week 9 - consciousness and sleep

Question 1

awareness

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

conscious experience

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

contemplative science

Answer 3

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.

Question 4

first person perspective

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

third person perspective

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

consciousness can denote the ability to ….

Answer 6

consciousness can denote the ability of a person to generate a series of conscious experiences one after another

Question 7

dualism

Answer 7

Rene Descartes’ position, dualism, was that mental and physical are, in essence, different substances.

Question 8

cortical blindness

Answer 8

Consider a patient with brain damage limited to primary visual cortex who claims not to see anything — a problem termed cortical blindness

Question 9

true or false - a Neuron’s excitability varies overtime

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

information integration theory of consciousness

Answer 10

Information Integration Theory of Consciousness, is that shared information itself constitutes consciousness

Question 11

perceptual priming

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

an organism would have minimal consciousness if the structure of shared information is …..

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

episodic recollection

Answer 13

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

Question 14

storing memories for events we experience each day depends on ………

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

what does memory retrieval that does not include conscious recollection depend on

Answer 15

Memory retrieval that does not include conscious recollection depends either on restricted portions of the cortex or on brain regions separate from the cortex.

Question 16

the construction of our body awareness appears to be mediated by specific ……

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

blindsight

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

low/high awareness analogy

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

sleep stages

Answer 19

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.

Question 20

blood alcohol content

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

circadian rhythm

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

consciousness

Answer 22

Consciousness - Consciousness: the awareness or deliberate perception of a stimulus

Question 23

cues

Answer 23

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)

Question 24

depressants

Answer 24

Depressants - Depressants: a class of drugs that slow down the body’s physiological and mental processes.

Question 25

dissociation

Answer 25

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

Question 26

euphoria

Answer 26

Euphoria - Euphoria: an intense feeling of pleasure, excitement or happiness.

Question 27

flexible correction model

Answer 27

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)

Question 28

hallucinogens

Answer 28

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.

Question 29

hypnosis

Answer 29

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

Question 30

hypnotherapy

Answer 30

Hypnotherapy - Hypnotherapy: The use of hypnotic techniques such as relaxation and suggestion to help engineer desirable change such as lower pain or quitting smoking.

Question 31

implicit associations test

Answer 31

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.

Question 32

jet lag

Answer 32

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).

Question 33

melatonin

Answer 33

Melatonin - Melatonin: A hormone associated with increased drowsiness and sleep.

Question 34

mindfulness

Answer 34

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?)

Question 35

priming

Answer 35

Priming - Priming: the activation of certain thoughts or feelings that make them easier to think of and act upon

Question 36

stimulants

Answer 36

Stimulants - Stimulants: a class of drugs that speed up the body’s physiological and mental processes.

Question 37

trance states

Answer 37

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.