Though there appears to be a developmental trajectory towards increased functional connectivity within the DMN over development, the level of maturity within this system at any given age is unclear. One might conclude that coherence within the DMN is absent, weak, moderate, or strong in older children, depending upon the methodology used and the significance criteria employed. Differences in individual connections between DMN regions appear quite salient when the DMN is considered in isolation, but the functional network of the brain encompasses much more than just the regions of the DMN. If DMN regions in children are immature pieces of an adult network waiting to be wired together, then placing the DMN in a wider network context will reveal that DMN regions weakly interact with other brain regions in children but come to interact strongly with other DMN regions by adulthood, and we are right to attend closely to individual connections within the DMN over development. On the other hand, if a wider network context reveals that DMN regions actually interact with different sets of brain regions in infants and
