Inter-individual variability in structural brain development from late childhood to young adulthood

NeuroImage, vol. 242, pp. 118450

Abstract

A fundamental task in neuroscience is to characterize the brain's developmental course. While replicable group-level models of structural brain development from childhood to adulthood have recently been identified, we have yet to quantify and understand individual differences in structural brain development. The present study examined inter-individual variability and sex differences in changes in brain structure, as assessed by anatomical MRI, across ages 8.0-26.0 years in 269 participants (149 females) with three time points of data (807 scans), drawn from three longitudinal datasets collected in the Netherlands, Norway, and USA. We further investigated the relationship between overall brain size and developmental changes, as well as how females and males differed in change variability across development. There was considerable inter-individual variability in the magnitude of changes observed for all examined brain measures. The majority of individuals demonstrated decreases in total gray matter volume, cortex volume, mean cortical thickness, and white matter surface area in mid-adolescence, with more variability present during the transition into adolescence and the transition into early adulthood. While most individuals demonstrated increases in white matter volume in early adolescence, this shifted to a majority demonstrating stability starting in mid-to-late adolescence. We observed sex differences in these patterns, and also an association between the size of an individual's brain structure and the overall rate of change for the structure. The present study provides new insight as to the amount of individual variance in changes in structural morphometrics from late childhood to early adulthood in order to obtain a more nuanced picture of brain development. The observed individual- and sex-differences in brain changes also highlight the importance of further studying individual variation in developmental patterns in healthy, at-risk, and clinical populations.

Authors 8

1. Kathryn L. Mills corresponding

   University of Oregon · University of Oslo

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, USA; PROMENTA Research Center, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway. Electronic address: klmills@oregon.edu

   Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, USA

   PROMENTA Research Center, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway

2. Kimberly D. Siegmund

   University of Southern California

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, University of Southern California, USA

3. Christian Krog Tamnes

   University of Oslo · Diakonhjemmet Hospital

   Affiliation as printed

   PROMENTA Research Center, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway; NORMENT, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, Norway; Department of Psychiatric Research, Diakonhjemmet Hospital, Oslo, Norway

   Department of Psychiatric Research, Diakonhjemmet Hospital, Oslo, Norway

   NORMENT, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, Norway

   PROMENTA Research Center, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway

4. Lia Ferschmann

   University of Oslo

   Affiliation as printed

   PROMENTA Research Center, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway

5. Lara Marise Wierenga Aachen Institute of Psychology, Leiden University Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, The Netherlands

   Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, The Netherlands

   Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, The Netherlands

6. Marieke Geerte Nynke Bos Aachen Institute of Psychology, Leiden University Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, The Netherlands

   Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, The Netherlands

   Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, The Netherlands

7. Beatríz Luna

   University of Pittsburgh

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, USA

8. Megan M. Herting corresponding

   University of Southern California

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, University of Southern California, USA. Electronic address: herting@usc.edu

   Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, University of Southern California, USA