1. Altered States of Consciousness & Amnesia

2. I. Altered States of Consciousness: Causes and Consequences A. Circadian rhythms: cycles of activity and inactivity generally lasting about one day. 1) Your degree of alertness depends both upon where you are in your circadian rhythms and how long you have been awake. B. Shifting Sleep Schedules 1) Jet Lag: the period of weariness and discomfort that occurs while your body clock is out of step with your new time zone. 2) Monday Morning Brain Fog 3) Shift Work

3. C. Rapid-Eye Movement (REM): the sleeper’s eyes are moving rapidly around under the closed eyelids. D. Paranoia: a thought process heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. E. Insomnia: lack of sleep. F. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): A prolonged period of anxiety and depression following the experience of an extremely stressful event.

4. II. Amnesia A. Repression: the process of moving an unbearably unacceptable memory or impulse from the conscious mind to the unconscious mind. B. Dissociation: a stored memory that cannot be retrieved. C. Amnesia: a severe loss or deterioration of memory or the inability to store or retrieve memory.

5. D. Dissociative Amnesia: a memory disorder characterized by extreme memory loss that is caused by extensive psychological stress in the absence of structural brain damage or a known neurobiological cause. There is the presence of… 1) Retrograde Amnesia: the inability to retrieve stored memories leading up to the onset of amnesia. There is an absence of… 2) Anterograde Amnesia: the inability to form new long term memories.

6. There are two types of Dissociative Amnesia… 1) Dissociative Fugue (Fugue State): a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality and other identifying characteristics of individuality. 2) Situation-Specific Amnesia: occurs as a result of a severely stressful event, as in PTSD, child sexual abuse, military combat, major accidents, witnessing a family member's murder or suicide, etc.