Seminars

Understanding and potentially reversing memory decline necessitates a comprehensive examination of memory's evolution throughout life. Traditional memory assessments, however, suffer from a lack of comparability across different age groups due to the diverse nature of the tests employed. Addressing this gap, our study introduces a novel, ACT-R model-based memory assessment designed to provide a consistent metric for evaluating memory function across a lifespan, from 5 to 85-year-olds. This approach allows for direct comparison across various tasks and materials tailored to specific age groups. Our findings reveal a pronounced U-shaped trajectory of long-term memory function, with performance at age 5 mirroring those observed in elderly individuals with impairments, highlighting critical periods of memory development and decline. Leveraging this unified assessment method, we further investigate the therapeutic potential of rs-fMRI-guided TBS targeting area 8AV in individuals with early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease—a region implicated in memory deterioration and mood disturbances in this population. This research not only advances our understanding of memory's lifespan dynamics but also opens new avenues for targeted interventions in Alzheimer’s Disease, marking a significant step forward in the quest to mitigate memory decay.

Adolescent development is not only shaped by the mere passing of time and accumulating experience, but it also depends on pubertal timing and the cascade of maturational processes orchestrated by gonadal hormones. Although individual variability in puberty onset confounds adolescent studies, it has not been efficiently controlled for. Here we introduce ultrasonic bone age assessment to estimate biological maturity and disentangle the independent effects of chronological and biological age on adolescent cognitive abilities, emotional development, and brain maturation. Comparing cognitive performance of participants with different skeletal maturity we uncover the impact of biological age on both IQ and specific abilities. With respect to emotional development, we find narrow windows of highest vulnerability determined by biological age. In terms of neural development, we focus on the relevance of neural states unrelated to sensory stimulation, such as cortical activity during sleep and resting states, and we uncover a novel anterior-to-posterior pattern of human brain maturation. Based on our findings, bone age is a promising biomarker of adolescent maturity.

Executive control processes and flexible behaviors rely on the integrity of, and dynamic interactions between, large-scale functional brain networks. The right insular cortex is a critical component of a salience/midcingulo-insular network that is thought to mediate interactions between brain networks involved in externally oriented (central executive/lateral frontoparietal network) and internally oriented (default mode/medial frontoparietal network) processes. How these brain systems reconfigure with development is a critical question for cognitive neuroscience, with implications for neurodevelopmental pathologies affecting brain connectivity. I will describe studies examining how brain network dynamics support flexible behaviors in typical and atypical development, presenting evidence suggesting a unique role for the dorsal anterior insular from studies of meta-analytic connectivity modeling, dynamic functional connectivity, and structural connectivity. These findings from adults, typically developing children, and children with autism suggest that structural and functional maturation of insular pathways is a critical component of the process by which human brain networks mature to support complex, flexible cognitive processes throughout the lifespan.