Development of Top-Down Cortical Propagations in Youth

Hierarchical processing requires activity propagating between higher and lower-order cortical areas. However, studies of brain development have chiefly quantified fluctuations within regions over time rather than propagations occurring over space. Here, we leveraged advances in neuroimaging and computer vision to track cortical activity propagations in a large sample of youth ( n =388). We found that propagations robustly ascend and descend the cortical hierarchy, and that top-down propagations become both more prevalent with cognitive control demands and with development in youth.