Chunk #28 — Discussion — rs-fcMRI may reflect an interaction between the maturing neural substrate and the use of efficient pathways for general task completion
If we consider the previously mentioned postulates, our results suggest that, typically, the most efficient way for children to respond to processing demands is to utilize more “local” level interactions as compared to adulthood. That is, in childhood there is, relatively greater co-activation of anatomically proximal regions than for adults with similar processing demands. A clear example of this is seen in Brown et al. [3], where identical task performance on lexical processing tests strongly activates a large set of visual regions in children, but strong visual activation is much more restricted in adults. These relationships may be reflected in correlated spontaneous activity measured via rs-fcMRI. The correlations in our youngest children would then represent the anatomical and spontaneous activity-defined initial regional relationships plus 7 years of experience-dependent Hebbian processes tuning these developing connections.
