Puberty in the corpus callosum.
Adolescence is an important period for brain development. White matter growth is influenced by sex hormones such as testosterone, and the corpus callosum-the largest white matter structure in the human brain-may change structurally during the hormone-laden period of adolescence. Little is known about puberty's relationship to structural brain development, even though pubertal stage may better predict cognitive and behavioral maturity than chronological age. We therefore aimed to establish the presence and direction of pubertal effects on callosal anatomy. For this purpose, we applied advanced surface-based mesh-modeling to map correlations between callosal thickness and pubertal stage in a large and well-matched sample of 124 children and adolescents (62 female and 62 male) aged 5-18years from a normative database. When linking callosal anatomy to pubertal status, only positive correlations reached statistical significance, indicating that callosal growth advances with puberty. In tests of differences in callosal anatomy at different stages of puberty, callosal growth was concentrated in different locations depending on the pubertal stage. Changing levels of circulating sex hormones during different phases of puberty likely contributed to the observed effects, and further research is clearly needed. Direct quantification of sex hormone levels and regional fiber connectivity-ideally using fiber tractography-will reveal whether hormones are the main drivers of callosal change during puberty. These callosal findings may lead to hypotheses regarding cortical changes during puberty, which may promote or result from changes in inter-hemispheric connectivity.
Department of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
M C
MC
Chavarria
Department of Counseling Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, United States.
F J
FJ
Sánchez
Image Processing Core, Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine, Bethesda, MD, United States.
Y-Y
YY
Chou
Department of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, United States; Imaging Genetics Center, Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics, USC Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, United States; Department of Neurology, USC Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, United States; Department of Psychiatry, USC Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, United States; Department of Radiology, USC Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, United States; Department of Engineering, USC Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, United States; Department of Ophthalmology, USC Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, United States; Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
P M
PM
Thompson
Department of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, United States. Electronic address: eileen.luders@ucla.edu.
E
E
Luders
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003337:Corpus Callosum / Q000254:growth & development*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D011627:Puberty
corpus callosum; development; gender; pubertal status; sex