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Age-related differences in task-induced brain activation is not task specific: Multivariate pattern generalization
Esther H H Keulers1, María Björk Birkisdóttir1, Luciana Falbo1
1Department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, the Netherlands.
Neuroimage
|December 12, 2018
Summary
Brain maturation during adolescence shows global changes, not just task-specific ones. Age-related brain activation patterns are consistent across different cognitive tasks, indicating widespread network development.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Neuroscience
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Background:
- Adolescence involves significant brain maturation and shifts in functional connectivity.
- Previous studies often examined task-induced brain changes in a function-specific manner.
- It remains unclear if observed functional maturation is task-dependent or generalizes across cognitive demands.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test the hypothesis that functional brain maturation during adolescence is driven by global changes in cognitive demand processing.
- To determine if age-discriminative task-induced activation patterns generalize across different types of cognitive tasks.
Main Methods:
- Utilized multivariate pattern classification analysis (MVPA) to analyze brain activation patterns.
- Compared 25 young adolescents (13 years old) with 22 older adolescents (17 years old).
- Administered three distinct tasks: metacognition, general cognition, and visual processing.
Main Results:
- MVPA revealed consistent and reliable age-discriminative activation patterns between 13- and 17-year-olds within each task.
- These age-discriminative patterns generalized across the different tasks, despite varying cognitive demands.
- Classifiers trained on one task successfully decoded age from brain activation in other tasks with 63-75% accuracy.
Conclusions:
- Functional brain maturation during adolescence is characterized by global changes in brain-wide networks.
- Age-specific activation patterns reflect maturational shifts in network organization and processing efficiency.
- Developmental changes in brain function are not limited to specific cognitive functions but represent a more generalized maturation process.
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