conciousness

consciousness

moment by moment awareness of ourselves

inverted spectrum problem

person who, from birth, has experienced the color red as you experience green, and green as you experience red. However, they have learned to use the word "red" for fire trucks and "green" for grass, just like everyone else

two key aspects of conciousness

a persons arousal/alertness and the content of a person’s awareness

awareness

the clarity and vividness of the thoughts and perceptions we are concious of

selective attention

the focusing of our conscious awareness on a particular stimulus

Inattentional blindness

focusing on one stimulus without noticing another

cognitive unconcious

all mental processes that occur outside our conscious awareness to support our perception, awareness, and thinking

change blindness

being unaware of seemingly obvious changes

areas associated with regulating a persons level of arousal

reticular activating system and thalamus

fusiform face area

brain area shown to show activity when people are looking at faces

parahippocampal place area

brain area shown to show activity when people are looking at houses

global workspace hypothesis

thoughts and perceptions become conscious when they are linked together by workspace neurons and brought into focused attention

circadian rhythms

physiological processes that cycle approximately every 24 hours, such as sleep-wake cycle

suprachiasmatic nucleus

most important brain region for producing and maintaining circadian rhythms with input of retina

pineal gland

in response to the signals from suprachiasmatic nucleus, Melatonin is released (causes drowsiness, caused by darkness)

fully awake

beta brain waves (high frequency low amplitude)

alpha waves

calm, relaxed (lower frequency)

Stage 1 sleep

theta waves, person can be easily aroused

Myoclonic jerks

sudden muscle movements, stage 1

stage 2 sleep

sleep spindles, k complex, theta waves

sleep spindles and k complexes

sudden increase in wave frequency, sudden high amplitude waves (represent brain’s activity in shutting out external stimuli)

stage ¾ sleep

delta waves, deepest stage of sleep

REM

brain waves most similar to awake/alert state, brain is highly active while body is paralyzed

sleep cycle

repeats about 5 times throughout the night

as the night goes on we spend more time in:

REM and stage 2

when morning comes sleep cycle:

gets shorter

3 primary functions of sleep

memory consolidation, protection, restoration

uncritical acceptance

we accept events of dreams as being normal

sensations in dreams

getting sprayed in the face can lead to dream about waterfalls

REM dreams

vivid, emotional, bizzare

Non REM dreams

boring non colorful, mundane

manifest content

surface content, what dreamer remembers

latent content

dreams hidden content, true meaning of dream

activation synthesis theory

theory suggests that dreams are produced when mind tries to make sense of random neural activity

activation synthesis theory criticism

our dreams would be a lot more chaotic if it was random neural activity

amygdala

very active in REM, involved in emotion

motor cortex

active during REM

prefrontal cortex

less activity during dreams, logical thinking

post hypnotic suggestions

suggestions made to subject to carry out under hypnosis

who can be hypnotized

people who are not distracted easily

social influence theory

simply behave how they expect a hypnotized person to behave, letting hypnotist guide them

Divided consciousness theory (Dissociation)

a split between different levels of consciousness, views hypnosis as altered state, trancelike state