The relationship between structural properties of frontal cortical regions and response inhibition in 6–14-year-old children

Development of attentional skills and inhibitory control rely on maturational changes in the brain across childhood and youth. However, both brain anatomy and different components of attention and inhibition show notable individual variation. Research on ADHD and inhibitory training and control have shown that variations in the thickness and surface area of particularly inferior cortical structures are associated with attentional control. However, the intricacies of how the development of inhibitory control is associated with the anatomical variations beyond the general age- and gender-dependent differences have not been resolved. Here, we sought to address these questions by quantifying the cortical thickness and surface area in frontal cortical regions and inhibitory control using the stop signal task performance in 6-14-year-old children. Our results showed that the thickness of the left medial orbitofrontal cortex and the surface area of the left caudal anterior cingulate were associated with the inhibitory performance, beyond the variance that could be explained by the subjects' age and gender. The results highlight the importance of factoring in anatomical variations when following attentional development and the importance of evaluating multiple anatomical measures when aiming to link the properties of cortical structures with variations in cognitive performance.