Spatiotemporal patterns of cortical microstructural maturation in children and adolescents with diffusion MRI

Abstract

Neocortical maturation is a dynamic process that proceeds in a hierarchical manner; however, the spatiotemporal organization of cortical microstructure with diffusion MRI has yet to be fully defined. This study characterized cortical microstructural maturation using diffusion MRI (fwe‐diffusion tensor imaging [DTI] and neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging [NODDI] multicompartment modeling) in a cohort of 637 children and adolescents between 8 and 21 years of age. We found spatially heterogeneous developmental patterns broadly demarcated into functional domains where NODDI metrics increased, and fwe‐DTI metrics decreased with age. By applying nonlinear growth models in a vertex‐wise analysis, we observed a general posterior‐to‐anterior pattern of maturation, where the fwe‐DTI measures mean diffusivity and radial diffusivity reached peak maturation earlier than the NODDI metrics neurite density index. Using non‐negative matrix factorization, we found occipito‐parietal cortical regions that correspond to lower order sensory domains mature earlier than fronto‐temporal higher order association domains. Our findings corroborate previous histological and neuroimaging studies that show spatially varying patterns of cortical maturation that may reflect unique developmental processes of cytoarchitectonically determined regional patterns of change.

MRI signatures of cortical microstructure in human development align with oligodendrocyte cell-type expression

“…The neurite signal fraction, fneurite, attributed to elongated cortical structures (e.g., axons, processes), increased with age across the whole cortex, but peaked earliest in the visual and somatomotor networks, mirroring previous findings (Lynch et al, 2024). Intracortical myelination continues over adolescence (Bartzokis, 2012;Gibson et al, 2014;Grydeland et al, 2019;Natu et al, 2019;Whitaker et al, 2016), following a stereotyped sensorimotor-to-association (S-A) axis of development (Sydnor et al, 2023).…”

Dynamics of White Matter Architecture in Lexical Production among Middle-Aged Adults

“…That is, each network comprised of a unique set of structurally covarying voxels, indicating that the microstructural integrity changes (TW-FA) along these voxels covary across participants (i.e., either strongly correlated or anti-correlated). Given its recent application in investigating age-related (Bagautdinova et al, 2023; Lynch et al, 2023; Sotiras et al, 2015) and biological processes captured by microstructural changes (Patel et al, 2023; Robert et al, 2022), and given that TW-FA values are non-negative, we considered NMF as an appropriate approach for our research question.…”