Chapter 5: Consciousness Flashcards
Consciousness
The moment-by-moment awareness of the external environment as well as one’s own thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
Introspect
The process of examining one’s internal thoughts and feelings.
Selective attention
The act of focusing one’s awareness into a particular aspect of one’s experience, to the exclusion of everything else.
Inattentional blindness
A failure to perceive information that is outside the focus of one’s attention.
Change blindness
A form of inattentional blindness, in which a person fails to notice changes in a visual stimulus.
Automaticity
The ability to perform a task without conscious awareness or attention.
Cognitive unconscious
The various mental processes that support everyday functioning without conscious awareness or control.
Subliminal perception
A form of perception that occurs without conscious awareness.
Default mode network
An interconnected system of brain regions that are active she the mind is alert and aware but not focused on any particular task, such as during mind wandering.
Global workspace hypothesis
The hypothesis that conscious awareness arises from synchronized activity, from across various brain regions, that is integrated into coherent representations of an experience.
Circadian rhythm
A regular, 24-hour pattern of bodily arousal. Also known as the biological rhythm or biological clock.
Sleep
A regularly occurring state of altered consciousness that happens when arousal is very low.
Beta waves
High-frequency, low-amplitude electrical waves in the brain (as measured by EEG) that occur in a rhythmic pattern and are associated with being awake and actively thinking.
Alpha waves
Low-frequency, high-amplitude electrical waves in the brain (as measured by EEG) that occur in a rhythmic pattern and are associated with being awake yet relaxed with the eyes closed.
Hallucinations
Sensory experiences, such as sights and sounds, that happen in the absence of any true sensory input.
Delta waves
Very-low-frequency, high-amplitude electrical waves in the brain (as measured by EEG) that occur in a rhythmic pattern and are associated with deep, Stage 3 sleep.
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep
A stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements, brain activity similar to wakefulness, faster heart and breathing rates, inhability to move the skeletal muscles, and dreams.
Unihemispheric sleep
A pattern of sleep in which only one half (or hemisphere) of the brain experiences slow-wave sleep at a time, while the other half remains awake.
Insomnia
A sleep disorder involving chronic difficulties with falling or staying asleep.
Sleep apnea
A sleep disorder in which a person’s breathing is interrupted because of obstruction in the airway or problems with the brain’s control of breathing.
REM behaviour disorder (RBD)
A sleep disorder that involves acting out one’s dreams because the paralysis that normally occurs during REM sleep is absent or incomplete.
Sleepwalking
A sleep disorder that involves walking or performing other behaviours while in deep sleep.
Night terrors
A sleep disorder occurring during deep sleep that involves dramatic expressions of fear, with accelerated heart rate and respiration.
Narcolepsy
A sleep disorder in which a person falls asleep suddenly and uncontrollably.
Dreams
Sequences of images, emotions, and thoughts, sometimes vivid and storylike, that are experienced during sleep.
Dreams
Sequences of images, emotions, and thoughts, sometimes vivid and storylike, that are experienced during sleep.
REM rebound
The tendency to spend more time in REM sleep if deprived of it on previous nights.
Manifest content
According to Sigmund Freud’s theory, the visible, surface content of a dream or behaviour that disguises the hidden, latent content.
Latent content
According to Sigmund Freud’s theory, the hidden drives and wishes that are expressed in dreams and behaviour but in a disguised form (as the manifest content)
Activation-synthesis hypothesis
The hypothesis that dreams result from the brain’s attempt to organize the chaotic patterns of brain activity during sleep into a semicoherent narrative.
Psychoactive drugs
Chemical substances that alter a person’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviours by influencing the activity of neurotransmitters in the nervous system.
Drug tolerance
The diminished response to a drug that results from prolonged use, leading the drug user to require larger doses to achieve the same original effect.
Withdrawal
Unpleasant physical symptoms that result when a person is physically dependant on a drug and its effects wear off.
Drug addiction
An uncontrollable compulsion to use a substance even though that substance damages the user’s health and everyday functioning.
Depressants
Drugs that decrease activity levels in the nervous system.
Alcohol myopia
The idea that alcohol narrows attention and perception, such that intoxicated people use restricted information in deciding how to think and behave.
Stimulants
Drugs that increase activity levels in the nervous system.
Psychedelics
Drugs that distort perception and can trigger hallucinations (sensations without any sensory input), changes in modes, thoughts, sense of self, and even feelings of insight.
Hypnosis
A relaxed state of mind in which a person is especially receptive to suggestions made by a hypnotist and feels their actions and thoughts are happening to them rather than being produced voluntarily.
Hypnotic analgesia
A reduction in pain perception caused by a hypnotic suggestion.
Dissociation
A splitting of conscious awareness. In the case of hypnosis, one stream of awareness stays connected to the hypnotist’s suggestions whereas another stream observes the person’s experiences in a disconnected way.
Meditation
A set of practices used to train a person’s ability to control attention, awareness, and sometimes emotions.
