the rapid pruning of synapses (which are largely local excitatory connections), and developmental shifts in local interneuron activity may together facilitate more extensive functional coordination between brain regions through development. Less widely distributed activity in adolescents has also been demonstrated in another cognitive control task (Velanova et al., 2008). At the same time, diffuse functional signal uncorrelated with task-performance decreases through development (Durston et al., 2006). Thus, the adult pattern of utilizing more-distributed networks is coincident with reduced task-irrelevant activity, indicating greater efficiency in the pattern and extent of cortical processing.
