Cortical temporal hierarchy is immature in middle childhood

• Published in: NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.) Vol. 216; p. 116616
• Main Authors: Moraczewski, Dustin, Nketia, Jazlyn, Redcay, Elizabeth
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.08.2020; Elsevier Limited; Elsevier
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adults; Age; Brain; Cerebral Cortex - diagnostic imaging; Cerebral Cortex - physiology; Child; Child Development - physiology; Childhood; Children; Children & youth; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive ability; Comprehension - physiology; Cross-Sectional Studies; Default Mode Network - diagnostic imaging; Default Mode Network - physiology; Development; Female; Functional Neuroimaging; Humans; Information processing; Inter-subject correlation; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Memory; Motion Pictures; Naturalistic viewing; Nerve Net - diagnostic imaging; Nerve Net - physiology; Parietal Lobe - diagnostic imaging; Parietal Lobe - physiology; Prefrontal cortex; Prefrontal Cortex - diagnostic imaging; Prefrontal Cortex - physiology; Social Cognition; Specialization; Temporal lobe; Temporal Lobe - diagnostic imaging; Temporal Lobe - physiology; Time Factors; Timescale; Visual Perception - physiology; Development; Inter-subject correlation; Timescale; Naturalistic viewing; Social cognition
• ISSN: 1053-8119; 1095-9572; 1095-9572
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116616

The development of successful social-cognitive abilities requires one to track, accumulate, and integrate knowledge of other people’s mental states across time. Regions of the brain differ in their temporal scale (i.e., a cortical temporal hierarchy) and those receptive to long temporal windows may facilitate social-cognitive abilities; however, the cortical development of long timescale processing remains to be investigated. The current study utilized naturalistic viewing to examine cortical development of long timescale processing and its relation to social-cognitive abilities in middle childhood – a time of expanding social spheres and increasing social-cognitive abilities. We found that, compared to adults, children exhibited reduced low-frequency power in the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and reduced specialization for long timescale processing within the TPJ and other regions broadly implicated in the default mode network and higher-order visual processing. Further, specialization for long timescales within the right dorsal medial prefrontal cortex became more ‘adult-like’ as a function of children’s comprehension of character mental states. These results suggest that cortical temporal hierarchy in middle childhood is immature and may be important for an accurate representation of complex naturalistic social stimuli during this age.