States of Consciousness

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States of Consciousness

• Things never were the way they used to be.
• Things will never be the way its going to be
  someday.
• Things are always just the way they are for the
  time being.
• And the time is always in motion.
• Alexander Evangeli Xenopouloudakis

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What is consciousness?

• Awareness of ones own mental activity
• Personal
• Can be selective
• Consciousness is continuous
• and ever-changing
• Klinger (1978)

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• In performing an experiment like this one on man
  attention car it house is boy critically hat
  important shoe that candy the old material horse
  that tree is pen being phone read cow by book the
  hot subject tape for pin the stand relevant view
  task sky be red cohesive man and car
  grammatically house complete boy but hat without
  shoe either candy being horse so tree easy pen
  that phone full cow attention book is hot not
  tape required pin in stand order view to sky read
  red it nor too difficult

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Attentional Processes

• Selective Attention
• The ability to focus awareness on a single
  stimulus to the exclusion of other stimuli
• Cocktail party phenomenon
• Divided attention
• The ability to distribute ones attention and
  simultaneously engage in two or more activities

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Mental Control Thought Suppression

• Wegner and colleagues (1987)
• Can we at suppress our thoughts?
• IV 2 (orderexpression/suppression X
  suppression/expression)
• DV of rings of bell (to indicate thinking of
  white bear) and mentions of white bear
• Rebound effect
• Stereotypes, dieting
• Generally good control but
• sometimes we fail

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Daydream Believer

• Imaginary scenes events that occur while awake
• When do they happen?
• Possible functions
• Mental rehearsal
• Mental arousal when bored
• Problem solving (practical creative)
• Pleasure

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Biological Rhythms

• Periodic fluctuations in physiological
  functioning
• Four cycles
• Yearly
• 28-day
• Circadian (24 hours)
• 90 minutes

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Circadian Rhythm

• Influences sleep wakefulness
• As well as
• Blood pressure
• Hormones
• Body temperature
• Humans drift toward 25-hour cycle because of
  advances in technology
• Syprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN)
• Controls our timing device for our circadian
  rhythm

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Sleep IQ Test

• 1. During sleep your brain rests.
• 2. You can not learn to function normally with
  one or two fewer hours of sleep a night than you
  need.
• 3. Boredom makes you feel sleepy, even if you
  have had enough sleep.
• 4. Resting in bed with your eyes closed cannot
  satisfy your bodys need for sleep.
• 5. Snoring is not harmful, as long as it doesnt
  disturb others or wake you up.
• 6. Everyone dreams at night.

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Sleep IQ Test

• 7. The older you get, the fewer hours of sleep
  you need.
• 8. Most people dont know when they are sleepy.
• 9. Raising the volume of your radio will help you
  stay awake while driving.
• 10. Sleep disorders are mainly due to worry or
  psychological problems.
• 11. The human body never adjusts to night shift
  work.
• 12. Most sleep disorders go away, even without
  treatment.

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Sleep IQ Answers

• 1. During sleep your brain rests.
• False While your body rests, your brain
  doesnt.
• 2. You can not learn to function normally with
  one or two fewer hours of sleep a night than you
  need.
• True Sleep need is biological. While children
  need more sleep than adults, how much sleep any
  individual needs is genetically determined.
• 3. Boredom makes you feel sleepy, even if you
  have had enough sleep.
• False Boredom only unmasks sleepiness, but it
  doesnt cause it.

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Sleep IQ Answers

• 4. Resting in bed with your eyes closed cannot
  satisfy your bodys need for sleep.
• True Sleep is as necessary to health as food
  and water, and rest is no substitute for sleep.
• 5. Snoring is not harmful, as long as it doesnt
  disturb others or wake you up.
• False Snoring may be a signal for sleep apnea
  (which can be fatal if untreated).
• 6. Everyone dreams at night.
• True Every person dreams every night its
  just that some of us cant remember much of our
  dreams.

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Sleep IQ Answers

• 7. The older you get, the fewer hours of sleep
  you need.
• False Although we tend to sleep less, our need
  for sleep doesnt decrease as we age.
• 8. Most people dont know when they are sleepy.
• True We are not very good judges of our
  biological need for sleep.
• 9. Raising the volume of your radio will help you
  stay awake while driving.
• False The only short-term solutions are to pull
  over and take a nap or to have a caffeinated
  drink.

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Sleep IQ Answers

• 10. Sleep disorders are mainly due to worry or
  psychological problems.
• False Sleep apnea is caused by relaxed muscles
  and narcolepsy appears to be genetic.
• 11. The human body never adjusts to night shift
  work.
• True No matter how long you work a night shift,
  sleeping during the day remains a challenge
  because of our circadian rhythms that operate on
  the light/dark schedule.
• 12. Most sleep disorders go away, even without
  treatment.
• False On average, sleep disorders do not
  disappear without treatment.

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The Stages of Sleep

• 5 stages
• First four stages are non-REM
• Fifth, and final, stage is REM
• Stage 1
• As you start this stage, brain waves go from beta
  to alpha to theta (by end of stage)
• Hypnic jerks
• Lasts about 10 minutes
• This is the transition from relaxed wakefulness
  to sleep

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The Stages of Sleep

• Stage 2
• Sleep spindles
• Lasts about 20 minutes
• Stages 3 4
• Delta wave
• Deep sleep
• Last about 30 minutes

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The Stages of Sleep

• REM
• After reverting back through stages 3 and 2, the
  brain enters the REM (rapid eye movement) stage
• Marked by more vivid, detailed, and storylike
  dreams
• We dream during all stages but these are more
  visual
• Each cycle lasts roughly 90 minutes
• Approx. 4 to 6 cycles per night
• The first time through the cycle, you only spend
  about 10 minutes in REM which increases to 30
  to 60 minutes by the last cycle

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Why do we sleep?

• Restorative theories
• Sleep rejuvenates us
• Amount of slow wave sleep depends on how long
  weve been awake
• Circadian theories
• Evolutionarily, it has survival value
• Amount of REM sleep depends on circadian rhythm

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What are dreams?

• Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be
  quietly and safely insane every night of our
  lives.
• Charles Fisher
• What are dreams?
• Electrochemical events that involve the
  brainstem, areas of the cortex, and the eyes
  flutter back and
• forth

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What do we dream about?

• Dream content
• Most common themes falling, being
  chased/attacked, repeatedly trying but failing to
  do something
• What influences the dreams we have
• Concerns of your
• everyday life
• External stimuli
• Yourself
• Lucid dreaming

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Why do we dream?

• Wish fulfillment (Freud)
• Manifest content
• Latent content
• Activation-synthesis (Hobson McCarley)
• Activation random neural signals firing in the
  brainstem that spread up to the cortex
• Synthesis the brain then creates images and
  stories in an effort to make sense out of these
  random signals
• So whos right?

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Sleep Disorders

• Insomnia
• Chronic problems in getting good sleep
• Difficulty in falling asleep, staying asleep
• Causes
• Stress, depression, health problems
• Solutions
• Sedatives arent always effective and should
  never be a long-term solution!!!
• Dont take naps during the day
• Avoid alcohol, caffeine, and cigarettes within 5
  hrs before bedtime (avoid exercise within 2 hrs)
• Keep a rigid schedule going to bed and waking
  up at the same time

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Sleep Disorders

• Hypersomnia
• Being sleepy during the day and sleeping too much
  at night
• Narcolepsy
• Parasomnias
• Sleep apnea
• Nightmares
• Night terrors
• Sleepwalking

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Meditation

• Procedure that uses mental exercises to achieve a
  highly focused state of consciousness
• TM
• Relaxation response
• Effects include
• Increased self esteem sense of control
• Overcoming insomnia, preventing smoking

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Hypnosis

• An induced state of consciousness
• Highly suggestible state
• Can influence thinking, feeling behavior
• Franz Anton Mesmer
• Animal magnetism
• Two stages of hypnosis
• Induction
• suggestion

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Hypnotic Susceptibility

• Hilgards Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale
• Roughly 10 highly hypnotizable
• Roughly 10 not hypnotizable at all
• Effects of hypnosis
• Perceptual effects
• Altering smells
• Pain relief
• Cognitive effects
• Hypermnesia vs. psuedomemories
• Behavioral effects
• Posthypnotic suggestion

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Chemically Altered Consciousness

• Psychoactive drugs
• Induce changes in thinking, perception behavior
  by affecting neuronal activity in the brain
• Four general categories
• Depressants
• Stimulants
• Hallucinogens
• Opiates