To further investigate regional differences in network organization, we examined interregional connectivity differences between the two groups. We found that the subcortical areas had increased connectivity with the primary sensory, association, and paralimbic areas in children, compared to young-adults. Young-adults, on the other hand, had increased connectivity between paralimbic and association areas, between paralimbic and limbic areas, and between limbic and association areas (p<0.001; p<0.01, FDR-corrected for multiple comparisons) (Figure 4A). The classification analysis of interregional connectivity showed complementary set of findings (see Text S1 for details). The interregional connectivity patterns in children could be distinguished from those in young-adults with accuracies ranging from 44% to 91%, with high accuracy values observed for connectivity patterns between subcortical areas and the primary sensory (91%), association (90%) and paralimbic (83%) areas, and between paralimbic and association (80%) areas (see Table 3). Figure 4B shows a graphical representation of developmental differences in functional connectivity along the posterior-anterior and ventral-dorsal axes, highlighting greater subcortical connectivity in children and greater paralimbic connectivity in young-adults. Figure S1 shows separate group-averaged functional connectivity matrices for children and young-adults, and Text S1 provides information about interparticipant variability in these matrices.
