Developmental Trajectory of Inhibition-Related Brain Activation during a Stop-Signal Task in Typically Developing Children

Poster Session C - Sunday, April 14, 2024, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Isabel M. Wilder¹ (isabel.wilder@nih.gov), Shau-Ming Wei^1,2, J. Shane Kippenhan¹, Michael D. Gregory¹, Christina A. Recto¹, Destiny S. Wright¹, Caroline B. Raymond¹, Lynnette K. Nieman³, Jack A. Yanovski⁴, Peter J. Schmidt², Karen F. Berman¹; ¹Section on Integrative Neuroimaging, Clinical & Translational Neuroscience Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, ²Behavioral Endocrinology Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, ³Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Obesity Branch, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Bethesda, MD, ⁴Section on Growth and Obesity, Division of Intramural Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, MD

Adolescence is a period of marked developmental changes in brain and cognitive abilities. One such ability that undergoes maturation during this time, inhibitory control, supports impulse regulation and goal-directed behavior and is implicated in adolescent externalizing psychopathology. However, the typical developmental patterns of regional neurofunction underlying inhibitory control during this critical period remain poorly understood. We longitudinally studied developmental trajectories of brain function associated with inhibitory control in healthy children, beginning at age eight, when they were ascertained by clinicians to be prepubertal, as they progressed through the pubertal transition to age 18. Within the “NIMH Intramural Longitudinal Study of the Endocrine and Neurobiological Events Accompanying Puberty,” 557 fMRI scans were collected from 131 healthy children (mean age across longitudinal scans=11.9±2.6 years, 56 girls, 75 boys) while they performed a Stop-Signal task. Data were analyzed across development in a voxel-wise manner using AFNI’s 3dMSS tool to perform mixed-effects spline-based modeling, controlling for sex and task performance. Age-related changes in neural activation during response inhibition were found in left insula and right DLPFC (pFDR<0.01). Resulting spline models demonstrated that for both regions, irrespective of sex or task performance, the degree of activation was lowest at age eight and increased through age 18. These data contribute to previous evidence suggesting that brain regions underlying cognitive control show age-related functional changes during adolescence. Future investigations, within this same cohort, will integrate effects of pubertal hormones and the roles of pubertal timing and tempo on inhibitory control-related brain development throughout this dynamic developmental period.

Topic Area: METHODS: Neuroimaging