regions that are known to mediate interference inhibition [44] were progressively more recruited with increasing age, which was associated with better task performance, while medial frontal and posterior areas were progressively negatively age correlated [28, 30, 42, 43, 45, 46] (Fig. 1c). Furthermore, the age-associated findings were not confounded by performance differences, given that groups were either naturally matched in performance [45] or findings survived performance-matched subgroup analyses or performance-covariation [28, 30, 42, 43, 46]. While the majority of studies found linear effects to account best for the developmental changes, one of these studies, testing adolescents and adults between 14 and 25 years found that curvilinear functions accounted better for the activation changes than linear functions; frontal activation increases peaked at 21 years and then declined again [45]. A purely paediatric study found increased activation in adolescents (14–15 years) relative to children (8–11 years) in left inferior parietal lobe after covarying for performance differences [47]. During cognitive switching a similar picture emerges where bilateral inferior fronto-cingulo-striato-parietal areas that are typical for adult switching [40] were progressively more recruited between late childhood and adulthood between 10 and 43 years which correlated with a more reflective performance [28, 42] (Fig. 1d). Findings
