A major portion of the work investigating the nature of functional human brain development is based on results from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. By examining the differences in the fMRI activation profile of a particular brain region between children, adolescents, and adults, the developmental trajectory of that region's involvement in a cognitive task can be outlined [3], [5], [7]–[10]. These experiments have been crucial to our current understanding of typical and atypical brain development.
