How the influence of cingulate-lingual interactions on event segmentation changes from early to late adolescence

Event segmentation, the process of dividing continuous experience into discrete events, plays a critical role in making sense of, and navigating one's environment. This process is likely subject to maturational changes during adolescence, but the modulation of underlying neural processes is contentious. To gain novel insights into the neurophysiological development of event segmentation, we examined N = 72 adolescents (13.8 ± 1.7 years, 32 males) using EEG methods and focused on modulations of theta, alpha and beta band activity. Moreover, we examined how directed connectivity between functional neuroanatomical structures associated with beta band activity across age. Connectivity from the cingulate to the lingual gyrus within the beta frequency band were significantly related to the likelihood of event segmentation, as shown by regression and moderation analyses, whereas theta and alpha band activity yielded no significant effects. The moderation analysis indicated that in older adolescents, reduced connectivity from the cingulate to the lingual gyrus likely promotes a balance between using event schemata and perceptual input when forming and updating working event models. This pattern across adolescence suggests that as the brain matures, the balanced consideration of both perceptual inputs and established episodic traces becomes increasingly relevant in the context of event segmentation. This likely enhances the efficiency of event segmentation, thereby improving the ability to organize environmental information during adolescence.