Recent studies of functional connectivity networks (FCNs) suggest that the reconfiguration of brain network across time, both at rest and during task, is linked with cognition in human adults. In this study, we tested this prediction, i.e. cognitive ability is associated with a flexible brain network in preschool children of 3-4 years -a critical age, representing a 'blossoming period' for brain development. We recorded magnetoencephalogram (MEG) data from 88 preschoolers, and assessed their cognitive ability by a battery of cognitive tests. We estimated FCNs obtained from the source reconstructed MEG recordings, and characterized the temporal variability at each node using a novel path-based measure of temporal variability; the latter captures reconfiguration of the node's interactions to the rest of the network across time. Using connectome predictive modeling, we demonstrated that the temporal variability of fronto-temporal nodes in the dynamic FCN can reliably predict out-of-scanner performance of short-term memory and attention distractability in novel participants. Further, we observed that the network-level temporal variability increased with age, while individual nodes exhibited an inverse relationship between temporal variability and node centrality. These results demonstrate that functional brain networks, and especially their reconfiguration ability, are important to cognition at an early but a critical stage of human brain development.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.