Psychology reading notes chapter 5

September 21, 2011

Consciousness pages 165-185

-Sleep paralysis is the state of being unable to move just after falling asleep, or
right before waking up. It can be accompanied by nightmares and hallucinations of
humming noises, or terrifying figures. Caused by a disruption in the sleep cycle.
-Consciousness is our experience of our bodies in the world, and our mental
perspective
-Our awareness changes based on external stimuli, and how our internal body
adapts to daily living
-Scientists dont know why we sleep
-Circadian rhythm: cyclical changes (hormone release, body temperature,
drowsiness, brain waves) that occur over about 24 hours
-The neurons in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus comprise
the brains biological clock, which makes us feel drowsy
-Melatonin makes us feel tired after dark
-Most people need 7-10 hours of sleep. Newborns need 16.
-Lack of sleep can cause depression, lack of attention, and slower reaction times
-Long-term lack of sleep can lead to heart problems, diabetes, obesity, and a
compromised immune system
-Rapid Eye Movement (REM) is the stage of sleep we you have the most vivid
dreams. NREM sleep is the stage when your eyes arent moving
-5 stages of sleep, cycling through lasts about 90 minutes
STAGE 1:
-Theta waves (4-7 times p/s, slower than beta and alpha waves)
-5-10 minutes
-Scrambled and bizarre dream-like images
-Jerking limbs
STAGE 2:
-Spend as much as 65% of sleeping time there
-Brain waves slow down even more
-Sudden bursts of electrical activity called sleep spindles and K complexes
-Brain activity slows; temperature goes down, no eye movement (relaxing)
STAGE 3 & 4:
-Occurs after about 10-30 minutes
-Delta waves (1-2 cycles per second) appear 20-50 percent of the time
-Deep sleep
-Alcohol suppresses delta waves
-Children spend up to 40 percent of their sleep in deep sleep, while adults
only spend about 25 percent of their sleep in deep sleep
STAGE 5: REM SLEEP
-15-30 minutes in stage 3&4 we return to stage 2 before abruptly entering
stage 5
-High frequency, low amplitude waves
-Increased heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing
-25 percent of our sleep time
-Lasts 10-20 minutes before going back to the earlier stages and the cycle
repeats
-Amount of time spent in REM sleep increases each cycle
-82 percent of REM periods are associated with dreaming, compared with 23
percent of NREM periods
-REM dreams more crazy than NREM dreams
-If you miss REM sleep for a few nights, your dreams will be more intense the next
time you get it
-Function of moving eyes unknown
-Middle ear muscular activity is when the inner ear engages during dreaming, as if
hearing the sounds in the dream
-REM sleep is a functioning brain with a paralyzed body
-Lucid dreaming: Knowing your having a dream while dreaming (maybe you can
control your dreams)

-Insomnia is characterized by having difficulty falling asleep, waking up too early,
or frequently waking up during the night, unable to return to sleep
-Rebound insomnia occurs after one has built up a tolerance to sleeping pills
-Narcolepsy is a condition when one spontaneously falls asleep for a few seconds,
to as long as an hour. May experience cataplexy.
-Hormone, orexin, might help cure this disorder
-Sleep apnea is when something blocks the airway during sleep, causing snoring,
and shortness of breath. This can repeatedly wake a person up and cause them to
feel fatigued the next day.
-Sleep apnea can raise the risk of death
-Is associated with being overweight
-Night terrors occur when the sleeper violently starts moving around and possibly
screaming
-Often scarier to onlooker, sleeper usually remembers nothing
-Sleepwalking: Sleepwalker acts like a clumsier normal person
-Walking or performing other tasks while fully asleep
-More likely to occur in sleep deprived individuals
-Occurs in stage 3-4 of sleep cycle

-Nearly everyone experienced enhanced aggression, negative emotions, and
misfortune in their dreams than the positive counterparts
-Dreams are involved with:
a) Processing emotional memories
b) Integrating new experiences with established memories
c) Learning new ways to do things
d) Simulating difficult life experiences to make them easier to handle
e) Reorganizing and consolidating memories
-Sigmund Freud: dreams are the guardians of sleep
-Dreams let us process forbidden desires
-You need someone to interpret your dreams
-Manifest content = dream events and details
-Latent content = the meaning, or interpretation of the dream
-Most modern day scientists disagree with Freud
-Activation-Synthesis Theory claims that dreams are the result of the brain trying
to make sense of random firings (internally generated neural signals) during sleep
-REM sleep is turned on by surges of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, while
production of serotonin and norepinephrine shut down.
-Acetylcholine activates nerve cells in the pons
-Serotonin and norepinephrine are responsible for reflective thought,
reasoning, attention, and memory
-Incomplete signals sent from the pons to the lateral geniculate nucleus of
the thalamus, which relays false messages to the forebrain
-Forebrain tries to convert the jumble of messages into a coherent story
-Amygdala enhances emotions of these chaotic firings
-Damage to either the deep frontal white matter that connects the brain to the lower
cortex, or to the parietal lobes can result in total loss of dreaming

-We begin to have more memorable, adult-like, dreams, when we develop the
wiring to do so.
-Dreams tend to have normal, everyday topics
-Scientists agree that
-Acetylcholine turns on REM sleep
-The forebrain plays an important role in dreaming
Other alterations of consciousness and unusual experiences
-Hallucinations
-Realistic perceptual experiences, but without any external stimuli
-During hallucinations, the proper parts of the brain are activated
-Can be brought on by oxygen, or sensory deprivation
Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences
-OBEs
-Having the perception that you are watching your body from above, and
your sense of self is detached from your physical being
-Often accompanied by lucid dreams, hallucinations, distortions, and strange
sensations
-Can be experienced while using drugs, medicated, or under extreme stress
-You have the sensation of floating above your body, but when asked for
details of your perspective, you dont actually see what someone from that
perspective would
-Can occur when senses of touch and vision are scrambled
-NDEs
-Occur in those whove been in situations close to death
-1/4 of NDEs have experienced consciousness outside of their bodies
-Often specialized to specific religion of the area and not consistent
-Many symptoms can be explained by the chemical reactions of the dying
body
-Dj vu
-The feeling that youve experienced something before, even though you
never have
-More common among liberal people, who are frequent travellers, and who
often record their dreams
-May be caused by an excess of dopamine in the temporal lobes
-May occur in familiar (but not exact) situations when your brain completes
the image (especially if you werent aware of the image the first time)
-Past life theory is unfalsifiable
-Mystical Experiences
-Sense of unity with world, time and space blend together, feeling of awe
-Results in more brain activity
-Hard to replicate in lab settings
-Hypnosis
-Set of techniques that provides suggestion for behavioral alterations
-Useful for treating pain, and medical complications
-More suggestible people are more susceptible to hypnosis techniques
-Dissociation Theory
-Attention, effort, and planning are carried out without arareness