Brain structure-function decoupling underlies cognitive development in youth

COEX 

During the development of children and adolescents, the human brain undergoes significant changes in both its structural architecture and functional organization to support increasingly complex cognitive and behavioral capabilities. The brain is functionally organized into large-scale networks along a functional hierarchy extending from unimodal sensory cortex to transmodal association cortex, supporting hierarchical information propagation. This macroscale functional hierarchy is anchored by an anatomical backbone of structural white matter pathways that coordinate synchronized neural activity and cognition. However, only sparse data exist regarding how white matter structural network constraints on brain functional dynamics relate to cognitive improvement during neurodevelopment. In this talk, we will present our work on the examination of the developmental trajectory of brain structure-function relationship in children and adolescents. We used a novel measure – structural-decoupling index to measure the degree of fMRI signal smoothness on structural connectome based on structure-informed graph signal processing (GSP) filtering of functional data. By leveraging on the longitudinal Singapore cohort (GUSTO), we studied how the structure-function decoupling changes longitudinally in preschool children from 4.5 to 6 years old and how the changes support cognitive flexibility maturation. Further, using two independent developmental datasets (NKI and HCP), we identified the developmental trajectories of region-specific structure-function decoupling patterns cross-sectionally and longitudinally in youth from 8 to 22 years old. We will present the differential changes of structure-function decoupling in unimodal and transmodal regions, which led to a spatial decoupling pattern more aligned with the functional hierarchy derived from young adults during the development. We will also present the region- and age-dependent association of structure-function decoupling with cognition during the development. In conclusion, by combining functional dynamics and white matter connectivity, we provide further insights into the neurobiological basis underlying cognitive development.