Changes in neural mechanisms of cognitive control during the transition from late adolescence to young adulthood

Abstract

The transition from late adolescence to young adulthood is marked by anatomical maturation of various brain regions. In parallel, defining life changes take place, such as entrance into college. Up till now research has not focused on functional brain differences during this particular developmental stage. The current cross-sectional fMRI study investigates age differences in cognitive control by comparing late adolescents, 18-19 years old, with young adults, 23-25 years old. Seventy-four male and female medical students carried out a combined cognitive and emotional Stroop task. Overall, lateral frontoparietal and medial parietal activation was observed during cognitive interference resolution. Young adults showed stronger activation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, left inferior frontal gyrus, left middle temporal gyrus and middle cingulate, compared to late adolescents. During emotional interference resolution, the left precentral and postcentral gyrus were involved across age and sex. The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus were activated more in young adults than in late adolescents. No sex-related differences were found in this homogeneous sample. The results suggest that the neural bases of cognitive control continue to change between late adolescence and young adulthood.

Figure 1

The combined cognitive and emotional Stroop task. Colored words were presented on the screen with a fixed interval of 2 s. The task of the participant was to press a button corresponding to the color of the ink. A black screen was shown after a response. In this example, an incongruent color word, neutral word and negative emotional word are illustrated. Congruent color words and positive emotional words were also included.

Fig. 2

Brain regions that were activated more in young adults compared to late adolescents. (A) During cognitive interference, an effect of age was found in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, left inferior frontal gyrus, the left middle temporal gyrus and middle cingulate. (B) Age-related differences for emotional interference were found in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus.