To investigate the impact of hormone maturation on brain function and psychological development, seventy-three girls aged 6-11 years were enrolled. Using the global voxel-wise functional connectivity, we found that girls with hormonal maturation showed significantly greater functional connectivity strength mainly in the default mode network and limbic system, relative to girls who were not hormonally maturated. While these two networks contribute substantially to the social cognition, cognitive processing and emotion regulation, our finding suggested that the hormonal maturation manifested its effects greatly on regions which are crucial to the social, self-referencial, and emotional cognition development.
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