Dear All,
The Faculty of Cognitive Psychology, ELTE is pleased to invite you all for the upcoming lecture of Cognitive Seminar (https://sites.google.com/site/eltekognitiv/home/elte-kognitiv-szeminariu)
Ilona Kovács (Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Pázmány Péter Catholic
University Adolescent Development Research Group, Budapest, webpage):
BETA: Biological and Experience-based Trajectories in Adolescent brain development
date: 22nd January 2019, 14:00
place: room 403, Institute of Psychology ELTE, 46 Izabella street, Budapest, 1064
Abstract:
The adolescent brain continues to mature well into the 20s, with neural circuitry underlying
executive functions among the last to mature. On the other hand, there is no consensus with
respect to the developmental pace of other different cognitive functions. A usual pitfall of
adolescent studies is that individual differences in puberty onset times are difficult to take into
consideration against chronological age. The variability between individuals in the timing of
the onset and in the pace of progression of puberty is very large, and the onset age can vary by
as much as 6 years in typical development. There is a great uncertainty in both cross-sectional
and longitudinal studies about the sheer contribution of genetically preprogrammed
maturation versus experience.
The BETA (Biological and Experience-based Trajectories in Adolescent brain development)
project aims to dissociate biological and chronological age for the first time, and to
investigate their role independently in adolescent cognitive functioning and in the
development of large-scale functional cortical networks. We assess biological maturity of a
large sample of children and adolescents by a computerized estimation of their bone age, and
then we select two cohorts of subjects for further investigations. Subjects are at the same
biological maturity level, however different in chronological age in the “experience” cohort.
In the “maturation” cohort, subjects are the same age, but they are different in maturity (or
bone-age). We show that biological maturation as estimated by bone age and life-time
experience related to chronological age are dissociable factors in adolescent brain
development, and that their exact role is different depending on the studied developmental
event.