Neural oscillatory dynamics serving abstract reasoning reveal robust sex differences in typically-developing children and adolescents

Spontaneous cortical MEG activity undergoes unique age- and sex-related changes during the transition to adolescence

“…The sex differences we observed in resting state spontaneous activity are a novel finding that are not entirely surprising given the known sexually dimorphic patterns of functional and structural neural development. For example, numerous studies have shown sex differences in the task-based oscillatory dynamics underlying working memory ( Embury et al, 2019 ), abstract reasoning ( Taylor et al, 2020b ), selective attention ( Taylor et al, 2021 ), visual processing (Fung et al, 2021), and visuospatial attention ( Killanin et al, 2020 ; Wiesman and Wilson, 2019 ) spanning theta, alpha, and gamma frequencies across spatially distributed areas. However, these findings are not universal; another study of motor processing in youth found no significant sex effects ( Trevarrow et al, 2019 ), which may indicate that sex differences are more robust in high-level cognitive and sensory tasks.…”

“…This trajectory of sex-specific change in spontaneous theta may relate to the differing structural and functional maturational trajectories between males and females ( Taylor et al, 2020 , 2020b ). For example, in an MEG study of abstract reasoning, Taylor et al (2020b) found that theta oscillations in males increased with age in frontoparietal regions, while such theta responses decreased in females.…”

Sexually dimorphic development in the cortical oscillatory dynamics serving early visual processing

“…The sexually dimorphic alpha responses identified in the present study again demonstrate female-specific recruitment of parietal association areas often involved in attention and higher-order processing, though unlike the gamma band results, these sex differences did not vary with age. Alpha activity has been documented to vary by age and sex during verbal working memory processing ( Embury et al, 2019 ); however, most MEG studies of cognitive development have observed these interactions in other frequency bands ( Fung et al, 2020 ; Killanin et al, 2020 ; Taylor et al, 2020 ). Future studies could utilize different visual stimuli or include further attentional manipulations to determine the extent to which alpha activity during basic visual perception exhibits developmental alterations, or whether such maturational effects are limited to more complex tasks and other oscillatory responses.…”

“…Maturation of neural activity serving higher-order cognitive processing during adolescence has been extensively studied using fMRI (for review, see Casey et al, 2005 ; Rubia, 2013 ), and studies have identified sex-specific developmental patterns of cortical network activity during complex visuospatial processing tasks in youth, such as mental rotation and spatial working memory ( Hugdahl et al, 2006 ; Kucian et al, 2007 ; Schweinsburg et al, 2005 ). There is also a growing wealth of knowledge regarding changes in childhood neural oscillatory dynamics serving motor control ( Gaetz et al, 2010 ; Heinrichs-Graham et al, 2018 , 2020 ; Trevarrow et al, 2019 ; Wilson et al, 2010 ), higher-order cognition ( Embury et al, 2019 ; Taylor et al, 2020 ; 2021 ), and more complex visuospatial attention ( Fung et al, 2020 ; Killanin et al, 2020 ). Executing these tasks obviously requires input and integration of basic sensory information for successful performance.…”

Oscillatory activity and EEG phase synchrony of concurrent word segmentation and meaning-mapping in 9-year-old children

“…To the best of our knowledge, no previous study has focused on brain oscillations during multimodal language learning in children. Brain oscillations play a crucial role in a variety of cognitive operations, such as stimulus processing ( Thut et al, 2011 ; Worden et al, 2000 ), cognitive control ( Canolty et al, 2006 ; Cunillera et al, 2012 ), and the development of abstract reasoning or verbal working memory ( Power et al, 2012 ; Embury et al, 2019 ; Taylor et al, 2020 ). Several studies have used phase synchrony between brain regions to explore the involvement of long-range communication ( Varela et al, 2001 ; Lachaux et al, 1999 ) during cognitive tasks that may require information flows between different brain regions ( Buzsáki and Dragun, 2004 ).…”