The prefrontal cortex: functional neural development during early childhood

Abstract

The prefrontal cortex plays an essential role in various cognitive functions, such as planning and reasoning, yet little is known about how such neural mechanisms develop during childhood, particularly in young children. To better understand this issue, the present article reviews the literature on the development of the prefrontal cortex during early childhood, focusing mainly on the changes in structural architecture, neural activity, and cognitive abilities. Neuroanatomically, the prefrontal cortex undergoes considerable maturation during childhood, including a reduction of synaptic and neuronal density, a growth of dendrites, and an increase in white matter volume, thereby forming distributed neural networks appropriate for complex cognitive processing. Concurrently, behavioral performance of various cognitive tasks improves with age, and intercorrelations among performance on each task become weak through development. Furthermore, the correlation between subcategories of intelligence test decreases as general intellectual efficiency increases. In addition, recent neuroimaging findings suggest that the prefrontal cortex is already functional in 4-year olds and becomes organized into focal, fine-tuned systems through later development. The literature reviewed suggests that fractionation of the functional neural systems plays a key role in the development of prefrontal cortex and such fractionating process has already commenced in preschool children.