Brain development in infancy predicts working memory in late childhood

What is it about?

Brains undergo tremendous growth in the first years of life. We leveraged data from a sample of children scanned up to 11 times between birth and 6 years and found that cortical thickness showed a large increase from birth through 12 months, a decrease from 12 to 18 months, and a small increase from 18 months to 6 years. We also found that a smaller peak thickness in the frontal lobe predicted better performance and more brain activity during a working memory task children completed at age 9, demonstrating the importance of frontal lobe development for later neurocognitive function.

Featured Image

Photo by Ecliptic Graphic on Unsplash

Photo by Ecliptic Graphic on Unsplash

Why is it important?

While early brain development is thought to affect later cognitive function, little research to date has studied cortical development frequently enough and over a long enough developmental window to identify implications of rapid changes in cortical thickness. Using a densely sampled longitudinal study, we were able to characterize patterns of cortical thickness growth from birth to age six and show how frontal lobe development in particular predicts brain activity and working memory ability over eight years later.