Conscious and Altered States Flashcards
different awareness levels of thoughts and feelings
consciousness
Wide range of experiences, from being acutely aware and alert to being totally unaware and unresponsive.
continuum of consciousness
Activities that require full awareness, alertness, and concentration to reach some goal
controlled processes
Activities that require little awareness, take minimal attention, and do not interfere with other ongoing activities
automatic processes
Activities that require a low level of awareness, often occurs during automatic processes, and involves fantasizing or dreaming while awake.
daydreaming
Results from any number of procedures—such as meditation, psychoactive drugs, hypnosis, or sleep deprivation—to produce an awareness that differs from normal consciousness.
altered states
consists of mental and emotional processes that we are unaware of but influence our conscious feelings, thoughts, and behavior.
cognitive unconscious
consists of five stages that involve different levels of awareness, consciousness, and responsiveness, and different levels of physiological arousal.
sleep
unique state of consciousness in which we are asleep but experience a variety of visual, auditory, and tactile images
dreaming
5 stages of sleep:
- Alpha stage
- Stage 1
- Stage 2
- Stage 3 & Stage 4
- REM Sleep
relaxed and drowsy state before sleep, usually with the eyes closed
Alpha stage
first stage of the real sleep
stage 2
- approximately 80% of the sleep time
- It is divided into sleep stages 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Non-REM sleep
deepest stage of sleep
stages 3 and 4
- lightest stage of sleep
- a transition from wakefulness to sleep
stage 1
Makes up the remaining 20% of the sleep time
REM Sleep
often called paradoxical sleep because of the paradox of being asleep yet physiologically aroused.
REM Sleep
2 theories of sleep
- Repair Theory
- Adaptive Theory
- Activities during the day deplete key factors in the brain or body that are repaired by sleep
- Sleep is primarily a restorative process.
repair theory
Sleep evolved because it prevented early humans and animals from wasting energy and exposing themselves to the dangers of nocturnal predators.
adaptive theory
2 major effects of sleep deprivation
- on the body
- on the nervous system
interferes with vigilance and concentration
effects on the nervous system
this usually occur during REM sleep
dreaming
10 characteristics of dreams
- Dreams have several characters
- More likely to take place indoors than out
- Rarely can we dream about something we intend to
- Filled with visual sensations but rarely include sensation of taste, smell, or pain
- Usually in color in sighted people and auditory/tactile in blind people
- Frequently involve emotions of anxiety or fear than joy or happiness
- Rarely involve sexual encounters and are almost never about sexual intercourse
- Involve motion such as running and walking
- May be recurrent
- Seem bizarre because they disregard physical laws by flying or falling without injury
3 theories of dream
- Freud’s Theory on Dreams
- Extensions of Waking Life
- Activation-Synthesis Theory
Pons sends nerve impulses to the cortex, which then tries to make sense of these random signals by creating dreams
Activation-Synthesis Theory
proponent of the Activation-Synthesis Theory
Alan Hobson and Robert McCarley
Dreams reflect the same thoughts, fears, concerns, problems, and emotions present when awake
extensions of waking life
- Humans have a ‘censor’ that protects from realizing threatening and unconscious desires.
- This transforms secret desires into harmless symbols in dreams.
Freud’s theory on dreams
Why can’t blind people see colors/images in dream?
A person blind since birth has never had the experience of seeing images originating from the external world and therefore has never formed visual memories connected to the external world.
What is the main purpose of dream?
The author of the new study believe, is to test whether the brain has had enough sleep, and if so, to wake it up
Why can’t we remember our dreams?
During REM sleep, our brain’s frontal lobe is offline. These includes many of the higher center of thoughts and action, including working memory, the planning and execution function, and the centers that integrates data from other regions of the brain.
