L03 - Consciousness Flashcards

Question

What are the stages of self-recognition? What is the mark test?

Answer 1

3 stages Social behaviour – see a stranger in the mirror Test behaviour – test the reaction of thing in mirror (it does the same thing as me?) Self-directed behaviour – look at their bodies in the mirror (check themselves out) sidenote: elephants like to look inside their mouths Mark test – Scientists put a mark on their body where they can only see when they look at themselves in the mirror and look at how they react If they touch the mirror, they are confused If they use the mirror to wipe it off, they understand the “self”

Answer 2

All the bits and pieces come together Thought, planning, decision making, self-control Hold things in your mind when they are not present as well as keeping distractions out Linking your different “selves” across time (uses the past in order to decide what to do in the present that is best for the future). Last checkpoint of choosing to act Frontal lobe calculates the complexity and the implications of the final act Represents your will and conscience Critical for holding your behaviour in check Therefore, children are more immature – conscience grows over time Research has shown that psychopaths have abnormally reduced activity prefrontal cortex Damage there can result in psychological disorders such as acquired sociopathy, resulting in impaired sympathy and aggressive behaviour without remorse SHOWS THAT FRONTAL LOBE AND MORE SPECIFICALLY THE PREFRONTAL CORTEX ARE CENTRAL TO US BEING HUMAN, OF BEING WHO WE ARE.

Answer 3

suffered in an explosion and an injury to the frontal lobe made him be a different person, was not the old Gage anymore.

Answer 4

We struggle with different things over the span of our life. Infancy – we struggle with trust Early childhood – shame and doubt Preschoolers – guilt School age - inferiority Adolescence – role confusion Early adulthood – isolation Middle age – stagnation Later years – despair

Answer 5

We do not know! Everybody is different EMERGING ADULTHOOD – In western culture, it is roughly from the ages of 18-25 when people are starting to finish off school and establish financial independence from their parents, setting off to the path of their careers and their own families. A person consists of the social groups of which the person belongs to.

Answer 6

Levels of consciousness – levels of alertness/responsiveness are correlated with patterns of electrical activity in the brain (brain waves) - recorded by an electroencephalogram (EEG) Brain and consciousness Relationship of consciousness and the brain Consciousness depends on the brain EEG – electrodes on skull that can detect electrical activity in the brain (can correlate them – help measure what level of sleep the person is in) EEGs and MEGs are good at predicting when the brain activity will occur but not where it will occur.

Answer 7

– the patterns of brain waves consist of RAPID AND IRREGULAR WAVES (low amplitude voltage) ALPHA AND BETA WAVES

Answer 8

– minimal, the brain waves are much SLOWER, greater amplitude DELTA, THETA, GAMMA waves

Answer 9

Beta – AWAKE, alert consciousness, thinking, excitement Alpha – Physically and mentally relaxed Theta – Creativity, insight, deep states, dreams, deep meditation, reduced consciousness Delta – Deep (dreamless) sleep, loss of bodily awareness, repair

Answer 10

Slow wave sleep REM sleep Problem-solving tasks Heightened perception learning

Answer 11

Alert Normal alert consciousness Active thinking REM sleep

Answer 12

Physically and emotionally relaxed

Answer 13

Creativity Insight Daydreams Reduced consciousness NREM light sleep

Answer 14

Slow wave/deep sleep NREM snd possibly also parts of REM

Answer 15

Sleep is a regularly occurring state of altered consciousness that happens when arousal is very low. Patterns of sleep happen every 90 minutes – 5 stages occur in that time

Answer 16

Stages 1-4: non-REM – no rapid eye movement, fewer dreams Stage 5: REM sleep – rapid eye movement, vivid dreams

Answer 17

5-10 minutes – Alpha and theta waves (when you dream – hypnagogic imagery – and twitch – monoclonic jerks)

Answer 18

10-30 minutes/cycle – 65% of total sleep, have k-complexes, VERY hard to wake up in this stage During stage 2, bursts of rapid rhythmic brain-wave activity called sleep spindle and high amplitude waves called k-complexes are observed.

Answer 19

15-30 minutes/cycle - Delta waves (slow waves) – crucial to feel rested, suppressed by alcohol (DEEP SLEEP – VERY HARD TO WAKE UP) In stages 3 and 4, you can determine subconsciously what noises are important and what noise are not. HARDER to wake up

Answer 20

10-20 minutes/cycle - Deep sleep, REM SLEEP– VIVID DREAMS – brain waves are similar with wakefulness, becomes longer as night goes on

Answer 21

a graph representing the different sleep stages like the one above.

Answer 22

high amplitude waves In stage 2 of sleep stages May be involved in maintaining sleep

Answer 23

bursts of brain-wave activity In stage 2 of sleep waves

Answer 24

Sleep about one third of our lives When you sleep you lose awareness of the time and place of right now When people don’t sleep, they don’t function very well Sleep deprivation causes bad things to happen/life to be harder Unresolved functions on why we sleep in the first place. Serves as restorative function Stop deficits often linked to cognitive deficits Prolonged sleep deprivation can lead to death SLEEP IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF BRAIN ACTIVITY Constructs Repairs Restores

Answer 25

Harder to concentrate Mistakes Harder to remember Harder to perform complex tasks Make people feel irritable Make people more likely to see the negative than the positive

Answer 26

Newborns – 16 hours College Students – 9 hours Most people 7-10 hours People (<1%) with DEC2 mutation – 6 hours or less

Answer 27

Functions REM sleep unclear Possibly memory consolidation Possibly forgetting Possibly both Possibly insight

Answer 28

Animals that cannot fully sleep like some fish and dolphins, sleep one brain hemisphere at a time Literally sleeping with one eye open Animals that cannot fully sleep like some fish and dolphins, sleep one brain hemisphere at a time Called unhemispheric sleep Literally sleeping with one eye open

Answer 29

Insomnia Narcolepsy Sleep apnea Sleepwalking Night terrors RBD

Answer 30

sleep disorder involving chronic difficulties falling/staying asleep

Answer 31

having uncontrollable sleep attacks when a person normally wouldn’t be sleeping.

Answer 32

a sleeping disorder in which a person stops breathing because of obstructions in the airways or problem with brain’s control of breathing.

Answer 33

Occurs more often in children in stage 4 of sleeping

Answer 34

occurs more often in younger children. While still asleep, look awake and terrified, breathing accelerates and high heart rate

Answer 35

REM behaviour disorder – during REM sleep normally the brainstem blocks signals from the motor cortex to the rest of the body but this DOES NOT OCCUR WHEN ONE SUFFERS FROM RBD. Often confused with sleepwalking as this causes people that suffer from RBD to act out their dreams in real life and even putting themselves in danger Occurs in middle-aged and older adults

Answer 36

Cyclical changes that occur on roughly a 24-hour basis Like the planet, we have roughly 24-hour cycles. Cyclically changing biological processes are hormone releases, body temperature, brain wave activity Regulated by neurons in the hypothalamus, triggering our sense of fatigue by increasing melatonin The most critical nucleus in the hypothalamus is the SUPRACHIASMATIC nucleus

Answer 37

Like jet lag or night shifts – can cause HEALTH PROBLEMS

Answer 38

Fire to central circadian oscillator Circadian clock Behaviour is controlled by the firing of these ganglion cells Certain firing patterns lead to certain behaviour pattern Connected to olivary pretectal nucleus Depend on the light/time of day Indirectly regulate via input to SCN (superchiasmatic nucleus) the light sensitive suppression of melatonin in pineal gland Changes expression of melatonin PRGCs are directly connected to structures that regulate sleep in the brain Modulate sleep during wakefulness The blue light being shone on the eyes that activate these cells can modify the brain’s responses during specific cognitive tasks and change responsiveness. This is why it is not good to look at a screen during the night The screen emits a lot of blue light and the brain and body change its activity pattern because they think it is the day.

Answer 39

The act of focusing one’s awareness onto a particular aspect of one’s experience, to the exclusion of everything else

Answer 40

A failure to perceive information that is outside the focus of one’s attention

Answer 41

A type of inattentional blindness, in which a person fails to see changes in a visual stimulus.

Answer 42

Sometimes reflects a failure to maintain our attention Other times it is an intentional strategy to escape an unpleasant/boring situation When your mind wanders, your awareness is shifting to things that are different from what you are seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and feeling right now Which means you're thinking is decoupled, meaning disconnected from what

Answer 43

A relaxed state of mind in which a person is especially receptive to suggestions made by a hypnotist and feels her actions and thoughts happening instead of being in control of them. The induction of a state of consciousness in which a person loses the power of voluntary action and is highly responsive to suggestion or direction Used in therapy to recover suppressed memories/allows modification of behaviour by suggestion Controversial Consider hypnosis as therapy. It is used to help people give up smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or deal with emotional difficulties, and although many of the claims are exaggerated, some of these treatments do help. Hypnosis is also used to reduce pain, and as an alternative to anaesthetic, in some kinds of operation.

Answer 44

Reduced sensitivity to pain under hypnotic suggestion

Answer 45

Splitting of conscious awareness In the case of hypnosis One stream of awareness stays connected to the hypnotist’s suggestions Another stream observes the person’s experience in a disassociated way. Separation of normally related mental processes, resulting in one group functioning independently from the rest, leading in extreme cases to disorders such as multiple personality.

Answer 46

According to GWT, items are conscious only when being processed within the workspace and broadcast to the rest of the (unconscious) system. So, when you are driving consciously, the information about red lights and other cars is in the global workspace and broadcast to the rest of the brain making it available to influence behaviour, speech, and memory. When your workspace is filled with daydreams, the lights and cars are relegated to the fringe, or even to the darkness, and are not broadcast.