The Developing Myeloarchitecture of the Human Cortex: Relationships between Intra-Cortical Myelination and Developing Cognitive Function

Three important themes in neuroscience are parcellation, structure-function specificity, and neural plasticity. These themes relate to: 1. The ability to delineate brain regions, for example on the basis of their cellular composition, myeloarchitecture, microstructural architecture, and/or connectivity profiles; 2. Relate parcellations to specific cognitive functions or behaviors; and 3. The ability of the tissue microstructure and architecture to adaptively change in response to environmental influences, with concurrent functional consequences. Neural plasticity suggests that any regional delineation scheme is likely to change with age and functional development, which we can exploit to identify functionally relevant regions and their development with age. From a large longitudinal cohort of neurotypically-developing children, 0 to 13 years of age, we used a data-driven approach to subdivide the cortex based on cortical myelination patterns. Next, we quantified the relationships between rates of myelination across each region and rates of functional development (including motor, language, visuospatial, executive, and academic ability). Linking these evolving processes, we identified unique and overlapping cortical regions that underly diverse skill development, providing new insight into how the cortical myeloarchitecture develops throughout early childhood and its importance to developing cognitive functioning.