Brain organization changes when children become adults

Any child in the face of parents who often impose might ask the question: 'what are your parents thinking?'. Now they have a new answer: 'Scientists have recently discovered that the parents' brains are organized differently from the children's brains'.

It is still not enough for children who make mistakes even though another study also offers salvation for parents. While the entire organizational structure varies between adult brains and children's brains, one of the key differences in adult brain activity appears only in the brains of children aged 7 and older. .

Experienced author and doctor Steven E. Petersen is also a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Washington Medical School - St. Louis said: 'Although making a statement is simple and attractive, the child's brain is not lack of organization or disorder. It is only organized in a different way but at least there are adult-like brains. '

Petersen and colleagues studied the organization of normal brain and its development in order to better understand how developmental disorders as well as brain damage can impair neurological abilities. They plan to apply what they have learned to develop treatments for those disorders.

Scientists use MRI to link functions in resting states to identify and study networks in the brain. Instead of recording mental activity when the study participants performed a cognitive exercise, this technique scans the spontaneous activity that occurs in the brain when they do nothing. When brain activity increases and falls at the same time in different brain regions, the researchers conclude that the regions tend to work together.

Through such studies, researchers have revealed that four brain networks take on different tasks in adult brains. Two of the four networks seem to be in charge of most of the brain's arbitrary functions. They have a close connection between several brain regions that are located far away from each other.

The organizational structure of the human brain undergoes a major transformation in the transition between childhood and adulthood. The brain regions are represented by circles, with the color outside the circle representing the location of the colored areas of the brain inside the circle representing the function of that region. (Photo: Washington University School of Medicine)

In a new study, organizational opposition has been evident: instead of having networks formed from brain regions located far away from each other but having a functional relationship, most of the connections Strictly in the brain children are formed between areas of the brain that are quite close together. The study was led by Dr. Damien A. Fair, a former University of Washington graduate student. He is currently a PhD student at Oregon University of Science and Health, in collaboration with graduate student Alexander L. Cohen of Washington University.They analyzed data collected from 210 subjects aged 7 to 31.

Fair said: 'We chose a group consisting of the youngest, analyzed the results and then added data from the next age group, re-analyzed until we proceeded with everything. study participants. The result is a detailed film about how and the progress of brain transfer from childhood to adulthood. The study clearly shows that the transformation from the internal network is primarily based on the proximity of the location to the formation of remote networks focusing on functional relationships'.

Researchers simultaneously tested children's brains for the 'small world' function - this is another organizational ability that exists in adult brains. This function is sometimes called the 'Kevin Bacon' organization after the trio game named '6 levels of Kevin Bacon' . The game emphasizes the ease of connecting any female actor or actress to Kevin Bacon in six films through connections between many other leading actors .

Fair said: 'The view of a large network allows us to link one link to another link through a few relatively few steps through special links. Like Kevin Bacon, these special links have many links to other links, allowing them to reduce the number of links needed in the link. '

Researchers know that children have fewer distance connections between brain regions than adults, but when they look more closely they find that these long distance connections are enough, with many connections and links to form a small world organization.

They set a lower age limit for participants in the study, 7 because the brain of 7-year-old children has approximately 95% of adult size. They also conducted a search for ways to transform research to suit the natural changes of children's brains. They also began to study with the same angle for those with brain damage or developmental disorders. Research grants include the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the John Merck Scholarship Foundation, the Burroughs-Wellcome Foundation, the People Fund, the Ogle Family Foundation, the Washington University Fellowship, the Research Fellowship UNCF / Merck university and postgraduate study.

References
Fair et al.Functional Brain Networks Develop from a 'Local to Distributed' Organization.PLoS Computational Biology, 2009;5 (5): e1000381 DOI: 10.1371 / journal.pcbi.1000381