The marked increase in white matter that occurs during adolescence is most prominent in the frontal lobe for both genders (Giedd et al. 1999), though male children and adolescents have significantly larger volumes of white matter surrounding the lateral ventricles and caudate nuclei than females (Hua et al. 2009). Adolescent males also demonstrate a significantly higher rate of change in white matter volume (De Bellis et al. 2001; Lenroot et al. 2007; Perrin et al. 2008) particularly in the occipital lobe (Perrin et al. 2009). Despite steeper white matter volume changes in males, maturation of white matter microstructure may occur earlier in female than male adolescents (Asato et al. 2010).
