Chapter 4: consciousness and sleep

Question 1

What is consciousness?

Answer 1

Personal awareness of internal and external stimuli.

Question 2

Waking consciousness?

Answer 2

state in which thoughts, feelings, and sensations are clear, organized, and the person feels alert.

Question 3

Altered states of consciousness?

Answer 3

state in which there is a shift in the quality or pattern of mental activity as compared to waking consciousness.

Question 4

The mind body problem: Descartes Dualism?

Answer 4

A belief that there are both physical events and mental events and they are governed by different principles.

Question 5

The mind body problem: monism

Answer 5

• A belief that reality consists of a unified whole; mind and body are same thing.
• believing in monism doesn’t detract from high esteem towards minds. “Understanding digestion doesn’t take away from chocolate (Damasio)”.

Question 6

William James?

Answer 6

Described consciousness as “fat homeless abyss”, “consciousness flows and changes”.

Question 7

Sigmund Freud?

Answer 7

Believed in different levels of consciousness:

• conscious
• preconscious (super ego)
• unconscious (Id)
• ego free floating throughout all three levels.

Question 8

Blindsight?

Answer 8

Condition to which a patient has damage to the visual cortex and is “blind” area of the visual field
Problem with the V1 in the occipital lobe
Significant amount of damage that usually lasts for life
Patient performs better than chance at guessing what is in this area of visual field

Question 9

Christof Koch

Answer 9

Provided evidence that we process most information outside conscious experience
Ex is attention to/consciousness of stimuli required for vision

Question 10

Unconscious?

Answer 10

anything happening without our awareness
Freudian Slips: unlock subconscious mind (like when you say something you didn’t mean to” in therapy
- manifest content: actual literal subject matter.
- latent content: underlying meaning.

Question 11

Sleep research?

Answer 11

Sleep researchers monitor activity of brain by recording electrodes attached to surface of scalp (EEG), as well as eye movement and muscle tension (EMG).

Question 12

Stages of sleep:

Answer 12

Stage 1:
- irregular, jagged, low voltage waves.
- activity high but declining.
Stage 2:
- sleep spindles, burst of 12-14 Hz waves
- K-complex: sharp, high amplitude negative wave followed by a smaller, slower positive wave.
Stage 3 and 4: slow wave sleep
- start of large amplitude waves.
- by stage 4 half of activity is slow wave
- deepest sleep, least responsive to stimuli.

Question 13

Sleep overview:

Answer 13

• After about 60-90 minutes, we cycle back from 4-3-2- REM
• if you sleep 8 hours, go through 4-5 cycles.
• early evening, more stages 3-4 and lee R.E.M.
• late evening, more R.E.M. and less stages 3-4

Question 14

R.E.M.

Answer 14

• irregular, fats eeg waves resembling beta waves.
• postural muscle paralysis and signs of sexual arousal.
• irregular heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rates.
• dreams are reported by majority of people waking from R.E.M.
• more striking imagery and complicated plots than non-R.E.M. dreams.

Question 15

Sleep deprivation

Answer 15

(You know the common affects)

- microsleeps can occur (don’t release your asleep, even increased by losing an hour.

Question 16

Robert Stickgold?

Answer 16

Dreams
Experiment
Was rafting that day and later when he went to bed before he fell asleep he had the same feeling as if he was back rafting
Students play tetris and listen to song about 2-3 hours before going to bed
Students found a majority dreamt about playing tetris again or some form of it

Question 17

Different waves of sleep?

Answer 17

beta waves
smaller and faster brain waves, typi- cally indicating mental activity.
alpha waves
brain waves that indicate a state of relaxation or light sleep.
theta waves
brain waves indicating the early stages of sleep.
delta waves
long, slow brain waves that indicate the deepest stage of sleep.

Question 18

REM Rebound?

Answer 18

Increased amounts of R.E.M. Sleep after being deprived of rem sleep on earlier nights.

Question 19

Hypothalamus and sleep?

Answer 19

The suprachismatic nucleus located in hypothalamus, controls pineal gland (which controls release of melatonin).

Question 20

Why do we sleep?

Answer 20

Growth, repair and restoration theory.
- release of human growth hormone.
Evolutionary or adaptive theory:
- sleep varies with time needed to search for food and safety from predators ie) horses sleep less than wolves.

Question 21

Unihemispheric sleep?

Answer 21

Dolphins will sleep with one side of brain asleep.

Question 22

Importance of REM?

Answer 22

• helps discard useless connections formed during the day.

- assists in memory formation

Question 23

Sleep disorders

Answer 23

Insomnia:
- inability to fall asleep or stay asleep or get good quality sleep.
Somnambulism or sleepwalking:
- sleep walking or other complex behaviours performed when asleep.
Sleep apnea:
- final to breathe when asleep, loud snoring and waking up.
Narcolepsy:
- overwhelming urge to fall asleep that may occur when talking or standing up.
R.E.M. sleep disorders:
- sleeper acts out their dreams.
Night terrors:
- sudden arousal from sleep and intense fear accompanied by physiological reactions (heart rate, perspiration) that occur during slow wave sleep.

Question 24

Why do we dream?

Answer 24

• Freud: wish fulfilment
• Cartwright: problem solving view
• Hobson and McCarthy: activation synthesis model, dreams are products of activity in pons.
• activation information mode model: when the brain is “making up” a dream to explain its own activation, it uses meaningful bits and pieces of the person’s experiences from the previous day or the last few days rather than just random items from memory.