Pines, Adam R.; Bart Larsen; Zaixu Cui; Valerie J. Sydor; Maxwell A. Bertolero; Azeez Adebimpe; Aaron F. Alexander-Bloch; Christos Davatzikos; Damien A. Fair; Ruben C. Gur; Raquel E. Gur; Hongming Li; Michael P. Milham; Tyler M. Moore; Kristin Murtha; Linden Parkes; Sharon L. Thompson-Schill; Sheila Shanmugan; Russell T. Shinohara; Sarah M. Weinstein; Danielle S. Bassett; Yong Fan and Theodore D. Satterthwaite

The brain is organized into networks at multiple resolutions, or scales, yet studies of functional network development typically focus on a single scale. Here, we derived personalized functional networks across 29 scales in a large sample of youths (n=693, ages 8-23 years) to identify multi-scale patterns of network re-organization related to neurocognitive development. We found that developmental shifts in inter-network coupling systematically adhered to and strengthened a functional hierarchy of cortical organization. Furthermore, we observed that scale-dependent effects were present in lower-order, unimodal networks, but not higher-order, transmodal networks. Finally, we found that network maturation had clear behavioral relevance: the development of coupling in unimodal and transmodal networks dissociably mediated the emergence of executive function. These results delineate maturation of multi-scale brain networks, which varies according to a functional hierarchy and impacts cognitive development.