Total cerebral volume increases very rapidly in childhood, peaking in early teenage years then declining in adolescence. However, most studies quantified only one or few structures and the relative development pattern of subcortical structures is still unclear. For our study, we aim to examine the cortical, subcortical and structural changes associated with age by comparing the cortical and subcortical volumes between 52 healthy teens and 40 healthy twenties using 3 T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In late adolescence, volumes of gray matter (GM) decreased and white matter (WM) increased, and asymmetry between the left and right hemispheres of the brains was found to be similar between teenagers and twenties. Only occipital GM, nucleus accumbens and thalamus showed difference in asymmetry. Various previous studies have shown that studying morphological changes of developing brains can be useful in identifying certain structural abnormalities associated with psychiatric and neurological diseases modifications in the brain. Therefore, we believe our analysis of volumetric differences in cortical and subcortical structures could be helpful for identifying neurophysiological changes that occur in transition from adolescence to adulthood.

中文翻译：

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使用 3 T 磁共振成像比较青少年和 20 岁大脑的大脑结构差异

总脑容量在儿童时期迅速增加，在青少年早期达到峰值，然后在青春期下降。然而，大多数研究只量化了一种或几种结构，皮层下结构的相对发育模式仍不清楚。在我们的研究中，我们的目标是通过使用 3 T 磁共振成像 (MRI) 比较 52 名健康青少年和 40 名健康二十多岁的皮质和皮质下体积，来检查与年龄相关的皮质、皮质下和结构变化。在青春期后期，灰质 (GM) 的体积减少，而白质 (WM) 的体积增加，并且发现青少年和 20 岁左右的大脑左右半球之间的不对称性相似。只有枕骨 GM、伏隔核和丘脑表现出不对称性差异。先前的各种研究表明，研究发育中大脑的形态变化有助于识别与大脑中精神和神经疾病改变相关的某些结构异常。因此，我们相信我们对皮质和皮质下结构的体积差异的分析可能有助于识别从青春期到成年期发生的神经生理学变化。