CONSCIOUSNESS AND
THE TWO-TRACK MIND
Chapter 3
Key Concepts
• Awareness
• Much of what our brain does is done without our conscious
awareness.
• Attention
• Divided attention, selective attention
• Sleep
• Stages of sleep
• Why do we sleep?
• Dreams
• What are dreams and why do we have them?
• Disorders of Sleep
• Hypnosis
Processing
The unconscious mind processes information
simultaneously on multiple tracks, while the conscious
mind processes information sequentially. Much of what are brain does
is done without our conscious awareness
Conscious Mind
Unconscious Mind
In performing an experiment like this one on
man attention car it house is boy critically
hat important shoe that candy the old
material horse that tree is pen being phone
read cow by book the hot subject tape for
pin the stand relevant view task sky be red
cohesive man and car grammatically house
complete boy but hat without shoe either
candy being horse so tree easy pen that
phone full cow attention book is hot not tape
required pin in stand order view to sky read
red it nor too difficult
Attentional Processes
• Selective Attention
• The ability to focus awareness on a single stimulus to the exclusion
of other stimuli
• Cocktail party phenomenon
• Divided attention
• The ability to distribute one’s attention and simultaneously engage
in two or more activities
Daydreams
• Imaginary scenes & events that occur while awake
• When do they happen?
• Possible functions:
• Mental rehearsal
• Mental arousal when bored
• Problem solving (practical & creative)
• Pleasure
Biological Rhythms
• Periodic fluctuations in physiological functioning
• Four cycles:
• Yearly
• 28-day
• Circadian (24 hours)
• 90 minutes (sleep cycle)
Circadian Rhythm
• A 24 hour cycle of varying
Arousal and awakeness.
• Influences sleep & wakefulness
• As well as:
• Blood pressure
• Hormones
• Body temperature – rises close to
Morning, peaks midday, drops
Before sleep
• Suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN)  part of the
hypothalamus
• Light tells the SCN to decrease melatonin from the pineal gland
(morning) and increase it at night fall.
• Drifting toward a 25 hour cycle because of technology
Other biological rhythms
• Ultradian Rhythm – Those that occur more than once
each day. Include cycles of appetite and hormonal
release.
• Infradian rhythm – those that occur once per month.
• Annual cycles (see next slide)
Annual Cycles
• On an annual cycle, geese migrate, grizzly bears
hibernate, and humans experience seasonal variations in
appetite, sleep, and mood.
• Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a mood disorder
people experience during dark winter months related to
lack of sufficient exposure.
• Almost no one who lives at the equator suffers
from SAD
• 1 percent of Florida residents
• 4 percent of Washington, D.C., residents
• 9 percent of Alaska residents.
Sleep IQ Test
1. During sleep your brain rests.
2. You can not learn to function normally with
one or two fewer hours of sleep a night than
you need.
3. Boredom makes you feel sleepy, even if you
have had enough sleep.
4. Resting in bed with your eyes closed cannot
satisfy your body’s need for sleep.
5. Snoring is not harmful, as long as it doesn’t
disturb others or wake you up.
6. Everyone dreams at night.
Sleep IQ Test
7. The older you get, the fewer hours of sleep you
need.
8. Most people don’t know when they are sleepy.
9. Raising the volume of your radio will help you
stay awake while driving.
10. Sleep disorders are mainly due to worry or
psychological problems.
11. The human body never adjusts to night shift
work.
12. Most sleep disorders go away, even without
treatment.
Sleep IQ Answers
1. During sleep your brain rests.
False: While your body rests, your brain doesn’t.
2. You can not learn to function normally with one or
two fewer hours of sleep a night than you need.
True: Sleep need is biological. While children need more
sleep than adults, how much sleep any individual needs is
genetically determined.
3. Boredom makes you feel sleepy, even if you have
had enough sleep.
False: Boredom only unmasks sleepiness, but it doesn’t
cause it.
Sleep IQ Answers
4. Resting in bed with your eyes closed cannot satisfy
your body’s need for sleep.
True: Sleep is as necessary to health as food and water, and
rest is no substitute for sleep.
5. Snoring is not harmful, as long as it doesn’t disturb
others or wake you up.
False: Snoring may be a signal for sleep apnea (which can
be fatal if untreated).
6. Everyone dreams at night.
True: Every person dreams every night – it’s just that some of
us can’t remember much of our dreams.
Sleep IQ Answers
7. The older you get, the fewer hours of sleep you
need.
False: Although we tend to sleep less, our need for sleep
doesn’t decrease as we age.
8. Most people don’t know when they are sleepy.
True: We are not very good judges of our biological need for
sleep.
9. Raising the volume of your radio will help you stay
awake while driving.
False: The only short-term solutions are to pull over and take
a nap or to have a caffeinated drink.
Sleep IQ Answers
10. Sleep disorders are mainly due to worry or
psychological problems.
False: Sleep apnea is caused by relaxed muscles and
narcolepsy appears to be genetic.
11. The human body never adjusts to night shift work.
True: No matter how long you work a night shift, sleeping
during the day remains a challenge because of our circadian
rhythms that operate on the light/dark schedule.
12. Most sleep disorders go away, even without
treatment.
False: On average, sleep disorders do not disappear without
treatment.
The Stages of Sleep
• 5 stages, characterized by different brain activity
• First four stages are non-REM
• Fifth, and final, stage is REM
• We pass through a cycle of the 5 stages about every 90 minutes,
or about 4 to 6 cycles per night. As sleep continues the amount of
time spent in each stage changes.
Awake and Alert
• During strong mental engagement, the brain exhibits low
amplitude and fast, irregular Beta waves (15‐30 cps). An
awake person involved in a conversation shows beta
activity.
Awake but Relaxed
When you close your eyes but remain awake, brain activity
slows to Alpha waves, large amplitude, slow and regular.
• A meditating person exhibits alpha waves in their brain
Stage 1
• Light sleep lasting about 10 minutes
• As you start this stage, brain waves go from beta to alpha to theta
(by end of stage)
• This is the transition from relaxed wakefulness to sleep
• You can be easily awakened and may think you had not been
asleep at all
• May experience hallucinations (sensory experience with sensory
stimulus) and hypnagogic sensations such as the sensation of
falling or floating.
Stage 2
• About 20 minutes
• More deeply relaxed but still light sleep (still showing theta
waves) and can be easily awakened
• Characterized by the appearance of Sleep Spindles
• Bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain-wave activity
• Sleep talking can occur.
Stage 3 and 4
• Stage 3 is transitional stage lasting a few minutes
• Stage 3 and 4 together last about 30 minutes
• Brain begins emitting big, slow delta waves in stage 3 and
increasingly into stage 4.
• Deep sleep
• Sleepwalking and bedwetting occur toward the end of stage 4
• Nightmares, night terrors are also stage 4 sleep disorders
REM
• Rapid Eye Movement
• About an hour after falling asleep, you revert back through
stages 3 and 2, and then enter REM sleep
• Brain activity during REM resembles stage 1 but heart
rate rises, breathing rate becomes rapid and irregular, and
eyes dart around every half minute or so (mark beginning
of a dream).
• Marked by more vivid, detailed, and storylike dreams
• We dream during all stages but these are more visual
REM
• Approx. 4 to 6 cycles per night
• The first time through the cycle, you only spend about 10
minutes in REM – this increases to 30 to 60 minutes by the last
cycle
• Called Paradoxical Sleep because the brain, including the
motor cortex is active but the brainstem blocks its messages to
the body – sleep paralysis
Brain in Non-REM
sleep, experiencing
mild auditory
stimulation
Brain in REM
sleep
90 Minute Sleep Cycles
• With each 90‐minute cycle, stage 4 sleep decreases and the
duration of REM sleep increases.
• When deprived of sleep and then allowed to sleep, we
experience REM Rebound
Question?
What is it that makes us sleepy? Is
it physical exertion or mental
exertion?
Why do we sleep?
• Sleep and Memory, Learning, and Creative thinking
• Sleep and Growth
• During sleep, the pituitary gland releases growth hormone
• Older people release less hormone and sleep less
• Restorative theories
• Sleep rejuvenates us, helps restore brain tissue
• Amount of slow wave sleep depends on how long we’ve been
awake
• Circadian theories
• Evolutionarily, it has survival value,
• Neural mechanism evolved over time to minimize exposure to
predators and conserve energy.
• This theory supported by the fact that there are species-specific
differences in sleep patterns.
What happens When We Are Deprived of
Sleep?
• Fatigue and eventually death, if sleeplessness continues
past as certain point
• Impaired concentration/cognitive
function
• Emotional irritability.
• Depressed immune system.
• The hormones cortisol and ghrelin
increase, and leptin decreases
Sleep and Accidents
• Frequency of accidents increases with loss of sleep
What are dreams?
• What are dreams?
• Electrochemical events that involve the brainstem, areas of the
cortex, and the eyes
What do we dream about?
• Dream content
• 8 out of 10 dreams have negative emotional content
• Most common themes: falling, being chased/attacked, repeatedly
trying but failing to do something
• What influences the dreams we have
• Concerns of your
everyday life
• External stimuli
• Yourself
• Lucid dreaming
Why do we dream?
• Wish fulfillment (Freud)
• Manifest content
• Latent content
• Activation-synthesis (Hobson & McCarley)
• Activation: random neural signals firing in the brainstem
that spread up to the cortex
• Synthesis: the brain then creates images and stories in
an effort to make sense out of these random signals
• Information Processing
• Dreams help sift through a days experience and fix it in our
memory
Why Do We Dream?
Physiological Function
• Dreams provide the sleeping brain with periodic
stimulation to develop
and preserve neural
pathways.
• Neural networks of
newborns are quickly
developing; therefore,
they need more sleep.
Sleep Disorders
• Insomnia
• Chronic problems in getting good sleep
• Difficulty in falling asleep, staying asleep
• Causes
• Stress, depression, health problems
• Solutions
• Sedatives aren’t always effective and should never be a long-term
solution
• Don’t take naps during the day
• Avoid caffeine and don’t exercise close to bed time
• Practice good sleep hygiene
Sleep Disorders
• Hypersomnia
• Being sleepy during the day and sleeping too much at night
• Narcolepsy – overpowering urge to fall asleep that may occur
during walking or standing or be triggered by stress
• Parasomnias
• Sleep apnea – breathing stops during sleep and the person is
repeatedly awakened by oxygen deprivations
• Nightmares
• Night terrors – sudden arousal from
sleep with intense fear, mostly in children
• Sleepwalking (somnambulism)
Hypnosis
• A social interaction in which one person suggests to
another that certain behaviors, perceptions, feelings or
thoughts will spontaneously occur.
• Ernest Hilgard - Hypnosis involves social influence and a
state of dissociation – a split between levels of
consciousness
• Two stages of hypnosis
• Induction
• suggestion
Hypnotic Susceptibility
• Hilgard’s Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale
• Roughly 10% highly hypnotizable
• Roughly 10% not hypnotizable at all
• Effects of hypnosis
• Perceptual effects
• Altering smells
• Pain relief
• Cognitive effects
• Hypermnesia vs. psuedomemories
• Behavioral effects
• Posthypnotic suggestion – Suggestion carried out after the person is no
longer hypnotised
• Posthypnotic amnesia – supposed inability to recall what one
experienced while hypnotised
Is hypnosis an altered state of
consciousness?
Social Influence Theory:
• Hypnotic subjects may
simply be imaginative
actors playing a social role.
Divided Consciousness
Theory:
• Hypnosis is a special state
of dissociated (divided)
consciousness
(Hilgard,1986, 1992).
Hilgard, 1992
Unified Account of Hypnosis
The Third Man Factor
• There have been stories of people at the very edge of
death, often adventurers or explorers, who experience
a sense of an incorporeal being beside them who
encourages them to make one final effort to survive.
• Is this hallucination? A form of self hypnosis? An
extreme coping mechanism?
• One study of cases showed that the largest group of
people who have experienced it involved climbers,
followed by solo sailors and shipwreck survivors,
followed by polar explorers.
• Is this at all related to childhood imaginary friends?
Third Man Factor
• Shared phenomenon: Sir Ernest Shackleton (second from left) and his team
all sensed another person with them while on a treacherous Antarctic
expedition
Chemically Altered Consciousness
• Psychoactive drugs
• Induce changes in thinking, perception & behavior by affecting
neuronal activity in the brain
• Four general categories
• Depressants
• Stimulants
• Hallucinogens
• Opiates
Dependence & Addiction
• Continued use of a
psychoactive drug
produces tolerance. With
repeated exposure to a
drug, the drug’s effect
lessens. Thus it takes
greater quantities to get
the desired effect.
Expectations
• The effect that any drug has on mood or behavior is also
influenced by a person’s expectations of how that drug will
effect them.
Withdrawal & Dependence
• Withdrawal: Upon stopping use of a drug
(after addiction), users may experience the
undesirable effects of withdrawal.
• Dependence: Absence of a drug may lead to a
feeling of physical pain, intense cravings
(physical dependence), and negative emotions
(psychological dependence).
Depressants
Depressants are drugs that reduce neural activity
and slow body functions. They include:
• Alcohol
• Barbiturates
• Opiates
Alcohol
Alcohol affects motor skills, judgment, and
memory…and increases aggressiveness while
reducing self awareness.
Barbiturates
Drugs that depress the activity of the central nervous
system, reducing anxiety but impairing memory and
judgment. Nembutal, Seconal, and Amytal are some
examples.
Opiates
Opium and its derivatives (morphine
and heroin) depress neural activity,
temporarily lessening pain and
anxiety. They are highly addictive.
Stimulants
Stimulants are drugs that excite neural activity and speed
up body functions.
1. Caffeine
2. Nicotine
3. Cocaine
4. Ecstasy
5. Amphetamines
6. Methamphetamines
Caffeine & Nicotine
Caffeine and nicotine increase heart and
breathing rates and other autonomic functions to
provide energy. This energy comes at a cost though.
The half life of caffeine is such that the cup of coffee you
drink today will affect your sleep tomorrow night. Caffeine
can make you feel jittery, irritable, dehydrated, headachy,
anxious, and sweaty.
Amphetamines
Amphetamines stimulate neural activity, causing
accelerated body functions and associated energy and
mood changes, with devastating effects.
MDMA or “Ecstasy”
Ecstasy or
Methylenedioxymethamphet
amine (MDMA) is a
stimulant and mild
hallucinogen. It produces a
euphoric high and can
damage serotonin‐producing
neurons, which results in a
permanent deflation of mood
and impairment of memory.
Cocaine
Induces immediate euphoria followed by a
crash. Cocaine molecules bind to sites on
the neuron that normally reabsorb
neurotransmitter molecules. Cocaine
blocks reuptake of dopamine,
norepinephrine, and serotonin, so that the
extra neurotransmitter molecules remain
in the synapse and their effects are
intensified.
Hallucinogens
Hallucinogens are drugs that distort perceptions and evoke
sensory images in the absence of sensory input.
LSD: (lysergic acid diethylamide) powerful
hallucinogenic drug (ergot fungus) that is
also known as acid.
THC (delta‐9‐tetrahydrocannabinol): is the
major active ingredient in marijuana (hemp
plant) that triggers a variety of effects,
including mild hallucinations.
Drug Use