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Hormones play an organizational role, priming the body to behave in a certain way once puberty begins, [16] and an active role, referring to changes in hormones during adolescence that trigger behavioral and physical changes. [17] Puberty occurs through a long process and begins with a surge in hormone production, which in turn causes a number ...
Derived from the Latin puberatum (age of maturity), the word puberty describes the physical changes to sexual maturation, not the psychosocial and cultural maturation denoted by the term adolescent development in Western culture, wherein adolescence is the period of mental transition from childhood to adulthood, which overlaps much of the body ...
[20] [21] Puberty which starts earlier than usual is known as precocious puberty, and puberty which starts later than usual is known as delayed puberty. Notable among the morphologic changes in size, shape, composition, and functioning of the pubertal body, is the development of secondary sex characteristics , the "filling in" of the child's ...
When developmental change is discontinuous, however, researchers may identify not only milestones of development, but related age periods often called stages. These stages are periods of time, often associated with known age ranges, during which a behavior or physical characteristic is qualitatively different from what it is at other ages.
Research finds that the adolescent brain undergoes significant changes in neural connectivity and plasticity. During this period, there is a pruning process where certain neural connections are strengthened while others are eliminated, resulting in more efficient neural networks and increased cognitive abilities, such as decision-making and ...
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The Tanner scale (also known as the Tanner stages or sexual maturity rating (SMR)) is a scale of physical development as pre-pubescent children transition into adolescence, and then adulthood. The scale defines physical measurements of development based on external primary and secondary sex characteristics , such as the size of the breasts ...
Testosterone levels increase in adolescence after puberty and into early adulthood, and naturally decline over time, usually starting in a man’s 40s or fifties. However, this drop now seems to ...