CONSCIOUSNESS AND ITS ALTERED STATES

Consciousness

is the awareness of one's surroundings and of what is in one's mind at a given moment.

Consciousness

Can change very quickly when new information arrives.

Still, much of what we do does not require deliberate, conscious thought.

Consciousness is required for any mental process that involve imagining situations, such as planning future behavior.

Wakefulness

Awareness

Two Dimensions of Consciousness

Wakefulness

the degree of alertness reflecting whether a person is awake or asleep.

Awareness

monitoring of information from the environment and from one's own thought.

A person can be awake but not very aware, as is true in vegetative states or severe drunkenness.

Distinction of Wakefulness and Awareness

Coma

Vegetative State

Minimally Conscious

Minimal Consciousness

Coma

a state of consciousness in which the eyes are closed and the person is unreposive and unaroused.

Reticular Activating System

a bundle of nerves in the brainstem that are involved in wakefulness and the transition between wakefulness and sleep.

Comatose people

whose brains show normal sleep patterns are more likely to regain consciousness than are those who do not exhibit these patterns (Fischer, 2004)

Vegetative State

a state of minimal consciousness in which the eyes might open, but the person is otherwise unresponsive.

Vegetative State

"wakefulness without awareness"

Vegetative State

Researchers asked a young women who was in a __________ to imagine a few things, such as walking through her house and playing tennis, while they scanned her brain using fMRI. Surprisingly, her brain showed activation in the same areas as did the brains of people who were conscious and asked to imagine the same things.

Minimally Conscious

state in which a patient shows signs of intentional behavior (such as visually tracking a person), but cannot communicate.

Minimally Conscious

People who are _________ have opened their eyes but show very little behavioral response to the world around them. Whereas a vegetative person cannot intentionally track a person with the eyes, a minimally conscious person can.

Tip-of-the-tongue Phenomenon

Moderate Consciousness

Tip-of-the-tongue Phenomenon

we know a person's name, and we know we know it, but we can't come up with it.

Tip-of-the-tongue Phenomenon

The experience of knowing that we know a name is conscious, even if we cannot bring the name into awareness.

Tip-of-the-tongue Phenomenon

When we sleep and dream, we are moderately conscious. We may be roused by sounds that are important to us, while ignoring others.

Flow

Mindfulness

Full Consciousness

Flow

exists when we thrive in our ability to rise to the occasion of challenging tasks

Mindfulness

a heightened awareness of the present moment, whether of events in one's environment or in one's own mind.

Attention

the limited capacity to process information that is under conscious control

Selective Attention

Sustained Attention

Attention

Selective Attention

the ability to focus awareness on specific features in the environment while ignoring others.

Inattentional blindness

Perceptual Load Model

Selective Attention

Inattentional blindness

when we selectively attend, we focus so much on certain things that we are blind to other things.

Perceptual Load Model

states that we do not notice potential distractors when a primary task consumes all of our attentional capacity.

Multitasking

Sustained attention is compromised during _________

Multitasking

The evidence suggests that truly concurrent, or parallel, task performance rarely occurs (Borst et al., 2010; Courage et al., 2015)

Multitasking

what we consider to be ____________ really involves fast switching of one’s attention from task to task.

Multitasking

it compromises learning

Threaded cognition theory

of multitasking behavior to explain limitations on concurrent multitasking

Multitasking

If two tasks require the involvement of your vision (such as monitoring the road while driving and reading a text message), only one of them can progress, and involvement with one task will necessarily interfere with the other

Multitasking

is much more likely an exercise in rapid switching between tasks rather than actual performance of two at the same time.

Meditation

Training Consciousness

Meditation

practices that people use to calm the mind, stabilize concentration, focus attention, and enhance awareness of the present moment

Mindfulness

Many forms of meditation develop _________, a fully conscious state of heightened awareness of the present moment.

Mindfulness meditation

encourages attention to the details of momentary experience.

score high on measures of wellbeing and optimism

People with high scores on mindfulness questionnaires also _______________.

Sleeping

Though a time of rest, it is, in fact, a very active process

Sleeping

The __________ brain is very active, but it is only partially processing information from the outside world.

1. It creates a perceptual wall between the conscious mind and the outside world and 2. the sleeping state can be reversed in an instant by waking

Two properties of sleep

Circadian Rhythms

the variation in physiological processes that cycle within approximately a 24-hour period.

circadian basis

Many physiological systems, including the sleep-wake cycle, feeding, hormone production, and cellular regeneration, vary on a ________(Refinetti, 2006)

suprachiastic nucleus (SCN)

The body has an internal timekeeper located in the hypothalamus

Retina

When the _______ in the eye senses light in the morning, it stimulates the SCN, which turn signals the nearby pineal gland to decrease the amount of melatonin it releases.

Nathaniel Kleitman and Eugene Aserinsky

In the 1950’s, _____________ were studying attention and fell asleep, their eyes moved rapidly underneath their eyelids

Rapid Eye Movements (REM)

quick movements of the eye that occur during sleep, thought to mark phases of dreaming.

Beta waves

are rapid, low-energy waves that occur when we are awake and alert.

Alpha waves

occur when we are awake but relaxed and drowsy.

Theta waves slower and lower energy waves than alpha, occur as we enter N1 sleep

After about 5-7 minutes in N1, we move to N2 sleep, when the THETA WAVES now show short periods of extremely fast and somewhat higher-energy sleep spindles.

After a short period of time, we move from N2 to N3 sleep, which initially consists of theta waves with some higher-energy delta waves.

three stages of non-REM sleep

Theta waves

slower and lower energy waves than alpha, occur as we enter N1 sleep

Shortly after entering the deepest part of N3 sleep, we start going back through N2 and then N1. On return to N1, our eyes begin to move rapidly underneath the eyelids. We are now in REM sleep and are actively dreaming.

non rem sleep to rem

8-10 minutes

The night's first episode of REM sleep lasts for only about _______.

four to six cycles

Adults move through about ________ of non-REM and REM sleep every night.

To help with the metabolic cleanup in the brain

To restore neural growth

To consolidate memory

To produce enzymes that protect against cellular damage.

Functions of Sleep

Sleep deprivation

inhibits the growth of new neurons and impairs production of the chemicals that make up the myelin sheath, which is crucial for the smooth and rapid conduction of neural impulses.

mirror-tracking task

Both young and elderly adults who learn a ___________ perform better if they learn the tasks shortly before sleep than if they learn it in the morning.

learning and memory

What appears to be really important for _________ is getting sleep at the appropriate (or your normal) place in the circadian cycle.

6 hours and 40 minutes

The typical adult gets about __________ of sleep on weekdays and 7 hours and 25 minutes on weekdays.

7 hours and 25 minutes

The typical adult gets about 6 hours and 40 minutes of sleep on weekdays and ____________ on weekdays.

Sleep debt

if you get 2 hours less sleep one night, then you owe your body 2 hours additional sleep the next night (or within a few days).

daytime drowsiness

the use of stimulants (such as caffeine or nicotine)

lack of focused attention

impaired learning and memory

Most people don’t pay back their sleep debt, so they pay in other ways

Smartphones, tablets, laptops, and televisions

activate arousal and make it difficult to sleep.

sleeplessness and daytime drowsiness

Texting and other types of screen use in bed is a major cause of _________________ in teens (Fossum et al., 2014; Johansson, Petrisko, & Chasens, 2016).

sleep loss

Scores on measures of anxiety, depression, and paranoia increase with _______.

Insomnia

Sleepwalking

Narcolepsy

Hypersomnia

Night Terrors

Sleep Disorders

Insomnia

A sleep difficulty characterized by difficulty falling and staying sleep, as well as not feeling rested.

Ambien, increases the effects of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)

Drug Treatment For Insomnia

Sleepwalking

A sleep difficulty characterized by activities occurring during non-REM sleep that usually occur when one is awake, such as walking and eating.

non-REM sleep

Because sleepwalking occurs during __________, the sleepwalker is not likely to be acting out a dream.

Narcolepsy

a sleep disorder characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness and weakness in facial and limb muscles.

Cataplexy

a weakness of facial muscles and the muscles in limbs.

Amphetamines (stimulants)

Treatment For Narcolepsy

Hypersomnia

a sleep difficulty characterized by sleeping more than 10 hours a day for 2 weeks or more; includes an urge to nap during inappropriate times.

Night terrors

a state that occurs when a person walks around, speaks incoherently, and ultimately awakens, terrified, from sleep.

Dreams

images, thoughts, and feelings experiences during sleep.

Dreams

When people in sleep labs are awakened, they report dreaming almost always if they were in REM sleep and somewhat regularly if they were in non-REM sleep.

Psychoanalytic Interpretation

Biological Interpretation

Dreaming Interpretation

Psychoanalytic Interpretation

Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious (Freud, 1900).

Manifest level

Latent level

Psychoanalytic Interpretation

Manifest level

Freud's surface level of dreams, recalled upon walking.

Latent level

Freud's deeper, unconscious level of dreams; their meaning is found at this level

Biological Interpretation

Dreams are result of random brain activity.

AIM – activation, input and mode

Biological Interpretation

Activation

refers to the amount of neural activation and ranges from low to high activation.

Activation

During REM sleep (when most vivid dreams occur), brain activation is high, similar to wakefulness

Input

whether stimulation is internal or external.

Input

In wakefulness, sensory input is fully open (we interact with the world).

Input

During REM sleep, external input is blocked, and internal brain-generated images dominate (leading to dreams).

Mode

mental state - from logical (wakeful) to loose-illogical (dreaming)

Mode

REM sleep is dominated by low serotonin and norepinephrine (linked to logic and memory) but high acetylcholine, which enhances internal brain activity.

Mode

This explains why dreams are often bizarre, emotional, and lack critical thinking but feel real.

Waking is highly active, external, and logical mode of consciousness

Non-REM sleep is moderately active, external and logical.

REM sleep is highly active, internal, and loose and therefore occupies the lower-front-right portion of the cube.

AIM Example

Psychoactive drugs

naturally occurring or synthesized substances that, when ingested or otherwise taken into the body, reliably produce qualitative changes in conscious experience.

Tolerance

the need to consume increasing amounts of a drug to get desired effect.

Withdrawal symptoms

the adverse effects of people with physical dependence experience if they stop using a drug

Hallucinations

convincing sensory experiences that occur in the absence of an external stimulus.

Addiction

a condition that results from habitual use or physical and psychological dependence on substance.