| anorexia nervosa | An eating disorder in which people, usually young women, are preoccupied with avoiding obesity and often diet to the point of starvation.
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| brain hemispheres | The two halves of the brain’s cerebrum, left and right.
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| bulimia nervosa | An eating disorder in which people, usually young women, alternate periods of binge eating with vomiting and other means of compensating for the weight gained.
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| catch-up growth | The tendency for human beings to regain a normal course of physical growth after in- jury or deprivation.
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| cerebral cortex | The covering layer of the cerebrum that contains the cells that control specific functions such as seeing, hearing, moving, and thinking.
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| cerebrum | The two connected hemispheres of the brain.
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| corpus callosum | The band of nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain.
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| dyslexia | A term for the difficulties some people experience in reading or in learning to read.
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| estrogens | Hormones that, in the female, are responsible for sexual maturation.
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| experience-dependent processes | Brain processes that are unique to the individual and responsive to particular cultural, community, and family experiences.
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| experience-expectant processes | Brain processes that are universal, experienced by all human beings across evolution.
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| glial cell | A nerve cell that supports and protects neurons and serves to encase them in myelin sheaths.
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| hemispheric specialization | Differential functioning of the two cerebral hemispheres; the left controlling the right side of the body, the right controlling the left side.
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| hormones | Powerful and highly specialized chemical substances that are produced by the cells of certain body organs and that have a regulatory effect on the activity of certain other organs.
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| iron-deficiency anemia | A disorder in which inadequate amounts of iron in the diet cause listlessness and may retard a child’s physical and intellectual development.
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| lateralization | The process by which each half of the brain becomes specialized for certain functions—for example, the control of speech and language by the left hemisphere and of visual-spatial processing by the right.
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| menarche | In females, the beginning of the menstrual cycle.
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| myelination | The process by which glial cells encase neurons in sheaths of the fatty substance myelin.
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| neural migration | The movement of neurons within the brain that ensures that all brain areas have a sufficient number of neural connections.
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| neuron | A cell in the body’s nervous system, consisting of a cell body, a long projection called an axon, and several shorter projections called dendrites; neurons send and receive neural impulses, or messages, throughout the brain and nervous system.
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| neuron proliferation | The rapid formation of neurons in the developing organism’s brain.
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| neuronal death | The death of some neurons that surround newly formed synaptic connections among other neurons; also called programmed cell death.
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| obesity | A condition in which a person’s weight is 30% or more in excess of the average weight for his or her height and frame.
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| pituitary gland | A so-called master gland, located at the base of the brain, that triggers the secretion of hormones by all other hormone-secreting, or endocrine, glands.
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| plasticity | The capacity of the brain, particularly in its developmental stages, to respond and adapt to input from the external environment.
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| progesterone | A hormone that, in females, helps regulate the menstrual cycle and prepares the uterus to receive and nurture a fertilized egg.
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| puberty | The onset of sexual maturity.
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| secular trend | A shift in the normative pattern of a characteristic, such as height, that occurs over a historical time period, such as a decade or century.
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| spermarche | In males, the first ejaculation of semen-containing ejaculate.
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| synapse | A specialized site of inter- cellular communication where in- formation is exchanged between nerve cells, usually by means of a chemical neurotransmitter.
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| synaptic pruning | The brain’s disposal of the axons and dendrites of a neuron that is not often stimulated.
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| synaptogenesis | The forming of synapses.
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| testosterone | A hormone that, in males, is responsible for the development of primary and secondary sex characteristics and is essential for the production of sperm.
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