Maturation of intra- and inter-regional connectivity and neuronal coordination may play a central role in adolescent behavioral development. There is a direct relationship between measures of frontostriatal white matter, which increases through adolescence, and inhibitory control performance (Liston et al., 2006). White-matter development is also directly related to improved functional integration of gray matter regions, suggesting more-distributed network activity through development (Stevens et al., 2009). This is corroborated by a study that, using resting state functional connectivity MRI along with graph analyses, observed a shift from greater connectivity with anatomically proximal nodes to networks that were more extensively integrated across all nodes in adulthood regardless of distance (Fair et al., 2009). Similarly, age-related increases in the functional integration of frontal and parietal regions support improved top-down inhibitory control performance in an antisaccade task (Hwang et al., 2010). White matter development, 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
