States of Consciousness:
Waking and Sleeping Rhythms
General Psych 2
Module 17
April 1, 2004
Class #18
We’ve changed a couple of times…
• In the late 1800’s, early psychologists like William
Wundt and William James defined psychology as the
science of consciousness or mental activity…
– Of course, dealing with consciousness scientifically proved to
be a very tricky thing
• Around 1920 or so, Watson attacks all of the early
ideas – psychology is soon looked upon as the study
of observable behavior
• But, over the last 25 years or so, the scientific study
of consciousness has reemerged
• So, today we look at psychology as the study of both
observable behavior and mental processes
Working definition…
• Consciousness
– Is an awareness of the environment and of
one’s own mental processes
Daydreams and Fantasies…
• James Thurber’s classic story, “The
secret life of Walter Mitty”…
• Singer (1975)
– Large interview/questionnaire type study
reported that nearly everyone has
daydreams or waking fantasies every day
– On the job, walking down the street, in the
classroom – anywhere and anytime
Fantasy-prone personalities…
• These people have excessively vivid
fantasies and more frequent than the
norm
– Approximately 4% of population
Wilson and Barber (1983)
• Study of 26 women with fantasy-prone
personalities…
– As children they had “intense” make-believe play
with dolls, stuffed animals, and imaginary
(Invisible) friends
– As adults, they spend more than half their time
fantasying
– When watching TV or imagining violent or scary
scenes they could get physically ill
– Most reported profound mystical or religious
experiences
– Some had experienced orgasms solely by sexual
fantasies
Fantasy-prone personalities…
• Interestingly, their fantasies can
sometimes be so vivid that later on they
sometimes have trouble sorting out real
events for those they imagined
The good and the bad…
• Problems
– Don’t deal with reality
– Distort reality
– Waste time
• Good things
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–
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–
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Can actually prepare for future events
Can enhance creativity
Scientists, writers, artists
Can be a substitute for impulsive behavior
For children, it can help in their social and
cognitive development
A Psychology of UFO Experiences???
• Several studies have investigated UFO
sightings putting these witnesses under
a battery of psychological tests…
– They look just like general population in all
psychological patterns (not higher in
mental illnesses, etc)…
– But…
Really an “alien” explanation or
something else?
• It seems that the various groups of
witnesses have displayed certain
common personality traits
• Ring (1990)
– Major study of 264 subjects…
• Higher sensitivity to “non-ordinary” realities
• Higher tendency towards dissociation
• Very similar personality traits to those who had
claimed to have had a near-death experience
Paranormal phenomena or not???
• Bartholomew (1988)
– Interviewed 152 “abductees” and
“contactees”
– Most fell inside the definition of fantasyprone persons
• Nickell (1996)
– All 13 “abductees” in this study had
fantasy-prone personalities
Sleep and Dreams
• Lets look at this particular altered state
of consciousness…
Biological Rhythms
• Circadian Rhythms
– Our bodies are synchronized with the 24-hour
cycle of day and night through this biological clock
• Can be disrupted by things such as:
– Jet lag
– Radically altering your sleeping schedule from
weekdays to weekends
• As college students often do
– Just as it begins to reset itself to the
weekend sleep schedule, a new school
week begins and may result in “Sunday
night insomnia” and “Monday morning
blues”
Sleep Cycles
• Stages of sleep are distinguished by
attaching electrodes to a person’s scalp
and recording brain waves from an EEG
(electroencephalograph)
– EEG measures patterns of activity in the
brain
Sleep Cycles
• “Pre-sleep”
– When you just get into bed and close your
eyes the EEG picks up slow alpha waves of
your awake but relaxed state
Stage 1
• Very light sleep
• Breathing rate slows
• Brain waves display theta waves (these are slower
and more irregular)
• Only lasts about two to five minutes
• You may experience fantastic images which are
similar to hallucinations
– For example, you may have a sensation of falling at which
moment your body may suddenly jerk, or of floating
weightlessly, or you may have a vivid visual image
• Myoclonic Jerk – short convulsion of the body which may
be brought on when your brain noticing your heart rate
and breathing rate decreasing more rapidly than normal
sends out a burst of electrical activity to your muscles
Stage 2
• For the next 20 minutes we relax more
deeply…
– Although, we can still be awakened without
too much difficulty during this stage, you
are now clearly asleep
– Brain activity is characterized by sleep
spindles
• These are periodic bursts of rapid,
rhythmic brain activity
Stage 3
• Very short phase – just a few minutes
• Gets us ready for deep sleep
• Large delta waves are emitted
Stage 4
• Deep sleep for about 30 minutes
• Tough to be awakened during this stage
• Curiously, it is during this stage in which
people talk or walk and young children wet
their beds
• Other curious things – we may be
undisturbed by the roar of a loud vehicle but
if we hear the cry from a baby in the next
room we can be awakened
Back down the ladder…
• About an hour after we fall asleep
another strange phenomenon occurs…
• Rather than continuing in deep slumber,
we go back down the sleep ladder
– We return to stage 3, then to stage 2 and
then we enter the most intriguing sleep
phase of all…Rapid Eye Movement sleep
REM sleep…
• For about 10:00, brain activity resembles
Stage 1 but unlike Stage 1:
• HR increases
• Breathing becomes more rapid and irregular
• People rarely snore during REM sleep
• Genitals show signs of arousal
– Erection in males
– Vaginal lubrication is possible in women
• Every 30 seconds or so your eyes dart around
in a momentary burst of activity under your
closed lids
EEGs During the Stages of Sleep
Webb, Wilse B., Sleep: An Experimental Approach, 1968, p.15. Reprinted by permission of Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Its called the “paradoxical sleep”…
• REM is often referred to as paradoxical
because the increased eye movements,
HR, respiration, and genital activity
suggest arousal – yet the muscles are
deeply relaxed and the sleeper is not
easily awakened
Its our dream stage as well…
• Some of brain activity during sleep is
experienced as dreams
– Mostly occurs during REM sleep
– Despite senselessness, dreams often contains
some logic
• Very emotional and storylike
• Not like the fleeting images of stage 1
• Daytime activities seem to have minor
influence on dream content
Why do we dream?
Well, Dr. Freud believed…
• Freud argued that dreams are a disguised
form of wish fulfillment…
• Manifest content
– Storyline of our dreams
– Symbolic
• Latent Content
– Consists of unconscious drives and wishes
– For example, Freud felt that if a woman dreamt
about a gun – she was in fact dreaming of a penis
Why the Rapid Eye Movements?
• Researchers aren’t sure
As the night wears on…
• The sleep cycle repeats itself about
every 90:00 with deep stage 4 sleep
becoming briefer and then eventually
disappearing and REM sleep getting
progressively longer
More REM sleep as the night wears on…
Adapted from A Primer of Sleep and Dreaming by Rosalind Cartwright. © 1978 by Addison-Wesley. Reprinted by permission of the author.
REM functions…
• Extended sleeplessness leads to fatigue,
irritability, and inattention…
• Some believe non-REM sleep helps restore
body and brain for the next day’s activities.
• Functions of REM sleep?
– May improve functioning of neurons that use
norepinephrine
– May be a time for developing, checking, and
expanding the brain’s nerve connections
Sleep Deprivation
• Problems:
– Chronically fatigued
– Diminished immunity to disease
– Slight hand tremor
– Irritability
– Occasional moments of inattention or
misperceptions on monotonous tasks
• Example: Cross-country driving
– Note: on highly motivated tasks, sleep
deprivation has little effect
Randy Gardner (1965)
• 17 tear-old who
made it into
Guinness Book of
World Records by
staying awake for 11
days
• During the final
night, he beat one
of the researchers
100 straight times in
a pinball game
Effects were more severe for this guy…
• In 1959, a New York disc jockey, Peter
Tripp, attempted a publicity stunt by
staying awake for 201 hours
• After three days, he began to
hallucinate and turned paranoid
• It was almost as though his sleepdeprivation was allowing dream images
to break into his waking consciousness
Do we need sleep?
• The answer is yes!
– Although, our bodies can be trained to do with
gradually less sleep
– Although, Gardner felt nauseous at times, had
difficulty reading, and suffered temporary memory
lapses, he had no long-term emotional or physical
side-effects but eventually we need it to cope with
stressors, etc.
• Measurements have been taken,
however, that indicate there are some
chemical changes during sleep
deprivation – so yes, our body does
need sleep!
Sleep debt???
• Researcher says we keep track of this…
– Dement (1999)
• Our brain keeps an accurate account of
sleep for at least two weeks
Maybe we shouldn’t sleep so much…
• Kripke (2002)
– This six-year study of
more than one
million adults ages
30 to 102 has shown
that people who get
only 6 to 7 hours a
night have a lower
death rate than
individuals who sleep
8 hours or more
Graphs indicate that under 4.5 is not
good either…
Lucid Dreaming Lucid Dreaming
• Awareness that a dream is a dream
while it is happening
• Laberge (1985)
– Feels that although we are not usually
explicitly aware of the fact that we are
dreaming while we are dreaming, at times
a remarkable exception occurs, and we
become conscious enough to realize that
we are dreaming
Lucid Dreaming
• Snyder & Gackenbach (1988)
– Lucid dreaming is normally a rare
experience
– Though most people report having had a
lucid dream at least once in their lives, only
about 20% of the population reports
having lucid dreams once a month or more
Lucid Dreaming
• LaBerge (1980; 1985)
– Reported that if subjects deliberately attempted to
feel the bedcovers they know they are sleeping in
or try to hear the ticking of the clock they know is
beside their bed, they fail to feel or hear anything
except what they find in their dream worlds
– Reported that lucid dreamers are conscious of the
absence of sensory input from the external world;
therefore, on empirical grounds, they conclude
that they are asleep
– Laberge feels that the evidence is clear: lucid
dreaming is an experiential and physiological
reality; though perhaps paradoxical, it is clearly a
phenomenon of sleep
Can we control our dreams???
• Apparently, with practice we can
achieve lucidity and have some degree
of control over the course of the dream
– For example, one woman mentioned that
when she can decide in her dream to face
up to a frightening figure or try to avoid
the danger
Dreams are unconscious processes???
These researchers say no…
• Most lucid dream researchers feel that the old
notion that dreams are unconscious
processes is false
– They suggest that waking consciousness is
always present in your dreams
• How else would you remember them?
Abnormalities of Sleep
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Insomnia
Narcolepsy
Sleep Apnea
Night Terrors
Hypersomnia
Sleepwalking
Insomnia
• Most common sleep disorder
•
•
•
•
•
– 15% of adults complain of this
Difficulty falling asleep
Waking up frequently
Waking up too early
Unrefreshing sleep
One feels daytime fatigue due to trouble
falling asleep or staying asleep
– Note: Not defined by the number of hours of sleep
a person gets
Causes of Insomnia
• Advanced age
– Occurs more frequently after the age of 60
• Gender
– Females
• A history of depression
– Main reason
Things that make it worse…
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•
•
•
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Worrying about it
Caffeine before bedtime
Alcohol before bedtime
Cigarettes before bedtime
Excessive napping in afternoon or
evening
How its treated…
• Over-the counter sleep medications
– Not recommended
• Prescription sleeping pills
– Controversial
• Behavioral techniques
– Relaxation therapy
• Warm milk
– Worth a try? – can’t hurt
Narcolepsy
• Sudden attacks of extreme sleepiness usually in the
middle of the day
• The person collapses directly into a brief period of
REM sleep – with its accompanying loss of muscular
tension
• Cataplexis
– The loss of muscle tone without loss of
consciousness
– Are frequently prompted by laughter,
embarrassment, anger and even sexual
intercourse may trigger an episode
• Sleep Paralysis
• Estimated 100,000 or more in U.S. suffer from this
Risks and Causes
• Risks
– Motor vehicle accidents
– Dangerous machinery, etc.
• Cause
– Unknown but in seems to run in families
• Dement (1972)
–Narcoleptic Dogs
Sleep Apnea
• Cessation of breathing for a short
period of time while sleeping
• An airless minute or so
• The decreased oxygen in the blood
arouses the sleeper to snort in air for a
few seconds
• The process is repeated hundreds of
times during a night’s sleep
Sleep Apnea
• Often not aware of there problem
• Can lead to insomnia
• At highest risk are obese or middleaged men
• They just can’t seem to find a sleeping
position that allows them to breath
easily
Sleep Apnea
• Continuous Positive Airway Pressure
– Most common treatment is a mask worn over
the nose while sleeping
Night Terrors
• Mysterious sleep disturbances that preschoolers and
older children are occasionally subject to
• They are usually subjected to these horrific dream
images one to four hours after falling asleep – during
stage 3 or stage 4 sleep
– Can last from 10-40 minutes
– Child may bolt out of bed, run wildly about house
with eyes open, screaming, etc.
– He is not awake and usually not aware of your
presence
– No recollection in the morning
• About 5% of children will have at least one episode
Night Terrors
• Don’t try to intervene unless he/she is
in danger
• Let them scream in out
• Note: Nightmares occur during
REM sleep and are often
remembered
Hypersomnia
• Excessive sleepiness
– They sleep a lot but its unrefreshing no matter
how long
• Typical case
– 8-9 hours during the week and then 18-22 per
day on the weekends to “catch up on lost sleep”
• Risk Factors
– Obesity
– Female
– Depression
• Causes
– Unknown but some have linked it to head
traumas, viral infections, or mood disorders
Sleepwalking
• Usually affects children between the ages of 6-12
before they enter puberty although it can occur in
adults as well
• Children will usually go to bed in a normal manner
but arise during their second or third hour of sleep
• Occurs in non-REM sleep
• They remember nothing
• Their eyes are partially or fully open and they void
things, listen when spoken to, respond to commands
(Johnny -- return to your bed!)
• Episodes last about 15-30 minutes
• Don’t shake them but gently guiding them is okay