Chapter 6 Flashcards
Consciousness
everything you experience. It’s the tune stuck in your head, the sweetness of chocolate cake, the throbbing pain of a toothache, the fierce love for your child and the. Bitter knowledge that eventually all feelings will end.
Selective Attention
The process that focuses awareness on some stimuli to the exclusion of others.
The Freudian Viewpoint: proposes that there are 3 levels of awareness:
The conscious mind – thoughts and perceptions
The preconscious – mental events outside current awareness, but can easily be recalled under certain conditions. For example, not thinking about a movie for years, but when someone mentions it, all the good memories come back.
Unconscious events – cannot be brought into conscious awareness under ordinary circumstances. - unacceptable sexual and aggressive urges etc..
The Cognitive Viewpoint
cognitive psychologists reject the notion of an unconscious mind driven by instinctive urges and repressed conflicts. - They rather view conscious and unconscious mental life as different, but complementary, forms of information processing that work together.
Controlled (conscious, or explicit) processing
the conscious use of attention and effort
Example: studying
Automatic (unconscious, or implicit) processing
can be performed without conscious awareness or effort.
Example: reading
Divided attention
the ability to respond, seemingly simultaneously, to multiple tasks or demands.
Example: talk and walk
Visual Agnosia
an inability to visually recognize objects. People with Visual Agnosia may be able to see objects, they just have difficulty processing and identifying the visual information effectively.
Example: tea pot
Blindsight
a condition where people are blind in part of their visual field yet in special tests respond to stimuli in that field despite reporting that they cannot see those stimuli.
Example: be able to catch or avoid a ball, despite claiming not to see the ball.
Priming
exposure to a stimulus influences (I.e., primes) how you subsequently respond to that same or another stimulus.
Example: advertising
Implicit memory
when memory influences our behaviour without conscious awareness.
Example: Riding a bike.
WHY DO WE HAVE CONSCIOUSNESS?
Conscious awareness provides a summary – a single mental presentation – of what is going on in your world at each moment, and it makes this summary available to brain regions involved in planning and decision-making.
A Neural basis of consciousness
basically describes a neurological state that correlates with a particular state of consciousness, or one that directly generates consciousness.
Window to the brain
A particular pattern of brain activity does not allow us to infer anything about a particular experience. Careful investigation can provide us with evidence that the person is experiencing a particular kind of experience. Then scan allows us to infer things about general concepts, not the individual experiences themselves.
Consciousness as a Global Workspace
The mind is a collection of largely separated but interacting information-processing modules that perform tasks related to sensation, perception, memory, planning, problem solving, emotion, and so on.
In essence, of the many brain modules and connecting circuits that are active at any instant, a particular subset becomes joined in unified activity that is strong enough to become a conscious perception or thought.
Neural States of Consciousness – A Different View
It is not the brain that provides us with consciousness; it is our actions and our behaviour that generate our consciousness.
Window to the brain
A particular pattern of brain activity does not allow us to infer anything about a particular experience. Careful investigation can provide us with evidence that the person is experiencing a particular kind of experience. Then scan allows us to infer things about general concepts, not the individual experiences themselves.
Consciousness as a Global Workspace
The mind is a collection of largely separated but interacting information-processing modules that perform tasks related to sensation, perception, memory, planning, problem solving, emotion, and so on.
In essence, of the many brain modules and connecting circuits that are active at any instant, a particular subset becomes joined in unified activity that is strong enough to become a conscious perception or thought.
Neural States of Consciousness – A Different View
It is not the brain that provides us with consciousness; it is our actions and our behavior that generate our consciousness.
“Everyone knows what attention is”
William James (Principles of Psychology)
Attention
the process of concentrating on some feature(s) of the environment to the possible exclusion of others.
FOCUSED ATTENTION
The second world war had a great effect on the research around focus.
Selective Attention
maintaining a focus of attention on a specific item even when faced with alternatives and distractions
Example: jenter på byen
Cocktail party phenomenon
highlights the remarkable capacity of the human brain to process and prioritize information in complex, noisy environments.
Automaticity
state reached when a task no longer requires conscious control
Divided Attention
the ability to respond, seemingly simultaneously, to multiple tasks or demands.
Circadian Rhythms
daily biological cycles. Sleep-wake cycle +++
Support a readiness for sleep by decreasing alertness, but don’t directly regulate sleep.
Suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN)
region of the brain in the hypothalamus responsible for controlling circadian rhythms.
Melatonin
hormone that has a relaxing effect on the body
All-cause mortality
death by any cause
Seasonal affective disorder (SAD)
a cyclic tendency to become psychologically depressed during certain seasons of the year.
Beta waves
the activity shown in the brain when a person is awake and alert
Delta waves
very regular, slow (0.5-2 cps) and large brain waves that appear as the sleeper moves into stage 3 of sleeping (deeper sleep). When Delta waves dominate, you have reached stage 4.
Alpha waves
the slower activity shown in the brain when a person is feeling relaxed and drowsy.
REM sleep (or “R”)
stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movement (REM), high arousal and frequent dreaming.
Slow-wave sleep
Stage 3 and stage 4 together.
Sleep deprivation
Short term total sleep deprivation = up to 45 hours without sleep. Long term total sleep deprivation = more than 45 hours. Partial deprivation = no more than 5 hours a night for at least one night.
- Experiment, performed worse on all things with sleep deprivation
Evolutionary/ circadian sleep models
models of sleep that focus on the position that sleep´s main purpose is to increase a species´ chances of survival in relation to its environmental demands.
Restoration model
states that sleep recharges our run-down bodies, and allows us to recover from physical and mental fatigue.
Brain part that regulate feeling asleep
certain areas of the brainstem and Basal forebrain
Memory consolidation
a gradual process by which the brain transfers information into long-term memory
Insomnia
chronic difficulty in falling asleep, staying asleep or experiencing restful sleep.
Sleep hygiene
practices that promote sleep; these include keeping a stable sleep routine and be/wake times, ensuring your bedroom is quiet, cool and comfortable, and following a relaxing pre-bed routine.
Narcolepsy
extreme daytime sleepiness, and sudden, uncontrollable sleep attacks that may last from less than a minute to an hour.
REM-sleep behaviour disorder (RBD)
a disorder in which the less of muscle tone that causes normal REM-sleep paralysis is absent.
Night terrors
frightening dreams that arouse the sleeper to a state of near-panic.
Sleep apnoea
the repeated stopping and restarting of breathing during sleep. Apnoea is a period of 10+ seconds when a person stops breathing. Usually 20-40 seconds.
Wish fulfilment
the gratification of our unconscious desires and needs.
Activation-synthesis theory
theory which states that dreams do not serve any particular function – they are merely a by-product of REM neural activity.
Problem-solving dream models
models which state that, because dreams are not constrained by reality, they can help us find creative solutions to our problems and ongoing concerns.
Cognitive-process dream theories
propose that dreaming and waking thought are produced by the same mental system in the brain.
Fantasy-prone personality
those with such a personality often live in a vivid, rich fantasy world that they control.
Blood-brain barrier
a speciallining of the tightly packed cells that lets vital nutrients pass through so neurons can function.
Neuromodulators
a specific group of neurotransmitters that have a widespread and generalized influence on synaptic transmission
Agonist
a drug that increases the activity of a neurotransmitter
Antagonist
a drug that inhibits or decreases the action of a neurotransmitter
Opiates
opium and drugs derived from it, such as morphine, codeine and heroin.
Endorphins
endogenous, or internally produced, morphine’s.
Antipsychoticsa
class of drug also known as neuroleptics and used primarily to treat psychoses, such as schizophrenia; they can also be used to treat many other disorders.
Tolerance
decreasing responsivity to a drug.
Homeostasis
a state of internal physiological equilibrium that the body strives to maintain.
Compensatory responses
reactions opposite to that of the drug
Withdrawal
occurrence of compensatory responses after discontinued drug use
Insomnia
chronic difficulty in falling asleep, staying asleep or experiencing restful sleep.
Substance dependence
maladaptive pattern of substance use that causes a person significant distress or substantially impairs that person’s life.
Depressants
decrease nervous system activity
Alcohol myopia
short-sighted thinking caused by the inability to pay attention to as much information as when sober
Stimulants
increase neural firing and arouse the nervous system
Opiates
opium and drugs derived from it, such as morphine, codeine and heroin.
Hallucinogens
powerful mind-altering drugs that produce hallucinations
THC (tetrahydrocannabinol)
Marijuana’s major active ingredient.
Hypnosis
a state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral (PNC) awareness, characterized by or enhanced capacity for response to suggestion
Subjectively experience that actions to be against their will
Increase pain tolerance
Forgetting and memory enhancement
Hypnotic susceptibility
a standard series of pass-fail suggestions that are read to a subject after a hypnotic induction
People cannot be hypnotized against their will
Even if they want to, it is easier for some.
Genetics play a role #twins
COMT gene
a gene variant that is commonly studied in mental illness.
Dissociation theories
theories that view hypnosis as an altered state involving a division (dissociation) of consciousness
Social Cognitive Theories
theories which propose that hypnotic experiences result from expectations of people who are motivated to take on the role of being hypnotized.
