Long‐term stability of the cortical volumetric profile and the functional human connectome throughout childhood and adolescence

• Published in: The European journal of neuroscience Vol. 54; no. 6; pp. 6187 - 6201
• Main Authors: Sato, João Ricardo, Biazoli, Claudinei Eduardo, Zugman, André, Pan, Pedro Mario, Bueno, Ana Paula Arantes, Moura, Luciana Monteiro, Gadelha, Ary, Picon, Felipe Almeida, Amaro, Edson, Salum, Giovanni Abrahão, Miguel, Euripedes Constantino, Rohde, Luis Augusto, Bressan, Rodrigo Affonseca, Jackowski, Andrea Parolin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chichester Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.09.2021
• Subjects: Accuracy; Adolescence; Adolescents; Child development; Children; Connectome; fingerprint; Fingerprinting; Neural networks; neurodevelopment; resting‐state; Structure-function relationships
• ISSN: 0953-816X; 1460-9568; 1460-9568
• DOI: 10.1111/ejn.15435

There is compelling evidence showing that between‐subject variability in several functional and structural brain features is sufficient for unique identification in adults. However, individuation of brain functional connectomes depends on the stabilization of neurodevelopmental processes during childhood and adolescence. Here, we aimed to (1) evaluate the intra‐subject functional connectome stability over time for the whole brain and for large scale functional networks and (2) determine the long‐term identification accuracy or ‘fingerprinting’ for the cortical volumetric profile and the functional connectome. For these purposes, we analysed a longitudinal cohort of 239 children and adolescents scanned in two sessions with an interval of approximately 3 years (age range 6–15 years at baseline and 9–18 years at follow‐up). Corroborating previous results using short between‐scan intervals in children and adolescents, we observed a moderate identification accuracy (38%) for the whole functional profile. In contrast, identification accuracy using cortical volumetric profile was 95%. Among the large‐scale networks, the default‐mode (26.8%), the frontoparietal (23.4%) and the dorsal‐attention (27.6%) networks were the most discriminative. Our results provide further evidence for a protracted development of specific individual structural and functional connectivity profiles. We analysed a longitudinal cohort of 239 children and adolescents scanned in two sessions with an interval of approximately 3 years. We observed a moderate identification accuracy (38%) for the whole functional profile. In contrast, identification accuracy using cortical volumetric profile was greater than 95%.