Functional MRI responses to naturalistic stimuli are increasingly typical across early childhood

While findings show that throughout development, there are child-and age-specific patterns of brain functioning, there is also evidence for significantly greater inter-individual response variability in young children relative to adults. It is currently unclear whether this increase in functional typicality (i.e., inter-individual similarity) is a developmental process that occurs across early childhood, and what changes in BOLD response may be driving changes in typicality. We collected fMRI data from 81 typically developing 4-8-year-old children during passive viewing of age-appropriate television clips and asked whether there is increasing typicality of brain response across this age range. We found that the increasing typicality hypothesis was supported across many regions engaged by passive viewing. Post hoc analyses showed that in a priori ROIs related to language and face processing, the strength of the group-average shared component of activity increased with age, with no concomitant decline in residual signal or change in spatial extent or variability. Together, this suggests that increasing inter-individual similarity of functional responses to audiovisual stimuli is an important feature of early childhood functional brain development.

Automated summary

Research findings indicate that there are distinctive patterns of brain functioning in children and adults, with greater variability in young children. It is unclear whether this increase in typicality is a developmental process in early childhood and the factors driving changes in brain responses. The study examined fMRI data from 81 typically developing children aged 4-8 years and found support for the increasing typicality hypothesis in various brain regions during passive viewing. The findings suggest that increasing inter-individual similarity in functional responses to audiovisual stimuli is crucial in early childhood brain development.