Development of effective connectivity for narrative comprehension in children

A large-scale study of narrative comprehension using functional MRI was performed involving children of ages 5-18 years old using a recently published method, multivariate autoregressive modeling, modified for multisubject analyses to investigate effective connectivity and its development with age. Feedback networks were found during a narrative processing task and involved effective connectivity from Broca's area and the medial aspect of the superior frontal gyrus to the posterior aspects of the superior temporal gyrus bilaterally. The effective connectivity from Broca's area to the superior temporal gyrus in the left hemisphere was shown to increase with age. The results demonstrate the feasibility of performing multisubject multivariate autoregressive modeling analyses to investigate effective connectivity in the absence of an a priori model.