Puberty contributes to adolescent development of fronto-striatal functional connectivity supporting inhibitory control

Abstract

Adolescence is defined by puberty and represents a neurobiological period characterized by enhanced neuroplasticity facilitating cognitive improvements. Fronto-striatal systems undergo important specialization throughout adolescence, supporting developmental changes in cognition and motivated behaviors. Though studies have characterized age-related changes, the extent to which puberty influences maturation of fronto-striatal networks is less known, limiting our understanding of unique adolescent processes. Here, we combine two longitudinal datasets to characterize the role of puberty in the development of fronto-striatal resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) and its relationship to inhibitory control in 110 10-18-year-olds. Not surprisingly, age-effects evident with older age ranges were not present in this sample. After controlling for age effects still possibly present, puberty was associated uniquely with late increases rsFC of nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) in both males and females and early puberty increases with ventrolateral PFC (vlPFC) in females. Additionally, greater dlPFC - NAcc rsFC was associated with worse inhibitory control performance in early puberty while vlPFC - NAcc was associated with response latency. Taken together, our findings suggest that mid-late puberty is a crucial period for lateral PFC - NAcc circuitry maturation, which may contribute to critical aspects of developmental improvements in inhibitory control function into adulthood.

Learning to read Chinese promotes two cortico-subcortical pathways: The development of thalamo-occipital and fronto-striatal circuits

“…Fronto-striatal connectivity is a critical cortico-subcortical pathway involved in language and cognitive processing ( Gordon et al, 2021 ). The fronto-striatal pathway has been shown to be closely associated with a variety of cognitive abilities, including inhibitory control ( Ojha et al, 2022 ), working memory( Rodrigue et al, 2020 ; Hidalgo-Lopez and Pletzer, 2021 ), executive function ( Galandra et al, 2019 ), and cognitive flexibility ( Banaie Boroujeni, 2021 ); its impairment can lead to problems, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity ( Cupertino et al, 2020 ; Mamiya et al, 2021 ) and reading disorder ( Hancock et al, 2017 ). From recent evidence, the thalamo-occipital and fronto-striatal connectivities seem to be two functional independent pathways.…”