Conciousness

Unit 3 - Psych

Constancy

perceiving ability under changing conditions (example: visual constancy - perceiving a mug as lighting changes)

Brightness Constancy

Understanding that as light changes, the object does not change color or form

Contrast

perceiving something relative to their surroundings

Brightness contrast

visual - something has changed

Alber’s Color Illusion

relative color theory can make some colored figures look transparent

Color assimilation

colors adopt appearance of their surroundings and look similar to each other (example: water color illusion)

Specific instances of color assimilation seen with interspersed with lines:

• Bezold effect

• Confetti effect

• Munker-White illusion

Color contrast

color regions that are perceived as separate wholes are ones that appear to shift away from surrounding colors

Size constancy (Ponzo illusion)

Even if things don’t take up the same space in our vision, their size is the same; just foreshortened

Muller-Lyer Illusion

size constancy

larger; farther

smaller; closer

Waking conciousness

• subjective awareness of internal and external states

• thoughts on these states and the Self as the individual

• ability to direct attention, a cognitive function

Measuring conscious states

• subjective

• private

• dynamic

• related to self

• self-reports are subjective and hard to verify

• physiological and behavioral measures are indirect, require inference

Two variables of conciouness

• Level of consciousness

• Content vividnes

In what ways is attention involved in conciousness?

• controlled vs. automatic attentional processing

• controlled - focusing attention in a voluntary and effortful way

• automatic - focusing attention in a voluntary and less effortful way

  • happens when there is something that demands less cognitive attention

  • practiced

• divided attention

  • uses automatic processing

  • capacity to attending to more than 1 activity at once

Balint’s Syndrome

• Follows a stroke where one experiences damage to the parietal lobe (usually right side)

• causes a problem with left-side attention → cannot determine where an object is in space even though it is visible

Hemispatial Neglect Syndrome

• happens after stroke or a symptom of alzheimer’s

• patients tend to be drawn to once side of an object (paper, plate, face, etc.)

• loss of attention and unawareness of that lack for one side → rather, failing to engage

• it doesn’t register as a problem to the person → anagnosia “not-naming”

Where in the brain is the passage of time located?

Humans love time

Ancient Greek astronomical clock

Circadian rhythms

• genes turn on and off → gene activity

• behavior

• moods

• motivations

• cognition

• physiology

  • temperature

  • blood pressure

  • cortisol

Molecular and Master Clocks

• SCN - suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus

• hypothalamus is important to drives

• Other important areas

  • optic nerve

  • hypothalamic nuclei - hunger, thirst, libido, movement

  • reticular formation - arousal

  • pineal gland - melatonin

SCN activty

• during the day or times of light, SCN is active and pineal gland is not

• during the night or times of darkness, SCN is less active and pineal gland is more active

What is Sleep?

• behavioral state

• physiological state

• state of consciousness → not a state of unconsciousness

Physiological measures of sleep

• when EEG goes from alpha to theta waves

• EOG - sees if eyes are moving or still

• EMG - muscle tone - degree to which muscles are contracting or not contracting

• EKG - how fast is the heart rhythm

• RIP - breathing rate

• Temp/Pulse/O2

Stages of Sleep

• 5 distinct stages

• cycle through every 90 minutes

• waking stage beta

• just before sleep alpha

• stage n1 sleep theta

• stage n2 sleep - sleep spindle, k complex

• stage n3 sleep delta

• REM sleep beta

• 123432Rem

REM Characteristics

• dreams

• limbic system - emotional processing

• association visual cortex - active (visual content)

• Motor cortex - active but blocked (dream movement)

• decreased activity in prefrontal cortex