Intrinsic timescale develops hierarchically from sensorimotor to association cortex in youth and stabilizes in adulthood

@article{shafiei2026intrinsic,
  title = {{Intrinsic timescale develops hierarchically from sensorimotor to association cortex in youth and stabilizes in adulthood}},
  author = {Golia Shafiei and Joëlle Bagautdinova and Valerie J. Sydnor and Dani S. Bassett and Deanna M. Barch and Matthew Cieslak and Yong Fan and Elizabeth Flook and Alexandre R. Franco and Gregory Kiar and Audrey C. Luo and Michael P. Milham and Linden Parkes and Taylor Salo and Leah H. Somerville and Tien T. Tong and Russell T. Shinohara and Theodore D. Satterthwaite},
  journal = {PLOS Biology},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.1371/journal.pbio.3004037},
  url = {https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3004037},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

TY  - JOUR
TI  - Intrinsic timescale develops hierarchically from sensorimotor to association cortex in youth and stabilizes in adulthood
AU  - Golia Shafiei
AU  - Joëlle Bagautdinova
AU  - Valerie J. Sydnor
AU  - Dani S. Bassett
AU  - Deanna M. Barch
AU  - Matthew Cieslak
AU  - Yong Fan
AU  - Elizabeth Flook
AU  - Alexandre R. Franco
AU  - Gregory Kiar
AU  - Audrey C. Luo
AU  - Michael P. Milham
AU  - Linden Parkes
AU  - Taylor Salo
AU  - Leah H. Somerville
AU  - Tien T. Tong
AU  - Russell T. Shinohara
AU  - Theodore D. Satterthwaite
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/29
JO  - PLOS Biology
DO  - 10.1371/journal.pbio.3004037
UR  - https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3004037
AB  - Intrinsic timescale is a commonly used measure of spontaneous neural dynamics that quantifies the temporal window of processing of neuronal populations. Intrinsic timescale displays a hierarchical cortical organization across multiple species and imaging modalities, with shorter timescales in sensorimotor cortex compared to association cortex. However, less is known about how intrinsic timescale evolves during human brain development and whether its cortical maturation patterns generalize to independent developmental samples. Here we estimate the intrinsic timescale in two independent cross-sectional datasets of youth (HCPD: n = 565; HBN: n = 729; age range 8–22 years) and investigate its neurodevelopmental patterns. We find that developmental patterns in the intrinsic timescale follow a hierarchical pattern that recapitulates an axis spanning sensorimotor to association cortices (S–A axis). Our analysis of an independent healthy young adult dataset (HCPYA: n = 973, age range 22–37 years) underscores the specificity of these developmental findings, suggesting that the intrinsic timescale develops along the S–A axis in youth and stabilizes in adulthood. Together, these results reveal convergence between major axes of cortical organization and development, highlighting intrinsic timescale as a principled marker of hierarchical brain maturation in youth.  Intrinsic timescale reflects the temporal window of neural processing, but how it matures across the human cortex during development remains unclear. This study shows that intrinsic timescale develops hierarchically from sensorimotor to association cortices across youth, recapitulating major cortical organization axes before stabilizing in adulthood.
SN  - 1545-7885
ER  -