week 9 - consciousness and sleep Flashcards
awareness
Awareness - A conscious experience or the capability of having conscious experiences, which is distinct from self-awareness, the conscious understanding of one’s own existence and individuality.
conscious experience
Conscious experience - The first-person perspective of a mental event, such as feeling some sensory input, a memory, an idea, an emotion, a mood, or a continuous temporal sequence of happenings.
contemplative science
Contemplative science - A research area concerned with understanding how contemplative practices such as meditation can affect individuals, including changes in their behavior, their emotional reactivity, their cognitive abilities, and their brains. Contemplative science also seeks insights into conscious experience that can be gained from first-person observations by individuals who have gained extraordinary expertise in introspection.
first person perspective
First-person perspective - Observations made by individuals about their own conscious experiences, also known as introspection or a subjective point of view. Phenomenology refers to the description and investigation of such observations.
third person perspective
Third-person perspective -Observations made by individuals in a way that can be independently confirmed by other individuals so as to lead to general, objective understanding. With respect to consciousness, third-person perspectives make use of behavioral and neural measures related to conscious experiences.
consciousness can denote the ability to ….
consciousness can denote the ability of a person to generate a series of conscious experiences one after another
dualism
Rene Descartes’ position, dualism, was that mental and physical are, in essence, different substances.
cortical blindness
Consider a patient with brain damage limited to primary visual cortex who claims not to see anything — a problem termed cortical blindness
true or false - a Neuron’s excitability varies overtime
A neuron’s excitability varies over time. Communication among neural populations is enhanced when their oscillatory cycles of excitability are synchronized. In this way, information transmitted from one population in its excitable phase is received by the target population when it is also in its excitable phase.
information integration theory of consciousness
Information Integration Theory of Consciousness, is that shared information itself constitutes consciousness
perceptual priming
Perceptual priming is a type of memory that does not entail the conscious experience of remembering and that is typically preserved in amnesia.
Perceptual priming is thought to reflect a fluency of processing produced by a prior experience, even when the individual cannot remember that prior experience.
an organism would have minimal consciousness if the structure of shared information is …..
An organism would have minimal consciousness if the structure of shared information is simple, whereas it would have rich conscious experiences if the structure of shared information is complex.
episodic recollection
The pinnacle of conscious human memory functions is known as episodic recollection because it allows one to re experience the past, to virtually relive an earlier event
storing memories for events we experience each day depends on ………
storing memories for the events we experience each day appears to depend on connections among multiple cortical regions as well as on a brain structure known as the hippocampus.
what does memory retrieval that does not include conscious recollection depend on
Memory retrieval that does not include conscious recollection depends either on restricted portions of the cortex or on brain regions separate from the cortex.
the construction of our body awareness appears to be mediated by specific ……
The construction of our body awareness appears to be mediated by specific brain mechanisms involving a region of the cortex known as the temporoparietal junction. Damage to this brain region can generate distorted body awareness, such as feeling a substantially elongated torso.
blindsight
A peculiar condition called blindsight is demonstrated when a person can analyze and respond to visual events even though they have no conscious awareness of having seen the stimuli.
low/high awareness analogy
In low awareness, you simply float on a small rubber raft and let the currents push you. It’s not very difficult to just drift along but you also don’t have total control. Higher states of consciousness are more like traveling in a canoe. In this scenario, you have a paddle and can steer, but it requires more effort. This analogy applies to many states of consciousness, but not all.
sleep stages
Sleep stages: Stage 1 (called NREM 1, or N1) is the “falling asleep” stage and is marked by theta waves. Stage 2 (called NREM 2, or N2) is considered a light sleep. Here, there are occasional “sleep spindles,” or very high intensity brain waves. These are thought to be associated with the processing of memories. NREM 2 makes up about 55% of all sleep. Stage 3 (called NREM 3, or N3) makes up between 20-25% of all sleep and is marked by greater muscle relaxation and the appearance of delta waves. Finally, REM sleep is marked by rapid eye movement (REM). Interestingly, this stage—in terms of brain activity—is similar to wakefulness. That is, the brain waves occur less intensely than in other stages of sleep. REM sleep accounts for about 20% of all sleep and is associated with dreaming.
blood alcohol content
Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) - Blood Alcohol Content (BAC): a measure of the percentage of alcohol found in a person’s blood. This measure is typically the standard used to determine the extent to which a person is intoxicated, as in the case of being too impaired to drive a vehicle.
circadian rhythm
Circadian Rhythm - Circadian Rhythm: The physiological sleep-wake cycle. It is influenced by exposure to sunlight as well as daily schedule and activity. Biologically, it includes changes in body temperature, blood pressure and blood sugar.
consciousness
Consciousness - Consciousness: the awareness or deliberate perception of a stimulus
cues
Cues - Cues: a stimulus that has a particular significance to the perceiver (e.g., a sight or a sound that has special relevance to the person who saw or heard it)
depressants
Depressants - Depressants: a class of drugs that slow down the body’s physiological and mental processes.
dissociation
Dissociation - Dissociation: the heightened focus on one stimulus or thought such that many other things around you are ignored; a disconnect between one’s awareness of their environment and the one object the person is focusing on
euphoria
Euphoria - Euphoria: an intense feeling of pleasure, excitement or happiness.
flexible correction model
Flexible Correction Model - Flexible Correction Model: the ability for people to correct or change their beliefs and evaluations if they believe these judgments have been biased (e.g., if someone realizes they only thought their day was great because it was sunny, they may revise their evaluation of the day to account for this “biasing” influence of the weather)
hallucinogens
Hallucinogens - Hallucinogens: substances that, when ingested, alter a person’s perceptions, often by creating hallucinations that are not real or distorting their perceptions of time.
hypnosis
Hypnosis - Hypnosis: the state of consciousness whereby a person is highly responsive to the suggestions of another; this state usually involves a dissociation with one’s environment and an intense focus on a single stimulus, which is usually accompanied by a sense of relaxation
hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy - Hypnotherapy: The use of hypnotic techniques such as relaxation and suggestion to help engineer desirable change such as lower pain or quitting smoking.
implicit associations test
Implicit Associations Test - Implicit Associations Test (IAT): A computer reaction time test that measures a person’s automatic associations with concepts. For instance, the IAT could be used to measure how quickly a person makes positive or negative evaluations of members of various ethnic groups.
jet lag
Jet Lag - Jet Lag: The state of being fatigued and/or having difficulty adjusting to a new time zone after traveling a long distance (across multiple time zones).
melatonin
Melatonin - Melatonin: A hormone associated with increased drowsiness and sleep.
mindfulness
Mindfulness - Mindfulness: a state of heightened focus on the thoughts passing through one’s head, as well as a more controlled evaluation of those thoughts (e.g., do you reject or support the thoughts you’re having?)
priming
Priming - Priming: the activation of certain thoughts or feelings that make them easier to think of and act upon
stimulants
Stimulants - Stimulants: a class of drugs that speed up the body’s physiological and mental processes.
trance states
Trance States - Trance: a state of consciousness characterized by the experience of “out-of-body possession,” or an acute dissociation between one’s self and the current, physical environment surrounding them.
