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Labile affect
An affect type that indicates abnormal sudden rapid shifts in affect.
Latah
A culture specific syndrome of Southeast Asia involving startle-induced disorganization, hypersuggestibility, automatic obedience, and echopraxia.
Learned helplessness
A condition in which a person attempts to establish and maintain contact with another by adopting a helpless, powerless stance.
Learning Disorder
When a child's academic ability is below what is expected for the child's age, schooling and level of intelligence. A learning difficulty is usually identified in reading, math or writing.
Lethargy
A feeling of tiredness, drowsiness or lack of energy.
Lethologica
Temporary inability to remember a proper noun or name.
Libido
The psychic drive or energy usually associated with the sexual instinct. (Sexual is used here in the broad sense to include pleasure and love-object seeking.)
Light therapy
Treatment by exposure to light. Also called phototherapy.
Locus coeruleus
A small area in the brain stem containing norepinephrine neurons that is considered to be a key brain center for anxiety and fear.
Long-term memory
The final phase of memory in which information storage may last from hours to a lifetime.
Loosening of associations
A disturbance of thinking shown by speech in which ideas shift from one subject to another that is unrelated or minimally related to the first. Statements that lack a meaningful relationship may be juxtaposed, or speech may shift suddenly from one frame of reference to another. The speaker gives no indication of being aware of the disconnectedness, contradictions, or illogicality of speech.
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