Longitudinal structural and functional brain development in childhood and adolescence

The development of the human brain involves a prolonged course of maturation, enabling us to learn to navigate our complex social environments. Here, we give short introductions to post-mortem and animal studies on postnatal brain development and selected methodological considerations for longitudinal developmental neuroimaging. We then describe typical developmental changes in brain structure and function from childhood to adulthood. We focus on measurements derived from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and on longitudinal data. Specifically, we discuss brain structural development based on morphometry and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies, and functional development based on resting-state and task-based functional MRI. Finally, we highlight selected current overarching research questions and argue that an important step in answering these questions is to study individual differences in longitudinal brain development.