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From the Journal of Neuroscience: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2023/02/06/JNEUROSCI.1460-22.2023

Abstract:

Abstract

Executive function (EF) is essential for humans to effectively engage in cognitively demanding tasks. In adults, EF is subserved by frontoparietal regions in the multiple demand (MD) network, which respond to various cognitively demanding tasks. However, children initially show poor EF and prolonged development. Do children recruit the same network as adults? Is it functionally and connectionally distinct from adjacent language cortex, as in adults? And is this activation or connectivity dependent on age or ability? We examine task-dependent (spatial working memory and passive language tasks) and resting state functional data in 44 adults (18-38 years, 68% female) and 37 children (4-12 years, 35% female). Subject-specific functional regions of interest (ss-fROIs) show bilateral MD network activation in children. In both children and adults, these MD ss-fROIs are not recruited for linguistic processing and are connectionally distinct from language ss-fROIs. While MD activation was lower in children than in adults (even in motion- and performance-matched groups), both showed increasing MD activation with better performance, especially in right hemisphere ss-fROIs. We observe this relationship even when controlling for age, cross-sectionally and in a small longitudinal sample of children. These data suggest that the MD network is selective to cognitive demand in children, is distinct from adjacent language cortex, and increases in selectivity as performance improves. These findings show that neural structures subserving domain-general EF emerge early and are sensitive to ability even in children. This research advances understanding of how high-level human cognition emerges and could inform interventions targeting cognitive control.

Preprint version publicly available on bioRxiv: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.11.503644v1.full

Pigs are often compared to 4yo in intelligence. Is the same network found in them?

for a long time most people, even psychologists, thought kids were just dumb, seemingly drunk little people. kids are actually smart af, they just don't know a lot of things. they pick up anything and everything multiple times faster than even well-educated adults. hopefully, people will one day stop being surprised that children are just as cognitively capable as adults

What? No the science is increasingly showing that brain development goes on for much longer than we thought. Out to 25 years and beyond, before which you are working with an under developed brain. It's why we make such poor decisions as young adults.

Kids are definitely just dumb little people, because their brains only have rudimentary systems like the one described here.

Kids have accelerated learning in some areas, like language, but go try and teach a child how to perform a new skill, like cooking, dancing, drawing, etc. Their brain lacks development in critical areas to perform even at a basic level without lots of development. Meanwhile adults, even not particularly quick ones, can easily perform the simple neural tasks required to learn these new skills.

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Kids are dumb but 25 is a pop sci meme based on extremely low levels of asymptotic but non-zero synaptic pruning and white development in the PFC not tied to any cognitive functions or behavioral changes. By 16 the vast majority of brain development is done and adult-level cognitive function is reached. By 18 you get adult-level psychosocial maturity. In the most extreme stretch of the data the latest I would say the brain is still meaningfully developing is 20 but I would personally draw the line at 18.

This is absolutely not the sole study I'm basing this on (it's consistent with decades of data), but if you want to read more here is a nice lay article about recent work characterizing brain development over the lifespan, and a nice summary figure. Here is the paper being summarized, which is somewhat approachable itself, with figure 3 being the most important summary figure. Note the general ideas are pretty consistent 20+ year old models of brain development

You start to lose gains pretty fast. https://www.msif.org/news/2018/06/15/brain-volume-changes-may-be-key-indicator-for-ms-progression/?lang=en/embed/

Peak performance of the brain is at 20 years old overall. With peak blood flow/metabolism, peak white matter volume and peak fluid intelligence ability. The ability to solve problems in an environment with no learned information.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6551607/

Figure 1