Peer-reviewed article
Same ages, different stages: Pubertal development in 9- and 10-year olds is associated with entropy of fMRI signals.
McKone KMP, Roediger DJ, Sequeira SL, Island E, Luciana M et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This is a neuroscience study examining the relationship between pubertal development and brain signal patterns (measured by fMRI entropy) in children aged 9-10 years. The researchers analyzed data from a large diverse sample and found that pubertal development was associated with higher levels of brain signal entropy in certain brain regions. The study is descriptive and exploratory rather than evaluating an intervention for child well-being.
Key points
- Sample of 6,838 children aged 8.92-11.08 years from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study
- Pubertal development was associated with higher fMRI signal entropy in occipital, parietal, and temporal lobes
- Associations were stronger in females than males across most pubertal measures
- Adjustment for socioeconomic status and body mass index reduced the strength of associations
- Study is cross-sectional proof-of-concept; longitudinal research needed to confirm findings
Limitations
This is a cross-sectional study that cannot establish causation or temporal relationships between pubertal development and brain changes. The study does not evaluate the impact of these findings on children's actual well-being, functioning, or health outcomes.
Abstract
Entropy is a novel brain measure that holds important information about brain flexibility and functioning, with promise for informing brain development in adolescence, as it has been shown to change across the lifespan. However, little is known about how it changes during the critically important phase of pubertal development, which kickstarts a period of broad neural reorganization and restructuring. This proof-of-concept cross-sectional study examined associations between fMRI signal entropy and early pubertal development in a large, diverse sample of children. Data (N = 6838; 49.6% male; ages 8.92-11.08) was drawn from the first wave of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. Sample entropy was calculated on the time series of the resting-state fMRI signals for every grayordinate (i.e., cortical vertex and subcortical voxel). Parent-reported pubertal development (approximated Tanner stage) and salivary hormone levels (dehydroepiandrosterone; estradiol; testosterone) were correlated with sample entropy across the whole brain. The patterns of association between sample entropy and pubertal stage/hormone levels were inspected for males and females separately. Findings indicated pubertal development was associated with higher levels of resting state fMRI signal entropy, specifically in the occipital, parietal, and temporal lobes. Associations were apparent in females across most pubertal metrics. For males the constrained range of pubertal development may in part account for weaker associations observed. Further, adjustment for variables associated with early timing of pubertal development (socioeconomic status, body mass index) reduced the strength of puberty-entropy associations for both sexes. Longitudinal research is needed to confirm the associations between sample entropy and puberty, to evaluate whether stronger associations emerge as more males enter puberty in earnest, and to disentangle potential confounds.