Chapter 6: States of Consciousness 

The Puzzle of Consciousness

  • Consciousness:  often defined as our moment-to-moment awareness of ourselves and our environment
    • Subjective and private: others can’t directly know what reality is for you, nor can you enter directly into their experience
    • Dynamic (ever-changing): we drift in and out of various states throughout each day. Moreover, although the stimuli of which we are aware constantly change, we are typically experiencing consciousness as a continuously flowing stream of mental activity, rather than as disjointed perceptions and thoughts
    • Self-reflective and central to our sense of self: The mind is aware of its own consciousness. Thus no matter what your awareness is focused on—a lovely sunset or an itch on your back—you can reflect on the fact that you are the one who is conscious of it
  • Selective Attention: the process that focuses awareness on some stimuli to the exclusion of others
  • Controlled (conscious) Processing: the conscious use of attention and effort
  • Automatic (unconscious) Processing: can be performed without conscious awareness or effort
  • Divided Attention: the capacity to attend to and perform more than one activity at the same time
  • Blindsight: are blind in part of their visual field yet in special tests respond to stimuli in that field despite reporting that they can’t see those stimuli
  • Priming: Exposure to a stimulus influences how you subsequently respond to that same or another stimulus

Circadian Rhythms: Our Daily Biological Clocks

  • Circadian Rhythms: daily biological cycles; our body’s 24-cycle
    • Every 24 hours our body temperature, certain hormonal secretions, and other bodily functions undergo a rhythmic change that affects our alertness and readies our passage back and forth between waking consciousness and sleep
  • Suprachiasmatic Nuclei (SCN): regulates most Circadian rhythms
  • Melatonin: a hormone that has a relaxing effect on the body
  • Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD):  is a cyclic tendency to become psychologically depressed during certain seasons of the year

Sleep and Dreaming

  • Beta Waves: when you are awake and alert
  • Alpha Waves: when you are feeling relaxed and drowsy, your brain waves will slow down
  • Delta Waves: very slow and large waves
  • Slow-wave sleep: stages 3 & 4- this is when delta waves appear
  • REM Sleep: characterized by rapid eye movements (REM), high arousal, and frequent dreaming
  • Restoration Model: sleep recharges our run-down bodies and allows us to recover from physical and mental fatigue
  • Evolutionary/Circadian Sleep Models:  emphasize that sleep’s main purpose is to increase a species’ chances of survival in relation to its environmental demands
  • Memory Consolidation: a gradual process by which the brain transfers information into long-term memory
  • Insomnia: a chronic difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or experiencing restful sleep
  • Narcolepsy: involves extreme daytime sleepiness and sudden, uncontrollable sleep attacks that may last from less than a minute to an hour
  • REM-sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD):  in which the loss of muscle tone that causes normal REMsleep paralysis is absent
  • Night Terrors: frightening dreams that arouse the sleeper to a near-panic state
    • More common in young children and treatment for kids is to just wait it out until they grow older
  • Sleep Apnea: repeatedly stop and restart breathing during sleep
  • Wish Fulfillment: the gratification of our unconscious desires and needs; Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
  • Problem Solving: because dreams are not constrained by reality they can help us find creative solutions to our problems and ongoing concerns
  • Cognitive-process Dream Theories:  focus on the process of how we dream and propose that dreaming and waking thought are produced by the same mental systems in the brain
  • Activation-Synthesis Theory: dreams do not serve any particular function—they are merely a by-product of REM neural activity

Drug-Induced States

  • Blood-Brain Barrier: a special lining of tightly packed cells that lets vital nutrients pass through so neurons can function
  • Agonist:  a drug that increases the activity of a neurotransmitter
  • Antagonist: is a drug that inhibits or decreases the action of a neurotransmitter
  • Tolerance: decreasing responsivity to a drug
  • Compensatory responses: which are reactions opposite to that of the drug
  • Withdrawl: occurrence of compensatory responses after discontinued drug use
  • Substance Dependence:  a maladaptive pattern of substance use that causes a person significant distress or substantially impairs that person’s life
  • Depressants: decrease nervous system activity
    • Alcohol Myopia:  shortsighted thinking caused by the inability to pay attention to as much information as when sober
  • Stimulants: increase neural firing and arouse the nervous system
    • Ex. Amphetamines, cocaine, Ecstasy (MDMA)
  • Opiates: Opium and drugs derived from it, such as morphine, codeine, and heroin
  • Hallucinogens: are powerful mind-altering drugs that produce hallucinations
    • Ex. lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD or ‘acid’)
  • Marijuana: a product of the hemp plant, Cannabis Sativa
    • THC: marijuana’s major active ingredient

Hypnosis

  • Hypnosis: is a procedure in which “one person (the subject) is guided by another (the hypnotist) to respond to suggestions for changes in subjective experience, alterations in perception, sensation, emotion, thought or behavior.
  • Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales: contain a standard series of pass-fail suggestions that are read to a subject after a hypnotic induction
  • Dissociation Theory: views hypnosis as an altered state involving a division (dissociation) of consciousness
  • Social-Cognitive Theories: propose that hypnotic experiences result from expectations of people who are motivated to take on the role of being hypnotized