Chap7 Consciousness Sleep RV 2018 and Sensation
Chap7 Consciousness Sleep RV 2018 and Sensation
sense of reality?
Consciousness and altered states
Chapter 7: States of Consciousness
Life is made up of many kinds of conscious
awareness
When you say, “I am” what are you referring to?
Who is the “you?” What is the “you” you are
talking about?
What is consciousness?
Slippery and difficult to define but we say that
it is our awareness of ourselves and our
environment
The aware part of dual processing
We change between different states of consciousness
Psych AP Chapter 7 3
Wide Awake:
Normal waking consciousness
Three varieties of normal waking consciousness:
directed consciousness
flowing consciousness
daydreaming
Directed consciousness
a focused and orderly “one tracked” awareness
centered on a specific stimulus
Ex. First learning to drive
Psych AP Chapter 7 4
Normal waking consciousness
Flowing consciousness
a drifting, unfocused awareness
your awareness (attention) moves at
random from attention to one stimulus
to another
Psych AP Chapter 7 5
Daydreaming!!!
Daydreams
focused and directed thinking, like directed consciousness, but
these involve fantasies (and not stimuli immediately at hand)
Psych AP Chapter 7 6
Circadian rhythms
Sleep is one of the cycles that the body does daily.
These cycles are called “circadian rhythms” (from
the Latin circa “about” and diem “day”) and the
body typically operates on a cycle of about 24 hours
Consider it your internal biological clock
Psych AP Chapter 7 8
Sleeping
NREM 1
NREM 2
NREM 3
9
Brain Waves & Sleep Stages
Psych AP Chapter 7 10
States of light and deep sleep
NREM 1 sleep:
the brain is slowing down from calm awake,
alpha waves
May experience:
hypnagogic images – vivid visual events
resembling hallucinations – sensory
experiences without a sensory stimulus
hypnic jerk – knees, legs, or whole body
jerks
Nobody knows for sure what causes them, but
some feel they represent the side effects of a
‘battle for control’
States of light and deep sleep
NREM 2 sleep:
the brain is slowing further
Sleep spindles – periodic bursts of rapid, rhythmic
brain-wave activity
Approximately 20 minutes
(but half the night)
NREM 3:
Slow wave sleep – brain emits large, slow delta waves
You are hard to wake up
At the end of the deep, slow-wave NREM 3 sleep that
children might wet the bed
Approx 30 minutes
REM sleep
Rapid Eye Movement
Dream Sleep
Emergent sleep: the brain begins to be more active;
returns to beta wave pattern of wakefulness though
you are still asleep
Approximately an hour after first falling asleep
Motor cortex is active but brainstem blocks the
messages – muscles are relaxed
Heart rate rises, breathing is rapid and irregular and
every half minute your eyes dart around (announce
the beginning of a dream)
Psych AP Chapter 7 13
Sleeping and dreaming
Dream Sleep
beta-wave brain activity (like when you are
wide awake) is present and REM (rapid eye
movement) activity is present
most people generally dream more than
once in a single night; virtually everyone
dreams every night
Psych AP Chapter 7 15
Over the years…
Psych AP Chapter 7 16
Sleeping and dreaming
Why do we sleep and dream?
What good is it to sleep and dream anyway?
Isn’t it a waste of about 33% of your life?
NO! Sleep and dreaming is important to
maintain normal psychological functioning
Sleep deprivation studies show that going
more than 40 hours without sleep leads to
forgetting, irritation, poor judgment, and
other symptoms
Sleeping and dreaming
18
Current understandings are of five
reasons why we sleep:
Protection
Safe to lie asleep in the cave instead of in harm’s way
(falling off cliffs)
Recuperation
Helpsto restore and repair brain tissue – high waking
metabolism creates free radicals which are toxic to
neurons
Can also prune weak or unused connections
19
Current understandings are of five
reasons:
Restoreand Build our fading memories of the
day’s experiences
Consolidates our memories – strengthens and
stabilizes neural memory traces
Better retention of material if you sleep after
training than if you continue awake
Supports Growth
Pituitarygland releases growth hormone
necessary for muscle development
Regularfull night sleep dramatically
improves athletic ability
21
Psych AP Chapter 7 22
Sleeping and dreaming
1. Binocular cues
Depth cues that depend on the use
of two eyes
2. Monocular cues
Depth cues that depend one eye
alone
Binocular Cues
Retinal disparity
the difference between the images seen by each eye
our brains combine the images from both eyes and
use the disparity to determine distance
the larger the disparity the closer object
Convergence
the more we turn our eyes inwards (towards our nose) to look
at an object, the closer it must be to us – brain notes the angle
of convergence
Monocular Cues
Relative clarity – We
perceive hazy objects
as farther away than
clear objects
Texture gradient – coarse
defined textures are
perceived as closer
than fine indistinct
textures.
Perceived lightness
changes with context
and remember colour is
contextual
Old or young
woman?
Remember - you
can’t see both as
the same time