Integration of brain in youngsters take time
Doctors and researchers say parents will definitely note a difference in behavior among kids as they mature, as specific areas in their brain network start to work in unison.
Parts in their brain network known as the default-mode network or DMN begin to work together, and parents mostly observe a change in the children's knack to look outside themselves, suggests a research presented at Neuroscience 2010.
''Between 13 and 19, the regions of the DMN start to work in concert," said researcher Stuart Washington, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow at Georgetown University and Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “It takes until the teen years for the DMN to develop".
For the study, he compared normal children with autistic kids between ages 7 and 17. He noted that that DMN didn’t work in autistic kids as much as with normal ones. DMN has been researched over the past decade and researchers haven’t fully deciphered what it exactly constitutes. They often link it with being able to understand that different people have different views and points of views about various things.
Earlier research has compared DMN activities in adults and children, but the current research analyzes it over four groups. The 41 participants were categorized as 10 children ages 6 to 9, 12 children ages 10 to 12, 9 teens ages 13 to 19 and 10 adults ages 22 to 27.
Researchers noted the brain activity of these participants while it rested, and noticed changes between children and teens, and children and adults. Looking at scans from autistic children ages 7 to 17, they found their DMN activity was most like the typically developing younger children.