consortium members comprising the backbone of the study. Here, the ABCD Professional Development Workgroup outlines key programming that has been offered to ABCD staff and trainees, including those instated before the official launch of ABCD data collection, and the addition of events throughout the years to meet the evolving needs of interested consortium members. We also discuss specific efforts to enhance a sense of community and facilitate communication among a large body of ABCD staff and trainees. We end with a discussion of challenges and proposed solutions that our Workgroup has encountered in leading professional development efforts, as well as future opportunities for further growth to nurture the next generation of scientists and professionals. As the number of large-scale datasets and multi-site collaborations grows across the globe, our hope is that the examples and lessons learned from professional development efforts in ABCD could be helpful for current or future scientific consortia.
ABCD is an observational study of development and health from childhood through young adulthood. The ABCD Bioethics and Medical Oversight Advisory Group (BMO) has engaged in reviewing and advising the ABCD organization on ethical and clinical oversight issues from the initial planning of the study to the present. Anticipated ethical and clinical oversight issues included the confidentiality of participant substance use, identifying and reporting neuroanatomical anomalies, responding to imminent potential self-harm, and mandatory reporting of child maltreatment. Issues introduced by protocol updates have included return of results for metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular health risk indicators, genetic anomalies identified by DNA analyses, and a proposal to collect information from Electronic Health Records (EHR). Each site engages Site Clinicians to provide expertise and oversight in accordance with ABCD guidelines. Site-specific Emergency Management Plans and more detailed Standard Operating Procedures have been developed and implemented in several areas of concern. The ABCD Site Clinician Network has provided a forum for discussing these issues. We also discuss collaborating with the ABCD Crisis and Communications group about a data misuse incident. At present, ABCD participants are transitioning from adolescence to young adulthood, raising additional issues on consent, return of results, and procedures for addressing mental and physical health concerns. For the past ten years, we describe the implementation of the ABCD bioethics and medical oversight guidelines, the concerns and options considered, and anticipated issues arising from planned initiatives.
The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study has substantially advanced developmental neuroscience through its large scale and open-science framework. This review synthesizes the study's significant statistical and methodological contributions over its first ten years, organized around the pillars of population neuroscience, longitudinal modeling, and causal inference. We first examine how ABCD's population-based design has prompted a reconsideration of how effect sizes are interpreted, helping to establish new benchmarks for distinguishing stable, biologically relevant signals from trivial associations in large-N contexts. We detail the computational innovations required to process high-dimensional data at scale, specifically highlighting new analytic tools like the Fast and Efficient Mixed Effects Algorithm (FEMA) framework for mass-univariate modeling and advanced strategies for managing selective attrition and missing data in large-scale longitudinal cohorts. In the domain of longitudinal and multilevel modeling, we discuss the transition from traditional cross-lagged designs to sophisticated frameworks - such as random-intercept cross-lagged panel models, latent growth curves, and parallel process models - that disentangle within-person developmental trajectories from stable between-person traits. We further highlight the study's role in advancing causal inference in observational research through "G-methods", marginal structural models, and quasi-experimental family-based designs. Finally, we explore how ABCD serves as a critical bridge for cross-cohort generalizability and lifespan validation using datasets like the UK Biobank. By contributing to new standards for reproducibility and methodological rigor, the ABCD Study has helped move neuroscience toward a "big data" era, providing a comprehensive statistical foundation for understanding the complex interplay between biology and environment during the transition to adulthood.
