Definitions - chap 5 Flashcards
conscious meter
uses sensors attached to the patient’s head and gives reading on a scale of 0-100 (no electrical activity in the brain to fully alert). Anesthesiologists using this index deliver anesthetics to keep the patient in the recommended range of 40-60 for general anesthesia during surgery.
consciousness
a person’s subjective experience of the world and the mind. waking consciousness & altered consciousness.
psychologists
hope to understand what it’s like to be human. they seek to understand the subjective perspectives of the people whom they study
phenomenology
how things seem to the conscious person
problems of other minds
the fundamental difficulty we have in perceiving the consciousness of others.
zombie
what philosophers call someone who could talk about experiences and could even seem to react to them, but might not be having any inner experience at all. no clear way to distinguish a conscious person from someone who might do and say all the same things as a conscious person but who is not conscious.
people judge minds according to:
the capacity for experience and the capacity for agency.
experience
the ability to feel pain, pleasure, hunger, consciousness, or fear.
agency
the ability for self control, planning, memory, or thought
mind body problem
the issue of how the mind is related to the brain and body
mental events
intimately tired to brain events, such that every thought, perception, or feeling is associated with a particular pattern of activation of neurons in the brain. assumed by most psychologists.
brain activity may precede the activities of the conscious mind
one study suggests that the brain begins to show electrical activity around half a second before a voluntary action (535 milliseconds). brain also started to show electrical activity before the person reported a conscious decision to move.
consciousness has four basic properties
intentionality, unity, selectivity, and transience.
intentionality
quality of being directed/paying attention toward an object/stimulus.
unity
resistance to division. not easily divided, cannot focus on two stimuli.
selectivity
the capacity to include some objects but not others (filter). conscious of current stimuli and other stimuli are filtered.
transience
the tendency to change. focus of attention keep changing (shift from one stimuli to another).
cocktail-party phenomenon
people tune in one message while they filter out others nearby
diehotic listening
people wear headphones where they hear different messages in each ear.
minimal consciousness
low level kind of sensory awareness and responsiveness that occurs when the mind inputs sensations and may output behavior.
full consciousness
occurs when you know and are able to report your mental state. means being aware of having a mental state while you are experiencing the mental state itself. involves thinking about things and thinking about the fact that you are thinking about things.
self consciousness
distant level of consciousness in which the person’s attention is drawn to the self as an object
experience sampling technique
in which people are asked to report their conscious experiences at a particular time. shows that consciousness is dominated by the immediate environment - what is seen, felt, heard, tasted, and smelled - and that all are at the forefront of the mind.
current concerns
what the person is thinking about repeatedly.
daydreaming
state of consciousness in which a seemingly purposeless flow of thoughts comes to mind. slowing down w/ alpha waves; generally familiar dreams. represents our wishes. Memory consolidation, dreams are what we are experiencing.
default network
becomes activated whenever people work on a mental task that they knew so well that they could daydream while doing it. involved in thinking about social life, about the self, and about the past and future.
mental control
attempt to change conscious states of mind.
thought suppression
the conscious avoidance of thought
rebound effect of thought suppression
the tendency of a thought to return to consciousness with greater frequency following suppression. suggestions that suppression itself may cause the thought to return to consciousness in a robust way.
ironic processes of mental control
ironic errors occur because the mental process that monitors errors can itself produce them. needed for effective mental control - they help in the process of banishing a thought from consciousness - but they can sometimes yield the very failure they seem designed to overcome.
ironic effects on mental control
arise from processes that work outside of consciousness
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory
viewed conscious thought as the surface of a much deeper mind made up of unconscious processes.
dynamic unconscious
described by Freud; an active system encompassing a lifetime of hidden memories, the person’s deepest instincts and desires, and the person’s inner struggle to control these forces.
repression
a mental process that removes unacceptable thoughts and memories from consciousness and keep s them in the unconscious.
Freudian slips
speech errors and lapses of consciousness. Freud believes that errors are not random and instead have some surplus meaning that has been created by an intelligent unconscious mind, even though the person consciously disavows the thoughts and memories that caused the errors in the first place.
cognitive unconscious
includes all mental processes that give rise to a person’s thoughts, choices, emotions, and behavior even though they are not experienced by the person.
subliminal perception
when thought or behavior is influenced by stimuli that a person cannot consciously report perceiving.
altered state of consciousness
a form of experience that departs significantly from normal subjective experience of the world and mind. can be accompanied by changes in thinking, disturbances in the sense of time, feelings of the loss of control, changes in emotional expression, alterations in body image and sense of self, perceptual distortions, and changes in meaning or significance.
sleep and dreams provide two unique perspectives on consciousness
a view of the mind without consciousness and a view of consciousness in an altered state.
hypnagogic state
presleep consciousness; wandering thoughts and images and odd juxtapositions, some almost dreamlike.
hypnic jerk
a sudden quiver or sensation of dropping
hypaopompic state
postsleep consciousness
circadian rhythm
a naturally occurring 24 hr cycle
EEG recordings
reveal a regular pattern of changes in electrical activity in the brain accompanying the circadian cycle
during waking
electrical activity changes involve alteration between high frequency activity (beta waves) during alertness and low frequency activity (alpha waves) during relaxation.
first stage of sleep
(~10 min) the EEG moves to frequency patterns lower than alpha waves (theta waves). transition from wakefulness to sleep.
second stage of sleep
(~15 mins) theta waves are interrupted by short bursts of activity called sleep spindles (low amp, high freq; may be related to memory reconsolidation) and K complexes (high amp, low freq), and the sleeper becomes more difficult to wake up.
stages three and four of sleep
the deepest stages of sleep; known as the slow wave sleep, in which the EEG patterns show activity called delta waves (high amp, low freq). 4 is hardest to wake up from.
REM sleep during 5th stage of sleep
theta waves & beta waves (gen. only present during awake consciousness). stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements and a high level of brain activity.
fifth stage of sleep
REM sleep; EEG patterns become high frequency sawtooth waves, similar to beta waves, suggesting that the mind at this time is as active as it is during waking
during REM sleep
pulse quickens, blood pressure rises, and there are signs of sexual arousal. still, except for side to side movements of the eyes. Those awakened during REM sleep report having more dreams. paradoxical sleep, as we aren’t active body wise, paralyzed neck down.
Dreams
experienced in real time; also reported in other stages besides REM sleep, but not as many and these dreams are described as less wild and more like normal thinking. don’t usually include episodic memories, rather they single out sensory experiences or objects from waking life. synchronized activity, bizarre unpredictable.
after entering stage 5
continue to cycle between REM and slow wave sleep stages every 90 mins. or so throughout the night. takes an hr. to get to stage 4. periods of REM last longer as the night goes on, and lighter sleep stages predominate between these periods with the deeper stages 3 and 4 disappearing about half way through the night
sleep following learning
appears to be essential for memory consolidation. memories normally deteriorate unless sleep occurs
rats forced to stay awake
have trouble regulating their body temp., and lose weight although they eat much more than normal. their bodily systems break down and they die, on average, in 21 days.
few hrs of sleep deprivation for humans
can cause reduced mental acuity and reaction time, increased irritability and depression, and increased risk of accidents and injury.
awake during the time of REM activity starts
causes memory problems and excessive aggression. causes a rebound of more REM sleep the next night.
deprivation from slow wave sleep (stages 3 and 4)
has physical effects: tired, fatigue, and hypersensitive to muscle and bone pain.
insomnia
difficulty in falling asleep or staying asleep. most common sleep disorder.
self induced insomnia
results from life style choices, such as working night shifts.
secondary insomnia
occurs in response to depression, anxiety, or some other condition.
primary insomnia
no obvious casual factors
sedatives
can reduce the proportion of time spent in REM sleep and slow wave sleep. side effects can include grogginess and irritability.
sleep apnea
disorder in which the person stops breathing for brief periods while asleep. usually snores because apnea involves an involuntary obstruction of the breathing passage. when episodes occur for over 10 secs. and many times, they may cause many awakenings and sleep loss or insomnia. therapies involving weight loss, drugs, sleep masks that push air into the nasal passage, or surgery may solve the problem
somnambulism (sleep walking)
occurs when a person arises and walks around while asleep. more common in children ages 4-8, with 15-40% of children experiencing at least one episode. usually in slow wave sleep. eyes usually open in a glassy state.
narcolepsy
disorder in which sudden sleep attacks occur in the middle of waking activities. involves the intrusion of a dreaming state of sleep into waking and is often accompanied by unrelenting excessive sleepiness and uncontrollable sleep attacks lasting from 30 secs to 3 mins. genetics basis.
sleep paralysis
experience of waking up unable to move and is sometimes associated with narcolepsy. usually happens when awakening from REM sleep but before regaining motor control. lasts only few seconds or mins and can be accompanied by hypnopompic (when awakening) or hypnagogic (when falling asleep) hallucinations in which dream content may occur in the waking world.
night terrors (sleep terrors)
abrupt awakenings with panic and intense emotional arousal. happen most often in non-REM sleep early in the sleep cycle and do not usually have dream content the sleep can report.
five characteristics of dream consciousness that distinguish it from the waking state
1) intensely feel emotion. 2) dream thought is illogical. 3) sensation is fully formed and meaningful; visual sensation is predominant, and you may also deeply experience sound, touch, and movement. pain uncommon. 4) occurs with un-criticized acceptance. 5) difficulty remembering the dream after it’s over. often remember dreams only if they are awakened during the dream.
first psychological theory of dreams
by Freud, proposed that dreams are confusing and obscure because the dynamic unconscious creates them precisely to be confusing and obscure. dreams represent wishes.
activation-synthesis model
proposes that dreams are produced when the brain attempts to make sense of random neural activity (from the day before) that occurs during sleep.
Freud’s theory vs activation-synthesis model
in Freud’s theory, dreams begin with meaning and in the AS model, dreams begin randomly, but meaning can be added as the mind lends interpretations in the processing of dream.
fMRI studies
shows that the brain changes that occur during REM correspond clearly with certain alterations of consciousness that occur in dreaming.
amygdala
active during REM. areas responsible for visual perception are not activated during dream. instead, visual association areas in the occipital lobe responsible for visual imagery do show activation.
prefrontal cortex
shows less activity during REM. may explain why dreams seem to be unplanned.
motor cortex
activated during REM, but spinal neurons running through the brain stem inhibit the expression of this motor activation.
Waking consciousness
Subjective awareness of self and environment. Intentional, unified, selective, and transient. Active thought about the past, present, and future.
psychoactive drugs
chemicals that influence consciousness or behavior by altering the brain’s chemical message system. substances originating outside the body that affect the brain. Expectations influence experience.
drug tolerance (physical dependence)
the tendency for larger drug doses to be required over time to achieve the same effect.
physical dependence
when pain, convulsions, hallucinations, or other unpleasant symptoms accompany withdrawal. opposite effects of the drug.
psychological dependence
strong desire (cravings) to return to the drug even when physical withdrawal symptoms are gone. need drug to operate normally mentally. not all compulsive behaviors are addiction.
what is enough sleep?
Varies from person to person, subjective evaluation.
sleep loss
Teenagers get 2 hrs less sleep every night than teens 80 yrs ago. 2001 study: 61% or men and 47% of women said they got enough sleep. 2003 study: life satisfaction correlated w/ getting enough sleep. Recurrent insomnia affects 10-15% of adults. 1 in 20 adults have sleep apenea.
dream content
most dreams contain content from real life.
categories of drugs
depressant, stimulants, narcotics, hallucinogens, and marijuana.
depressants
substances that reduce the activity of the CNS. sedative or calming effect, tend to induce sleep in high doses and can produce both types of dependence. Alcohol. agonizing GABA.
alcohol
euphoria and reduced anxiety are initial effects. greater quantities bring slowed reactions, slurred speech, poor judgement, and other reductions in the effectiveness of thought and action. increases neurotransmitter GABA.
GABA
inhibits the transmission of neural impulses.
expecting theory
alcohol affects can be produced by people’s expectations of how alcohol will influence them in particular situations.
alcohol myopia
alcohol hampers attention, leading people to respond in simple ways to complex situations. fine judgements is impaired with alcohol. focusing on details in front of us; one though only, won’t notice danger
barbiturates (depressant)
sedative; Secanal or Nembutal; prescribed as sleep aids and as anesthetics before surgery. overdose is easy.
benzodiazepines (depressant)
sedative (newer than barbiturates); Valium and Xanax; also called minor tranquilizers and are prescribed to treat anxiety or sleep problems. both dependences. overdose is easy.
toxic inhalants (depressant)
promote temporary effects that resemble drunkenness, but overdoses can be lethal and continued use can cause neurological damage. more rapidly sedating than alcohol, slower than barbiturates/benzodiazepines.
stimulants
substances that excite the CNS, heightening arousal and activity levels. includes caffeine, amphetamines, nicotine, and cocaine, and Ecstasy. increase dopamine and norepinephrine, inducing alertness and energy. produces a euphoric sense of confidence and an agitated motivation to get things done. both dependences. withdrawal symptoms involve depressive effects, such as fatigue and negative emotions.
amphetamines (stimulant)
drives dopamine system; original purpose for medicinal and diet; causes insomnia, aggression, and paranoia with long term use.
ecstasy (stimulant)
amphetamine derivative. makes users feel emphatic and close to those around them, but side effects include interfering with the regulation of body temp, which makes users highly susceptible to heatstroke and exhaustion. not as likely to cause either dependence. has a potentially toxic effect on serotonin neurons. sustained use is associated with damage to serotonergic neurons and potentially associated problems with mood, attention, memory, and impulse control. produces euphoric high by indirectly effecting dopamine system.
cocaine (stimulant)
drives dopamine system; produce exhilaration and euphoria; very addictive. withdrawal takes the form of an unpleasant crash and side effects include both psychological problems such as insomnia, depression, aggression, and paranoia, as well as physical problems such as death from heart attack and hypothermia.
nicotine (stimulant)
tobacco use is more motivated by the unpleasantness of quitting than the pleasantness of using it. positive effects include relaxation and improved concentration, which come from the relief of withdrawal symptoms.
narcotics (opiates)
highly addictive drugs derived from opium that relieve pain. induce a feeling of well being and relaxation, but can also induce stupor and lethargy. long term use produces both tolerance and dependence. introduces the dangers of diseases such as HIV when users share syringes. reduces the experience of pain. artificially floods endorphin receptors, reducing effectiveness and production.
addictive bc they are analgesic. all produce euphoria. kill pain so form physical dependence, need it to not feel pain at all. withdrawal can kill
endorphins
neurotransmitters closely related to opiates. reduce the feeling of pain naturally. secreted in the pituitary gland and other brain sites as response to injury or exertion, which reduces pain and increases well being.
hallucinogens & disassociatives
drugs that alter sensation and perception and that often cause visual and auditory hallucinations. include LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, PCP, and ketamine. do not induce significant tolerance or dependence and overdose deaths are rare.
marijuana (cannabis, THC)
plant whose leaves and buds contain a psychoactive drug called tetrahydrocannabional (THC). produces an intoxication that is mildly hallucinogenic (stimulant and depressant properties). euphoric, with heightened senses of sight and sound and the perception of a rush of ideas. affects judgement and short term memory, and it impairs motor skills and coordination. receptors normally respond to anandamide. tolerance and withdrawal symptoms minimal. psychological dependence.
using strains high in CBD (higher pain relief properties) can cause a physical dependence. each strain doesn’t produce same rate of dependence.
no long term effects really, but using it chronically can lead to decreased motivation, even when they stop using it.
anadamide
involved in the regulation of mood, memory, appetite, and pain perception.
marijuana abuse and dependence
linked with increased risk of depression, anxiety, and other forms of psychopathology.
gateway drugs
drug whose use increases the risk of the subsequent use of more harmful drugs. marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco. some suggest that early onset drug use in general increases the risk of later drug problems.
hypnosis
a social interaction in which one person (the hypnotist) makes suggestions that lead to a change in another’s (the subject’s) subjective experience of the world. people with active, vivid imaginations or those who are easily absorbed in activities are more prone to hypnosis.
posthypnotic amnesia
the failure to retrieve memories following hypnotic suggestions to forget. can be reversed in subsequent hypnosis, but only those memories.
hypnotic analgesia
the reduction of pain through hypnosis in people who are susceptible to hypnosis.
hypnosis and pain
one study found that pain induced in volunteers was ore effectively treated with hypnosis than morphine, diazepam, aspirin, acupuncture, or placebos.
stroop task
psychological test in which a person is asked to name the color of words on a page. significantly slower and make more errors when naming ink colors that don’t match the content of the words than if the content were neutral. effect eliminated when people are hypnotized. suggesting to highly susceptible people that they should respond to all words the same has the same effect as hypnosis. decreases activity in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), part of brain involved in conflict monitoring, during elimination.
methamphetamine
drives dopamine system; increase energy, attention, focus, good feeling/euphoria.
caffeine & nicotine
creates dependence
opium (narcotic)
slow acting
morphine (narcotic)
derived from opium; knocks away molecules that allow opium to act as quickly an effectively.
heroin (narcotic)
developed to help kick addiction w/ morphine; failed.
methadone (narcotic)
different delivery system of heroin.
LSD, psilocybin, mescaline (hallucinogens)
potent serotonin agonists; potent hallucinations. long lasting psychological effect; hardly any physical effect.
PCP, ketamine (dissociatives)
dissociate mind from reality, takes conscious awareness and separate it from physical world.
state of awareness
waking conscious and altered conscious
stages 1-4 of sleep
non REM sleep; theta waves, delta waves. needed for rest and survival.
REM sleep
theta waves, beta waves. needed for brain development and memory consolidation. paradoxical, loss of muscle tone below the waist. 20-30 mins.
K complexes
high amplitude, low frequency, opposite of sleep spindles.
stage 3
deep sleep (slow wave sleep), delta waves that are low frequency and high amplitude. 25-25 mins.
stage 4
delta waves are more than 50% of brain activity. deep sleep (slow wave sleep). synchronized. hardest stage to wake up from. 40-45 mins.
beta waves
present when you’re alert and have conscious thought.
enough sleep
varies from person to person, subjective evaluation. teenagers get 2 less hrs of sleep than they did 80 yrs ago. 2001 poll: 61% of men and 47% of women said they get enough sleep.
life satisfaction
correlated with getting enough sleep.
recurrent insomnia
affects 10-15% of all adults
theoretical reasons for dreaming
wish fulfillment, activation-synthesis, and memory consolidation.
REM dreams
vivid, highly emotional, and narrative in nature. active. odd and unfamiliar situations, unpredictable.
manifest dream content
the content we experience, Freud. Narrative.
