• Consciousness, sleep, and
dreaming
• Psychoactive drugs
• Meditation and hypnosis
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Things You’ll Learn in Chapter 5
Q1 Can getting too little sleep increase
your risk of getting a cold?
Q2 Can using a computer or iPad late at
night make it harder to fall asleep?
Q3 Are you addicted to Facebook?
Q4 Can using marijuana decrease your IQ?
Q5 Can hypnosis decrease the pain of childbirth?
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
CONSCIOUSNESS, SLEEP, AND
DREAMING
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
What Is Consciousness?
• Consciousness = awareness of internal events
and of the external environment
• Remember selective attention (Chapter 4)?
– Controlling consciousness through deliberate
concentration and full concentration
• Alternate state of consciousness = any mental
state different from ordinary waking
consciousness
– Sleep, dreaming, psychoactive drug use, hypnosis
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Divided attention: texting and driving
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Circadian Rhythms
• 24-hour biological clock
• Changes in alertness, body temperature,
moods, blood pressure, pulse, and others
• Peak in the middle of the day; low point at night
• SCN (suprachiasmatic nucleus)
perceives darkness, signals
pineal gland to release
melatonin
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Sleep challenges for teenagers
• Teens experience a natural shift in the timing of circadian
rhythms during puberty (Carskadon et al., 1998)
• Delay in release of melatonin: released around 10pm in
adults, but not until 1am in teens!
What might this mean for schools?
• Delaying start of high school by 30 mins
leads to improvements in mood, alertness,
health (Owens et al., 2010) and decreases in
car accidents among teen drivers
(Danner & Phillips, 2008)© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Sleep Deprivation
• 1 in ________ adults are so sleepy during the
day that it interferes with daily activities
• _______ % of all drivers have fallen asleep a
few seconds at the wheel (microsleep)
Are YOU
sleep
deprived?
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Q1 Can getting too little sleep increase your risk of
getting a cold?
•
•
•
•
Reduced cognitive and motor performance
Irritability and mood alterations
Decreased self-esteem
Impaired immune system = People sleeping
<7 hours/night are 3x more likely to catch
a cold than those who sleep 8+ hrs
• Greater risk of obesity because sleep deprivation
interferes with appetite-controlling hormone
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Stages of Sleep
• 90-minute pattern
• Dreams during REM sleep
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Why Do We Sleep?
Four Sleep Theories
1. Adaptation/protection theory: conserve
energy and protect from predators
2. Repair/restoration theory: recuperate from
daily activities
3. Growth/development theory: more sleep
during stages of brain growth
4. Learning/memory theory: more REM sleep
during stages of greatest learning
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Why Do We Dream?
Three Dream Theories
1. Wish-fulfillment = unacceptable desires are
normally repressed, but emerge in dreams
–
–
Manifest content = story line of the dream
Latent content = what the dream represents
2. Activation-synthesis hypothesis = dreams are the
brain’s way of making sense of random electrical
stimulation occurring during REM
3. Cognitive view = dreams organize and interpret
information from waking experience into memories
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Sleep-Wake Disorders
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Q2 Can using a computer or iPad late at night make it harder
to fall asleep?
• Exposure to light from electronic displays (iPad or
computer) reduces melatonin by 22%
• Nonprescription sleep aids don’t work; prescription
tranquilizers and barbiturates help people sleep, but
decrease Stage 4 and REM sleep and can create
dependence
• Some research shows small doses
of melatonin help people fall asleep
and stay asleep
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Improve your sleep:
During the Day
• Natural sleep aids:
• Exercise
• Regular sleep/wake hours
• Avoid stimulants
• Avoid late meals and heavy
drinking
• Stop worrying
• Use presleep rituals
• Practice yoga
In Bed
• Use progressive relaxation
• Use fantasies of self in
tranquil setting
• Use deep breathing
• Warm bath
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Psychoactive Drugs
• Agonist drugs = enhance a particular
neurotransmitter
• Antagonist drugs = inhibit a neurotransmitter
• Drug abuse = drug taking that causes emotional or
physical harm to self or others
• Addiction = body requires drug to function; the
outcome of tolerance and dependence
–
–
–
–
Psychological dependence
Physical dependence
Withdrawal
Tolerance
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Q3 Are you addicted to Facebook?
• Feel unreasonably
compelled to check FB?
• “Do you feel an urge to use
FB more and more?”
• “Do you become restless or
troubled if prohibited from
using FB?”
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Four Drug Categories
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Four Drug Categories
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Q4 Can using marijuana decrease your IQ?
• Teenagers who started
smoking marijuana before
age 18 and were addicted to
the drug by age 38 showed
decreases in IQ
• Drops of 8 points for heaviest
users
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Meditation and Hypnosis
• Results of meditation range from
mellow relaxation to strong
hallucinations
• Meditation leads to altered states of
consciousness because of purposeful
changes in prefrontal cortex
• By focusing on single object, emotion
or word, you diminish the number of brain cells that are
devoted to multiple tasks; neurons that had been devoted
to time now allow you to experience sense of timelessness
and mild euphoria
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Q5 Can hypnosis decrease the pain
of childbirth?
• Hypnosis = trance-like state
of heightened suggestibility,
deep relaxation, focus
• Medical areas that
experience high levels of
anxiety (dentistry, childbirth, etc.) use hypnosis
to create both lower levels and shorter
duration of pain
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.