Abstract

Correlations in regional cortical thickness or volume across human subjects have been consistently reported for over a decade, and it has been speculated that the mechanism of this “structural connectivity” is related to coupled maturation across the lifespan. Regions that are connected to each other may grow at the same rate, leading to inter-regional correlations of cortical thickness or volume in adult brains. The extent to which such anatomically or functionally connected brain regions demonstrate coordinated structural maturation during childhood and adolescence is unknown. To address these issues, we conducted the first network analysis of correlated anatomical change in the human brain, demonstrating how maturation underlies cross-sectional cortical thickness correlations. We further used fMRI gathered in a group of the same subjects to quantify convergence between structural, maturational and functional brain networks.