Ch. 4: Consciousness pt. I Flashcards
Consciousness
One’s moment by moment subjective experiences. Consciousness involves not just sensations and thoughts, but also memories and anything else you are experiencing at the moment. Sometimes viewed as a continuous stream.
Dualism definition
The philosopher Rene Descartes proposed that the mind was physically distinct from the brain. It has now obviously been discredited. The rejection of this viewpoint has coincided with psychologists’ current viewpoint that the brain and mind are inseparable.
The Global Workspace model
Proposes that consciousness arises as a function of which brain circuits are active. That is, you experience your brain regions’ output as conscious awareness. Most importantly, the Global Workspace model presents no single area of the brain responsible for general awareness.
Percentage of all injury deaths for which TBIs are responsible for
30
time period to recover from a concussion
1-2 weeks usually, but up to several weeks
Minimally conscious state
Being conscious while in a coma. Also, some people are able to move their eyes.
Unresponsive wakefullness syndrome
People who emerge from a coma s.t. their eyes are open and they have sleep/wake cycles, but cannot respond to external stimuli for more than a month. When a person is in this state they are not conscious, even though their eyes might be open. The longer such a state lasts, the less likely someone is to be able to emerge from it.
Brain death
The irreversible loss of brain function; no activity is found in any part of the brain. The main difference between this and being in a coma is a lack of any brain activity and the necessity of life support to keep someone’s heart beating. Without machinery and care, they would instantly die.
Locked-in syndrome
Have little to no muscle control while being fully conscious otherwise.
Attention
Involves being able to selectively focus on some things and avoid focusing on others.
Automatic processes
Occur when performing tasks that are so well learned that we don’t have to think much or at all while doing them (e.g. riding a bike). It might even be the case that thinking about doing one of these tasks will make it harder to do as compared with not thinking about it.
Controlled processes
Occur when performing new or complicated tasks that require people to pay attention.
Cocktail party phenomenon
Getting your attention distracted during a conversation by hearing your name called/mentioned somewhere else.
Shadowing technique
Saying something you are listening to causes you to be unable to pay attention to other sensory input. The other sensory input can still be processed however, and the person might notice that some sort of sensory input apart for that which he was repeating orally occurred.
Filter theory of the selective nature of attention
We constantly filter sensory information so as to not overwhelm our capacity to interpret it, and we do so by throwing out what we unconsciously deem to be unimportant information. An object produces a higher emotional response when it is deemed as socially relevant, and therefore is less likely to be throwing out by this filtering process. When sensory information is thrown out, however, it is still processed to some degree.
Change blindness
We are often blind to large changes in our environments because we cannot pay attention to the vast amounts of visual information available.
Sir Francis Galton
first proposed the idea of brain activity below the level of conscious awareness, in 1879
Subliminal perception
Stimuli get processed by sensory systems, but because of their brevity or subtleness, do not reach consciousness. These types of messages have little influences on behavior. Moreover, preconceptions or preconceived notions related to the subliminal message largely dictate your response to it. If you go into something thinking that the subliminal messaging will do something, that thing will happen even if the subliminal messaging doesn’t occur. This is also why subliminal messaging can’t influence complex actions such as buying a product. It can influence motivational behavior however.
Circadian rhythms
Brain activity and other physiological processes that are regulated into patterns.
Process of the brain inducing sleep due to light
Information about light detected by the eyes is sent to a small region of the hypothalamus called the suprachaismatic nucleus. This region then sends signals to the Pineal gland, which then secretes melatonin. Bright light suppresses the production of melatonin, meanwhile darkness triggers its release
Order of sizes of the different brainwaves along with what stage of sleep they correspond to
Beta –alert wakefullness; alpha –when people close their eyes and relax, but can also be when they are intensely focusing on something; theta –first stage of sleep, where the person would deny being “asleep” if they were woken up; delta –slow wave sleep where people are very hard to wake up and groggy if woken up; beta (for the second time) –REM sleep. This cycle generally repeats about 5 times in an average night of sleep.
spindles and K-complexes
Occur during the transition between theta waves and delta waves. Spindles are little bursts of activity in the brain waves while K-complexes are large waves notable because they are basically isolated and only next to the smaller theta waves.
REM sleep attributes
rapid eye movement, sexual arousal, (non-mundane) dreams usually occur during REM. Non-mundane dreams include intense emotion during dream, sense perceptions during dreams, and an uncritical acceptance of illogical events. Promotes learning; ie. college students studying for finals experience more REM sleep than average, and studies have found that without sleep people can’t learn complex tasks.
Insomnia
a sleep disorder where people’s inability to fall asleep compromises their health and ability to function in daily life. It is associated with diminished psychological well-being, including depression. An estimated 12-20% of adults have insomnia. A major cause of insomnia is: People stress about falling to sleep so much that they actually activate a stress response, which in turn stops them from falling asleep.
Pseudoinsomnia
People dream that they aren’t asleep, and if you wake them they would swear they weren’t asleep as a consequence.
Obstructive sleep apnea
Someone that falls asleep stops breathing for short periods, causing them to wake up to gasp for air; basically, the person’s throat closes during these periods. It is most common amongst middle-aged men, and is associated with obesity, though it is unclear if it causes obesity or obesity causes it. People with sleep apnea usually don’t know that they have it because they don’t remember the frequent awakenings in the night and the main symptom otherwise is loud snoring that only someone else can detect by being in the same bed.
Narcolepsy
spontaneous falling asleep for several seconds or minutes while performing some activity. Someone experiencing narcolepsy usually suffers sleep paralysis during an episode, causing them to go limp and collapse.
REM behavior disorder
basically the opposite of narcolepsy; the person has their sleep paralysis disabled, and so will act out the vivid dreams of the REM phase of sleep.
Somnabulism
sleep-walking
Restorative theory of sleep
People sleep because sleep allows the body to rest and repair itself. This includes physical injuries and cleaning out the metabolic byproducts of neural activity that build up in the interstitial space –a small fluid-filled space between brain cells. During sleep, this space increases by 60%, allowing for efficient removal of the aforementioned byproducts. Growth Hormone is usually released during sleep as well.
Effects of sleep deprivation
2-3 days of sleep deprivation have little effect on strength, athletic ability, or the performance of complex tasks. However, subjects find it almost impossible to do quiet tasks such as reading, or boring or mundane tasks. A long period of sleep deprivation causes mood problems and decreases cognitive performance. Sleep deprived students have decreased activity in the hippocampus.
Microsleeps
caused by chronic sleep deprivation, a person will fall asleep from periods of a few seconds to a minute.
Circadian Rhythm theory of sleep
People sleep because we have evolved to be quiet during the night when our eyes are not very effective and predators hunt.
Dreams are a product of ______. Occur during:
an altered state of conscience; both REM and non-REM sleep
REM sleep; parts of the brain activated vs. deactivated
Activates brain structures associated with motivation, emotion, and reward, as well as the activation of visual association areas and the deactivation of various parts of the prefrontal cortex –including the region responsible for logic. Note: REM doesn’t produce the dream state, but is simply linked with the dreams that occur.
suprachaismatic nucleus
Intermediary in the process of falling asleep. Information about light detected by the eyes is sent to it, residing in the hypothalamus. It then sends signals to the Pineal gland, which then secretes melatonin.
