The midpoint of cortical thinning between late childhood and early adulthood differs between individuals and brain regions: Evidence from longitudinal modelling in a 12-wave neuroimaging sample
In a recent paper in NeuroImage, we used high-temporal resolution neuroimaging data of up to 12-waves in the HUBU cohort (N = 90, aged 7-21 years) to investigate changes in apparent cortical thickness across childhood and adolescence. Fitting a four-parameter logistic nonlinear random effects mixed model, we quantified the characteristic, s-shaped, trajectory of cortical thinning in adolescence. This approach yields biologically meaningful parameters, including the midpoint of cortical thinning (MCT), which corresponds to the age at which the cortex shows most rapid thinning - in our sample occurring, on average, at 14 years of age. These results show that, given suitable data and models, cortical maturation can be quantified with precision for each individual and brain region.