Inverted U-shaped brain development of cognitive control across the human lifespan

Cognitive control, a crucial brain function for goal-directed human behavior, exhibits dynamic changes throughout the lifespan. However, the specific age-related alterations of brain activities related to cognitive control remain under-investigated. To address this gap, we conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis of 107 neuroimaging studies using conflict tasks, encompassing 3,153 participants whose age spanned from 5 to 85 years old. Using the seed-based effect size mapping and meta-regression approaches, we unveiled brain regions with activities exhibiting an inverted U-shaped developmental trajectory within cognitive control network, peaking between the ages of 24 and 41 years. Conversely, regions associated with the dorsal attention network displayed relatively more stable activity across the lifespan. Additionally, we observed evidence of greater left laterality of brain activities in both the youth and elderly. These results highlight the inverted U-shaped trajectories in cognitive control brain activities, while also revealing the heterogeneity in brain development for different regions.