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Epidemiological research reveals that insufficient sleep in children has negative cognitive and emotional consequences; however, the physiological underpinnings of these observations remain understudied. We tested the hypothesis that the topographical distribution of deep sleep slow wave activity during the childhood predicts brain white matter microstructure (myelin) 3.5 y later. Healthy children underwent sleep high-density EEG at baseline (n = 13; ages 2.4–8.0 y) and follow-up (n = 14; ages 5.5–12.2 y). At follow-up, myelin (myelin water fraction) and cortical morphology were also quantified. Our investigation revealed 3 main findings. (1) The Frontal/Occipital (F/O)-ratio at baseline strongly predicted whole brain myelin at follow-up. (2) At follow-up, the F/O-ratio was only minimally (negatively) linked to brain myelin. (3) Cortical morphology was not related to the F/O-ratio, neither at baseline nor at follow-up. Our results support the hypothesis that during child development EEG markers during sleep longitudinally predict brain myelin content. Data extend previous findings reporting a link between EEG markers of sleep need and cortical morphology, by supporting the hypothesis that sleep is a necessary component to underlying processes of brain, and specifically myelin, maturation. In line with the overarching theory that sleep contributes to neurodevelopmental processes, it remains to be investigated whether chronic sleep loss negatively affects white matter myelin microstructure growth during sensitive periods of development. • This study extends to children a concept developed initially in a rodent model. • A sleep EEG marker predicts brain myelin morphology in a childhood period. • Deep sleep (slow wave activity) is a strong prognostic marker for myelin maturation. • Sleep is a new translational avenue for the developmental process of mental health. • Slow wave activity may mediate benefits of sleep at the systems and cellular level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In adults, oscillatory activity in the sensorimotor cortex is coherent with contralateral muscle activity at beta frequencies (15–35 Hz) during tonic contraction. This functional coupling reflects the involvement of the sensorimotor cortex, the corticospinal pathway, and likely also ascending sensory feedback in the task at hand. However, little is known about the developmental trajectory of task-related corticomuscular connectivity relating to the voluntary control of the ankle muscles. To address this, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) from the vertex (Cz) and electromyography (EMG) from ankle muscles (proximal and distal anterior tibial, TA; soleus, SOL; gastrocnemius medialis, GM) in 33 participants aged 7–23 yr during tonic dorsi- and plantar flexion requiring precise maintenance of a submaximal torque level. Coherence was calculated for Cz-TA, Cz-SOL, TA-TA, and SOL-GM signal pairs. We found strong, positive associations between age and beta band coherence for Cz-TA, Cz-SOL, and TA-TA, suggesting that oscillatory corticomuscular connectivity is strengthened during childhood development and adolescence. Directionality analysis indicated that the primary interaction underlying this age-related increase was in the descending direction. In addition, performance during dorsi- and plantar flexion tasks was positively associated with age, indicating more precise control of the ankle joint in older participants. Performance was also positively associated with beta band coherence, suggesting that participants with greater coherence also exhibited greater precision. We propose that these results indicate an age-related increase in oscillatory corticospinal input to the ankle muscle motoneuron pools during childhood development and adolescence, with possible implications for maturation of precision force control. Within the theoretical framework of predictive coding, we suggest that our results may reflect an age-related increase in reliance on feedforward control as the developing nervous system becomes better at predicting the sensory consequences of movement. These findings may contribute to the development of novel intervention strategies targeting improved sensorimotor control in children and adolescents with central motor disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Adaptive emotion processing is critical for nearly all aspects of social and emotional functioning. There are distinct developmental trajectories associated with improved emotion processing, with a protracted developmental course for negative or complex emotions. The specific changes in neural circuitry that underlie this development, however are still scarcely understood. We employed a multivariate approach in order to elucidate distinctions in complex, naturalistic emotion processing between childhood and adulthood. Method Twenty-one adults (M±SD age = 26.57 ± 5.08 years) and thirty children (age = 7.75 ± 1.80 years) completed a free-viewing movie task during BOLD fMRI scanning. This task was designed to assess naturalistic processing of movie clips portraying positive, negative, and neutral emotions. Multivariate support vector machines (SVM) were trained to classify age groups based on neural activation during the task. Results SVMs were able to successfully classify condition (positive, negative, and neutral) across all participants with high accuracy (61.44%). SVMs could successfully distinguish adults and children within each condition (ps < 0.05). Regions that informed the age group SVMs were associated with sensory and socio-emotional processing (inferior parietal lobule), emotion regulation (inferior frontal gyrus), and sensory regions of the temporal and occipital lobes. Conclusions These results point to distributed differences in activation between childhood and adulthood unique to each emotional condition. In the negative condition specifically, there is evidence for a shift in engagement from regions of sensory and socio-emotional integration to emotion regulation regions between children and adults. These results provide insight into circuitry contributing to maturation of emotional processing across development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) is one of the most prevalent brain functional imaging modalities. Previous rs-fMRI studies have mainly focused on adults and elderly subjects. Recently, infant rs-fMRI studies have become an area of active research. After a decade of gap filling studies, many facets of the brain functional development from early infancy to toddler has been uncovered. However, infant rs-fMRI is still in its infancy. The image analysis tools for neonates and young infants can be quite different from those for adults. From data analysis to result interpretation, more questions and issues have been raised, and new hypotheses have been formed. With the anticipated availability of unprecedented high-resolution rs-fMRI and dedicated analysis pipelines from the Baby Connectome Project (BCP), it is important now to revisit previous findings and hypotheses, discuss and comment existing issues and problems, and make a "to-do-list" for the future studies. This review article aims to comprehensively review a decade of the findings, unveiling hidden jewels of the fields of developmental neuroscience and neuroimage computing. Emphases will be given to early infancy, particularly the first few years of life. In this review, an end-to-end summary, from infant rs-fMRI experimental design to data processing, and from the development of individual functional systems to large-scale brain functional networks, is provided. A comprehensive summary of the rs-fMRI findings in developmental patterns is highlighted. Furthermore, an extensive summary of the neurodevelopmental disorders and the effects of other hazardous factors is provided. Finally, future research trends focusing on emerging dynamic functional connectivity and state-of-the-art functional connectome analysis are summarized. In next decade, early infant rs-fMRI and developmental connectome study could be one of the shining research topics. Graphical abstract Image 1 Highlights • Comprehensive review of early brain developmental studies using rs-fMRI. • Outlining practical and end-to-end neonate/infant rs-fMRI pipelines. • Highlighting future research trends for early development studies. • Summarizing consistent findings in the literature regarding early brain developmental patterns. • Providing up-to-date neonate/infant (<5 years old) functional network literature review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childhood obesity is a rising problem worldwide mainly caused by overconsumption, which is driven by food choices. In adults, food choices are based on a value signal encoded in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). This signal is modulated by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), which is involved in self-control. We aimed to examine the neural correlates of food choice in children, and how considering healthiness affects neural activity and choice behavior. 24 children and 28 adults performed a food choice task while being scanned with fMRI and provided health and taste ratings of the foods afterwards. During the choice task participants considered either the healthiness or tastiness of the food or chose naturally. Health rating was a positive predictor of choice in adults, but a negative predictor in children. Children had weaker dlPFC activation than adults during yes vs. no independent of health or taste condition. Both children and adults made healthier choices when considering healthiness. Taste rating modulated mPFC activation in both children and adults. When considering the healthiness, health rating positively modulated mPFC activation in adults, but negatively in children. Considering the healthiness increased connectivity between dlPFC and mPFC in adults, but not in children. In conclusion, considering healthiness can promote healthier choices in both children and adults, but is accompanied by an opposing pattern of brain activation in the mPFC. Since the absolute number of healthy choices remained lower in children, this suggests that children may not yet be geared to modify their choices away from their natural tendency to choose unhealthy tasty foods. Thus, this study suggests that it may be promising to develop interventions that increase children's preference for healthy food, for example by increasing the habitual consumption of healthy foods from a young age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children learn new words and word forms with ease, often acquiring a new word after very few repetitions. Recent neurophysiological research on word form acquisition in adults indicates that novel words can be acquired within minutes of repetitive exposure to them, regardless of the individual's focused attention on the speech input. Although it is well-known that children surpass adults in language acquisition, the developmental aspects of such rapid and automatic neural acquisition mechanisms remain unexplored. To address this open question, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to scrutinise brain dynamics elicited by spoken words and word-like sounds in healthy monolingual (Danish) children throughout a 20-min repetitive passive exposure session. We found rapid neural dynamics manifested as an enhancement of early (~100 ms) brain activity over the short exposure session, with distinct spatiotemporal patterns for different novel sounds. For novel Danish word forms, signs of such enhancement were seen in the left temporal regions only, suggesting reliance on pre-existing language circuits for acquisition of novel word forms with native phonology. In contrast, exposure both to novel word forms with non-native phonology and to novel non-speech sounds led to activity enhancement in both left and right hemispheres, suggesting that more wide-spread cortical networks contribute to the build-up of memory traces for non-native and non-speech sounds. Similar studies in adults have previously reported more sluggish (~15–25 min, as opposed to 4 min in the present study) or non-existent neural dynamics for non-native sound acquisition, which might be indicative of a higher degree of plasticity in the children's brain. Overall, the results indicate a rapid and highly plastic mechanism for a dynamic build-up of memory traces for novel acoustic information in the children's brain that operates automatically and recruits bilateral temporal cortical circuits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children have more difficulty perceiving speech in noise than adults. Whether this difficulty relates to an immature processing of prosodic or linguistic elements of the attended speech is still unclear. To address the impact of noise on linguistic processing per se , we assessed how babble noise impacts the cortical tracking of intelligible speech devoid of prosody in school-aged children and adults. Twenty adults and twenty children (7-9 years) listened to synthesized French monosyllabic words presented at 2.5 Hz, either randomly or in 4-word hierarchical structures wherein 2 words formed a phrase at 1.25 Hz, and 2 phrases formed a sentence at 0.625 Hz, with or without babble noise. Neuromagnetic responses to words, phrases and sentences were identified and source-localized. Children and adults displayed significant cortical tracking of words in all conditions, and of phrases and sentences only when words formed meaningful sentences. In children compared with adults, the cortical tracking was lower for all linguistic units in conditions without noise. In the presence of noise, the cortical tracking was similarly reduced for sentence units in both groups, but remained stable for phrase units. Critically, when there was noise, adults increased the cortical tracking of monosyllabic words in the inferior frontal gyri and supratemporal auditory cortices but children did not. This study demonstrates that the difficulties of school-aged children in understanding speech in a multi-talker background might be partly due to an immature tracking of lexical but not supra-lexical linguistic units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present study was to detail the childhood developmental course of different white matter (WM) characteristics. In a longitudinal diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) study of 159 healthy children between 4 and 11 years scanned twice, we used tract-based spatial statistics as well as delineation of 15 major WM tracts to characterize the regional pattern of change in fractional anisotropy (FA), mean (MD), radial (RD) and axial diffusivity (AD). We tested whether there were decelerations of change with increasing age globally and tract-wise, and also illustrated change along medial-to-lateral, posterior-to-anterior and inferior-to-superior gradients. We found a significant linear increase in global FA, and decrease in MD and RD over time. For mean AD, a weak decrease was observed. The developmental changes in specific WM tracts showed regional differences. Eight WM tracts showed non-linear development patterns for one or several DTI metrics, with a deceleration in change with age. Sex did not affect change in any DTI metric. Overall, greater rate of change was found in the left hemisphere. Spatially, there was a posterior-to-anterior gradient of change with greater change in frontal regions for all metrics. The current study provides a comprehensive characterization of the regional patters of change in WM microstructure across pre-adolescence childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evidence for a functionally inhibitory role of alpha oscillations is growing stronger, mostly derived from studies in healthy adults investigating spatial attention. It remains unexplored if the modulation of alpha band oscillations plays a similar functional role in typically developing children. The aim of this study was to characterize alpha modulations in children in relation to attentional performance. To this end, the posterior alpha activity (8–12 Hz) in children between 7 and 10 years old was measured using EEG while they performed a visuospatial covert attention task. We found that the alpha activity decreased in the hemisphere contralateral to the attended hemifield, whereas it relatively increased in the other hemisphere. In addition, we found that the degree of lateralized alpha modulation predicted performance on the attention task by negatively predicting the response time on invalid trials. Of note, children who were behaviorally less influenced by spatial cueing also were children with a clear lateralized alpha modulation pattern, with a significantly stronger alpha lateralization in the left hemisphere than children who were influenced more by spatial cueing. In addition, a bias to the right visual field such as that commonly observed in children, was significantly smaller or absent in the children influenced least by spatial cueing. Among all children, the magnitude of this visual field bias was positively related to the ability to modulate alpha activity. In conclusion, we have shown that the pattern of alpha oscillations modulated by attention is already present in 7–10 year old typically developing children. Although a similar pattern is observed in adults, the consequences for behavior are different. The fact that alpha modulation is already present at this age opens up the possibility of using hemispheric alpha lateralization as a tool to study the physiological basis of attention deficits in clinical disorders such as ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It remains unclear if changes of the cerebral cortex occur gradually from childhood to adulthood, or if adolescence marks a differential period of cortical development. In the current study of 90 healthy volunteers aged 5–32 years (48 females, 85 right handed) with 180 scans (2 scans for each participant with ~ 4 year gaps), thinning of overall mean thickness and across the four major cortical lobes bilaterally was observed across this full age span. However, the thinning rate, calculated as Δcortical thickness / Δage (mm/year) between scans of each participant, revealed an accelerated cortical thinning during adolescence, which was preceded by less thinning in childhood and followed by decelerated thinning in young adulthood. Males and females showed similarly faster thinning rates during adolescence relative to young adults. The underlying basis and role of accelerated cortical thinning during adolescence for cognition, behaviour and disorders that appear at such a stage of development remains to be determined in future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Brain development occurs rapidly during the first few years of life involving region-specific changes in both gray matter and white matter. Due to the inherent difficulties in acquiring magnetic resonance imaging data in young children, little is known about the properties of white matter in typically developing toddlers. In the context of an ongoing study of young children with autism spectrum disorder, we collected diffusion-weighted imaging data during natural nocturnal sleep in a sample of young (mean age=35months) typically developing male and female (n=41 and 25, respectively) children. Axial diffusivity, radial diffusivity, mean diffusivity and fractional anisotropy were measured at 99 points along the length of 18 major brain tracts. Influences of hemisphere, age, sex, and handedness were examined. We find that diffusion properties vary significantly along the length of the majority of tracks. We also identify hemispheric and sex differences in diffusion properties in several tracts. Finally, we find the relationship between age and diffusion parameters changes along the tract length illustrating variability in age-related white-matter development at the tract level. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The present study used the functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) methodology to investigate the neural correlates of elementary school children's own- and other-race face processing. An old-new paradigm was used to assess children's recognition ability of own- and other-race faces. FNIRS data revealed that other-race faces elicited significantly greater [oxy-Hb] changes than own-race faces in the right middle frontal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus regions (BA9) and the left cuneus (BA18). With increased age, the [oxy-Hb] activity differences between own- and other-race faces, or the neural other-race effect (NORE), underwent significant changes in these two cortical areas: at younger ages, the neural response to the other-race faces was modestly greater than that to the own-race faces, but with increased age, the neural response to the own-race faces became increasingly greater than that to the other-race faces. Moreover, these areas had strong regional functional connectivity with a swath of the cortical regions in terms of the neural other-race effect that also changed with increased age. We also found significant and positive correlations between the behavioral other-race effect (reaction time) and the neural other-race effect in the right middle frontal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus regions (BA9). These results taken together suggest that children, like adults, devote different amounts of neural resources to processing own- and other-race faces, but the size and direction of the neural other-race effect and associated functional regional connectivity change with increased age. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The development of the frontopolar cortex (FPC) through late childhood and adolescence was investigated using measures of cortical thickness. T1-weighted structural MRIs from 35 typically developing participants aged 8–20 years were used to construct 3D models of the brain, from which cortical thickness was measured. There was a significant inverse association between age and cortical thickness, such that cortical thickness decreased as age increased between 8 and 20 years. There was no effect of laterality or gender on cortical thickness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Although it is well known that executive processes supported by the frontal lobe develop during childhood and adolescence, only one functional imaging study has used the Stroop task to investigate the relationship between frontal lobe function and cognition from a developmental point of view. Hence, we measured brain activation in the lateral prefrontal cortex of children with functional near-infrared imaging during an event-related, color–word matching Stroop task and compared results with a previous study, conducted with the same paradigm in adults. In children, the Stroop task elicited significant brain activation in the left lateral prefrontal cortex comparable to adults. However, the hemodynamic response occurred later in children than adults. Individual brain activation due to Stroop interference varied much more in children than adults, which was paralleled by a higher behavioral variance in children. Data suggest that children differed in their individual cognitive development independent of their chronological age more than adults. Brain activation due to Stroop interference increased with age in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in correlation with an improvement of behavioral performance. In conclusion, our results indicate that neuromaturational processes regarding resolution of Stroop interference may depend on increased ability to recruit frontal neural resources. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• A systematic review of 79 fNIRS studies with children and adolescents was performed. • Six methodological aspects of the included studies were critically evaluated. • The limitations of the literature and potential pitfalls of fNIRS are highlighted. • Recommendations and directions for future developmental fNIRS research are provided. Despite decades of research, our understanding of functional brain development throughout childhood and adolescence remains limited due to the challenges posed by certain neuroimaging modalities. Recently, there has been a growing interest in using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to elucidate the neural basis of cognitive and socioemotional development and identify the factors shaping these types of development. This article, focusing on the fNIRS methods, presents an up-to-date systematic review of fNIRS studies addressing the effects of age and other factors on brain functions in children and adolescents. Literature searches were conducted using PubMed and PsycINFO. A total of 79 fNIRS studies involving healthy individuals aged 3–17 years that were published in peer-reviewed journals in English before July 2020 were included. Six methodological aspects of these studies were evaluated, including the research design, experimental paradigm, fNIRS measurement, data preprocessing, statistical analysis, and result presentation. The risk of bias, such as selective outcome reporting, was assessed throughout the review. A qualitative synthesis of study findings in terms of the factor effects on changes in oxyhemoglobin concentration was also performed. This unregistered review highlights the strengths and limitations of the existing literature and suggests directions for future research to facilitate the improved use of fNIRS in developmental cognitive neuroscience research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the important role of manual dexterity in child development, the neurobiological mechanisms associated with manual dexterity in childhood remain unclear. We leveraged fixel-based analysis (FBA) to examine the longitudinal association between manual dexterity and the development of white matter structural properties in the corticospinal tract (CST). High angular diffusion weighted imaging (HARDI) data were acquired for 44 right-handed typically developing children (22 female) aged 9-13 across two timepoints (timepoint 1: mean age 10.5 years ± 0.5 years, timepoint 2: 11.8 ± 0.5 years). Manual dexterity was assessed using the Grooved Pegboard Test, a widely used measure of manual dexterity. FBA-derived measures of fiber density and morphology were generated for the CST at each timepoint. Connectivity-based fixel enhancement and mixed linear modelling were used to examine the longitudinal association between manual dexterity and white matter structural properties of the CST. Longitudinal mixed effects models showed that greater manual dexterity of the dominant hand was associated with increased fiber cross-section in the contralateral CST. Analyses further demonstrated that the rate of improvement in manual dexterity was associated with the rate of increase in fiber cross-section in the contralateral CST between the two timepoints. Our longitudinal data suggest that the development of manual dexterity in late childhood is associated with maturation of the CST. These findings significantly enhance our understanding of the neurobiological systems that subserve fine motor development and provide an important step toward mapping normative trajectories of fine motor function against microstructural and morphological development in childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The default-mode network (DMN) is a set of functionally connected regions that play crucial roles in internal cognitive processing. Previous resting-state fMRI studies have demonstrated that the intrinsic functional organization of the DMN undergoes remarkable reconfigurations during childhood and adolescence. However, these studies have mainly focused on cross-sectional designs with small sample sizes, limiting the consistency and interpretations of the findings. Here, we used a large sample of longitudinal resting-state fMRI data comprising 305 typically developing children (6–12 years of age at baseline, 491 scans in total) and graph theoretical approaches to delineate the developmental trajectories of the functional architecture of the DMN. For each child, the DMN was constructed according to a prior parcellation with 32 brain nodes. We showed that the overall connectivity increased in strength from childhood to adolescence and became spatially similar to that in the young adult group (N = 61, 18–28 years of age). These increases were primarily located in the midline structures. Global and local network efficiency in the DMN also increased with age, indicating an enhanced capability in parallel information communication within the brain system. Based on the divergent developmental rates of nodal centrality, we identified three subclusters within the DMN, with the fastest rates in the cluster mainly comprising the anterior medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex. Together, our findings highlight the developmental patterns of the functional architecture in the DMN from childhood to adolescence, which has implications for the understanding of network mechanisms underlying the cognitive development of individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapidly and accurately processing information from faces is a critical human function that is known to improve with developmental age. Understanding the underlying drivers of this improvement remains a contentious question, with debate continuing as to the presence of early vs. late maturation of face-processing mechanisms. Recent behavioural evidence suggests an important 'hallmark' of expert face processing – the face inversion effect – is present in very young children, yet neural support for this remains unclear. To address this, we conducted a detailed investigation of the neural dynamics of face processing in children spanning a range of ages (6–11 years) and adults. Uniquely, we applied multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to the electroencephalogram signal (EEG) to test for the presence of a distinct neural profile associated with canonical upright faces when compared both to other objects (houses) and to inverted faces. Results revealed robust discrimination profiles, at the individual level, of differentiated neural activity associated with broad face categorization and further with its expert processing, as indexed by the face inversion effect, from the youngest ages tested. This result is consistent with an early functional maturation of broad face processing mechanisms. Yet, clear quantitative differences between the response profile of children and adults is suggestive of age-related refinement of this system with developing face and general expertise. Standard ERP analysis also provides some support for qualitative differences in the neural response to inverted faces in children in contrast to adults. This neural profile is in line with recent behavioural studies that have reported impressively expert early face abilities during childhood, while also providing novel evidence of the ongoing neural specialisation between child and adulthood. • Though we know face abilities improve with age, the mechanisms of change are unclear. • We probe the development of specialised neural processing, via child and adult EEG. • Examination of ERPs was complemented with cutting-edge multivariate pattern analysis. • Adult-like patterns of face categorization in 6–11 year olds suggest early functional maturation. • But differences in orientation-decoding signal some refinement of the system with age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childhood obesity is a rising problem caused in part by unhealthy food choices. Food choices are based on a neural value signal encoded in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and self-control involves modulation of this signal by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). We determined the effects of development, body mass (BMI Cole score) and body mass history on the neural correlates of healthy food choice in children. 141 children (aged 10-17y) from Germany, Hungary and Sweden were scanned with fMRI while performing a food choice task. Afterwards health and taste ratings of the foods were collected. In the food choice task children were asked to consider the healthiness or tastiness of the food or to choose naturally. Overall, children made healthier choices when asked to consider healthiness. However, children who had a higher weight gain per year chose less healthy foods when considering healthiness but not when choosing naturally. Pubertal development stage correlated positively while current body mass correlated negatively with dlPFC activation when accepting foods. Pubertal development negatively and current body mass positively influenced the effect of considering healthiness on activation of brain areas involved in salience and motivation. In conclusion, children in earlier stages of pubertal development and children with a higher body weight exhibited less activation in the dlPFC, which has been implicated in self-control during food choice. Furthermore, pubertal development and body mass influenced neural responses to a health cue in areas involved in salience and motivation. Thus, these findings suggest that children in earlier stages of pubertal development, children with a higher body mass gain and children with overweight may possibly be less susceptible to healthy eating interventions that rely on self-control or that highlight health aspects of food. • Children who have relatively gained body mass made less healthy food choices. • Children with higher BMI had weaker activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. • Developmentally younger children had weaker activity in this area during choice too. • Body mass and development influenced brain responses when considering healthiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]