Ch 3- Textbook Flashcards
What is consciousness?
- Awareness of ourselves and our environment
- Awareness that we are aware
- This awareness allow us to assemble information that helps us act in our long- term interests, by considering consequences
What is cognitive neuroscience?
- The study of brain activity linked with mental processes/ cognition
What is dual- processing?
- The fact that perception, language, memory, and attitudes operate on 2 levels- a conscious, deliberate “high road”, and an unconscious, automatic “low road”.
What is blindsight?
- A condition in which a person can respond to a visual stimulus without consciously experiencing it
- People act as if they can see
- Occurs because the eye sends information simultaneously to different brain areas which support different tasks
What is the hollow face illusion?
- An example of the visual perception track (enables us to “think about the world” and plan future actions) and the visual action track (guides our moment- to- moment actions) conflicting
What is selective attention?
- Focusing our conscious awareness on a particular stimulus
Ex: The cocktail party effect
What is selective in attention?
- The fact that, at any level of conscious awareness, we are “blind” to all but a tiny sliver of visual stimuli
What is unintentional blindness?
- Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere
What does change blindness suggest?
- We fail to notice changes in the environment
Where does most information get processed during sleep?
- Outside of our conscious awareness
What are sleep stages?
- 4 distinct stages we cycle through every 90 minutes during sleep
What happens during REM sleep?
- Vivid dreams commonly occur
- Muscles are relaxed but other body systems are active
What are alpha waves and when do the occur?
- Relatively slow brain waves
- Occur in a relaxed state
What sleep stage do hallucinations and / or sensations of falling or floating occur in?
NREM- 1
What sleep stage do sleep spindles (bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain wave activity) occur in?
NREM-2
What are delta waves and what sleep stage are they most likely to occur in?
- Delta waves are large, slow waves associated with deep sleep
- Associated with NREM-3
What sleep stage do you spend 20-25% of your night in? What sleep stage do you spend about half of the night in?
- REM sleep= 20- 25%
- NREM2- 50% of the night
What do sleep theories state?
- Sleep protects
- Sleep helps us to recuperate
- Sleep helps restore and rebuild our fading memories of the day’s experiences (consolidates)
- Sleep builds creative thinking
- Sleep supports growth
What are night terrors and what sleep stage do they commonly occur in?
- A sleep disorder characterized by high arousal and an appearance of bring terrified
- Occur in stage 3
What are dreams?
- A sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person’s mind
- Notable for their hallucinatory imagery, discontinuities and incongruities, and for the dreamer’s delusional acceptance of the content and later difficulty remembering it
Why did Sigmund Freud say we dream?
- To satisfy our own wishes
- He considered dreams to be the key to understanding out inner conflicts
Why do we dream?
- To file away memories
- To develop and preserve neural pathways
- To make sense of neural static
- To reflect cognitive development
What is REM rebound?
- When people are deprived of REM sleep after repeatedly being awakened, they return more and more quickly go the REM stage after falling back to sleep
What is hypnotic ability?
- The ability to focus attention totally on a task, to become imaginatively absorbed in it, to entertain fanciful possibilities
What is dissociation?
- A split between levels of consciousness, which allows some thoughts and behaviours to occur simultaneously with others
Why might an injured athlete not notice an injury until the end of the game?
- Their attention to certain stimuli (i.e their injury) was blocked, as they were caught up in competition.
What are psychoactive drugs?
- Chemicals that change perceptions & mods
- What people with substance- realized disorders use
What form of psychoactive drug is alcohol?
- Depressant: it calms neural activity and slows bodily functions
What do stimulants do?
- Excite neural activity and speed up body functions.
- Cause energy and self- confidence to rise
Ex: caffeine, ectasy, nicotine
What is an amphetamine?
- A drug that stimulates neural activity, causing speeded- up body functions and associated energy & mood changes
What do hallucinogens do?
- Distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input.
- Heighten senses
Ex: marijuana, lsd
What are the 3 influences on drug use?
- Biological influences
- Socio- cultural influences
- Psychological influences
