Lastly, we investigated whether development is associated with simultaneous emergence of functional segregation and integration at the whole-brain level. For each pair of ROIs we first computed the wiring distance using DTI-based fiber tracking. We computed the fiber length in a common Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) space rather than individual subject space to rule out any potential confounding effects of developmental changes in interregional fiber length on our findings. We then examined developmental changes in functional connectivity in relation to the wiring distance between them. We found that functional connectivity between more proximal anatomical regions were significantly higher in children, whereas functional connectivity between more distal anatomical regions were significantly higher in young-adults (p<0.0001), as shown in Figure 5. This suggests a pattern of higher short-range functional segregation in children and higher long-range functional integration in young-adults.
