Psychology Brain States & Consciousness

Blindsight

A condition in which a person can respond to a visual stimulus without consciously experiencing it

Stages of REM: NREM-3

Deepest sleep. Is is at the end of the deep, slow-wave NREM-3 sleep that children may wet the bed.

Stage 4 Sleep...

Is predominantly delta waves, and the body is at its lowest level of functioning.

Cognitive Neuroscience

the interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with cognition (including perception, thinking, memory, and language)

Consciousness helps us act....

In our long-term interests (by considering consequences) rather than merely seeking short-term pleasure and avoid pain. It also promotes our survival by anticipating how we seem to others and helping us read their minds: "he looks really angry! I'd better run!"

Is it any surprise that our sleep patterns are genetically influenced..

In studies of fraternal and identical twins, only the identical twins had strikingly similar sleep patterns and durations

Nightmares

-Bad dreams occurring in REM sleep. -Children tend to have more nightmares.

REM dreams

"hallucinations of the sleeping mind" are vivid, emotional, and bizarre—so vivid we may confuse them with reality For both women and men, 8 in 10 dreams are marked by at least one negative event or emotion Common themes are repeatedly failing in an attempt to do something; of being attacked, pursued, or rejected; or of experiencing misfortune

Insomnia

-Not being able to get to sleep, stay asleep, or get a good quality of sleep. -Can be psychological or physiological reasons for this.

Sleep Walking (somnambulism)

-Occurs during deep sleep, moving around or walking while sleeping. -more common in childhood and with boys; most ppl grow out of this by adolescence. -stage 4 sleep; along with sleep talking.

Night Terrors

-People experience extreme fear & screams or runs around during deep sleep w/o being fully awake -Occur in childhood and can be grown out of -Different then a typical nightmare

REM behavior disorder

-People thrash around and even get up and act our their nightmare

Sleep Apnea

-People will stop breathing for nearly half a minute or so in their sleep. -This can also lead to heart problems.

Narcolepsy

-Where a person will fall immediately into REM sleep during the day without warning.

psychologists believe sleep may have been evolved for five reasons....

1.) Sleep protects -A species' sleep pattern tends to suit its ecological niche 2.) Sleep helps us recuperate -It helps restore and repair brain tissue 3.) Sleep helps restore and rebuild our fading memories of the day's experiences -Sleep strengthens memories in a way that being awake does not. 4.) Sleep feeds creative thinking -There is a boost that a complete night's sleep gives to our thinking and learning. After working on a task, then sleeping on it, people solve problems more insightfully than do those who stay awake 5.) Sleep supports growth -During deep sleep, the pituitary gland releases a growth hormone

why do we dream? To make sense of neural static

According to one version, dreams are the brain's attempt to make sense of random neural activity

Allowed to sleep unhindered, most adults will sleep at least 9 hours a night. With that much sleep, we awake refreshed, sustain better moods, and perform more efficient and accurate work

After a succession of 5-hour nights, we accumulate a sleep debt that need not be entirely repaid but cannot be satisfied by one long sleep. "The brain keeps an accurate count of sleep debt for at least two weeks," Dement

Sleep patterns are also culturally influenced..

Americans are nevertheless sleeping less than their counterparts a century ago

our body temp tends to fluctuate

As morning approaches body temperature rises then peaks during the day Thinking is sharpest and memory most accurate when we are at our daily peak in circadian arousal dips for a time in early afternoon (when many people take siestas) begins to drop again in the evening

The sleep cycle repeats itself about every 90 minutes for younger adults (somewhat more frequently for older adults).

As the night wears on, deep NREM-3 sleep grows shorter and disappears and the REM and NREM-2 sleep periods get longer

Older adults sleep more than young adults

False

Sleepwalkers are acting out their dreams

False

When ppl dream of performing some activity, their limbs often move in concert with the dream

False

why do we dream? To satisfy our own wishes

Freud proposed that dreams provide a psychic safety valve that discharges otherwise unacceptable feelings He viewed a dream's manifest content (the apparent and remembered story line) as a censored, symbolic version of its latent content (the unconscious drives and wishes that would be threatening if expressed directly)

Consciousness

Our awareness of ourselves and our environment. It allows us to assemble information from many sources as we reflect on our past and plan for our future it focuses our attention when we learn a complex concept or behavior

Beneath the surface, unconscious information processing occurs simultaneously on many parallel tracks

Perception, memory, thinking, language, and attitudes all operate on two levels; this is called dual processing: the principle that information is often simultaneously processed on separate conscious and unconscious tracks a conscious, deliberate "high road" an unconscious, automatic "low road"

Why do we dream? to develop and preserve neural pathways

Perhaps dreams, or the brain activity associated with REM sleep, serve a physiological function, providing the sleeping brain with periodic stimulation

Sleep

Periodic, natural, easily reversible loss of consciousness- as distinct from unconsciousness resulting from a coma, general anesthesia, or hibernation.

REM sleep:

Rapid eye movement sleep; a recurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur. Also known as paradoxical sleep, because the muscles are relaxed (except for minor twitches) but other body systems are active.

The role of melatonin..

Retinal proteins control the circadian clock by triggering signals to the brain's suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) The SCN does its job in part by causing the brain's pineal gland to decrease its production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin in the morning and to increase it in the evening

About an hour after you first fall asleep, a strange thing happens: Rather than continuing in deep slumber, you ascend from your initial sleep dive.

Returning through NREM-2 (where you spend about half your night), you enter the most intriguing sleep phase—REM sleep) For about 10 minutes, your brain waves become rapid and saw-toothed, more like those of the nearly awake NREM-1 sleep. During REM sleep your heart rate rises, your breathing becomes rapid and irregular, and every half-minute or so your eyes dart around in momentary bursts of activity behind closed lids. These eye movements announce the beginning of a dream—often emotional, usually story-like, and richly hallucinatory

why do we dream? to reflect cognitive development

Some theorists preferring to see dreams as part of brain maturation and cognitive development

Selective Attention

The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus This leads us to the "cocktail party effect": your ability to attend to only one voice among many

Why do we dream? to file away memories

The information-processing perspective proposes that dreams may help sift, sort, and fix the day's experiences in our memory

Many cognitive neuroscience discoveries tell us of a particular brain region (such as the visual cortex mentioned before) that becomes active with a particular conscious experience

There is growing evidence that we have "two minds", each supported by its own neural equipment

People rarely snore during dreams..

When REM starts, snoring stops.

In everyday life, we mostly function like an

automatic point-and-shoot camera, but with a manual (conscious) override. Running on automatic pilot allows our consciousness —our mind's CEO—to monitor the whole system and deal with new challenges, while neural assistants automatically take care of routine business Our unconscious parallel processing is faster than sequential conscious processing, but both are essential. Sequential processing is skilled at solving new problems, which require our focused attention.

Life lesson:

even in psychology we see that it's not always safe and/or easy to do two things at one (selective attention)

Change Blindness

failing to notice changes in the environment

Inattentional Blindness

failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere. a by-product of what we are really good at: focusing attention on some part of our environment Attention is powerfully selective. Your conscious mind is in one place at a time We can even apply this concept to magic: "Every time you perform a magic trick, you're engaging in experimental psychology," says the magician Teller, a master of mind-messing methods (2009).

Sleep experts recommend treating insomnia with an occasional sleeping pill

false

some ppl dream ever night; others seldom dream

false

We spend 6 years of our life..

in dreams, many of which are anything but sweet.

Stage 3 sleep..

is highlighted by the first appearance of delta waves. Delta Waves: the slowest and largest waves.

Stage 2 sleep..

is indicated by the presence of sleep spindles. sleep spindles: bursts of activity on the EEG

Stage 1 sleep..

is light sleep. Small, irregular brainwaves produced in light sleep (people may or may not say they were asleep) Hypnic Jerk: Reflex muscle contraction

Choice Blindness

lets consider the jam experience most people didnt notice that they were actually "retasting" their nonpreferred jam

More than 80 percent of the time..

recall a dream after being awakened during REM sleep

The idea that "everyone needs 8 hours of sleep" is untrue..

some of us thrive with fewer than 6 hours per night; others regularly rack up 9 hours or more

28% of auto accidents are due to..

talking and driving and/or texting and driving

circadian rhythm

the biological clock; regular bodily rhythms (for example, of temp and wakefulness) that occur on a 24-hour cycle

About every 90 minutes...

we cycle thru four distinct sleep stages

Stages of REM: NREM-2:

you are now clearly asleep

Stages of REM: NREM-1:

you may experience fantastic images resembling hallucinations. hallucinations: false sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus. To catch ur own hypnagogic experiences, you might use ur alarm's snooze function.