underactivate
underactivate verb: to produce insufficient levels of activation.
Verb
underactivate (third-person singular simple present underactivates, present participle underactivating, simple past and past participle underactivated)
- To produce insufficient levels of activation.
- Wood and Flowers (1999) demonstrated with Positron Emission Tomography (PET) that the same brain regions that underactivate in dyslexia also underactivate in the inattentive subtype of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.2001 -, Que Ida, Annals of Dyslexia 2001, →ISBN, page 37
- In contrast, struggling readers underactivate the reading systems in the back of the brain and overactivate the system in the front of the brain.2014, Patrick R. Riccards, Phyllis Blaunstein, Reid Lyon, Why Kids Can't Read: Continuing to Challenge the Status Quo in Education, →ISBN
Forms of underactivate
| third-person singular present | underactivates |
|---|---|
| present participle | underactivating |
| past participle | underactivated |
| past | underactivated |
Origin of underactivate
From under- + activate.
Questions about underactivate
- What does underactivate mean?
- Underactivate means to produce insufficient levels of activation.
- What part of speech is underactivate?
- Underactivate is a verb.
- What is the past tense of underactivate?
- The past tense of underactivate is underactivated.
Words near underactivate in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: underactivate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “underactivate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/underactivate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.