Chapter 7
Objectives

 Describe the research related to sleep and dreaming
 Define altered states of consciousness, including
hypnosis and hallucination
 Discuss the effects of drug states and such
substances as marijuana and alcohol
 Describe research into such techniques as
biofeedback and mediation
Terms











Biofeedback
Consciousness
Hallucinations
Hypertensions
Hypnosis
LSD
Marijuana
Meditation
Posthypnotic suggestion
REM Sleep
Hey there

 You are looking around the room and your awareness is
drifting to that attractive classmate sitting across the
room.
 You are reading these words
 Everything you think and feel is part of your conscious
experience
 Consciousness: A state of awareness, including a
person’s feelings, sensations, ideas, and perceptions.
Introduction

 Normal states of consciousness the most active areas
of research in psychology?
 No this is not the case. The subject that has had a great
deal of research in recent years is the study of altered
states of consciousness.
 Altered state of consciousness involves a change in
mental processes, not just feeling more or less alert.
Introduction

 Since at least the 1960’s, psychologists have been
studying altered states of consciousness by having
people sleep, meditate, undergo hypnosis, take
drugs during laboratory, researchers can observe
changes in behavior and measure changes in
breathing, pulse rate, body temperature, and brain
activity.
Sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 Most people think of sleep as a state of
unconsciousness, punctuated by brief periods of
dreaming.
 Only partially correct
 Sleep is a state of altered consciousness,
characterized by certain patterns of brain activity.
Sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 Sleep is a major part of human and animal behavior but it is
difficult to study because a researcher cannot ask a sleeping
person to report on the experience without first waking the
person.
 Electroencephalograph (EEG)- Machine that records the
electrical activity of the brain
 By observing sleeping subjects and by recording their brain and
body responses, researchers have discovered 2 different types
of sleep patterns:
 Quiet sleep
 Active sleep
Stages of sleep

 As you begin to fall asleep, your body temperature
declines, your pulse rate drops, and your breathing
grows slow and even. Gradually your eyes close and
your brain briefly emits alpha waves, as observed on
the EEG, which are associated with the absence of
concentrated thought and with relaxation. Your
body may twitch, your eyes roll, and brief visual
images flash across your mind (although your
eyelids are shut) as you enter Stage 1, the lightest
level of sleep
Stages of sleep

 Turn to page 159
Stages of sleep

 Stage 1
 Your pulse rate slows more
 Muscles relax, but breathing becomes uneven and
your brain waves grow irregular
 If awakened during stage 1, you would report that
your were “just drifting.”
 Lasts 10 minutes
Stages of sleep

 Stage 2
 Brain waves occasionally shift from low-amplitude
high-frequency waves to high-amplitude lowfrequency waves
 Eyes roll slowly from side to side
Stages of sleep

 Stage 3
 30 minutes after entering stage 2
 Large amplitude delta waves begin to seep your
brain every second
Stages of sleep

 Stage 4
Deepest sleep of all
Difficult to awaken in this stage
Large, regular delta waves
State of oblivion
If awaken by a loud noise or sudden movement, you
may feel disoriented.
 Talking out loud, sleepwalking, and bed-wetting
occur in this stage, leave no trace of memory





Stages of sleep

 On average, a person spends 75% of sleep time in
Stages 1-4
 Then REM happens, where your muscles are even
more relaxed than before, your eyes begin to move
rapidly
 REM sleep: The period of sleep during which the
eyes dart back and forth (rapid eye movement) and
dreaming usually occurs
Stages of sleep

 REM
 Pulse rate and breathing become irregular
 Levels of adrenal and sexual hormones in your blood
rise, as if you were in the middle of an intensely
emotional or physically demanding activity
 Face and fingers twitch
 Muscles in arms and legs are paralyzed
 Brain sends out waves that closely resemble those of
a person who is fully awake
Stages of sleep

 REM
 Called active sleep
 Stages 1-4 referred to as NREM (quiet sleep)
 Or quiet sleep because of the absence of rapid eye
movement, which is accompanied by slower pattern of
brain waves
 During REM sleep that almost all dreaming normally
takes place
 Lasts for about 10 minutes, after which you retrace the
descent to stage 4. You go through the cycle every 90
minutes or so
 Each time the period of stage 4 sleep decreases and the
length of REM sleep increase, until you eventually wake up
 At no point does your brain ever become inactive
Handout

 Falling a sleep
How much sleep?

 Newborns
 16-18 hours
 Half of it in REM
 16 year olds
 10-11 hours of sleep
 Grad school
 8 hours
 Men & Women 70 years and older
 May need only 5 hours of sleep
How much sleep?

 Adults average about 25% of their time in REM
sleep, and 75% in NREM sleep.
 Amount of sleep a person needs may vary, it does
appear that everyone sleeps and that both types of
sleep are important to normal functioning.


Handout

 Sleeping a light fantastic
Dreams

 Everyone dreams although most people only recall only a few,
if any of their dreams
 1st few dreams
 Usually composed of vague thoughts left over from the day’s
activities (Watching TV)
 As night wears on, dreams become longer and more vivid and
dramatic, especially during REM
 Last dream is likely to be the longest and the one people
remember when they wake up, although people can rarely
recall more than the last 15 minutes of a dream when they
awaken
Dreams

 Researchers have found that after, people have been
deprived of REM sleep, thy subsequently increase
the amount of time they spend in REM sleep. Thus is
appears that a certain amount of dreaming each
night is necessary
Content of Dreams

 When people are awakened randomly during REM
sleep and asked what they had just been dreaming,
the reports are common and dull
 Commonplace settings (even late-night REM) occur
in living rooms, cars, streets
 The dreams we remember “are more coherent,
sexier, and generally more interesting”
Content of Dreams

 Most dreams involve either strenuous recreational
activities or passive events such as sitting and watching
 Large percentage of dreams are negative or unpleasant
 Anxiety, anger, sadness
 We incorporate everyday activities into our dreams
 Can manipulate the content of a person’s dreams
 Light water spray 42%
 Light 23%
 Tone 9%
Nightmares

 Small portions of our dreams
 Frightening quality, we usually awaken in the middle
of them
 Intensity of brain activity to the
stimulation of those parts of the brain
responsible for emotional reactions
Dream Interpretation

 Sigmund Freud 1st to argue that dreams are an
important part of our emotional lives
 Believed that no matter how simple, dreams contain
clues to thought and desires the dreamer is afraid
to acknowledge or express in waking hours
 Said dreams are full of hidden meanings and
disguises
Dream Interpretation

 Nathaniel Kleitman
 Pioneer of REM sleep
 “Dreaming may serve no function”
 Unimportant bi-product of stimulating certain brain cells
during sleep
 McCarley
 “Feeling paralyzed in a dream simply means that brain cells
that inhibit muscle activity were randomly stimulated
Freud on Dreams

 Page 162
Top 10 things about
dreams

 Video
Dreams

 Dream dictionary
Lucid Dreaming

 Website
Hypnosis

 Hypnosis: Is a form of altered consciousness in
which people become highly suggestible and do
not use their critical thinking skills.
 Subjects may recall in vivid detail incidents they had
forgotten or feel no pain when pricked with a needle
 Subjects are not asleep
Hypnosis

 Trace like state
 Highly receptive and responsive to certain internal
and external stimuli
 Able to focus on 1 tiny aspect of reality and ignore the
rest
 Hypnotist
 Induces a trance by slowly persuading a subject to
relax and to lose interest in external distractions
Hallucinations

 Hallucinations: Perceptions that have no direct
external cause, seeing, smelling, tasting, or feeling
things that do not exist
 Can produce hallucinations:
 Hypnosis, meditation, drugs, withdraw from drugs
 People hallucinate while dreaming and when
deprived of sleep
Drugs and Their Effects

 Page 168