Research Article
Maturation of Brain Regions Related to the Default Mode Network during Adolescence Facilitates Narrative Comprehension
Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus1,2,3,4*, Rola Farah1, Ardag Hajinazarian2,3,4, Kenneth Eaton3, Akila Rajagopal3, Vincent J Schmithorst5, Mekibib Altaye3, Jennifer J Vannest3 and Scott K Holland2,3,4
1Educational Neuroimaging Center, Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion, Israel
2Reading and Literacy Discovery Center, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
3Pediatric Neuroimaging Research Consortium, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
4Communication Sciences Research Center, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
4Department of Radiology, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
- *Corresponding Author:
- Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus
Educational Neuroimaging Center
Faculty of Education in Science and T echnology
T echnion, Haifa, Israel
Tel: +972-4-829-2165
E-mail: tzipi.kraus@technion.ac.il
Received Date: Dec 18, 2016; Accepted Date: Jan 06, 2017; Published Date: Jan 12, 2017
Citation: Horowitz-Kraus T, Farah R, Hajinazarian A, Eaton K, Rajagopal A, et al. (2017) Maturation of Brain Regions Related to the Default Mode Network during Adolescence Facilitates Narrative Comprehension. J Child Adolesc Behav 5: 328. doi: 10.4172/2375-4494.1000328
Copyright: © 2017 Horowitz-Kraus T, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Objectives: Although the Default Mode Network (DMN) has been examined extensively in adults, developmental characteristics of this network during childhood are not fully understood. Methods: In this longitudinal study, we characterized the developmental changes in the DMN in fifteen children who were each scanned three times during a narrative comprehension task using magnetic resonance imaging. Results: Despite similar brain-activation patterns along developmental ages 5 to 18 years when listening to stories, increased, widely distributed deactivation of the DMN was observed in children between the ages of 11 and 18 years. Our findings suggest that changes occurring with increased age, primarily brain maturation and cognitive development drive deactivation of the DMN, which in turn might facilitate attendance to the task. Conclusions: The interpretation of our results is as a possible reference for the typical course of deactivation of the DMN and to explain the impaired patterns in this neural network associated with different language-related pathologies.
