Chapter 5 Flashcards
A point on a ranking scale of 0 to 100. The 50th percentile is the midpoint; half the people in the population being studied rank higher and half rank lower.
Percentile
A biological mechanism that protects the brain when malnutrition affects body growth. That brain is the last part of the body to be damaged by malnutrition.
Head-Sparing
Rapid eye movement sleep, a stage of sleep characterized by flickering eyes behind closed lids, dreaming, and rapid brain waves.
REM Sleep
A custom in which parents and their children (usually infants) sleep together in the same room.
Co-Sleeping
The billions of nerve cells in the central nervous system, especially the brains.
Neurons
The outer layers of the brain in humans and other mammals.
Cortex
The area of cortex at the front of the brain that specializes in anticipation, planning, and impulse control.
Prefrontal Cortex
A fiber that extends from a neuron and transmits electrochemical impulses from that neuron to the dendrites of other neurons.
Axon
A fiber that extends from a neuron and receives electrochemical impulses transmitted from other neurons via their axons.
Dendrite
The intersection between the axon of one neuron and the dendrites of other neurons.
Synapse
The great but temporary increase in the number of dendrites that develop in an infant’s brain during the first two years of life.
Transient Exuberance
When applied to brain development, the process by which unused connections in the brain atrophy and die.
Pruning
Brain functions that require certain basic common experiences (which an infant can be expected to have) in order to develop normally.
Experience-Expectant Brain Functions
Brain functions that depend on particular, variable experiences and that therefore may or may not develop in a particular infant.
Experience-Dependent Brain Functions
A life-threatening injury that occurs when an infant is forcefully shaken back and forth, a motion that ruptures blood vessels in the brain and breaks neural connections.
Shaken Baby Syndrome
