executive function relates to surface area of frontal and temporal cortex in verylowbirthweight late teenagers background being born with very low birth weight vlbw birth weight bw 1500 g is associated with increased risk of maldevelopment of the immature brain which may affect neurological functioning deficits in attention and executive function problems have been reported in vlbw survivors compared with healthy subjectsaims the aim of this study was to evaluate attention and executive functions and to relate the clinical test results to cortical morphometry findings in vlbw young adults compared with termborn controlsstudy design prospective followup study of three year cohorts of vlbw and control children from birth to adulthoodoutcome measures a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery was administered to 55 vlbw subjects born preterm mean bw 1217 g and 81 termborn controls mean bw 3707 g at age 1920 cerebral mri was successfully obtained in 46 vlbw subjects and 61 controls the freesurfer software package was applied for the cortical analyses based on t1weighted mri imagesresults the vlbw group obtained inferior scores on 15 of the 29 neuropsychological measures assessing attention and executive function and on both the attention and executive function domain scores we found positive correlations between the executive function domain score and cortical surface area especially in the anteromedial frontal and the temporal lobes of the brain in the vlbw groupconclusion young adults born with vlbw show deficits in attention and executive function compared with controls the executive problems were related to smaller cortical surface area in brain regions known to be involved in higher order cognitive functioning