Consciousness Flashcards
What is phenomenology?
Study of how things seem to the conscious person
What is the problem of other minds?
the fundamental difficulty we have in perceiving the consciousness of others
What do philosophers call the hypothetical nonconscious person?
zombie
- no clear way to distinguish a conscious person from someone who is not conscious but just appears to be
What are the 2 dimensions of mind perception?
People judge minds according to
- capacity for experience
- capacity for agency
> minds have experiences and lead us to perform actions
What solution did behaviorism offer for the problem of other minds?
Eliminate consciousness from psychology entirely and follow the other sciences into total objectivity by renouncing study of anything mental.
What is the mind-body problem?
the issue of how the mind is related to the brain and body
What are the 4 basic properties of consciousness?
- intentionality: quality of being directed towards an object
- unity: resistance to division/ ability to integrate info from all of the body’s senses into one coherent whole
- selectivity: capacity to include some objects but not others/brain makes decisions about what info to include or exclude
- transience: tendency to change
what is dichotic listening?
- a task in which people wearing headphones hear different messages in each ear
- conscious system is most inclined to select info of special interest to listener
eg. cocktail party phenomenon: people tune in one message even while they filter out others nearby
What are the different levels of consciousness?
- minimal: low-level kind of sensory awareness & responsiveness that occurs when mind inputs sensations may output behavior
- full: you know and are able to report your mental state
- self-conscious: person’s attention is drawn to the self as an object to the exclusion of everything else
What are 3 disorders of consciousness?
- coma: patients don’t communicate & don’t respond to their name being called/ completely unaware
- vegetative state: alternate btw eyes-open and eyes-closed states/ no behavior caused in response to external stimuli
- minimally conscious: can respond reliably but inconsistently to sensory stimulation
What is locked-in syndrome?
- condition where patients have full awareness but can’t demonstrate it, because unable to voluntarily move muscles
- not a disorder of consciousness
What is daydreaming?
- state in which a seemingly purposeless flow of thoughts comes into mind
- brain active when it has no specific task at hand > default network
- default network involves thoughts about social life, self & past and future
What is mental control?
the attempt to change conscious states of mind
What is thought suppression?
conscious avoidance of a thought
What is the rebound effect of thought suppression?
the tendency of a thought to return to consciousness with greater frequency following suppression
What is ironic processes of mental control?
- mental process can produce ironic errors because monitoring for errors can itself produce them
- ironic monitor works outside of consciousness
What is Freud’s dynamic unconscious?
an active system encompassing a lifetime of hidden memories, the person’s deepest instincts and desires and the person’s inner struggles to control these forces
What does Freud believe must be done about the unconscious?
- force to be held in check by repression: mental process that removes unacceptable thoughts and memories from consciousness and keeps them in the unconscious
What are Freudian slips?
- evidence of the unconscious mind in speech errors and lapses in consciousness
- believes that errors are not random and instead have some deeper meaning created by intelligent unconscious mind
What is the cognitive unconscious?
all the mental processes that give rise to a person’s thoughts, choices, emotions, and behavior even though they are not experienced by the person
What are dual-process theories?
suggest that we have 2 different systems in our brains for processing info:
1. dedicated to fast, automatic and unconscious processing (System 1); helps efficiently navigate your daily life
2. dedicated to slow, effortful and conscious processing (System 2); uses info and inputs from S1 to help guide future behavior
What is an altered state of consciousness?
- a form of experience that departs significantly from the normal subjective experience of the world and the mind
- can be accompanied by changes in thinking, disturbances in sense of time, feelings of loss of control, etc.
What is pre-sleep consciousness called?
hypnagogic state
What’s a hypnic jerk?
sudden quiver or sensation of dropping
What is the post-sleep consciousness?
hypnopompic state
What is the naturally occurring 24-hour cycle?
circadian rhythm
What changes in electrical activity occur in the brain during the circadian cycle?
- during waking: alternating between high frequency activity (beta waves) during alertness and lower-frequency activity (alpha waves) during relaxation
When do the largest changes in EEG occur?
- during sleep there are 5 stages
What are the 5 sleep stages?
Stage 1: Theta waves
Stage 2: sleep spindles and K complexes (short bursts of activity)
Stage 3 & 4: delta waves
Stage 5: sawtooth waves
What is the 5th stage of sleep called?
REM: stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements and high level of brain activity
What is the glymphatic system?
- system in the brain that eliminates potentially neurotoxic waste products and distributes necessary compounds through brain such as glucose, lipids and amino acids
- operates mainly during sleep
What is insomnia?
- difficulty in falling asleep or staying asleep
- self induced insomnia: lifestyle choices
- secondary insomnia: response to depression, anxiety, other conditions
- primary insomnia: no obvious causal factors
What’s sleep apnea?
- disorder in which the person stops breathing for brief period while asleep
- involuntary obstruction of breathing passage
What is somnambulism/sleep walking?
- occurs when a person arises and walks around while asleep
- usually during slow wave sleep
What is narcolepsy?
- disorder in which sudden sleep attacks occur in middle of waking activities
- intrusion of sleep into wakefulness & accompanied by unrelenting excessive sleepiness and uncontrollable sleep attacks (30 sec-30min)
- genetic basis
What is sleep paralysis?
- the experience of waking up unable to move
- occurs when waking from REM sleep but before you have regained motor control
What are sleep terrors/night terrors?
abrupt awakenings with panic and intense emotional arousal
What are the 5 characteristics of dream consciousness?
- We intensely feel emotion
- Dream thought is illogical: continuities don’t apply
- Sensation is fully formed and meaningful
- Dreaming occurs with uncritical acceptance: as if events are normal
- We have difficulty remembering the dream after it’s over
What is Freud’s theory of dreams?
- dreams are confusing and obscure because the dynamic unconscious creates them precisely to be confusing
- dreams represent wishes and some of these wishes are so unacceptable that the mind can express them only in disguised form
- mostly sexual
What is Freud’s manifest content of a dream?
A dream’s apparent topic or superficial meaning is a smoke screen for its latent content > dream’s true underlying meaning
What is the action synthesis model? (Hobson, McCarley)
theory that dreams are produced when the brain attempts to make sense of random neural activity that occurs during sleep
What is the difference between Freud’s theory and activation synthesis theory?
Freud: dreams begin with meaning
AST: dreams begin randomly, but meaning can be added as the mind lends interpretations in process of dreaming
What is the neurocognitive theory of dreams?
dreaming is enabled by the default network
What’s the threat simulation theory of dreams?
purpose of dreams is to simulate threatening situations that a person is likely to experience and practice escape and avoidance from those situations
Which brain areas are activated and which aren’t during REM sleep?
Activated: motor cortex, visual association areas, amygdala, brainstem
Deactivated: prefrontal cortex
What are psychoactive drugs?
- chemicals that influence consciousness or behavior by altering the brain’s chemical message system
- agonists: increase activity of a neurotransmitter
- antagonists: decreasing activity of a NT
What is drug use initially motivated by?
positive reinforcement: increase in the likelihood of a behavior following the presentation of a reward
What is drug use motivated by over time?
- negative reinforcement: increase in likelihood of a behavior following removal of aversive state
- over time some drugs become less rewarding
- people continue to use drugs to reduce withdrawal symptoms
What are 3 factors in drug use?
- Drug tolerance: tendency for larger drug doses to be required over time to achieve the same effect
- Physical dependence: pain, convulsions, hallucinations that accompany withdrawals from drug use
- Psychological dependence: strong desire to return to drug even when physical withdrawal symptoms are gone
What are depressants?
- substances that reduce the activity of the central nervous system
- have sedative/calming effects & can arrest breathing in extremely high doses
- can produce both physical & psychological dependence
What are 2 theories explaining the variable effects of alcohol on people?
- expectancy theory: the idea that alcohol effects can be produced by people’s expectations of how alcohol will influence them in particular situations
- alcohol myopia: condition that results when alcohol hampers attention, leading people to respond in simple ways to complex situations
What is a balanced placebo design?
study design in which design in which behavior is observed following the presence/ absence of an actual stimulus and also following the presence/absence of a placebo stimulus
What are stimulants?
- substances that excite the central nervous system, heightening arousal and activity levels
- increases the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain > higher levels of activity in brain circuits
- increased alertness and energy in the user
What are narcotics/opiates?
- highly addictive drugs derived from opium that relieve pain
- long-term use produces both tolerance and dependence
- mimic the brain’s own internal relaxation and well-being system
What are hallucinogens?
- drugs that alter sensation and perception and often cause visual and auditory hallucinations
- produce profound changes in perception
- main class of drugs that animals won’t work to self-administer
- don’t induce significant tolerance/dependance/overdose deaths
What is Marijuana/cannabis?
the leaves and buds of the hemp plant, which contains psychoactive drug called tetrahydrocannabinol
- receptors that respond to THC are normally activated by a NT called anandamide
- anandamide: involved in mood, memory & appetite regulation
- abuse & dependence linked with depression, anxiety
What is a gateway drug?
drug whose use increases risk of subsequent use of more harmful drugs
What is hypnosis?
- social interaction in which hypnotist makes suggestions that lead to a change in another person’s subjective experience of the world
- not everyone is equally susceptible to hypnosis
What is post-hypnotic amnesia?
- Failure to retrieve memories following hypnotic suggestions to forget
- only memories lost under hypnosis can be retrieved through hypnosis
What is hypnotic analgesia?
- reduction of pain through hypnosis in people who are susceptible to hypnosis
