Multiple demand network ‘online early,’ sensitive to ability in young children
Regions of the brain associated with executive function in adults are similarly recruited in children as young as 4 years, according to findings published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
“Based on previous studies, we know that in adults, executive function involves a set of brain regions spanning the frontal and parietal lobes known as the multiple demand network,” Zeynep M. Saygin, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at The Ohio State University and study co-author, told Healio. “This network is distinct from the spatially adjacent language network involved in linguistic processing.
“Children, however, initially have poor executive function skills and show prolonged development of these skills, improving with age,” Saygin continued. “We asked whether young children recruit the same neural machinery as adults do and whether their neural activation depends on their age or on their individual executive function ability.”
Saygin and colleagues recruited 44 adults aged 18 to 38 years and 37 children aged 4 to 12 years to complete several functional MRI localizer tasks, which assessed spatial working memory. Researchers also assessed linguistic processing in a subset of 30 children and 29 adults who completed language-related tasks.
According to study results, both adults and children exhibited significant selectivity in bilateral multiple demand (MD) subject-specific functional regions of interest (ss-fROIs), although adults had greater selectivity in all ss-fROIs. Notably, linguistic processing was not involved in ss-fROIs within the MD network in adults or children.
Sixteen adults completed an additional “wiggly” round of tasks to “mimic motion in child scans” during MRIs. Analyses of these scans revealed that most bilateral MD ss-fROIs remained significant, “suggesting that this network shows adult-like specificity and connectivity even in children,” Saygin said. “So, these frontoparietal cortices are ‘online’ early and are sensitive to ability, showing increased engagement with gains in executive function skills in children.”
According to Saygin, longitudinal study is ongoing and will address research questions including how these findings relate to children’s real-life behaviors, such as school readiness, and how the development of the MD network affects children’s neuroplasticity in cases of injury.