Chunk #27 — Discussion — rs-fcMRI may reflect an interaction between the maturing neural substrate and the use of efficient pathways for general task completion
As early as 1875 spontaneous synchronized neural activity has been used to study various aspects of adult brain organization [50]–[53]. However, despite the passing of over 130 years since its initial use, there remains uncertainty as to the role of intrinsic spontaneous brain activity in brain function. In adults, spontaneous correlated activity has been suggested to be important for gating information flow [54], building internal representations [43],[44],[54], and maintaining mature network relationships [43],[44],[54]. Much less work has been done in regards to development, but there are suggestions that spontaneous activity is important for the establishment of early cortical patterns (e.g., ocular dominance columns) [55]–[58] and may over time represent (in a Hebbian sense) a history of repeated co-activation between regions [21],[22],[27],[32],[34],[59],[60]. Within this framework, the changes in the correlation structure of spontaneous activity over development seen in this report may provide insight regarding the arrangement by which brain regions are communicating in children compared to adults.
