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How often do you remember your dreams?

How many hours of sleep do you get (on average) per night?

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Unit 5: States of Consciousness

AP Psychology

Ms. Desgrosellier

January 4, 2011

Key Ideas: Levels of consciousness Sleep and dreaming Sleep disorders Hypnosis Meditation Psychoactive drugs – depressants,

narcotics, stimulants, hallucinogens

LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

preconscious: the level of consciousness that is outside of awareness but contains feelings and memories that you can easily bring into conscious awareness.

e.g. What did you have for dinner last night?


nonconscious: the level of consciousness devoted to processes completely inaccessible to conscious awareness.

e.g. blood flow, filtering of blood by kidneys, secretion of hormones, distance of objects, recognizing patterns, etc.


unconscious: sometimes called the subconscious, the level of consciousness that includes often unacceptable feelings, wishes, and thoughts not directly available to conscious awareness.


This is according to psychoanalysts and psychodynamic psychologists.

It operates whenever you feel or act without being aware of what’s influencing you, whether it’s a stimulus from the current situation or from your past.


Unconsciousness is characterized by loss of responsiveness to the environment resulting from disease, trauma, or anesthesia.


Consciousness enables you to analyze, compare, and interpret experiences, and allows you to integrate what you already know, what you perceive in the present, and what you anticipate.

Consciousness can be altered by sleep, hypnosis, meditation, and drugs.

SLEEP & DREAMS Your biological clock is controlled by your

hypothalamus. It systematically regulates your body

temperate, blood pressure, pulse, blood sugar levels, hormonal levels, and activity levels over the course of about a day.

Without environmental cues, the body runs on a 25-hour cycle.

SLEEP & DREAMS Circadian rhythms: cycles of

change that recur approximately every 24 hours.

The forebrain, the reticular formation, and the thalamus are involved in the changes in wakefulness, arousal, and attention.

Why do we sleep? Two restorative functions: one involved in protein synthesis

throughout the body consolidation: maintaining plasticity of

neural connections essential for storing and retrieving memories, which enables your to put together new material from the day before with old material.

SLEEP & DREAMS Sleep deprivation makes you

drowsy, unable to concentrate, and impairs your memory and immune system.

Newborns = needs 16 to 18 hours

Adults = 7 to 8 hours

SLEEP & DREAMS sleep: a complex combination of

states of consciousness, each with its own level of consciousness, awareness, responsiveness, and physiological arousal.

EEGs can measure the changes in brain waves.

1.5.2011DO NOW:

Choose one of levels of consciousness and briefly describe it:

preconscious nonconscious unconscious consciousness

SLEEP & DREAMS Stage 1 sleep – quick sleep stage

with gradual loss of responsiveness to outside, drifting thoughts, and images. EEGs show theta waves.

Stage 2 sleep – about 50% of sleep time. EEGs show high-frequency sleep spindles and K complexes.

SLEEP & DREAMS Stage 3 sleep – deep sleep stage.

EEGs show some high-amplitude, low-frequency delta waves.

Stage 4 sleep – deepest sleep stage. EEGs show mostly delta waves. Slowed heart rate and respiration, lowered temperature and lowered blood flow to the brain. Growth hormone is secreted.

SLEEP & DREAMS

SLEEP & DREAMS

SLEEP & DREAMS

SLEEP & DREAMS REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement

sleep) – sleep stage when eyes dart about. About 80% dreaming, 5 to 6 times each night (about 20% of sleep time).

Called paradoxical sleep because EEGs are similar to stage 1 and wakefulness, but we are in deep sleep with skeletal muscles paralyzed.

SLEEP & DREAMS

SLEEP & DREAMS

STAGE 1STAGE 2STAGE 3STAGE 4

REM SLEEP

SLEEP & DREAMS Nightmares: frightening dreams

that occur during REM sleep. Lucid dreaming: the ability to be

aware of and direct one’s dreams, has been used to help people make recurrent nightmares less frightening.

Interpretation of Dreams

According to Sigmund Freud, psychoanalyst, dreams were “The royal road to the unconscious,” a safety valve for unconscious desires and fears disguised in dreams.


Manifest content: according to Freud, the remembered story line of a dream.

Latent content: according to Freud, the underlying meaning of a dream.


Activation-synthesis theory: during REM sleep the brainstem stimulates the forebrain with random neural activity, which we interpret as a dream


Cognitive information processing theory: dreams are the interplay of brain waves and psychological functioning of interpretive parts of the mind.

daydreaming: state with focus on inner, private realities, which can generate creative ideas.

1.6.2011DO NOW

Briefly explain our normal sleep cycle: In what order do we move

through the stages? How do the cycles repeat?

THEN, choose one stage and identify a key characteristic.

Sleep Disorders insomnia: the inability to fall asleep

and/or stay asleep. narcolepsy: sudden and

uncontrollable lapse into sleep (usually REM).

Sleep apnea: temporary cessations of breathing that awaken the sufferer repeatedly during the night.

Sleep Disorders Night terrors: in children,

characterized by bloodcurdling screams and intense fear during stage 4 sleep.

sleepwalking: usually in children during stage 4 sleep.

Hypnosis hypnosis: state with deep

relaxation and heightened suggestibility.

Under hypnosis, subjects can change aspects of reality and let those changes influence their behavior.

Hypnosis Hypnotized individuals may feel as if their

bodies are floating or sinking; see, feel, hear, smell, or taste things that aren’t there; lose sense of touch or pain; be made to feel like they are passing back in time; act as if they are out of their own control; and respond to suggestions by others.

Subjects can have trouble differentiating between this make-believe and reality.

Hypnosis Three theories on hypnotism: Hypnotism involves highly focused

awareness and intensified imagination.

Hypnotism is a social phenomenon in which highly motivated subjects enter a hypnotized “role.”

Hypnosis dissociation: a division of consciousness. Part of consciousness responds to

suggestions, while the “hidden observer” provides evidence for dissociation of consciousness.

Evidence: hypnotized subjects who indicate that a part of them is experiencing more pain with hands submerged in ice water than the hypnotized subjects acknowledge.

Hypnosis After hypnosis, the individual may

follow a posthypnotic suggestion and may have a thought or feeling without conscious knowledge of its hypnotically suggested source.

They may also experience posthypnotic amnesia, forgetting selected events by suggestion.

Hypnosis One of the

most practical applications is pain control, and hypnosis is used in surgery, childbirth, and dentistry.

1.7.2011DO NOW

Briefly define hypnosis. Do you think that hypnosis

should be considered an “altered state of consciousness?” Why or why not?

Meditation Meditation: a set of techniques

used to focus concentration away from thoughts and feelings in order to create calmness, tranquility, and inner peace.

EEGs of meditators show alpha waves characteristic of relaxed wakefulness.

Meditation Physiological changes, like lowered blood

pressure, slowed heart and breathing rates, and warming of hands are common during meditation, and indicate action of the parasympathetic nervous system, which we normally cannot consciously control.

Meditators often report an increased feeling of well-being.

Meditation Psychologists

disagree as to whether or not meditation is an altered state of consciousness.

A Buddhist monk has his vital signs measured as he prepares to enter an advanced state of meditation in Normandy, France. During meditation, the monk's body produces enough heat to dry cold, wet sheets put over his shoulders in a frigid room

Drugs Psychoactive

drugs: chemicals that can bass through the blood-brain barrier into the brain to alter perception, thinking, behavior, and mood.

Drugs

They produce a wide range of effects from mild relaxation or increased alertness to vivid hallucinations.

The effect a person expects from a drug partly determines the actual effect on the person.

Different effects can be experienced depending on one’s mood and social situation.

Drugs

Psychoactive drugs stimulate or inhibit different regions of the brain by interacting with neurotransmitter systems.

1.10.2011DO NOW

CHOOSE A NEW SEAT – Try to sit with people you have not sat with before in this class.

THEN, briefly define “psychoactive drug.”

ALSO, have your reading notes out to be checked!

Drugs

Psychological dependence: when a person has intense desire to achieve the drugged state in spite of adverse effects.

If a person uses a drug repeatedly, the intensity of produced effects by the same dose may decrease, causing the person to take larger doses.

Drugs

Tolerance: the decreasing responsivity to a drug.

This partly depends on environmental stimuli associated with taking the drug.

Drugs

Physiological dependence (addiction): blood chemistry changes from taking a drug necessitate taking the drug again to prevent withdrawal symptoms.

Withdrawal symptoms: typically intense craving for drug and effects opposite to those the drug usually induces.

Drugs

There are hundreds of psychoactive drugs, but they can be classified into four broad categories:

Depressants Narcotics (Opiates) Stimulants Hallucinogens

PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS JIGSAW

Directions: With your group, read the following articles on psychoactive drugs. Then create a poster and presentation (approximately 5-10 minutes long) about your psychoactive drug. Answer the following questions below:

1. What are the main effects of the drug? 2. What are some common versions of the drug? 3. What neurotransmitters are affected? 4. What are some health risks associated with the drug? 5. What are the withdrawal/addiction problems for this

drug?

1.11.2011DO NOW

Sit with your group from yesterday and finish your poster.

Prepare for your presentation (10 minutes to do so).

REMINDERS: Dream log project due Friday.

Exam 5 on Thursday!


EVERYONE in your group should be participating.

On the back of your poster, write down what everyone’s role was (e.g. found important info, made poster, presented, etc.)


When listening to presentations, make sure you are filling out your graphic organizer.

Don’t forget to include your own information so you can use this as a study tool!

Documents

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