Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior
Open Access

Research Article

Maturation of Brain Regions Related to the Default Mode Network during Adolescence Facilitates Narrative Comprehension

Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus^1,2,3,4*, Rola Farah¹, Ardag Hajinazarian^2,3,4, Kenneth Eaton³, Akila Rajagopal³, Vincent J Schmithorst⁵, Mekibib Altaye³, Jennifer J Vannest³ and Scott K Holland^2,3,4

¹Educational Neuroimaging Center, Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion, Israel

²Reading and Literacy Discovery Center, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

³Pediatric Neuroimaging Research Consortium, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

⁴Communication Sciences Research Center, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

⁴Department of Radiology, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus
Educational Neuroimaging Center
Faculty of Education in Science and T echnology
T echnion, Haifa, Israel
Tel: +972-4-829-2165
E-mail: tzipi.kraus@technion.ac.il

Received Date: Dec 18, 2016; Accepted Date: Jan 06, 2017; Published Date: Jan 12, 2017

Citation: Horowitz-Kraus T, Farah R, Hajinazarian A, Eaton K, Rajagopal A, et al. (2017) Maturation of Brain Regions Related to the Default Mode Network during Adolescence Facilitates Narrative Comprehension. J Child Adolesc Behav 5: 328. doi: 10.4172/2375-4494.1000328

Copyright: © 2017 Horowitz-Kraus T, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Objectives: Although the Default Mode Network (DMN) has been examined extensively in adults, developmental characteristics of this network during childhood are not fully understood. Methods: In this longitudinal study, we characterized the developmental changes in the DMN in fifteen children who were each scanned three times during a narrative comprehension task using magnetic resonance imaging. Results: Despite similar brain-activation patterns along developmental ages 5 to 18 years when listening to stories, increased, widely distributed deactivation of the DMN was observed in children between the ages of 11 and 18 years. Our findings suggest that changes occurring with increased age, primarily brain maturation and cognitive development drive deactivation of the DMN, which in turn might facilitate attendance to the task. Conclusions: The interpretation of our results is as a possible reference for the typical course of deactivation of the DMN and to explain the impaired patterns in this neural network associated with different language-related pathologies.

Keywords