PSY 1102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Motor Cortex, Hominidae, Nocturnal Emission
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One of the conditions that determines when human babies are born is the ability of the infant"s head to fit through the birth canal. In turn, this imposes limits on the extent of development of the human brain before birth. As a result, when human babies are born the brain is far from mature. Unlike some other species, humans must go through an extended period of dependence. During this period which begins with infancy in the postnatal period adult humans can observe the development of the child. Nerve cells (neurons) consist of three principal parts: As a neuron develops, the axon grows to form connections with the dendrites of another neuron. Also, the richness of a neuron"s dendritic tree increases, providing more surface area for neurons to connect to. In the later stages of fetal development, the brain produces more neurons (nerve cells) than will survive. Instead, there is a great dying off of surplus neurons.