underactivate

Meanings

verbunderactivate (third-person singular simple present underactivates, present participle underactivating, simple past and past participle underactivated)

present singular third person underactivates · participle present underactivating · participle past underactivated · past underactivated

To produce insufficient levels of activation.
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
2 more examples
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
An important discovery over the last ten years comes from studies that parametrically varied working memory load to establish that, compared to younger adults, older adults tend to overactivate PFC regions at lower loads, and to underactivate at higher loads, where performance also drops off.
2016, Roberto Cabeza, Lars Nyberg, Denise C. Park, Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging: Linking Cognitive and Cerebral Aging, →ISBN