Our finding that large-scale brain networks in children showed small-world properties that were very similar to young-adults, together with the above observations, suggests that key aspects of functional brain organization are conserved throughout the developmental process—from early childhood to young adulthood and into older adulthood. Critically, despite the fact that the brain undergoes vast structural reorganization at the neuronal level in the form of myelination and synaptic pruning throughout development, key global properties of functional organization appear to be conserved.
