Unit 4: Consciousness and Information Processing

• Consciousness


  individual awareness of your unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensation, and environment.
• Spontaneous consciousness


  Daydreaming, drowsiness, dreaming
• physiologically conscious


  Hallucinations, orgasm, food/oxygen, starvation
• Psychologically conscious


  Sensory deprivation, hypnosis, meditation
• Subconscious


  Partially conscious
• Unconscious


  Cannot be directly observed with conscious mind
• Biological rhythms are controlled by an internal clock.
• Circadian rhythm


  24 hour cycle; sleep and body temperature
• Sleep Theories


  1. Protects
  2. Recuperates (restores brain tissue)
  3. Helps process memory
  4. Growth
• Sleep deprivation


  Irritability, hallucinations, increase risk of stroke, impaired immune system
• REM (Rapid Eye Movement)


  Active while sleeping, vivid dreams
• There are five stages of sleep with one through four being NREM, and 5 being REM.
• Delayed sleep phase syndrome


  Circadian rhythm is off
• Insomnia


  Cannot fall/stay asleep
• narcolepsy


  Sudden, uncontrollable sleep during normal waking periods
• Sleep apnea


  Breathing stops temporarily during sleep; CPAP
• Night terrors


  Appearance of terrified, seldom remembered, during NREM 4
• Sleepwalking


  Disruption and sleep pattern causes to walk/move
• Dreams


  Sequence of images, thoughts, emotions
• Manifest content


  Remembered storyline of a dream
• Latent content


  Underlying meaning of a dream
• Sigmund Freud and dreams


  Wish fulfillment, unacceptable feelings, repressed memories
• Information processing theory


  Dreams sort out/makes sense of memories
• Activation synthesis theories


  Dreams makes sense of random neural activity
• REM rebound


  Rem sleep increases, following rem sleep deprivation
• Psychoactive drugs


  Alter perception/mood, impact consciousness, breaks blood–brain barrier
• Depressants


  Reduce neural activity/slow body functions
• Stimulants


  Excite neural activity/speed up body functions
• Hallucinogens


  LSD trips, marijuana time distortion
• Influences on drug use:

  1. Biological
  2. Physiological
  3. Socio-cultural