This selective strengthening and weakening of connections may be additionally influenced by developmental changes in interregional wiring distance. For example, on the basis of previous findings of an inverse relationship between strength of functional connectivity and wiring distance in adults [53],[86], the observed age-related decrease in subcortical-cortical functional connectivity may be due to age-related increases in subcortical-cortical wiring distance. In our analysis, however, we controlled for any confounding influences of changes in physical wiring distance by computing functional connectivity and wiring distance in a common MNI space. Further studies that examine both functional connectivity and wiring distance in native image space are needed in order to investigate the influence of age-related changes in wiring distance on the observed age-related changes in functional connectivity. More generally, the manner in which these structural and functional changes in connectivity influence the development of large-scale functional organization in the human brain is an important topic for future research. Recent studies do, however, suggest that intrinsic resting-state functional connectivity in the human brain reflects anatomical connectivity at both short and long spatial scales [87],[88]. Taken together, these findings suggest that the development of large-scale functional connectivity is related to ongoing developmental changes in structural connectivity.
