Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Carrying inward to a central organ or section, as nerves that conduct impulses from the periphery of the body to the brain or spinal cord.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Bringing; carrying to or toward; conveying inward. Used in physiology as the opposite of
efferent , and said of veins which convey blood from the periphery to the physiological center of the blood-circulation;
Wiktionary
- adj. Carrying towards.
- n. An afferent structure or connection
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Bearing or conducting inwards to a part or organ; -- opposed to
efferent
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of nerves and nerve impulses; conveying sensory information from the sense organs to the CNS
- n. a nerve that passes impulses from receptors toward or to the central nervous system
Etymologies
- Latin afferēns, afferent-, present participle of afferre, to bring toward : ad-, ad- + ferre, to bring; see bher-1 in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“Thus: a given inhibitory tetanus exerted on a certain set of motoneurones fails to prevent their excitation in response to strong stimulation of a given afferent nerve; but when the stimulation of the excitatory afferent is weaker the given standard inhibitory tetanus does prevent the response of the motor neurones to the excitatory stimulation.”
“The fibres which come ultimately from the dorsal aspect of the spinal marrow are those which carry inwards the effect of a stimulus applied towards their ultimate termination, and are therefore called afferent, or sensory.”
“According to their function, the former set have been called afferent, as conveying impressions towards the centre; the latter efferent, as conveying the respondent movement from the centre.”
Theism: The Witness of Reason and Nature to an All-Wise and Beneficent Creator.
“Title: A novel role for TRPM8 in visceral afferent function”
The Wall Street Journal: Finding the Pathways to a Cause of Tinnitus
“The autonomic nervous system is divided into interacting and balancing systems, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and the visceral afferent system.”
“A feedback network of nerves, known as the visceral afferent system, allows the brain to carefully monitor the effects this stimulation has on critical parts of the body.”
“Whatever the specifics, they wrote, the important thing is that the stimulation affected only “a few cubic millimeters of neural tissue,” which means that “the depression probably resulted from the stimulation of afferent, efferent, or passing fibers within the substantia nigra or from the inhibition of those fibers.””
“Spencers Mom in reply to a comment from afferent input”
Pundits And Writers Start Hitting McCain For Non-Stop P.O.W. References
“IslandGyal in reply to a comment from afferent input”
“Buckeye Terrorist Fist Jab Nation in reply to a comment from afferent input”
Hillary Supporter Dianne Feinstein: The Race Is Over, Make Hillary Veep
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘afferent’.
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Specifically
Being a list of words which have "specifically" in their definitions.
recompose, specifically, Dutch, abstinence, discipline, virtue, namely, opening, century, amalgamation, cup, second and 281 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Columns & Rows
peripteral, peristyle, orthostichy, pseudo-dipteral, ployment, indentation, plinth, stylobate, balustrade, chine, trompe, telamon and 61 more...
artoparts See: efferent Oct 31, 2008