Consciousness & Sense And Perception: Vision Flashcards
What is consciousness? And the Global Workspace Model?
Consciousness is one’s moment-by-moment personal, subjective experiences. The GWM proposes that consciousness enables various brain functions to cooperate.
What are after-the-fact explanations in terms of consciousness?
The idea that sometimes our unconscious processes lead people to do things that their conscious mind struggles to explain.
What is attention in consciousness? What is endogenous and exogenous attention?
Attention is the process that enables one to focus selectively on some things and avoid focusing on others. Attention is a focal aspect of consciousness.
Endogenous attention is intentionally directing focus of your attention, whilst exogenous attention is focus of your attention driven by a stimulus or event.
What is Change Blindness?
A failure to notice large change’s in one’s environment.
What is Priming?
Exposure to a stimulus unconsciously facilitates the response to a new stimulus.
What is Subliminal Perception?
The processing of information by sensory systems without conscious awareness.
Can we observe consciousness? (Results of fMRI)
Possibly. Using fMRI results found that seeing a face caused activity to increase in face recognizing brain areas. Therefore, it might be possible to observe conscious experience.
What is the Freudian Slip?
The act of suddenly expressing an unconscious though at an inappropriate time or wrong social context.
What is the Circadian Rhythm?
The biological patterns that occur at regular intervals as a function of time and day.
How does light impact sleep? (Brain functions)
Changes in light register in the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus, this signals pineal glands to secrete melatonin (a hormone that aids in sleep by responding to darkness).
What are the stages of sleep and their characteristics?
Awake: Beta and alpha waves
1) Theta waves - short bursts of irregular waves
- May see fantastical images or geometric shapes
- Feeling like falling or jerking
2) Theta waves + sleep spindles + K-complexes - “really asleep”
- Ss and K-C shut out the external world and keep people asleep
- Ss decrease with age and K-C are triggered with abrupt noise
3-4) Delta waves - slow-wave sleep
REM sleep) Beta waves
- Occurs after 90 minutes of sleeping
- The occipital cortex and brain stem are more active than when awake
- Brain is active but muscles are paralyzed
How many times does the sleep cycle repeat itself in a night?
5 times
What are REM dreams and non-REM dreams?
REM dreams are bizarre, invoking intense emotions or visual and auditory hallucinations, and create uncritical acceptance of illogical events.
Non-REM dreams are dull and mundane.
Why might REM dreams occur? (Brain functions)
There is increased activity in the amygdala, visual associative areas, occipital cortex and brain stem. There is decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex.
What is the Restorative Theory of sleep?
Sleep allows the body to rest and repair itself by strengthening the immune system and clearing out toxic metabolic by-products in the brain.
