Chapter 5-my notes Flashcards
What is the circadian rythm?
- cycle of bodily rythm that naturally occurs over a 24-hour period
- cylce of sleep and waking
- rest-activity cycle
What does circa mean?
About
What does diem mean?
Day
What is not awake?
Mind and brain=turned off BUT mind creates dreams
What is dream consciousness?
Altered state of consciousness (radical), departs from normal subjective experience of the world and the mind
What are examples of changes in the dream consciousness?
Thinking, sense of time, (o) loss of control, emotional expression, body image and sense of self, meaning of significance, perception
What are the two perspectives on consciousness?
1- Mind without consciousness 2- Consciousness in altered state (mind altered consciousness)
What is sleep deprivation?
Significant loss of sleep
What are microsleeps?
Brief sidesteps into sleep that last only a few seconds, less than 30 seconds
What are serious consequences of minimal sleep loss?
- Memory problems (esp. when awakened at the start of REM activity)
- excessive aggression
- physical effects bc no healing of bacteria (deprivation of slow-wave sleep=stage 4)
Why is sleep important?
- To keep knowledge we intake (of course changes too)
ex: studying all night= not help=no material sticks - Recuperation, growth, mental health
Why is evolution tied to sleep?
Number of hours of sleep can come from the number of hours necessary for safety of animal (easy prey=less sleep)
What are brain waves used for?
Determine which stage of sleep an individual is experiencing
What is an EEG?
- An electroencephalograph: shows brain wave activity as a person passes through various stages of sleep
- Changes in electrical activity
Ex: alternation between beta waves and alpha waves
What are beta waves?
awake waves
Alpha waves?
state of relaxation or light sleep, drowsiness
Theta waves?
Early stages of sleep; light sleep
Delta waves?
Slow waves; deepest stage of sleep
What do you experience during stage one?
- Hypnagogic images – vivid visual events (dreamlike), surrealist consciousness, replacement of wandering thoughts and images and odd juxtaposition
- Hypnic jerk – knees, legs, or whole body jerks, quiver, sensation of drooping (missing step of staircase)
- Temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, and muscle tension start to drop
- Frequency of patterns=lower than alpha waves=that waves and a bit of alpha waves
- 10 minutes
What is the hypnopompic state?
Post-sleep consciousness, glimmerings of waking consciousness
What do you experience during stage two?
– Sleep spindles (brief bursts of activity only lasting a second or two) and K complexes
- Temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, muscle tension continue to drop
- More difficult to be awaken
- 20 minutes
What do you experience during stage 3 (40mins and decreases as the cycles passe) and 4 (30 to 40mins)?
- Delta waves pronounced
- Stage 4: Deep sleep= 50 percent+ of waves are delta waves also MRTBH continue to drop and are lowest.
What are interesting facts about stage 3 and 4?
- Only occur in the first portion of your night’s sleep
- More deaths of very old/ill people occur during stage 4
- Delta waves blocked by alcohol
What do you experience during stage 5= REM? (rapid eye movement)
- Stage in which eyes move rapidly under the eyelids
- Person is typically dreaming
- Temperature rises
- Blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate are irregular
- Muscle tension is low
- High-frequency sawtooth waves, similar to beta waves (mind as active as it is during waking)
- Sexual arousal
- Few mins to an hour
Interesting information about stage 5?
- WIthout enough of it: trouble concentrating, anxiety, memory problems
- It stimulates the developing brain (newborns spend 50% sleep in REM, adults spend only about 20% in REM)
- REM sleep is known as paradoxical sleep (high level of brain activity but body doesn’t move).
- If awakened during REM sleep, people almost always report a dream.
- REM rebound – increased amounts of REM sleep after being deprived of REM sleep on earlier nights
What are the three most common problems with sleep?
Insomnia, somnambulism, sleep apnea
What is insomnia?
The inability to get to sleep, stay asleep, or get a good quality of sleep, 30 to 48% believe they have it
Causes: anxiety (hypersensitive to signs of sleepiness), depression, working night shifts
“Solutions”: sedatives (rem and slow-wave decreased), its also addictive, bad even though it’s great for emotional events
Primary: really wanting to go to sleep
Secondary: mental problems
What is sleep apnea?
Person stops breathing for nearly half a minute or more, often found in middle-aged men
Symptoms: snoring (involuntary obstruction of breathing passage), angry or jittery after being awakened, occurs 10sec/time for many times (leads to insomnia)
Solutions: sleep masks (push air into nasal passage), drugs, weight loss, surgery
What is narcolepsy?
Person falls immediately into REM sleep during the day without warning; sleep attacks
- Duration: anytime, last 30secs to 30mins
- Symptoms: excessive sleepiness, uncontrollable sle.att.
- Causes: genetic
- Solution: medication
What is sleepwalking?
Moving around (any action!) or walking around (stage 4)
- Happens at early age (4 to 8 yo, 15 to 40% in children), genetic, can be just in bed.
- Can be dangerous (falling off stares)
- Popular beliefs=not true→ outstretched arms, unsafe to wake them up or to lead them back to bed.
- Won’t remember a thing when they wake up
What are night terrors?
Rare disorder in which the person experiences extreme fear and screams or runs around (stage 4=difficult to wake up) ex: going to get murdered
- Ends at the age of 5 (2% in adults)
- Can last a while
- Abrupt awakening with panic and intense emotional arousal (anger, fear)
What are nightmares?
Bad dreams (REM sleep, not disorder, difference with night terrors), when traumatic event=usually have nightmares and mostly on children
What is the difference between dream consciousness and the waking state?
- Strong [emotions]
- Dream [thought]=illogical ex: setting, people (no association)
- [Sensation]=fully formed and meaningful→senses=strong but pain=uncommon
- Uncritical [acceptance]→images and event=normal to us
- [Difficulty remembering] after dream is over→ only when immediately awakened during it.
Characteristics of dreams?
1- Most people dream 4-5 times per night
2) - Not everyone remembers though!
- Usually remember when we wake up directly from REM sleep (alarm o’clock)
3) - Dreams are mostly about 90 minutes apart (cycle between delta and REM is 90 minutes) and decrease the closer you are from waking up
4) - First dream of the night is short (10 minutes)
- Last dream is about 30 minutes (or longer)
What do we dream about?
1) Negative emotions more than positive
→ we remember negative info more than positive, prob adaptive thing bc helps us avoid situations of danger
2) Almost every day [things] (ex: our job, driving a car, school)
3) About ½ of college students’ dreams have sexual components
→ completely normal, higher for males than females
→ college level bc of hormones maybe, exposure and part of the developmental stage
4) [Actions] in dreams are usually familiar (like running, talking, etc.)
→ everyday actions
5) People in our dreams are typically important in our lives
(not necessarily mean we like them)
6) There are gender differences and cultural differences in our dreams
Are dreams meaningful?
-Freud thought dreams reflect unconscious desires (true) and wishes (meaningful=latent content)
-Others:
1) Content is meaningless and that dreams are merely a by-product of motor commands not carried out while the body is still in REM sleep.
- Sent to the brains, but brain is active so creation of dreams - Motor cortex=activated except spinal neurons=no motor activation to brain (reason why we don’t get up or else we are not dreaming)
⇒ ACTIVATION-SYNTHESIS
2) Another way of thinking
3) Parts of a person’s recent experiences are incorporated into dreams (what you think about before going to bed) (ex: conflict w/ friend, having exam)
4) Allow us to practice for our real lives and help us to problem-solve → crucial for memory
Ex: we sleep after doing a math exercise, we wake up, and we find the solution
→ when we learn a sport, we can become better a bit thanks to dreams
What are the three dream theories?
1- Freud: dreams=confusing and obscure, unacceptable wishes, taboo, anxiety producing.
- SURPRISINGLY→ dreams=suppressed thoughts but are not what we want
- Begins with meaning
2- Biblical figures like Prophet Daniel helped King of Babylon by interpreting his dreams: dreams=prophecies
3- Activation-synthesis model during sleep: dreams=produced when brain attempts to make sense of random neural activity, keeps interpreting info bc of neural activation (no senses = no stable view of person for ex.) without sense of real time
ex: going from work to palace
- Begins with randomness and ends with meaning
What do fMRI studies say about brain changes (parts that are deactivated of the brain)?
1) Amygdala (threatening and stressful events) =active during REM sleep → factor for strong emotions
2) Areas usually for perception-first intake of info (eye receptors)=not active BUT visual association in occipital lobe=active →brain knows not really seeing images and “imagines” them
3) Prefrontal cortex (planning and executing actions)=not active → dreams=unplanned and rambling
