Psychology: Sleep and Dreaming

describe alpha and theta brain activity

alpha is restful and theta waves characterize a period between wake and sleep

Bodily rhythms

biological rhythms that can happen daily, monthly or annually.

spindles

bursts of brain activity

REM sleep

part of the sleep cycle with rapid eye movements caused by eyes moving a lot behind the eyelids when dreaming occurs

Sleep Cycle

a nightly pattern of deep sleep, light sleep and dreaming

NREM sleep

non-rapid eye movement sleep; encompasses all sleep stages except for REM sleep

Sensory Blockade

During REM sleep, all incoming sensory information is stopped.

Neuron

a nerve cell that transmits information

Movement inhibition

The state, during REM sleep, when the body is paralysed and there is no movement.

Sleep deprivation

not having enough sleep

How does sleep deprivation affect the human body?

It can affect physical functioning such as weight and brain functioning.

List some functions of sleep

- Neuron reparation
- Learning stimulation
- Development & Growth

a) Study supporting dreaming during REM sleep
b) State a weakness of this study

Dement and Nathaniel Kleitman (1957)
They found that people tended to report dreaming when woken up in REM sleep and so concluded that dream takes place in REM sleep.

Some participants didn't report dreaming when woken up from REM sleep and some reported dreaming in NREM sleep, so this is not an easy area to study or draw conclusions about.

Circadian Rhythms

human body rhythms that have a daily 24 hr cycle
Eg: sleep-wake cycle

Sleep-wake cycle

a daily rhythm generally triggered by the day-night cycle.

Ultradian rhythms

rhythms that occur in a period of less than 24 hrs such as the sleep cycle.

Describe the four stages of sleep

Stage 1: Sleep Onset
- Light sleep- can easily be woken up
- Muscles are less active; slow eye movements & sudden twitches
- Alpha & Beta brain waves

Stage 2: Late Night Stage
- Slower brainwaves
- Eye Movements stop
- Mainly theta waves
- spindles
- body temperature drops
- heart rate slows down

Stage 3: Deep Sleep
- slow delta brainwaves but also some faster waves
- stage between light and deep sleep

Stage 4: Deep Sleep
- almost all waves are slow delta waves
- hard to wake up
- no eye movements
- disorientation if interrupted
- sleep-walking/ night terrors

Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN)

A small brain structure that uses sensory input from the retina to synchronize the body's circadian rhythms with the day-night cycle and other external triggers.

Where is the SCN located?

in the middle of the brain

Jet-lag

fatigue and sleep disturbance resulting from disruption of the body's normal circadian rhythm as a result of crossing time zones

How long is one sleep cycle?

90 minutes

Endogenous

internal pacemakers; our biological clocks.

Hormones

chemical messengers taking messages through the bloodstream.

Melatonin

a hormone involved in setting circadian rhythms, including the sleep-wake cycle and blood pressure.

Pineal Gland

a small endocrine gland that produces melatonin.

Endocrine Gland

a gland that produces a hormone that is secreted into the bloodstream.

Exogenous

external cues in the environment that affect our biological clock.

Zeitgebers

external cues that synchronize our biological rhythms. Eg: the light-dark cycle and the 12 month cycle of the seasons.

Entrainment

when biological rhythms are matched to their environmental triggers, such as circadian rhythms being set in response to external cues.

Strengths & Weaknesses of the internal influences on sleep explanation

+ Evidence from animals that the SCN have the role of setting the biological clock. If the SCN of hamsters is removed, their bodily rhythms stop and sleep-wake patterns become random. If they have a transplanted SCN their rhythms start again and their cycles return to normal.

+ Evidence from humans. Miles et al. (1977) looked at a blind man whose bodily rhythm was nearer to 25 hours, suggesting we have circadian rhythms governed by internal factors.

+ Li-You Chen et al. (2015) confirm that the pineal hormone melatonin is important for controlling sleep. They found that sleep deprivation led to reduction in melatonin levels in rats. Such studies support the suggestion that melatonin influences sleep.

- Much of the evidence is from animal studies and there can be problems generalizing this to humans.

- The evidence relating to human blindness is weak. There are individual differences in 'being blind' and it can be difficult to draw conclusions leading to universal explanations. Eg: people with NLP blindness might perceive light and colors.

Strengths & Weaknesses of the external influences on sleep explanation

+ There are practical applications for understanding body clocks in humans. Understanding zeitgebers can help shift workers, for example by darkening their bedroom in the daytime.

+ Ralph Mustlberger and Debra Skene (2004) agree that light is the main way bodily rhythms are synchronized to an individual's day and night times. They add that social stimuli are also cues to time. Social stimuli can be linked to levels of arousal and what someone is doing affects how awake they are. They say that compared to light as a zeitgeber, cues are not strong. This is evidence for external cues acting as zeitgebers and for light being a main zeitgeber although this review does conclude that more needs to be known.

- There are differences in findings. Siffre (1975) wanted to check the findings of studies that claim a 'natural' sleep-wake cycle could be 48 hours, when other studies suggest it is nearer to the expected 24 hours. It is hard to draw firm conclusions about the sleep-wake cycle and the role of zeitgebers when results of studies differ.

- Studies like Siffre's are sleep-deprivation studies, so the situation is not 'natural' and there may be a lack of validity.

Unconscious mind (Freud)

an inaccessible part of the mind that affects behavior and feelings.

Id (Freud)

the part of Freud's personality theory that is demanding thought of as "I want..."

Superego (Freud)

the part of Freud's personality theory that is the conscience, thought of as "you can't have..."

Ego (Freud)

the part of Freud's personality theory that is reasoning, to balance demands of id and superego.

Manifest content

the story the dreamer tells of what happens in a dream

Latent content

The deeper meaning of a dream, usually involving symbolism, hidden meaning, and repressed or obscured ideas and wishes

Dreamwork (Freud)

the transformation of unconscious thoughts into dream content.

Describe the three stages of Dreamwork

Condensation: many ideas appear as one idea in a dream. These separate elements are important in uncovering repressed material, so the one idea needs to be unpicked.

Displacement: when something unimportant seems to be important, shifting the attention away from the important thing.

Secondary elaboration: using muddled ideas from dreamwork to build a whole story. The mind adds information in order for the dream to make sense which gets in the way of understanding the latent content of the dream.

Strengths & Weaknesses of Freud's theory of dreaming

+ His data was qualitative, detailed and focused on real individuals, so there was validity in the findings. Although the data was interpreted by an analyst, which could affect validity, the patients accepted the interpretations, strengthening the validity.

+His unique approach allowed him to study the unconscious which is very hard to study.

+ There is some evidence supporting Freud's theory that dreams 'guard' sleep. Guenole et al. (2013) found that people reported more dreaming if they heard noise and were stimulated by it while asleep and then woke, as opposed to people waking without the stimulation. It seems that the noise did not wake them because dreaming kept them asleep.

- Freud's ideas about dreaming cannot easily be tested so they cannot be shown to be true or false. The concepts, such as dreamwork or unconscious, cannot be measured objectively and so his theory is unscientific.

- The cases studies used contained analysis unique to the individual being studied. This means that the results cannot be generalized to the wider population.

Insomnia

problems with sleeping at night that cause difficulties during the day

Chronic insomnia

when difficulty with sleep occurs three or more nights a week, lasting at least 3 months

Acute insomnia

a brief period of problems with sleep

Symptoms of insomnia

- difficulty with falling asleep
- frequently waking up during the night
- not feeling refreshed on waking
- finding it hard to fall asleep when tired during the day
- feeling irritable and unable to concentrate

Causes of insomnia

- Lifestyle: flying frequently or working shifts can affect bodily rhythms
- health conditions: mental and physical ill health can contribute to insomnia
- medication, food and drinks: they influence hormone and neurotransmitter levels in the brain; affecting your sleep-wake cycle too

Narcolepsy

inability to control sleeping and waking, so experiencing involuntary daytime sleeping

Symptoms of Narcolepsy

- Excessive daytime sleepiness
- Sleep paralysis and abnormal REM sleep
- hallucinations and vivid dreams
- Cataplexy

Hallucinations

seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or feeling things that are not there

Cataplexy

a loss of muscle power and tone, triggered by an onset of strong emotions such as laughter

Causes of Narcolepsy

- Lack of hypocretin due to damaged or missing cells in the hypothalamus.
- 10% of people with narcolepsy have a family member with the condition so it is believed to be genetic to a certain extent. Variations of chromosome 6 called the HLA complex appears to be involved in narcolepsy
- Stress and trauma were linked to narcolepsy by Wayne Barker (1948).
- It has been suggested that muscle paralysis can be a survival characteristic and is due to evolution.

Function of hypocretin

it keeps us awake and regulates our sleep-wake cycle

Explain Hobson and McCarley's (1977) activation-synthesis theory of dreaming

During REM sleep, random thoughts are sent in the brain from neurons being randomly activated and 'firing', which means an electrical impulse in a neuron releases neurotransmitters across synaptic gaps. The firing of the neurons are seen as internally generated information and the brain then automatically works to make sense of this 'non-sense'.

Strengths & Weaknesses of the activation-synthesis theory of dreaming

+ When people are observed in sleeping labs, they all show rapid eye movement periodically during their night's sleep, but muscles are paralyzed and sensory data is not received. From this, it makes sense to conclude that dreaming comes from the brain generating and making sense of random information.

+ McCarley and Hobson (1975) used cats to see which areas of the brain were active during REM sleep. they found activity in two structures involved in shutting down physical movement during sleep.

- When reporting dreams, people can often link them to things that happened the day before. This suggests that the random firing of neurons during REM sleep has some meaning. Rittenhouse, Stickgold and Hobson (1994) found that 34% of 200 dreams did not make logical sense, however, perhaps the dreamer tells the dream in a way that makes it make sense. This is a weakness as it goes against the theory.

- The theory was built on and amended, making it a weakness as it did not stand the test of time. A new AIM theory was created based on the activation-synthesis theory as it was not supported by new findings suggesting that dreams have meanings.

Freud's Psychosexual Stages

Freud's theory of child development

Phallic Stage (Freud)

the third of Freud's stages during which the Oedipus complex is worked through

Oedipus complex

part of Freud's phallic stage; a boy has unconscious feelings for his mother and hates his father, who he sees as a rival and fears will castrate him.

Freud (1909) Little Hans: Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy

Aims:
- To help the individual
- To build evidence for his theory of how children develop

Procedure:
- Freud studied Little Hans by gathering a lot of detailed information from reports sent to him by the boy's parents and some direct information from Little Hans himself.
- Freud focused on Little Hans' dreams and phobia of horses. He analyzed what Little Hans said and the reports to find out what was in his unconscious mind that was causing the phobia. The idea was to cure the phobia through the realization of his unconscious thoughts.
- Freud used traditional psychoanalysis and his own ideas about how children develop to uncover Little Hans' unconscious desires.

Results:
- Horse Phobia:
Hans has seen a horse fall and die on the street and is now afraid that the horses he sees on the streets will fall. He particularly does not like horses with black bits around the mouth and Freud interpreted that as a symbol for his father as it resembles his mustache. Hans' unconscious fear of his father is shown by this phobia and could be due to his desire for his mother.

- An Early Dream:
Little Hans' father reported a dream Hans had at the age of 5 where he woke up crying saying he thought his mother was gone and he had no mummy. Freud said that this dream shows his anxiety that his mother could leave and could be linked to the Oedipus complex.

- The Giraffe Dream:
In this dream, there was a big giraffe and a crumpled one in a room. The big giraffe shouted because Hans took away the crumpled one. Although Hans has denied this, Freud and Hans' father believed that the giraffe was a symbol for a penis. After discussing the dream with the dad, Freud linked the dream to the fact that Little Hans liked to get in bed with his parents in the mornings- something his father disliked. It was thought that the father was the big giraffe and his mother the crumpled one. This dream was interpreted to show Hans' desire to take his mother away from his father and was taken as evidence for the Oedipus complex in the phallic stage of development according to Freud's theory.

Conclusions:
- Freud used this study as evidence to support his theory of child development in a series of psychosexual stages. The phobia and the dreams supported Freud's theory about the Oedipus complex in the phallic stage as it showed Hans' desire for his mother and his fear of his father.

Evaluation of Freud (1909) Little Hans: Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy

+ Freud gathered a lot of in-depth and detailed information about the boy from both the parents and the child himself. The detail gives a richness and validity to the data collected.

+ Freud carried out the study scientifically by adding his own notes and keeping a reflective account, which is a common practice in counseling today.

- Little Hans' parents knew about Freud's ideas and as a lot of information came from Hans' father, it might be that only the information that suited the complex was passed on, leading to bias.

- The case study is unique to Little Hans and the results cannot be generalized so a universal theory cannot be generated from them.

- There is a learning explanation for Hans' phobia of horses. After seeing a horse fall and die, Hans learned his fear from that incident. From that event he could've generalized his feelings of anxiety and fear at the time to all horses.

Siffre (1975) Six Months Alone in a Cave

Aims:
- To see how people would get on when traveling through space where they could be isolated and would not have zeitgebers such as daylight to set their biological clock.
- To see what his 'natural' sleep-wake cycle was when deprived of external environmental cues

Procedure:
- Siffre went into Midnight Cave, Texas, USA, on 14 February 1972 and came out in September of the same year, spending more than 6 months without seeing daylight.
- He lived in a chamber with a tent on a wooden platform, with a bed, a table and a chair. He had frozen food to eat and 780 gallons of water to sustain him. he undertook experiments in the cave and recorded the results. These experiments included taking his blood pressure, and then went through memory and physical tests.
- He exercised on an exercise bicycle and also did target practice with a pellet gun. He called 'night' the period when he felt tired. When he was ready to sleep, the team of researchers above ground turned the lights off.

Results:
- Siffre was keen at the start of the study but became depressed and upset at his lack of freedom. He became desperate for companionship; this was demonstrated when he wanted to trap a mouse he could hear nearby to end his loneliness.
- he became suicidal and came out of the cave with worse eyesight and psychological problems. He wanted to abandon the study and found that his short-term memory was affected.
- He did not get the 'days and nights' right and his sleep-wake cycles were longer than 24 hours.
- As the study went on, the cycles varied from 18 hours to 52 hours with two instances where he had a 48-hour sleep-wake cycle.

Conclusions:
- He concluded that the body clock might be manageable, if erratic, however, the period of isolation in a confined space was not manageable and astronauts would need companionship.
- 'Time' I snot something humans work with and understand without eternal cues.

Evaluation of Siffre (1975) Six Months Alone in a Cave

+ There was a lot of detail produced- both qualitative and quantitative data was collected. Siffre kept a lot of data about his bodily and mental functioning and was careful in how he carried out his experiments and logged his results. He produced a detailed record of his progress during his stay away from eternal time cues.

+ The study was done over a long period of time. Siffre spent 6 months in the cave studying his biological rhythms and found no regularity in his sleep-was cycle. If he has stayed for a shorter period of time, he may have found a correlation or pattern of some sort at random.

- Lights came on when Siffre woke up and went off when he went to sleep. They were strong lights and would affect his internal body clock, acting as cues, Czeisler et al. (1999) used 24 volunteers kept in a lower-level artificial lighting, which was switched on and off over 20 and 28-hour cycles. They found that a 'day' was close to 24 hours.

- The findings are not generalizable as this as a one-off study where Siffre had to deal with issues such as the noise of mice, telephone connections to the research team and other such issues. This study was unique to Siffre and therefore lacked external validity.