[Structural Brain Development in Healthy Children and Adolescents].

Brain maturation progresses throughout childhood into adolescence. Investigating the mechanism of brain development during these periods in healthy people is necessary for some clinical purposes. For example, these mechanisms are needed to investigate the mechanism of impaired brain maturation in neurodevelopmental disorders-such as autism spectrum disorders or attention-deficit hyper disorder-and improve early prevention of psychiatric or neurodegenerative diseases like depression or Alzheimer's disease. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) is an effective way to analyze brain magnetic resonance images (MRI) of children and adolescents, as the brain structures of children and adolescents vary widely depending on their age, sex, and several other factors. In this article, information from studies using VBM about the relationship between structural brain development in healthy children and adolescents and age, life style, parenting, and genetic variations is discussed.