Consciousness
Unit 5
Consciousness
• Our awareness of ourselves and our environment
• Much of our information processing is
consciousness, much is unconscious and automatic
• Selective attention: riding a bike
• “Stream of consciousness”
State of Consciousness
• Normal/waking awareness
• Altered states: day dreaming, sleeping, mediating,
and drug induced
Sleep and Dreams
• We process most information outside our conscious
awareness
• T or F
o When people dream of performing some activity, their limbs often move
in concert with the dream
o Sleepwalkers are acting out their dreams
o Some people dream every night; other seldom dream
Biological Rhythms and
Sleep
• Circadian Rhythm are those that occur once each
day. It spans 24 hours and is responsible for our
varying levels of arousal throughout the course of a
day
Circadian Rhythm
• Body temp rises as morning approaches, peaks
during the day, dips for a time in early afternoon,
and then begins to drop before we go to sleep
• Thinking is sharpest and memory most accurate
when we are at our daily peak
o All-nighter example
Circadian Rhythm
• Bright light tweaks the circadian clock by activating
light-sensitive retinal proteins
• These proteins signal the SCN (nucleus) to decrease
the production of sleep-inducing hormone
melatonin
• Invention of light bulb drastically impacted us
• Time-zones
Sleep Stages
• About every 90 minutes we pass through a cycle of
five distinct sleep stages
• Armond Aserinsky discovered REM sleep (rapid eye
movement)
o And along with Nathaniel Kleitman pioneered procedures now used
today to measure sleep stages
Sleep Stages
• Follow along Figure 5.4 page 179
• Alpha waves: awake, relaxed state (slow)
• Transition to sleep: marked by slowed breating and
stage 1 brain waves
o May experience fantastic images, hallucinations, sensory experiences
(sensation of falling-jerks body)
o Jerked awake in class (dreaming about tripping or falling)
Sleep Stages
• Stage 2 characterized by the periodic appearance
of sleep spindles-bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain
wave activity (20 mins)
o Still can be woken up fairly easily
o Sleep talking can begin to occur
• Then for the next few minutes you go through
transitional stage 3 to deep sleep stage 4
Sleep Stages
• First in stage 3 and increasing in stage 4 your brain
emits large, slow delta waves
• These two stages last for about 30 minutes
• Hard to be awoken
• Sleep walking or bed wetting may occur
Sleep Stages
• Stage 1-4 (NREM) sleep
• Rather than continuing in deep slumber you ascend
from your initial sleep dive
• For about ten minutes brain waves become active
as you enter REM (similar waves to stage 1)
• Heart rate rises, breathing become irregular and
rapid, every half-minute or so your eyes dart around
Sleep Stages (REM)
• Essentially paralyzed may experience an
occasional twitch
• Aroused and calm
• Snoring stops
• REM announces the beginning of a dream
Sleep Stages
• As the night progresses deep stage 4 sleep gets
progressively briefer and then disappears
• The REM and stage 2 sleep periods get longer
• By morning 20-25% REM sleep
o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fk2PJOxTwc
Why dream in REM?
• The body is completely relaxed so people do not
react physically to their dreams
• Other stages body may interpret our dreams as
reality and react to them, causing startle
Why do we sleep?
Age-related difference
Sleep patterns genetically influenced
Culturally influenced
People sleeping less thanks to light bulbs, shift work,
the Internet, and social diversions
• Most adults (if allowed) could sleep at least for 9
hours
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o We awake refreshed, better mood, more efficient and accurate work
o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MT8ekBGyM4 (peter trip)
The Effects of Sleep loss
• Teens need 8 or 9 hours of sleep (today average
less than 7)
• Students often function below their peak
• Sleep deprivation: difficulty studying, diminished
productivity, tendency to make mistakes, irritability,
fatigue
The Effects of Sleep loss
• Increases hunger-arousing hormone
o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSmdkOAmly8 (weight gain)
• Increases the stress hormone cortisol
• Suppresses immune cells that fight off viral infections
and cancer
• Alters metabolic and hormonal functioning in was
that mimic aging
• Impaired creativity, concentration, and
communication
Effects of Sleep loss
• Devastating for driving, piloting, and equipment
operating
• Accidents frequently occur later in the evening
• Time-change: accidents skyrocket right after we
lose an hour of sleep
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SCyRs0PE5s
Sleeping vs. Being Bored
• Who here has fallen asleep in class?
• Boredom does not cause drowsiness
• Boredom causes restless behavior like fidgeting or
impatience
• When people fall asleep while bored, it is an
indication of sleep deprivation
Sleep Theories
• Sleep protects: darkness of ancestors
• Sleep helps us recuperate: restore and repair brain
tissue
• Sleep is for making memories
• Sleep also feeds creative thinking
• Sleep plays a role in the growth process
• *Nocturnal animals-______ and _____eyes
• *Animals who sleep a lot-_________ metabolism
Sleep disorders
• Insomnia: inability to fall OR stay a sleep
o 1 in 10 adults, 1 in 4 older adults
o Alcohol and sleeping pills aggregate the problem
o Treatment: Exercise, avoid caffeine after early afternoon, avoid rich foods
before bedtime, relax before bed, stay on regular sleeping schedule, hide
the clock, avoid long naps
Sleep Disorders
• Narcolepsy
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Periodic, overwhelming sleepiness
Collapse directly into a brief period of REM (extreme)
1 in 2000 in U.S.
Causes? Absence of hypothalamic neural center that produces orexin
Treatment? Drugs to relieve sleepiness and scientists developing a drug to
mimic orexin
Sleep disorders
• Sleep apnea
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o
o
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1 in 20
People intermittently stop breathing during sleep
Unaware of disorder: may just feel fatigue the next day
Associated with obesity
Sleep Disorders
• Night terrors: may sit up or walk around, talk,
experience a doubling of heart and breathing
rates, appear terrified (not nightmares)
Target children
Occur during Stage 4 sleep (2-3 hours of sleep)
Seldom remembered
As we grow older, deep stage 4 diminishes, so do night terrors and
sleeping walking/talking
o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2yfUL8uct0 (sleep disorders)
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What we dream
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REM dreams are vivid, emotional, and bizarre
May confuse them with reality (kids esp)
We spend six years of our life in dreams
8 in 10 dreams are marked by at least one negative
event or emotion
o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GGzc3x9WJU
General trends of what we
dream
• Northeastern have dreams with images of time,
activity, streets, and architecture
• Southerners dream of nature, good fortune,
emotion, and family members
• Westerners dream about objects, negative
emotions, and indoor settings
• In the U.S. men are more like to dream about
aggression and tools; women were more likely to
dream about children, clothes, food, and friendly
interactions
Freud’s theory of dreams
• Plot of the dream the manifest content
• Hidden content od reams was supposed to reflect
our unconscious thoughts and desires, while to
difficult to deal with when we are awake
What we dream
• We maintain some awareness of changes in our
external environment (water example)
• Can’t remember recorded information played
while we are soundly asleep
• To remember a dream, get up and stay awake for
a few minutes
Why we dream?
• To satisfy our own wishes
o Freud: latent content-consists of unconscious drives and wishes that would
be threatening if expressed directly
o He considered dreams the key to understanding our inner conflicts
o No reason to believe Freud’s claims
o Interpretations of dreams?
Why we Dream?
• To file away memories
o Dreams help sift, sort, and fix the day’s experiences in our memory
o Brain scans confirm the link between REM sleep and memory
Why we dream?
• To develop and preserve neural pathways
o Provide the brain with periodic stimulation
• To make sense of neural static
o Dreams make sense of random neural activity
• To reflect cognitive development
o Dreams are part of brain maturation
Why we dream?
• We need REM sleep
• Increased REM sleep results in REM rebound
• Most mammals experience REM rebound
Hypnosis
• Altered state of consciousness
• Facts and falsehoods
o No magical mind-control power; they merely engage people’s ability to
focus on certain images or behaviors
Can Anyone Experience
Hypnosis?
• Anyone can turn attention inward and imagine is
able to experience some degree of hypnosis
Can Hypnosis Enhance
recall of forgotten events?
• American, Australian, and British courts generally
ban testimony from witnesses who have been
hypnotized
• No we can’t. Fact mixed with Fiction.
• Research disputes claims of age regression
Can hypnosis force
people to act against their
will?
• An authoritative person in a legitimate context can
induce people-hypnotized or not to perform some
unlikely acts
Can hypnosis be
therapeutic?
• Posthypnotic suggestions have helped alleviate
headaches, asthma, and stress-related skin
disorders
• Helpful for the treatment of obesity
o Not alcohol, drug, or smoking addictions
Can hypnosis alleviate
pain?
• Hypnosis can relieve pain
Explaining the
Hypnotized state
• Hypnosis as a social phenomenon
o Some psychologists believe that hypnotic phenomena reflect the
workings of normal consciousness and the power of social influence
o They point out how powerfully our interpretations and attentional spotlight
influenced our ordinary perceptions
Explaining the hypnosis
state
• Hypnosis as divided consciousness
o Ernest Hilgard believed a special state of dissociation (a split between
different levels of consciousness)
o Ex: hypnosis dissociates the sensation of the pain stimulus (cold water)
• Today:
o More to thinking and acting than we are conscious of
o New theory: Hypnosis is an extension of both normal principles of social
influenced and of everyday dissociations between our conscious
awareness and our automatic behaviors
PSA Presentations on
Drugs
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Be sure to answer the following:
side effects of use of the drug
Addictiveness
category it falls under and why
a problem of some sort
all members must speak
statistics encouraged
• Alcohol, Heroin, Caffeine Meth, Cocaine, Nicotine,
Ecstasy, Marijuana