Circadian Rhythms
Body natural body clock.
Naturally 25 hours, but we adapt to astronomical clock.
Particularly stressful for people who do shift work.
People get tired at 2pm and 4 am.
Rhythms
When we Spring Forward, accidents increase. When we Fall back, they decrease.
Women who believe their periods to be bad, often are confirming their own biases.
Symptoms that aren’t period related, are explained by periods, but those same symptoms
at different times aren’t. Recall pds worse than reported at time.
Sleep Patterns
People need on the average 9 or 10 hours sleep without outside cues.
People need less sleep as they get older.
REM sleep, or dream sleep, is required for functional sleep.
Drugs, alcohol, or interruptions can disrupt REM sleep creating REM rebound and/or
sleep dept.
Sleep Patterns
When deprived of sleep, when you go back to sleep, you go immediately to REM to try
and catch up. Often creating more nightmares. This pattern is called REM Rebound
Sleep Patterns
Sleep debt causes
–irritability
–inability to concentrate (although you can perform well on short tests)
–lack of energy
–REM rebound-can even occur while awake if sleep deprived enough.
Lack of Sleep is also associated with obesity and impaired memory.
Sleep Patterns: Reset every 90 minutes.
Alpha
Wave : Awake but relaxed.
Stage
1: Twilight
Stage
2: Sleep
Stage
3
Hallucinations,
Sleep
weird fantasies, jumping around, floating
spindles occur
Transition to Slow wave.
Stage 4 Sleep
REM: rapid eye movement
Delta level, slow wave sleep. Night terrors, sleepwalking, bedwetting, decreases as night
goes on. Also associated with growth
Dream sleep, increased sympathetic system, brain waves between awake and level 1,
increases from 10 minutes to 90 min by end of night. Genital Arousal occurs here, in both
males and females.
Sleep Talking
Can occur in all sleep stages, not stage-dependent.
REM Sleep
Is Paradoxal sleep, because your brain and body is very active, but body has low muscle
tone.
Babies get more than older people, probably because of all the learning.
REM sleep increases as the night progresses: 15 minutes, then 30, then 1 hour. (wide
variation of this, but as an example.
Activation-synthesis: your brain learns while in REM
Sleep: Why?
Non-grazing big mammals sleep longer, maybe to keep up away from predators.
Rebuild cells?
Sleep Disorders
Apnea: stopping breathing while sleeping: may be life-threatening.
Narcolepsy: uncontrollable sleep attacks
Insomnia: most common, inability to sleep. 50% of people get it. Often caused by
changed sleep habits. Usually temporary.
Insomnia Treatment
Relax, read a book, drink milk.
Avoid Exercise right before bed.
Don’t drink or take sleeping pills, they disrupt circadian rhythms.
Dreams
Freud thought dreams had manifest content, the storyline, and latent content, the hidden
symbolic meaning.
Famous work: Interpretation of Dreams
Dreams were expression of unresolved sexual conflicts.
Pretty much discounted today.
Dreams
Usually normal everyday events spliced together in a bizarre fashion.
Only 1 in 10 have sexual content in males, 1 and 30 in girls, although boys usually get
erections and girls get clitoral erections even without sexual content in the dream.
Usually lasting throughout most of the night. Girls dream about 50/50 gender; men 65%
about men.
Dreams
We incorporate outside stimuli into our dreams.
You cannot be taught subliminally when you dream.
Lucid Dreaming is controlling your dreaming, dreaming about what you want and
controlling outcomes.
Why we Dream: Theories
Stimulate neural connections so they won’t be lost.
Bursts of random firings brain is trying to make sense of.Explains the discontinuity of
dreams.
Consolidating memories and days events, while disposing of excess information not
needed.
Daydreaming
Daydreaming allows us to plan the day, fantasize and exercise our creativity…perhaps
let out aggression or rehearse.
Young people do it more that older people.
95% of people have sexual fantasies.
–Men are more anonymous and less romanitc and have more sex fantasies than women.
Daydreaming
Einstein said it was more important than that absorbing knowledge for him.
People prone to violence and drug abuse, have less vivid fantasies than those who don’t.
Hypnosis: What is it?
Social Phenomenon: We do it to please the hypnotist. Trying to please.
Divided Consciousness: Disassociation, we can divide our consciousness similarly
when we drive and think. The result we use part of our mind, the other is a hidden
observer.
Hypnosis What it Can’t do.
People will not do things against there will. Things they do are related to Milgram’s
studies on what people will do for people in power.
Will not regress or retrieve deeply repressed memories. These retrieved memories are
combinations of memory and suggestion. Relaxation may help in recall however
Hypnosis and Therapy
May aid in psychosomatic illnesses, because you believe it will.
Beyond relaxing, not much more.
Hypnosis: What is can do
It can distract you from pain. People who put hand in ice water don’t report “feeling the
pain,” although they are aware that it exists. This supports the disassociative qualities of
hypnotism. Same principle as Lamaze for childbirth. Distraction and disassociation
makes you feel less pain.
Hypnotism
Everyone can be hypnotized, although about 20% are more hypnotizable than others.
Drug and Alcohol Terms
Tolerance: user needs more and more of a substance to get “high.”
Physical dependence: need the drug or experience physical withdrawal symptoms.
Psychological dependence: need drug or don’t feel like yourself.
Drugs and Addiction 3 Myths
Taking addictive drugs lead to immediate and irrevocable addiction. Even morphine
taken as painkiller doesn’t usually lead to addiction. (about 10% of time)
Addiction can’t be overcome alone. Many people simply age out of addiction or quit on
there own. Programs have no more success than individuals trying on their own.
Drug and addiction-Myths
That the definition of addiction can be extended to other repetitive, pleasure-seeking
behaviors. Shopoholics are not the same as alcoholics.
Depressants: Alcohol
Alcohol is a depressant to the system, all the time, it depresses the sympathetic nervous
system.
Alcohol tends to magnify all our tendencies. Helpful people become more helpful,
aggressive more aggressive, sexual or sexual wannabes, more sexual.
People become more self-disclosing.
Alcohol cont
Drinking excess amounts lead to blackouts-interfering with REM and memory
consolidation from short-term to long=term memory.
Alcohol reduces self-awareness (disassociate)-those who want to suppress feelings of
inadequacy , its like someone else is that beast.
Alcohol cont.
Forces attention toward immediate time and away from long-term consequences,
leading people to do the irresponsible.
Subjects given fake alcohol acted and felt in ways similar to real drinkers. They blamed
the “drinks” for their behavior.
Alcohol addicts
Alcohol addicted people experience debilitating withdrawal symptoms, including
diarrhea, vomiting and hallucinations.
Children of alcoholics can hold more liquor in their first experience than non COAs
suggesting a genetic link.
Alcoholics
Feel life is meaningless and are directionless..
Feelings of failure.
Genetic link.
Being able to hold alcohol on first drinks huge predictor of future alcohol problems.
Peer influence
Depressants: Barbiturates or Downs
Qualudes, seconal, tranquilizers, valium sleeping pills. All act to suppress the
sympathetic nervous system, mimicking the effects of alcohol. Taken together you may
find yourself in a coma.
Ineffective as sleeping pills because of their effect on REM sleep.
Depressants: Opiates
Heroin, morphine, Opium.
Depress the entire neural system.
Give feeling of “blissful pleasure,” some first time users report having orgasms from
use.
Highly physically addictive. Tolerance builds quickly. Withdrawal creates awful
symptoms. Brain stop producing endorphins.
Psychoactive Drugs: Stimulants
Nicotine, Methamphetamines, cocaine, ecstasy.
Increase heart rate, respiration, breathing,pupils dialate, appetite diminishes
Feelings of euphoria, confidence, well-being followed by a corresponding crash.
Stimulants
In high doses can deplete natural stores of neurotransmitters. (serotonin, dopamine.
Ecstasy: an amphetamine with mild hallucinogenic effects, can cause dehydration and
brain damage in serotonin system.
Stimulants: Cocaine and Speed
The most highly psychologically addictive.
Rats will hit a lever 1000s of times to get cocaine to the exclusion of food.
Hallucinogens
LSD, ecstasy, peyote, mescaline, psilocybin, Marijuana.
Common to see visual distortion of things that are there.
In rare cases, real hallucinations, flashbacks.
Heavily influenced by emotional state, and personality explaining bad trips.