G. Dennis Rains,
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
| adoption studies | A research strategy in which children who are at high risk for a condition and who have been adopted shortly after birth are studied in an effort to identify the effect of having a biological parent with a condition even though one does not grow up with that parent. A higher-than-baseline occurrence of the condition in such children indicates that a genetic factor contributes to the condition.
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| adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) | Hormone released by the anterior pituitary that triggers the release of hormones, including cortisol, from the adrenal cortex.
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| affective disorder | A term that has been replaced by the term mood disorder.
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| agoraphobia | Fear of public, unprotected places.
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| alogia | Reduction or absence of verbal expression (i.e., speech).
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| Alzheimer's disease | The most common form of progressive deterioration of cognitive and emotional functioning (dementia); characterized by neuropathological changes that are detectable only at autopsy.
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| antipsychotics | Medications used to treat the symptoms of psychotic disorders. Also called neuroleptics.
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| antisocial personality disorder | A pervasive pattern of behavior characterized by an extreme lack of concern for the immediate or future consequences of one's behavior. Individuals with this disorder tend to be callous, selfish, and irresponsible. They frequently manipulate and exploit others, exhibiting little or no empathy, and they often engage in illegal behavior, without feeling guilt or remorse. In the past the terms psychopathy and sociopathy have been used to describe this disorder.
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| anxiolytics | Antianxiety medications.
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| apolipoprotein E4 | A protein, the gene for the programming of which may represent a risk factor for familial forms of Alzheimer's disease.
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| atypical antipsychotics | A relatively new class of antipsychotic medications, which appear to act by blocking both dopamine and serotonin receptors and which are generally more effective than the classical neuroleptics in treating patients with predominantly negative symptoms. Medications in this category include clozapine, risperidone, and olanzapine.
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| avolition | The apparent absence of motivation.
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| bipolar disorder | A disorder characterized by fluctuations between periods of depression and periods of mania, with normal periods interspersed between these two extremes. Formerly called manic-depressive disorder.
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| bizarre behavior | Behavior outside the conventional range of behavior for a given context that does not serve any adaptive purpose.
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| blunted affect | Diminished or complete absence of emotional expression.
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| catecholamine hypothesis of depression | A refinement of the monoamine hypothesis of depression, which posits that some forms of depression result from a specific abnormality in catecholamine (particularly norepinephrine) activity.
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| compulsions | Repetitive behaviors that a person feels a need to perform (often in response to obsessive thoughts) and cannot keep from performing, despite their interference with other aspects of his or her life.
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| concordance rate | The probability that a person in a particular familial relationship with a patient will have the same disorder as the patient.
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| corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH) | A hormone released by the hypothalamus that in turn triggers the release of adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) from the anterior pituitary.
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| cortisol | A hormone released by the adrenal cortex that is part of the activation of a stress response. In some patients with depression, there appears to be a disruption of the negative feedback loop to the hypothalamus and anterior pituitary that normally shuts down the release of cortisol after it has reached an optimum level. This disruption results in abnormally high levels of cortisol, which exert a widespread influence on cerebral functioning.
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| delusions | Beliefs that are not based on reality.
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| diathesis | A predisposition toward some abnormality or disease.
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| endogenous depression | Depression caused by internal factors, presumably biological. This term is not currently in wide use.
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| formal thought disorder | Disorganization of the form of thinking, typically manifesting itself through an individual's verbal productions.
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| generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) | An anxiety disorder in which anxiety is not triggered by a stimulus of a particular type. Persons with this disorder have a pervasive feeling of anxiety that is not related to anything in particular.
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| granulovacuolar degeneration | Abnormal areas of cytoplasmic loss filled with granules, seen in neurons in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.
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| hallucinations | Perceptual experiences that are not based on sensory stimuli.
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| Huntington's chorea | A hereditary disease characterized by chronic progressive chorea and mental deterioration progressing to dementia and terminating in death.
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| hypofrontality | Reduced metabolic activity in prefrontal cortex as measured by functional imaging methods.
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| illusions | Distortions in perception that most people would experience under particular stimulus conditions.
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| loose associations | Thinking (as reflected in speech) that moves haphazardly and rapidly from one fragmentary referent to another, so that ideas are touched on fleetingly rather than being logically developed.
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| major depressive disorder (unipolar depression) | A mood disorder characterized by dysphoric (sad, depressed) mood and loss of interest and pleasure in nearly all activities. Associated symptoms may include changes in appetite, sleep disturbance, decreased psychomotor activity, decreased energy, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, difficulty concentrating and making decisions, and thoughts of death (including suicidal thoughts). Also called unipolar depression.
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| mania | Episodes characterized by euphoria, hyperactivity, expansiveness, irritable mood, inflated self-esteem, and impaired judgment.
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| monoamine hypothesis of depression | The hypothesis that abnormally low levels of monoamines (norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin) play a role in depression.
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| monoamine oxidase inhibitors | A class of drugs that enhances monoamine activity by inhibiting the breakdown of monoamines by monoamine oxidase.
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| mood disorders | Disorders that have a long-term disturbance of mood as their prominent feature.
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| neuritic plaques | A particularly important cellular abnormality seen in the cerebral cortex in Alzheimer's disease. Neuritic plaques are areas of incompletely destroyed neurons consisting of a dense core of a protein known as ß amyloid, surrounded by degenerating axons and dendrites, together with reactive astrocytes and activated microglia. Eventually the glial cells completely destroy the degenerating neurons and leave a core of ß amyloid protein. Also called senile plaques, amyloid plaques, or simply plaques.
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| neurofibrillary tangles | Abnormal proliferation of neurofibrils seen in the neuronal cytoplasm in the brains of persons with Alzheimer's disease.
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| neuroleptics | Medications used to treat the symptoms of psychotic disorders. Also called antipsychotics.
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| obsessions | Preoccupying thoughts that involuntarily dominate a person's thinking.
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| obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) | A disorder characterized by the presence of preoccupying, anxiety-producing thoughts (obsessions), often related to a particular theme, and behaviors generated by these thoughts that the individual cannot keep from performing (compulsions).
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| panic disorder | An anxiety disorder characterized by intermittent but highly intense episodes of anxiety.
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| Parkinson's disease | A disease characterized by hypokinesia, bradykinesia, cogwheel rigidity, and resting tremor resulting from deterioration of dopamine-producing cells in the substantia nigra.
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| phobic disorders | A class of anxiety disorders in which anxiety is related to a particular type of object or situation.
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| preparedness theory of phobias | The hypothesis that phobias for certain stimuli (e.g., snakes) were adaptive in the more naturalistic settings in which our early ancestors found themselves and that natural selection has therefore favored the survival of animals that were genetically programmed to fear (or to rapidly learn to fear) these stimuli.
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| proximate causes | The immediate causes of a syndrome or disorder. For example, in diabetes, the proximate cause of the disorder is insufficient insulin.
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| psychopathy | A term formerly used to describe the disorder affecting individuals who behave in a manner that indicates an extreme lack of concern for the immediate or future consequences of their behavior, particularly its effects on other people. In the past the term sociopathy has also been used to describe behavior of this sort. These terms have been largely replaced by the term antisocial personality disorder.
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| reactive depression | Depression due to external (interpersonal and social) factors, as opposed to internal (biological) factors.
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| seasonal affective disorder (SAD) | A form of depression that occurs during the winter months, when days are short and nights are long.
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| selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) | A class of antidepressant drugs that selectively blocks the reuptake of serotonin. Fluoxetine (Prozac) was the first drug of this class.
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| serotonin hypothesis of depression | Posits that some forms of depression result from a specific abnormality of serotonin activity; a refinement of the monoamine hypothesis of depression.
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| social phobia | Fear of social situations.
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| sociopathy | See antisocial personality disorder.
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| ß amyloid precursor protein (APP) | A long chain of amino acids that is cut apart by enzymes to produce ß amyloid protein.
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| tricyclic antidepressants | A class of antidepressant medications with a three-ringed structure that blocks the reuptake of monoamines (particularly norepinephrine and serotonin). An example is imipramine.
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| twin studies | Studies that investigate the possibility that a genetic factor contributes to a condition by comparing the concordance rates (the probability that a person in a particular familial relationship with a patient also has the condition) between monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins. A higher concordance rate for monozygotic twins than for dizygotic twins is evidence for a genetic factor in the condition.
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| type II schizophrenia | See two-syndrome hypothesis of schizophrenia.**
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| type I schizophrenia | See two-syndrome hypothesis of schizophrenia.**
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| ultimate causes | Remote causes of a disorder. These can be divided into two categories: a predisposition for the disorder (termed diathesis) and an environmental component (termed stress). For example, in diabetes the diathesis is a genetic factor that predisposes an individual to the disease. This may be triggered by environmental stressors such as obesity.
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| vegetative symptoms | Symptoms of depression that are presumed to be more directly related to brain dysfunction, including disturbances of sleep, changes in appetite, diurnal mood variation, and decrease in sex drive.
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| ventricular-brain ratio (VBR) | The ratio of the volume of the cerebral ventricles to overall brain volume.
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| word salad | A term sometimes applied to the disorganized speech seen in some people with schizophrenia.
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2002 McGraw-Hill Higher Education