1.5: Sleep - Unit 1 Biological Bases of Behavior

Module 1.5a Sleep:Consciousness

1.5-1 Defining Consciousness

1. Explain consciousness.

   • Our subjective awareness of ourselves and our environment

2. Identify the three concepts we know about the conscious.

   • helps us make sense of our life including sensations, emotions, and choices

   • when learning a behavior, it focuses our attention

   • we go between different states of consciousness (includes normal waking and various altered states)

3. Explain cognitive neuroscience.

   • Interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with cognition

   • thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

4. Explain how the brain can “cross a threshold for consciousness.

   • if a stimulus activates brain-wide coordinated neural activity, with strong signals in one brain area triggering activity elsewhere

1.5-2 The Two-Track Mind

5. Explain dual processing.

   • The principle that information is often simultaneously processed on separate conscious “high road” and unconscious “low road “tracks

6. What is blindsight?

   • a condition in which a person can respond to visual stimulus without consciously experiencing it

7. Explain how the following work:

   • Visual Perception Track: enables us to “think about the world,” recognize things, plan future actions

   • Visual Action Track: moment-to-moment movements

8.  Explain the following:

   • Parallel Processing: processing multiple aspects of a stimulus or problem simultaneously

   • Sequential Processing: processing one aspect of a stimulus or problem at a time, generally used to process new information or to solve a difficult problem

Module 1.5b  Sleep: Sleep Stages and Theories

1.5-3 What is Sleep?

9. What is sleep?

   • periodic, natural loss of consciousness, distinct from unconsciousness from coma, anesthesia, or hibernation

10. Identify our two biological rhythms.

    • 24 hr biological clock

    • 90 min sleep cycle

1.5-4 Circadian Rhythm

11. What is the circadian rhythm?

    • Biological clock, regular bodily rhythms (ex. temp, wakefulness) that occur on a 24 hr cycle

12. How do age and experience alter our circadian rhythm?

    • Most younger people are sharpest as the day goes on (night owls)

    • most older people are sharper earlier in the day (morning loving larks)

13. At what age does this shift usually start?

    • About 20 years old

14. Night owls tend to be: smart and creative

15. Morning-loving larks tend to: do better in school, take more initiative, be more punctual, less vulnerable to depression

1.5-5 Sleep Stages

16. How long does it take to cycle through the stages of sleep? 90 minutes

17. Explain REM or R Sleep.

    • Rapid eye movement sleep, recurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur

    • Also called paradoxical sleep, because the muscles are relaxed but other body systems are active

18. Identify:

    • Alpha Waves: the relatively slow brain waves of a relaxed, awake state

    • NREM Sleep: non-rapid eye movement sleep, encompasses all sleep stages except for REM sleep

19. Explain what happens at each stage of sleep:

    • Stage 1: you might experience hallucination, sensation of falling or floating 

      • very brief period of time, experience fantastic images resembling hallucinations, sensory experiences that occur without sensory stimulus, experience hypnagogic (hypnic) sensations that may later be incorporated into your memories

    • Stage 2: ~20 min, relax more and experience sleep spindles (bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain-wave activity that aids memory processing), can still be awakened with little effort but you are still asleep

    • Stage 3: ~30 min, slow delta waves and is hard to awaken

    • Stage 4 REM Sleep: return to stage 2 then REM, ~10 min, brain becomes awake-like, heart rate rises, breathing becomes rapid and irregular, every half min eyes move, typically shows beginning of dream

20. How does the sleep cycle change as you age?

    • As you age, the sleep cycles are shorter and more frequent

21. About how much of each night is spent in REM sleep?

    • 20-25%

1.5-6 What Affects our Sleep Patterns?

22. Give an example of a genetic sleep disorder. insomnia

23. Sleep patterns are also influenced by what other factors:

    • cultural norms

    • social norms

    • economic status

    • stress, poverty, discrimination

24. What is the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN)?

    • A pair of cell clusters in the hypothalamus that controls the circadian rhythm, controls melatonin production

25. How is the SCN impacted by light?

    • reduces melatonin production

26. What are the effects of desynchronization?

    • Fatigue, stomach problems, heart disease, breast cancer

27. How long before bedtime should you put away all electronic devices?

    • 1 hour before sleep

1.5-7 Why Do We Sleep?

28. Identify the reasons why we sleep.

    • protects

    • restores

    • aids memory consolidation

    • feeds creative thinking

    • supports growth

    • conserves energy

    • improves athletic ability

Module 1.5c Sleep: Sleep Loss, Sleep Disorders, and Dreams

1.5-8 Sleep Deprivation

29. If you get only 5 hours of sleep over several nights, then how long will your brain keep an account of this “sleep debt”?

    • 2 weeks

30. Sleep loss can affect our mood, and predict depressive disorders.

31. How does REM Sleep help to protect us?

    • Processes emotional experiences to protect against depression

32. Identify the four ways that lack of sleep impacts us:

    • Increases ghrelin (hunger) and decreases leptin (hunger suppression)

    • Increases cortisol (stimulates production of body fat) and decreases metabolic weight (stress hormone that causes the body to make fat and decrease metabolic rate)

    • Disrupts gene expression, increases risk for heart disease and other negative health outcomes

    • Enhancing limbic brain responses to the mere sight of food and decreasing cortical responses to resist temptation

1.5-9 Major Sleep Disorders

33. Explain each of the following disorders:

    • Insomnia: recurring problems in falling or staying asleep

    • Narcolepsy: sleep disorder characterized by uncontrollable sleep attacks, person may lapse directly into REM, often at inopportune times

    • Sleep Apnea: stopping breathing repeatedly during sleep and repeated momentary awakenings

    • Sleepwalking: repeated episodes of complex motor behavior, like walking, while asleep, happens in stage 3

    • REM Sleep Behavior Disorder: normal REM paralysis doesn’t occur; twitching, talking, kicking, and punching can occur, often acting out one’s dream

34. Identify the two problems with sleeping pills and alcohol to fix insomnia.

    • Reduce REM sleep which leads to memory and concentration problems

    • Tolerance (need increased doses to get the same effect) 

1.5-10 Dreams

35. Explain dreams.

    • Sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person’s mind

36. Explain the link between each of the following and dreams:

    • Trauma: causes nightmares

    • Music: dream twice as much

    • Vision loss: dream mainly about using other senses, may see in their dreams

    • Media experiences: influence dreams

37. Dreams help us to do what four things?

    • file away memories

    • develop and preserve neural pathways

    • make sense of neural static, activation-synthesis theory

    • reflect cognitive development