Developmental changes in effective connectivity associated with relational reasoning

Abstract

Rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC) is part of a frontoparietal network of regions involved in relational reasoning, the mental process of working with relationships between multiple mental representations. RLPFC has shown functional and structural changes with age, with increasing specificity of left RLPFC activation for relational integration during development. Here, we used dynamic causal modelling (DCM) to investigate changes in effective connectivity during a relational reasoning task through the transition from adolescence into adulthood. We examined fMRI data of 37 healthy female participants (11-30 years old) performing a relational reasoning paradigm.Comparing relational integration to the manipulation of single relations revealed activation in five regions: the RLPFC, anterior insula, dorsolateral PFC, inferior parietal lobe, and medial superior frontal gyrus. We used a new exhaustive search approach and identified a full DCM model, which included all reciprocal connections between the five clusters in the left hemisphere, as the optimal model. In line with previous resting state fMRI results, we showed distinct developmental effects on the strength of long-range frontoparietal vs. frontoinsular short-range fixed connections. The modulatory connections associated with relational integration increased with age. Gray matter volume in left RLPFC, which decreased with age, partly accounted for changes in fixed PFC connectivity. Finally, improvements in relational integration performance were associated with greater modulatory and weaker fixed PFC connectivity. This pattern provides further evidence of increasing specificity of left PFC function for relational integration compared to the manipulation of single relations, and demonstrates an association between effective connectivity and performance changes during development.

Effective connectivity of ascending and descending frontalthalamic pathways during sustained attention: Complex brain network interactions in adolescence

“…Nevertheless, structural MRI and activation studies have suggested that many of the regions assessed in our network analyses undergo developmental changes through adolescence [Gogtay et al, ; Luna et al, ; Rubia et al, ; Yurgelun‐Todd, ]. Changes in effective connectivity from adolescence to adulthood have been demonstrated in complex domains including reasoning [Bazargani et al, ] and processes related to language [Booth et al, ]. Other investigations in more fundamental domains such as reward processing, have provided negative results [Cho et al, ].…”

Evolutionary and Developmental Changes in the Lateral Frontoparietal Network: A Little Goes a Long Way for Higher-Level Cognition

“…Of greatest relevance to the present review, a study focusing on the neurodevelopment of second-order relational reasoning recently showed that frontoparietal connections strengthened with age, and were more tightly coupled than shorter-range frontoinsular connections for second- relative to first-order relational problems (Bazargani et al, 2014). More broadly, various studies have shown that tighter resting-state functional connectivity among LFPN regions is associated with better relational reasoning, as measured by nonverbal IQ scores (Langeslag et al, 2013) or full-scale IQ scores (Song et al, 2008; Li and Tian, 2014).…”

General and specialized brain correlates for analogical reasoning: A meta‐analysis of functional imaging studies

“…This result is also in agreement with previous findings from different approaches such as morphometry [Aichelburg et al, 2014;Krawczyk et al, 2010], and developmental studies in children. The latter studies suggested that maturation of the PFC and especially of the rlPFC is critical for relational reasoning in matrix problems [Crone et al, 2009], for semantic analogies [Wright et al, 2008], and visuospatial analogies [Bazargani et al, 2014;Thibaut et al, 2010;Wendelken et al, 2011]. These studies showed functional and structural changes in the left rlPFC during development, with decreasing grey matter volume and increasing specificity of left rlPFC activation for relational integration [for a review, see Dumontheil, 2014].…”