Differentiation in prefrontal cortex recruitment during childhood: Evidence from cognitive control demands and social contexts

Neural substrates of early executive function development

“…The authors interpreted this as reflecting compensatory neural activity in the developing PFC. Similarly, recent fNIRS work by Chevalier, Jackson, Roux, Moriguchi, and Auyeung (2019), using a task with both inhibitory and switching demands, identified that less activation in the PFC was associated with better performance in older children (8–9 years), whereas younger children (5–6 years) displayed more reliance on strong PFC activation for successful cognitive control. Chevalier et al (2019) interpreted these results as evidence that less activation in the PFC in older children may reflect the greater functional connectivity between frontal and parietal regions, leading to increasingly flexible and automatized cognitive control during childhood.…”

“…Similarly, recent fNIRS work by Chevalier, Jackson, Roux, Moriguchi, and Auyeung (2019), using a task with both inhibitory and switching demands, identified that less activation in the PFC was associated with better performance in older children (8–9 years), whereas younger children (5–6 years) displayed more reliance on strong PFC activation for successful cognitive control. Chevalier et al (2019) interpreted these results as evidence that less activation in the PFC in older children may reflect the greater functional connectivity between frontal and parietal regions, leading to increasingly flexible and automatized cognitive control during childhood. This was also the conclusion of Quiñones-Camacho et al (2019), who similarly found evidence of reduced DL-PFC activation during a cognitive flexibility task in 4–5 year old children who had strong attentional control skills, although in this study there was no direct association between task performance and DL-PFC activation (perhaps due to the younger age of the participants).…”

“…These results suggest that developmental changes in the neural substrate of EF may be more nuanced than the diffuse-to-focal view proposes, with some areas decreasing in activation and others increasing in activation with specialisation. This point is also backed up by the recent well-powered fNIRS study by Chevalier et al (2019), which found that older children were able to engage EF in a more flexible manner (i.e., adjusting cognitive control to specific contexts) than younger children, and that this flexibility impacted on which frontal regions showed increased or decreased activation. More broadly, given the recent failure to replicate many behavioural findings in psychology (Open Science Collaboration, 2015), the field would benefit from replication of some of the early fMRI findings in a larger sample spanning mid-childhood to adulthood, ideally using longitudinal methodology to decrease confounds associated with between-subjects brain and performance variability.

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Midfrontal theta oscillations and conflict monitoring in children and adults

“…They speak to less efficient conflict monitoring and signaling of the need for control in children than adults. Increasing signal strength for conflict detection and the need to adjust top-down control accordingly may account, at least in part, for more dynamic tailoring of PFC recruitment and control engagement as a function of changing task demands with age (e.g., Chevalier et al, 2019;Durston et al, 2002;Niebaum et al, 2019).…”

Neural Substrates of Early Executive Function Development

“…These results suggest that developmental changes in the neural substrate of EF may be more nuanced than the diffuse-to-focal view proposes, with some areas decreasing in activation and others increasing in activation with specialisation. This point is also backed up by the recent well-powered fNIRS study by Chevalier et al (2019), which found that older children were able to engage EF in a more flexible manner (i.e., adjusting cognitive control to specific contexts) than younger children, and that this flexibility impacted on which frontal regions showed increased or decreased activation. More broadly, given the recent failure to replicate many behavioural findings in psychology (Open Science Collaboration, 2015), the field would benefit from replication of some of the early fMRI findings in a larger sample spanning mid-childhood to adulthood, ideally using longitudinal methodology to decrease confounds associated with betweensubjects brain and performance variability.…”