In conclusion, there is substantial evidence in the developmental cognitive neuroscience literature that cognitive maturation is associated with progressive increases in the activation of task-relevant prefrontal brain regions and their connections to striatal and parieto-temporal regions that mediate top-down control in the context of inhibitory, attention, motivation control and timing functions (Fig. 1). Within frontal regions, there is also some evidence for a shift from earlier developing vmPFC/ACC areas to a more lateralised frontal specialisation in later developing DLPFC/IFC for some functions such as cognitive control, timing and attention [29–32] (e.g., Fig. 2a–c) and some evidence for developmental left-lateralisation effects within frontal regions for some cognitive control and timing functions [28, 29, 31, 52] (e.g., Figs. 1a, c, 2a). Although the majority of studies show increased frontal activation with age, the literature is not entirely consistent, with some studies showing increased activation in children relative to adults in some frontal regions, which has been associated with increased effort for task performance [55, 87]. Functional connectivity studies [27, 29, 31, 33, 34] show that not only the activation but also the
