These relatively late functional maturation changes between childhood and adulthood in fronto-striatal and fronto-parieto-temporal networks that mediate these “cool” and “hot” EF are parallel to structural developmental changes over this time period in these regions. In particular, frontal and temporo-parietal association areas as well as the basal ganglia develop relatively late throughout adolescence, decreasing in grey matter and cortical thickness, while increasing in white matter, well into mid-adulthood [22, 23, 88]. Nevertheless, few imaging studies have investigated the common development of structural and functional maturation within the same subjects. Progressively enhanced white matter integrity over development has been associated with better task performance during cognitive control tasks [21, 89] and with activation in adjacent grey matter regions [89]. A study on language abilities, reported that cortical thinning in fronto-parietal regions, associated with cognitive maturation [22, 26] was correlated with stronger fronto-parietal activation [90]. Also, the development of long-distance white matter connections has been shown to play an important role in the development of functional neural networks for executive control, both of which were associated with better performance [34]. There is
