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Brain development during childhood and adolescence: a longitudinal MRI study

Nature Neuroscience volume 2, pages 861–863 (1999)Cite this article

Abstract

Pediatric neuroimaging studies1,2,3,4,5, 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. These changes in cortical gray matter were regionally specific, with developmental curves for the frontal and parietal lobe peaking at about age 12 and for the temporal lobe at about age 16, whereas cortical gray matter continued to increase in the occipital lobe through age 20.

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Figure 1: Predicted size with 95% confidence intervals for cortical gray matter in frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes for 243 scans from 89 males and 56 females, ages 4 to 22 years.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Child Psychiatry Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, Building 10, Room 4C110, 10 Center Drive, MSC 1367, Bethesda, 20892, Maryland, USA

    Jay N. Giedd, Jonathan Blumenthal, F. X. Castellanos, Hong Liu & Judith L. Rapoport

  2. Biometry Branch, National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke, Federal Building, Room 7C06, 7550 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, 20892, Maryland, USA

    Neal O. Jeffries

  3. Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University,

    Alex Zijdenbos, Tomáš Paus & Alan C. Evans

  4. 3801 University Street, Montreal, H3A 2B4, Quebec, Canada

    Alex Zijdenbos, Tomáš Paus & Alan C. Evans

Authors
  1. Jay N. Giedd
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  2. Jonathan Blumenthal
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  3. Neal O. Jeffries
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  4. F. X. Castellanos
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  5. Hong Liu
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  6. Alex Zijdenbos
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  7. Tomáš Paus
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  8. Alan C. Evans
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  9. Judith L. Rapoport
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Correspondence to Jay N. Giedd.

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Giedd, J., Blumenthal, J., Jeffries, N. et al. Brain development during childhood and adolescence: a longitudinal MRI study. Nat Neurosci 2, 861–863 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/13158

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