Chapter 7 States of Consciousness

Consciousness  Consciousness  our awareness of ourselves and our environments

Consciousness Waking Consciousness  What you are currently aware of and attending to  Linear (serial) processing  The result of cognitive processing

Consciousness Subconsciousness  That which lies just below your waking consciousness  Easily accessible  Parallel processing

Consciousness Unconsciousness  Reactions and processing outside our awareness

Altered States of Consciousness Sleep and Dreams Hypnosis Chemically altered states

Sleep and Dreams  Sleep  periodic, natural, reversible loss of consciousness  Circadian Rhythm  the biological clock  regular bodily rhythms that occur on a 24-hour cycle, such as of wakefulness and body temperature

Sleep and Dreams Stage 1  Lasts up to 5 minutes  Hallucinations  Hypnogogic experience Stage 2  20 minutes  Sleep spindles  Sleep talking may occur

Sleep and Dreams Stage 3  Transitional stage  Lasts only a few minutes Stage 4  Brain emits delta waves  Lasts 30 minutes  Sleep walking, bed wetting may occur  You can still process the outside world

Brain Waves and Sleep Stages  Alpha Waves  slow waves of a relaxed, awake brain  Delta Waves  large, slow waves of deep sleep

Stages in a Typical Night’s Sleep Sleep stages Awake Hours of sleep REM

Stages in a Typical Night’s Sleep Hours of sleep Minutes of Stage 4 and REM Decreasing Stage 4 Increasing REM

Sleep and Dreams  REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep  recurring sleep stage  vivid dreams  “paradoxical sleep”  muscles are generally relaxed, but other body systems are active

Sleep Deprivation  Effects of Sleep Loss  fatigue  impaired concentration  depressed immune system  greater vulnerability to accidents

Sleep Disorders  Insomnia  persistent problems in falling or staying asleep  Narcolepsy  uncontrollable sleep attacks  Sleep Apnea  temporary cessation of breathing  momentary reawakenings

Night Terrors and Nightmares  Night Terrors  occur within 2 or 3 hours of falling asleep, usually during Stage 4  high arousal-- appearance of being terrified Sleep stages Awake Hours of sleep REM

Dreams What are dreams made of?

Dreams: Freud  Sigmund Freud--The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)  wish fulfillment  discharge otherwise unacceptable feelings  Manifest Content  remembered story line  Latent Content  underlying meaning

Dreams: Freud  Dreams  Dream is a safe outlet for the mind  Deals with unacceptable thoughts and emotions  Manifest content is the “dressed up” symbolic version of the unconscious  Most adult dreams have strong sexual undertones  Dream interpenetration is the “royal road to the unconscious”

Dreams: Information processing  As Information Processing  Dreams serve to sift and sort memories of our daily experiences  Helps us to better process and store memories and learning from the previous day

Dreams: Information processing Support for theory  REM sleep increases following a stressful experience and intense learning experiences  People will perform worse on a memory test if kept from dreaming the night before

Dreams: Activation-synthesis Neural activity is random and dreams are your brain’s attempt to make sense of it Your brain tries to impose meaning on meaningless stimuli

Dreams: Activation-synthesis Support  Eye movement of REM sleep coincides with bursts of neural activity in the visual cortex  Would account for random and bizarre occurrences in dreams

Dreams: Physiological Function Dreams serve to provide neural stimulation for a sleeping brain Stimulation of the neural pathways strengthens connections and makes processing faster and more efficient

Dreams: Physiological Function Support  Infants and children experience longer periods of REM sleep than adults.  REM sleep periods decrease as we age

Sleep Across the Lifespan

Dreams So which is the best theory?