Chapter 10

Electroencephalograph (EEG)

A device that measures and amplifies tiny electrical changes on the scalp that reflect patterns of brain activity

Polysomnograph

A device that measures sleep stages using a combination of EEG and eye-movement records

Jet Lag

A period of discomfort and inefficiency while your internal clock is out of phase with your new surroundings; Most people find it easier to adjust when flying west, where they go to bed later, than when flying east, where they go to bed earlier

What evidence shows that deja vu does not always indicate that an experience was actually familiar?

A person with temporal lobe epilepsy reported an intense deja vu experience immeidately before his seizures, regardless of where he was or what he was seeing at the time

Circadian Rhythm

A rhythm of activity and inactivity lasting about a day

Spatial neglect (damage to parts of the right hemisphere)

A tendency to ignore the left side of the body, the left side of the world, or the left side of objects

According to the neurocognitive theory of dreaming, how does dreaming differ from other thinking?

According to the neurocognitive theory, dreaming is like other thinking, except that it occurs during a time of decreased sensory input and loss of voluntary control of thinking.

Phi Effect

An illusion of the light moving back and forth between the two locations

Coma

Caused by trauma or damage to the brain; the brain shows a steady but low level of activity and no response to any stimulus, including potentially painful stimuli

Minimally Conscious State

Condition in which someone has brief periods of purposeful actions and speech comprehension

Timing of consciousness

Consciousness does not occur at exactly the same time as events. We construct a conscious perception of events that already happened. We sometimes experience consciousness retroactively, not simultaneously with the events.

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep aka paradoxical sleep

During this stage of sleep, the sleeper's eyes move rapidly back and forth under the closed lids. (The other stages of sleep are known as non-REM, or NREM sleep.); people spend 20 to 25% of an average night in REM sleep

Activation-synthesis theory of dreams

Input arising from the pons activates the brain during REM sleep. The cortex takes that haphazard activity plus whatever stimuli strike the sense organs and does its best to synthesize a story to make sense of this activity (Makes few testable predictions)

Name two important functions of sleep.

Sleep conserves energy, and memories strengthen during sleep.

Binocular Rivalry

The alternation between seeing the pattern in the left retina and the pattern in the right retina

During which sleep stage is the brain least active? During which stage are the muscles least active?

The brain is least active during stage 4 sleep. The muscles are least active during REM sleep.

Brain Death

The brain shows no activity and no response to any stimulus

Manifest content

The content that appears on the surface

Latent Content

The hidden ideas that the dream experience represents symbolically

Deja vu experience

The sense that an event is uncannily familiar; fairly common in young adults and becomes less so as people grow older

Consciousness

The subjective experience of perceiving oneself and one's surroundings

Vegetative State

They respond to some stimuli (atleast with changes in heart rate and breathing) but show no purposeful actions

REM behavior disorder

This condition causes people to fail to inhibit their muscular activity during REM and as a result, they sometimes walk around flailing their arms.

Suprachiassmatic Nucleus

Tiny structure at the base of the brain that generates the circadian rhythm of sleep and wakefullness; regulates the pineal gland's secretion of the hormone melatonin which is important for the daily rhythm of sleep

Neurocognitive Theory

Treats dreams as a kind of thinking that occurs under special conditions; these conditions include persisting activity of much of the cortex, reduced sensory stimulation, especially in the brain's primary sensory areas, and loss of voluntary control of thinking (Makes few testable predictions)

Sleep spindles

Waves of activity at about 12-14 per second; marks Stage 2; result from an exchange of information between the cerebral cortex and the underlying thalamus; important for storing memory