Lecture 6: Consciousness Flashcards
What is Consciousness?
It’s one’s subjective experience of the world, one’s body & mental perspective
* Alterations in consciousness can be experienced through:
- Subliminal perception
- Sleep-related experiences
- Hypnosis
What is Sleep Paralysis?
It’s when your unable to move just before falling asleep or right before waking up
- Caused by a disruption in sleep cycle, usually associated with anxiety & terror
- 10% experience the incubus phenomenon
- Has been reported in many cultures
What is Sleep Walking?
It’s when your walking while fully being asleep, you act like a fully awake person but your asleep.
13-15% children and 4-5% of adults sleepwalk occasionally
*But it can cause sleep deprivation.
Sleep Deprivation can cause..
- Depression
- Difficulties learning new information or paying attention
- Slowed reaction times
- Hallucinations
- Less vigorous immune response to viral infections
How much sleep do you need (at least) to function…
you should be getting at least 7-8 hours of sleep
Define Electroencephalogram (EEG)
Measures brain activity to analyze between different stages of sleep and wakefulness
Name the 5 different brain waves
- Gamma
- Beta
- Alpha
- Theta
- Delta
Give a short description about what Gamma and Delta are…
- Gamma is problem solving and concentration
- Delta is sleep and dreaming
Give a short description about what Beta and Alpha are…
- Beta is a busy and active mind
- Alpha is a reflective and restful mind
What is Theta?
It’s drowsiness
What is Stage 1 of sleep? How does brain activity slow down?
It’s considered a “light” stage of sleep, and it happens as the brain activity slows down producing THETA waves
*Brain activity is slows when in an
1. BETA - awake and alert stage
2. ALPHA - awake and in a relaxed state
3. GAMMA - awake/concentrating and problem solving
What is somethings that a person may experience in their stage 1 sleep?
Hypnagogic Imagery - which are dream like images that pass in and out of consciousness
Myoclonic Jerks - sudden jerking of limbs
Stage 2, What is it? What happens to the heart rate and muscles?
Brain activity slows down even more than before
An EGG would show
1. Sleep Spindles - sudden intense bursts of electrical activity
2. K - Complexes - occasional rising and falling brain waves
*Appear ONLY during sleep
The heart rate and body temperature decreases and muscles relax more…
Stage 3, What is it? and why Is it one of the more important states??
In order to have well rested sleep, you need to go through stages 3 and 4, kinda like deep sleep.
*It is Delta waves, for children 40% of their sleep is in deep sleep, however for adults it’s like 1/4 which is like 25%
What Happens after deep sleep?
We return to stage 2 and then move onto stage 5 (REM) which is 20-25% of out sleep.
In this stage the brain is….
*most active
*body is inactive…known paradoxical sleep
This is when dreaming occurs, REM sleep is longer when entered early morning rather then closer to when we first fall asleep….stages 1-4 ARE NOT REM!!!!!
What happens when we don’t get our REM sleep
Basically when were deprived of REM sleep we experience REM rebounds
Explain dreaming, scientifically!
We dream in something called NREM sleep which is like the opposite of REM dreaming. It depends on the stage your on.
What is NREM dreaming compared to REM?
NREM - is long emotional, sleep, something weird would occur such as flying elephants
REM - is short and everyday topics dream like dreaming about doing your test
What does REM stand for?
Rapid Eye Movement
What is Lucid Dream?
Its a dream where you know your dreaming, for example - walking into a haunted house, seeing ghosts but telling yourself it’s all a dream
Does everyone dream?
Yes everyone dreams however, some people may forget their dreams.
Why do we dream?
We don’t know why exactly for sure but some reasons may be…
- Processing emotional memories
- Integrating new experiences with established memories
- Reorganizing & combining memories
What is Insomnia?
Insomnia is one of the most common sleep disturbances, it’s when people find it extremely difficult to fall asleep.
*9-20% of people struggle with it
What side effect can sleeping pills cause?
Can result dependancy and then once off of it you can have rebound insomnia
Define Narcolepsy
This is when one experiences a sudden and unexpected sleep episode lasting a few minutes or seconds
*Once they fall asleep they immediately go into REM sleep
What is sleep apnea?
Sleep apnea is caused by a blocked airway during sleep, so you’ll be awake multiple times throughout the night.
Sleep apnea is a lack of oxygen, what can happen because of this?
due to lack of oxygen, carbon dioxide can build up and cause many severe problems
What is effective for children and adults with sleep apnea
For children surgery is more effective, as their younger
For adults however, face masks are known to be more effective
Explain Hypnosis?
A person administers imaginative suggestions to another to produce changes in their consciousness.
People respond to hypnotic suggestions differently,
State the 6 Research Flaws..
- Reactivity
- Social desirability bias/positive impression management
- Unrepresentative or biased sample
- Confounding variables
- Lack of a control group
- Invalid measures
Define reactivity
This term refers to how the act of observing someone might change their behaviour and so also change the data you collect from them.
Define social desirability and positivity impression management
These terms refer to the possibility that people may not always tell the truth when asked questions, or may attempt to improve their performance on a task to impress the experimenter.
Define unrepresentative/ biased sample
This term refers to the possibility that the sample of participants in the research description may not reflect the full range of people about whom we are interested in making conclusions (i.e., the population).
Define confounding variables
When conducting an experiment, a confounding variable is something that differs between the experimental and control groups, which confounds (or confuses) our interpretation of the study.
Define lack of control group
Remember that in an experiment, we create an experimental group for whom we have manipulated an independent variable (e.g., we increase the amount of violent TV a group of children watches) to try to determine the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable (e.g., we look to see if watching more violent TV increases aggression in this group of children).
Define invalid measures
This term refers to the question of whether or not we are sure that we are really measuring the thing we want to measure.