Imaging Study Shows Brain Maturing: "Time-Lapse Imaging Tracks Brain Maturation from ages 5 to 20 -- Constructed from MRI scans of healthy children and teens, the time-lapse "
movie", from which the above images were extracted, compresses 15 years of brain development (ages 5 - 20) into just a few seconds. Red indicates more gray matter, blue less gray matter. Gray matter wanes in a back-to-front wave as the brain matures and neural connections are pruned. Areas performing more basic functions mature earlier; areas for higher order functions mature later. The prefrontal cortex, which handles reasoning and other "executive" functions, emerged late in evolution and is among the last to mature. Studies in twins are showing that development of such late-maturing areas is less influenced by heredity than areas that mature earlier. (Source: Paul Thompson, Ph.D., UCLA Laboratory of Neuroimaging)"
