Despite our differences, there is much about the natural visual world that most observers perceive in common. Across adults, approximately 30% of the brain is activated in a consistent fashion while viewing naturalistic input. At what stage of development is this consistency of neural profile across individuals present? Here, we focused specifically on whether this mature profile is present in adolescence, a key developmental period that bridges childhood and adulthood, and in which new cognitive and social challenges are at play. We acquired fMRI data evoked by a movie shown twice to younger (9–14 years old) and older adolescents (15–19 years old) and to adults, and conducted three key analyses. First, we characterized the consistency of the neural response within individuals (across separate runs of the movie), then within individuals of the same age group, and, last, between age groups. The neural consistency within individuals was similar across age groups with reliable activation in largely overlapping but slightly different cortical regions. In contrast, somewhat differing regions exhibited higher within-age correlations in both groups of adolescents than in the adults. Last, across the whole cortex, we identified regions evincing different patterns of maturation across age. Together, these findings provide a fine-grained characterization of functional neural development in adolescence and uncover signatures of widespread change in cortical coherence that supports the emerging mature stereotypical responses to naturalistic stimuli. These results also offer a more nuanced account of development that obeys neither a rigid linear progression nor a large qualitative change over time.

尽管我们存在差异，但大多数观察者对自然视觉世界的看法有很多共同点。在成年人中，大约 30% 的大脑在观看自然输入时以一致的方式被激活。这种跨个体神经特征的一致性出现在哪个发展阶段？在这里，我们特别关注这种成熟的形象是否存在于青春期，青春期是连接童年和成年的关键发展时期，新的认知和社会挑战正在发挥作用。我们获得了由一部向年轻人（9-14 岁）和年长的青少年（15-19 岁）和成年人放映两次的电影所诱发的 fMRI 数据，并进行了三项关键分析。首先，我们描述了个体神经反应的一致性（在不同的电影中），然后是同一年龄组的个体，最后是年龄组之间。个体内部的神经一致性在不同年龄组中是相似的，在大部分重叠但略有不同的皮质区域中具有可靠的激活。相比之下，有些不同的区域在两组青少年中表现出比成年人更高的年龄内相关性。最后，在整个皮层中，我们确定了不同年龄成熟模式不同的区域。总之，这些发现提供了青春期功能性神经发育的细粒度特征，并揭示了皮质一致性广泛变化的特征，这些特征支持对自然刺激的新兴成熟刻板反应。