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Functional Stability and Similarity of Whole-brain and Social Brain Connectomes across Development

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Jacqueline Lee¹ (), Rebecca Todd¹, Tamara Vanderwal¹; ¹University of British Columbia

The functional connectome undergoes dynamic reorganization during childhood and adolescence; however, trajectories governing its maturation in typical and atypical development remain incompletely understood. Connectome stability (consistency across runs) and similarity (group resemblance) assessed using fMRI are associated with developmental outcomes including age and social abilities. These measures are also strongly correlated, suggesting that these organizational features are highly intertwined. Prior research has solely focused on the whole brain (WB), leaving it unclear whether these neurodevelopmental patterns are preserved or enhanced in the social brain (SB)—regions that become specialized for social cognition over development. In the present study, we examined associations between stability, similarity, and developmental measures (age, social abilities) in a large psychiatrically-enriched sample of youth from the Healthy Brain Network (N = 740; 6–18 years). Using linear mixed-effects models, we assessed relationships between stability (Rest–Movie) and similarity (Rest, Movie) across WB and SB connectomes and test how these measures relate to age and social abilities. We replicated robust positive relationships between stability and similarity in the WB and newly showed that this relationship is stronger in the SB. Social abilities were positively associated with WB/SB similarity during rest, whereas age was negatively associated with WB/SB stability and WB similarity during rest and movie. These findings suggest that group-typical convergence increase with social development, whereas divergence from group-typical patterns and greater task-reconfiguration increase with chronological age. These neurodevelopmental patterns were typically observed and sometimes enhanced in the SB, suggesting that SB maturation may drive some aspects of WB developmental organization.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Development & aging