Terminology Chapter 3 Flashcards
Consciousness
subjective awareness of ourselves and environment
hypnosis
altered state of consciousness involving changes in perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviours.
cognitive neuroscience
the interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with our mental processes—is relating specific brain states to conscious experiences.
selective attention
our awareness focuses, like a flashlight beam, on a minute aspect of all that we experience. We may think we can fully attend to a conversation or a class lecture while checking and returning text messages. Actually, our consciousness focuses on but one thing at a time.
inattentional blindness
At the level of conscious awareness, we are “blind” to all but a tiny sliver of visual stimuli.
Change blindness
Viewers failed to notice that, after a brief visual interruption, a big Coke bottle had disappeared, a railing had risen, clothing had changed color—and someone they’d been talking to had been replaced by a different person
Dual Processing
Perception, memory, thinking, language, and attitudes all operate on two independent levels—a conscious, deliberate “high road” and an unconscious, automatic “low road”
blindsight
- the ability to see with out seeing
- Likewise, if your right and left eyes view different scenes, you will only be consciously aware of one at a time. Yet you will display some blindsight awareness of the other (Baker & Cass, 2013).
parallel processing
enables your mind to take care of routine business
sequential processing
is best for solving new problems, which requires our focused attention on one thing at a time.
Two levels of consciousness
Conscious- sequential processing
unconscious- parallel processing
sleep
what we do to recharge our internal energy. While we sleep we still process in our unconscious minds.
circadian rhythm
Our bodies roughly synchronize with the 24-hour cycle of day and night thanks to an internal biological clock called the circadian rhythm (from the Latin circa, “about,” and diem, “day”).
REM sleep
(rapid eye movement sleep; sometimes called R sleep)
- During REM sleep, your brain’s motor cortex is active, but your brainstem blocks its messages. This leaves your muscles relaxed, so much so that, except for an occasional finger, toe, or facial twitch, you are essentially paralyzed. Moreover, you cannot easily be awakened. (This immobility may occasionally linger as you awaken from REM sleep, producing a disturbing experience of sleep paralysis [Santomauro & French, 2009].) REM sleep is thus sometimes called paradoxical sleep: The body is internally aroused, with waking-like brain activity, yet asleep and externally calm.
Alpha waves
the relatively slow alpha waves of your relaxed state but awake state.
hallucinations
sensory experiences that occur without a sensory stimulus. For example the sensation of falling, or floating in suspension.
delta waves
- The deep sleep of the N3 stage.
- Kids may wet the bed in this stage.
- people who are in this stage may not awaken to the sounds of a storm.
suprachiasmatic nucleas
- a pair of grain-of-rice-sized, 10,000-cell clusters in the hypothalamus
- The SCN does its job partly by causing the brain’s pineal gland to decrease its production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin in the morning and to increase it in the evening (Chang et al.,
insomnia
Ongoing difficulty falling or staying asleep.
insomnia effects
Chronic tiredness, increased risk of depression, obesity, hypertension, and arthritic and fibromyalgia pain (Olfson et al., 2018). Reliance on sleeping pills and alcohol, which reduce REM sleep and lead to tolerance—a state in which increasing doses are needed to produce an effect.
narcolepsy
Sudden attacks of overwhelming sleepiness.
Effects of narcolepsy
Risk of falling asleep at a dangerous moment. Narcolepsy attacks usually last less than 5 minutes, but they can happen at the worst and most emotional times. Everyday activities, such as driving, require extra caution.
