Sensations and Altered State of Consciousness

Sensation

Taking information form inside our senses

Perception

How we interpret things

Bottom-up processing 

Take in a sensation that we know nothing about and have no prior knowledge

Top-down processing 

Draws from expectations and experience and we use prior knowledge 

Receptor sites

cells that respond to energy

Transduction 

Anytime a sense is turned into an electrical signal 

Absolute threshold

The minimum level of stimulus needed to detect a stimulus 50% of the time 

Subliminal messaging

Messages that are unconsciously perceived and effect what you do or thing

Signal detection theory

Absolute threshold can be affected by environment and psychological state 

Difference threshold

Being able to detect the difference between two stimuli

Weber’s law

A change in a stimulus is a constant proportion of the original stimulus

Sensory adaptation

Overtime you aren’t affected by what you sensed at first

Subliminal threshold 

Stimuli that is below our conscious awareness 

Visual cortex

Main thing that deals with vision in the occipital lobe

Color

Created from different light waves that are traveling at different speeds

Hue

A specific color

Wavelength

Distance from the peak of one wave to the peak of the next

Intensity 

Perceived in brightnes

Amplitude

Size of the wave in a wavelength 

Cornia

refracts light and helps with focus 

Pupil

regulates the amount of light entering the eye

Iris

Dilates and gets smaller in response to light intensity and inner emotions

Lens

Focuses incoming rays into images on the back surface of your eye

Retina

Houses the rods and is the back of the eye

Fovea

Retina’s area of focus and houses the cones

Optic nerve

Blind spot in vision

Rods 

Peripheral vision, functions in dim light, detects black and white, can’t detect detail, and RODS ARE LIGHT SENSITIVE  

Cones 

Center of retina (fovea), needs light to function, detects fine detail, and allows us to see color

Parallel processing

The brain processes color, motion, form, and depth at the same time

Blindsight phenomenon

Being blind but able to respond appropriately to visuals

Feature detection

Certain features are processed in specialized areas

Trichromatic theory

Vision is enabled by 3 cones

Opponent process theory

Thalamus pairs cones up

Psychophysics

The relationship with stimuli and its senses

Priming

Being exposed to a stimulus affects how you react to another stimulus

Accommodation

New info alters our ideas

Cochlear implant

Helps people with very bad hearing loss regain it

Kinesthesis 

Being able to sense the position and movement of your body part 

Gate control theory

The spinal cord keeps pain signals away from the brain

Sensory interaction 

Sense work with one another to make a complete view of the world 

Consciousness

Awareness with what is going on

Circadian rhythm

Regulates the sleep cycle

REM sleep

The stage in sleep when we are dreaming

Insomnia

Trouble falling asleep

Narcolepsy 

constantly being tired and feeling the need to sleep 

Sleep apnea

You stop breathing when sleeping

Night terrors

Episodes where you are panicking badly when you aren’t in the dream state

REM rebound

Recovering for lost rem sleep by having longer durations of rem sleep

Tolerance

Less of a response to something after dealing with it repeatedly

Withdrawal

A reaction to stopping a substance

Physical dependence

Someone’s body getting used to a substance

Psychological dependence

Mentally craving a substance

Addiction 

Seeking and constantly craving substances 

Near-death experience 

Doing something that makes you almost die

Information-process theory

Dreams are exactly like real life

Activation theory

Dreams are random and meaningless

Freud’s Theory of Dreams

Dreams have symbols that our unconscious mind can’t perceive

Manifest content 

Storyline of a dream

Latent content 

Underlying meaning of a dream 

Synesthesia

Perceive a sense is going to impact another sense

Vestibular sense

Fluid moving to keep you balanced

Pheromones

Detected by smell

Nerve deafness

Destruction of hair cells

Conduction deafness 

Can’t bring the sound vibration to the cochlea but nothing is wrong with the hair cells 

Frequency theory 

All the hairs are engaged but fired at different rates 

Place theory

Different places in the cochlea that vibrates from different pitches

Cochlea

Transforms sound waves into sound we can actually understand

Middle ear

Concentrates the vibrations of the eardrum of the cochlea’s oval window

Outer ear 

Collects sound 

Tinnitus

Ringing in your ear