5.2 altered states of consciousness Flashcards
female students dreams
tended to dream about failing
losing control and menacing animals
(negative things)
male students dreams
having supernatural powers
meeting aliens
(positive dreams)
less fear based than student females dreams
why do we dream?
sigmund freud (1st idea of dreams)
dreams as wish-fulfillment
(two main categories of goals we desire are sexuality and aggression)
we are not able to express these desires most of our lives, freud says dreaming allows us to let of steam which reality doesn’t allow us to express
dreams as wish-fulfillment
if true the content of our dreams provide us with insight with what we want deep down inside of our conscious minds
(two main categories of goals we desire are sexuality and aggression-according to freud)
manifest content
latent content
dream work
manifest content
the actual images and experiences we have while dreaming
(that we would like to happen)
manifest content matches the wish you would enjoy fulfilling
latent content
the true meaning of our dreams - our deep unconscious desires - lying at the root of the symbols that form the manifest content of our dreams
dream work
a psychoanalysis technique in which the client records their dreams and the analyst tries to interpret their true meaning
interpretation of dreams flowchart
one of the many criticisms is that freudian dream analysis is inherently gender biased and overly focused on childhood experiences
(appeals to common sense a lot-no scientific way to prove the content of the dream is what freud claims it means)
there could be more than one interpretation
psychoanalysis is now considered
pseudoscience
the activation-synthesis hypothesis
(most excepted theory-dreaming serves no purpose at all)
while we sleep and particularly during the REM stage of sleep the pons in our brain stem sends random bursts of neural activity up to the rest of the brain this activity causes rapid eye movements and stimulates the visual auditory and other centres of the brain that we rely on to experience real world sensations, as a result the activity causes us to have detailed sensory experiences even without any actual sensory inputs. that is the activation part of the process, the synthesis part comes from higher parts of the brain, probably our frontal lobes,organizing the sensory experiences activated by the pons into a coherent story, which can be difficult given the randomness of the activity that the pons generates, sometimes the more sophisticated parts of our brains succeed in putting things together in a dream that isn’t to absurd and has sort of a sensible structure, but other times the synthesis fails and results in dreams that are chaotic
the activation-synthesis hypothesis
support for the theory comes from evidence that:
- the pons produces bursts of activity that result in the characteristic features of REM sleep
- the pons connects with precisely the brain areas that provide us with visual, auditory and tactile sensations
- the majority of dreams occur during the REM stage of sleep, which is also when the pons is most active
problem solving theory of dreaming
perhaps dreams provide a way to work through life problems?
(however there is no definitive explanation for what dreaming is for
disorders of consciousness
brain death coma persistent vegetative state minimally conscious state locked in state
brain death
a condition in which no part of the brain is functional, but life support machines may keep vital organs going (eg. heart and lungs)
Coma
the brain still functions somewhat, but the person still remains unconscious and unaware of their surroundings
