Learning environments are associated with developmental trajectories of thalamocortical attention circuits in childhood

Educational environments place sustained demands on attention and self-regulation during a period of rapid brain development. Yet it remains unclear whether everyday schooling contexts are associated with differences in the maturation of neural systems supporting these processes. The thalamus plays a central role in sensory gating and large-scale cortical communication, but its developmental organization in relation to real-world learning environments has rarely been examined. Here, we analyzed high-temporal resolution resting-state fMRI (TR = 500 ms) from 72 children aged 4–15 years enrolled in Montessori or traditional classrooms. Using a pediatric data-driven parcellation approach based on voxelwise functional connectivity, we identified five spatially coherent thalamic territories with distinct large-scale connectivity profiles, primarily linked to visual, sensorimotor, and attention networks. Connectivity analyses revealed selective associations with educational context. In a thalamic territory preferentially coupled to the ventral attention system, Montessori enrollment was associated with stronger thalamocortical connectivity and a steeper age-related increase across development. No clusters showed enhanced connectivity with executive-control or default-mode networks, consistent with their later maturation. These effects were robust to motion and demographic controls. Together, these findings suggest that schooling context co-varies with the developmental refinement of thalamic circuits supporting salience detection and the selective prioritization of information during learning. While causal direction cannot be inferred, the results identify a tractable neural pathway through which everyday learning environments may relate to developing brain systems underlying attention and adaptive behaviour.