In conclusion, we observed an economical small-world organization in the functional brain networks derived from rs-fMRI in healthy children. Our results indicated significant effects of age, sex, and IQ on both global and regional nodal properties. These findings may help elucidate normal brain maturation, which merits further investigations that include a larger number of subjects, apply a longitudinal design, and combine multimodality MRI data. Our study provided insights into the maturation mechanism of the functional brain systems in healthy children from a network perspective.
