Longitudinal Mapping of Cortical Thickness and Brain Growth in Normal Children

By Elizabeth R. Sowell, Paul M. Thompson, C. Leonard, Suzanne E. Welcome, E. Kan, Arthur W. Toga. Journal of Neuroscience, 2004

1,505 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology now allow the tracing of developmental changes in the brains of children. We applied computer-matching algorithms and new techniques for measuring cortical thickness (in millimeters) to the structural MRI images of 45 children scanned twice (2 yr apart) between the ages 5 and 11. Changes in brain size were also assessed, showing local brain growth progressing at a rate of ∼0.4-1.5 mm per year, most prominently in frontal and occipital regions. Estimated cortical thickness ranged from 1.5 mm in occipital regions to 5.5 mm in dorsomedial frontal cortex. Gray matter thinning coupled with cortical expansion was highly significant in right frontal and bilateral parieto-occipital regions. Significant thickening was restricted to left inferior frontal (Broca's area) and bilateral posterior perisylvian (Wernicke's area on the left) regions. In the left hemisphere, gray matter thickness was correlated with changing cognitive abilities. For the first time, developmental changes in gray matter thickness, brain size, and structure-function relationships have been traced within the same individuals studied longitudinally during a time of rapid cognitive development.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e65c2e29820b692a4bb1d699e3e6775c71440137

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Citations in the corpus

Unique developmental trajectories of cortical thickness and surface area (2014, positive): “This is then followed by peaks in higher order association areas in parietal and prefrontal regions (Shaw et al., 2008; Sowell et al., 2004).”
Selective Brain Damage: Measuring the Disparate Impact of Model Pruning (2019, background): “Despite losing 50% of all synapses between age two and ten, the brain continues to function [42, 62].”
A Structural MRI Study of Human Brain Development from Birth to 2 Years (2008, background): “Several large scale longitudinal studies have been published (Giedd et al., 1999; Sowell et al., 2004).”
The neuronal basis and ontogeny of empathy and mind reading: review of literature and implications for future research. (2006, background): “…science suggesting different developmental trajectories for different brain regions over the life span (Giedd et al., 1999; Gogtay et al., 2004; Sowell et al., 2003, 2004; Raz et al., 2005) it is suggested that introducing a developmental approach to the neuro-scientific study of mentalizing…”
Development of attentional networks: An fMRI study with children and adults (2005, background): “Since developmental studies of brain morphometry indicate long-lasting maturation processes during childhood and adolescence (Giedd, 1999; Sowell et al., 2002, 2004), in particular within the fronto-parietal networks and the cerebellum, we also obtained anatomical MR images on all subjects,…”
The Basics of Brain Development (2010, methodology): “Using mapping methods, Sowell et al. (2004) reported similarities in the patterns of brain growth and cortical density reductions and interpreted this as evidence that local cortical thinning might bear a direct relationship to myelination of nearby fiber tracts; but the nature of this relationship…”
The NKI-Rockland Sample: A Model for Accelerating the Pace of Discovery Science in Psychiatry (2012, methodology): “It is our hope that familiarity with the conceptual underpinnings of the enhanced NKI-RS will facilitate harmonization with future data collection efforts aimed at advancing psychiatric neuroscience and nosology.”
Mapping anatomical correlations across cerebral cortex (MACACC) using cortical thickness from MRI (2006, background): “The thickness of the cortex declines throughout most of the cerebrum with the exception of the temporal poles where continuous growth can be observed (Sowell et al., 2004).”
The social brain in adolescence (2008, neutral): “Sowell and colleagues observed a similar inverted-U-shaped pattern of grey-matter volume in the ST”
Longitudinal Development of Human Brain Wiring Continues from Childhood into Adulthood (2011, background): “In agreement with previous longitudinal brain volume studies (Giedd et al., 1999; Sowell et al., 2004; Lenroot et al., 2007), we show white matter increases and gray matter decreases in most subjects across the age range, including many young adults (Fig.”
Musical Training Shapes Structural Brain Development (2009, positive): “2, available at www.jneurosci.org as supplemental material) are consistent with previous findings in normal development that have included similar age ranges (from 5 to 7 years old) (e.g., Sowell et al., 2004).”
Construction of a 3D probabilistic atlas of human cortical structures (2008, methodology): “We note that the use of BFC here differs from the preprocessing that was performed previously in the Delineation preprocessing section; we selected the combination of BFC and PVC for this stage of the processing because it is a sequence that has been used routinely in our lab (e.g., Sowell et al., ”
Cortical thickness and central surface estimation (2013, methodology): “At the outer boundary, and also within blurred regions, the GMT is fully described by the WMD, because the CSFD is zero (Lohmann et al., 2003; Sowell et al., 2004).”
Brain anatomy differences in childhood stuttering (2008, methodology): “, 2005) but was not found to increase with development between 5 and 11 years (Sowell et al., 2004).”