Chapter 3:
States of Consciousness
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Consciousness• An awareness of ourselves and our
environment
• Selective attention to one’s ongoing thoughts, feelings, and perceptions
• Levels of information processing:
- conscious
- subconscious.
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• Consciousness - a chief executive
• Assistants - take care of routine tasks
• Altered states of consciousness
• Different
• Examples: sleep, dreaming, hypnosis, drug induced states, and near death experiences.
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Sleep and Dreaming
• Stages of sleep - stages 1, 2, 3, 4 & REM
• What distinguishes these stages?
• pattern of brain wave activity
• Electroencephalograph (EEG) - machine for monitoring neuron firing
• Five different patterns are noted during sleep.
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Brain Wave Activity and
Sleep
Page 277
Sleep Research Subject
Researcher monitors brain wave activity, muscle tension, eye movements, genital arousal, and other bodily responses (p.272).
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Dream Research Findings: Stages of Sleep
As can be seen, sleep throughout the night has a predictable pattern to it (p. 278).
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• Light sleep
• Lasts up to 5 minutes
• Some experience fantastic images, resembling hallucinations
• Example: sensations of falling or of floating weightlessly.
Sleep: Stage 1
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• You are clearly asleep
• Sleep spindles
• About 20 min. in length
Sleep: Stage 2
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• Large, slow delta waves• Called slow wave sleep
• Hard to awaken
•About 30 minutes
• End of stage 4, children sometimes walk in sleep
• Brain still processes information (selective attention)
• Stage 4 gets briefer as sleep continues.
Sleep: Stages 3 & 4
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• After going through stages 1-4, you ascend returning through stage 3 and stage 2
• You then enter REM sleep
• REM - Rapid Eye Movement (1952)
• Brain waves become rapid
• Much like nearly awake stage 1 sleep
• Important sleep; REM rebound.
Sleep: REM
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• Stages vary in length - get longer as sleep goes on
• Breathing rapid and irregular
• Heart rate rises, genital arousal
• Body paralyzed, muscles relaxed
•Motor cortex is active, but brainstem blocks its messages
• REM called paradoxical sleep. Why?
Other Characteristics of REM:
One Other Characteristic of REM:
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REM Sleep: • Awaken someone during REM, they will usually
recall a dream
• REM dreams are often emotional and story like
• REM’s protective paralysis
• Are eye movements due to watching the dream?
• REM sleep periods (dreams) get longer
• 20-25% of sleep time is dream time.
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What Do We Dream?• We spend 600 hours a year dreaming - 6 years of
our lives• 8 in 10 dreams - marked by negative emotions• Awakened during REM, males report only one in
ten dreams as being sexual. Women one in thirty• Usually dream about events in daily life• 65% of characters in men’s dreams are males.
Women 50/50 split.
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Why Do We Dream?• Sigmund Freud: manifest and latent content
• Freud - dreams allow for the expression of unconscious, anxiety-laden material
• Unconscious emerges in dreams in the form of symbols
• Wish fulfillment
• Example.
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Why Do We Dream: Another Theory
• The activation-synthesis theory
• Dreams result from random neuron firings
• Provides periodic stimulation
• Dreams - brain’s attempt to make sense of random neuron firings
• Emotion related limbic system active during REM adding emotions.
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Why Do We Sleep?• Obviously, we need sleep
• We sleep 1/3 of our lives, 25 yrs. average
• But why?
• Not an easy question to answer
• Effect of sleep deprivation - sleepiness, diminished productivity, mistakes, fatigue
• Sleep deprivation “makes you stupid”.
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Other Effects of Sleep Loss:• Suppression of the disease fighting immune
system
• Impaired creativity and concentration
• Slight hand tremors
• Slowed performance & reaction times
• Misperceptions on monotonous tasks- makes driving hazardous.
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But Still, Why Do We Sleep?• We have very few answers
• Sleep may have evolved because . . .
• Helps us recuperate, restores body tissue, especially brain
• Brain is active, perhaps, repairing and organizing itself
• However, unsure what is restored
• May play a role in the growth process.20
Sleep Disorders• Insomnia - recurring problems in falling or
staying asleep
• Narcolepsy - periodic, overwhelming sleepiness, uncontrollable sleep attacks, usually lasting less than five minutes
• Sleep apnea - characterized by temporary cessations of breathing and consequent reawakenings.
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• Night terrors - characterized by high arousal and an appearance of being terrified
• Night terrors - stage 4 sleep, within two or three hours of falling asleep
• Seldom remembered.
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Hypnosis
• A social interaction in which one person (the hypnotist) suggests to another that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur
• If instructed to forget once out of the hypnotic state, the subject will have posthypnotic amnesia, a temporary memory loss, like being unable to recall.
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• Can anyone experience hypnosis?
• Can hypnosis enhance recall of forgotten events?
• Can hypnosis force people to act against their will?
• Can hypnosis be therapeutic?
• Can hypnosis alleviate pain?
• Theory of dissociation
• Is hypnosis an altered state of consciousness?24