Trivial Pursuit
Neurons to Neighborhoods
Mapquest
You're So Sensitive!
Paper or Plastic?
100
Breastfeeding mothers usually assume a distinctive sleeping posture when co-sleeping with their infants, which can also be seen in this other group of mothers with their infants.
Who are female great apes?
100
This is another name for nerve cells.
What are neurons?
100
This area surrounds the rest of the brain, resembling half a shelled walnut.
What is the cerebral cortex?
100
These studies confirm that early, extreme sensory deprivation results in permanent brain damage and loss of functions.
What are animal studies?
100
This characteristic seems to be a basic property of the nervous system.
What is plasticity?
200
Parents from this culture view sleep regularity as far more important than U.S. parents do.
Who are the Dutch?
200
These messages are sent across synapses by neurons.
What are neurotransmitters?
200
This part of the brain lies in front of the areas controlling body movement and is responsible for thought.
What is the prefrontal cortex?
200
These experiences must occur for the brain's visual centers to develop normally.
What are early, varied visual experiences?
200
When the early brain is injured, the extent of plasticity depends on several factors.
What is the age at time of injury, site and severity of damage, skill area, and environmental supports for recovery?
300
Rushing early learning harms the brain in this way. (p. 169)
What is by overwhelming its neural circuits? (...thereby reducing the brain's sensitivity to the everyday experiences it needs for a healthy start in life.)
300
"Use it or lose it" might be a term used to describe this process which returns neurons not needed at the moment to a uncommitted state.
What is synaptic pruning?
300
This refers to the specialization of the two hemispheres of the brain.
What is lateralization? (each hemisphere differs in their functions; for most of us, the left hemisphere is largely responsible for verbal abilities and positive emotion while the right hemisphere handles spatial abilities and negative emotion)
300
Studies of infants placed in orphanages who were later exposed to family rearing showed significant differences in this domain of development based on whether they were adopted before the age of 6 months or after that time.
What is cognitive development? (For children adopted before 6 months, cognitive catch-up was significant by early childhood and adolescence; for those institutionalized longer than 6 months, more serious intellectual deficits were observed, and while there was some improvement over time, they remained substantially below average.)
300
Recovery for this skill is greater than for spatial skills after early brain injury.
What is language?
400
While the American Academy of Pediatrics warns against co-sleeping as a means of preventing SIDS, parent-infant co-sleeping is the norm for approximately this percentage of the world's population.
What is 90%?
400
Neural fibers are coated with this insulating, fatty sheath to improve the efficiency of message transfer.
What is myelin? (gains in neural fibers and myelination account for the overall increase in size of the brain from nearly 30% of its adult weight at birth to 70% by age 2)
400
Most newborns favor this side of their body in their head position and reflexive actions.
What is the right side?
400
This physical characteristic was a major correlate of both time spent in an institution and poor cognitive and emotional functioning.
What is below-average head size? (suggesting that early lack of stimulation permanently damaged the brain)
400
Compared with language, these skills were more impaired after early brain injury.
What are spatial skills? (When preschool-adolescent age children were asked to copy designs, those with early right-hemispheric damage had trouble with holistic processing--accurately representing the overall shape. In contrast, those with left-hemispheric damage captured the basic shape but omitted fine-grained details.)
500
This brain secretion does not make its first appearance until the middle of an infant's first year.
What is melatonin? (promoting drowsiness much greater at night than during the day)
500
Neural fibers myelinate over a longer period for this area of the brain than the other areas.
What are the language areas?
500
These are the cortical regions with the most extended period of development.
What are the frontal lobes? (From 2 months on, the prefrontal cortex functions more effectively, undergoing rapid myelination and formation and pruning of synapses during preschool and school age, followed by another period of accelerated growth in adolescence, when it reaches an adult level of synaptic connections.)
500
This type of growth young brain's rapidly developing organization, which depends on ordinary experiences--opportunities to explore the environment, interact with people, and hear language and other sounds.
What is experience-expectant brain growth?
500
In infancy and childhood, this is the goal of brain growth.
What is to form neural connections that ensure mastery of essential skills?
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