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Scientific Correspondence

Nature Neuroscience 2, 861–863 (1 October 1999) | doi:10.1038/13158

Brain development during childhood and adolescence: a longitudinal MRI study

Jay N. Giedd , Jonathan Blumenthal , Neal O. Jeffries , F. X. Castellanos , Hong Liu , Alex Zijdenbos , Tom|[aacute]||[scaron]| Paus , Alan C. Evans & Judith L. Rapoport

Pediatric neuroimaging studies, up to now exclusively cross sectional, identify linear decreases in cortical gray matter and increases in white matter across ages 4 to 20. In this large-scale longitudinal pediatric neuroimaging study, we confirmed linear increases in white matter, but demonstrated nonlinear changes in cortical gray matter, with a preadolescent increase followed by a postadolescent decrease.