ch.5

• consciousness - our subjective awareness of ourselves and our environment
• hypnosis - a social interaction in which one person suggest to another that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviours will spontaneously occur
• posthypnotic suggestion - a suggestion made during a hypnosis session that is to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized; used by some clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviours
• stroop effect - the delay in reaction between congruent and incongruent stimuli
• Ernest Hilgard - theorized that hypnosis involves a special state of dissociation or divided consciousness
• dissociation - a split in consciousness, which allows some thoughts and behaviours to occur simultaneously with others
• sleep - a periodic, natural loss of consciousness
• circadian rhythm - our biological clock; regular bodily rhythms that occur on a 24 hour cycle
• Eugene Aserinsky - discovered REM sleep when he hooked his son up to an EEG
• REM sleep - rapid eye movement sleep; a recurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur; aka paradoxical sleep because the muscles are relaxed but other body systems are active
• 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
• hallucinations - false sensory experiences such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus
• hypnagogic sensations - bizarre experiences such as jerking or feeling of falling while transitioning to sleep
• NREM 1 - lasts about 5 minutes; experience hallucinations and hypnagogic sensations; emits theta waves
• NREM 2 - lasts about 20 minutes; experience sleep spindles
• sleep spindles - random bursts of brain wave activity
• NREM 3 - lasts about 30 minutes; first emission of delta waves
• delta waves - large, slow brain waves associated with deep sleep of NREM 3
• suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) - a pair of cell clusters in the hypothalamus that controls circadian rhythm; in response to light, it causes the pineal gland to adjust melatonin production which modifies our feelings of sleepiness
• melatonin - a sleep inducing hormone
• NREM 4 - deepest stage of sleep in which it is hard to wake; lasts for about 30 minutes; emission of delta waves; experience sleep walking, bed wetting
• beta waves - waves of someone who is wide awake
• sleep functions - helps protect, recuperate, restore fading memories of the day's experiences, feeds creative thinking, supports growth
• insomnia - recurring problems in falling or staying asleep
• tolerance - a state in which increasing doses are needed to produce an effect
• narcolepsy - sleep disorder characterized by uncontrollable sleep attacks
• sleep apnea - sleep disorder characterized by temporary cessations of breathing during sleep and repeated momentary awakenings
• night terrors - sleep disorder characterized by high arousal and an appearance of being terrified; occur during NREM 3 within 2 or 3 hours of falling asleep
• somnambulism - sleepwalking
• dreams - sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person's mind
• Sigmund Freud - wrote the interpretation of dreams; believed dreams are the royal road to the unconscious; there there were 2 levels of dreams; manifest and latent
• manifest content - they remembered, symbolic story line of a dream
• latent content - the underlying meaning of a dream
• REM rebound - the tendency for REM sleep to increase following REM sleep deprivation
• Freud's wish fulfillment - theory that dreams provide a psychic safety valve; express unacceptable feelings; contain manifest and latent content
• information processing theory - theory that dreams help us sort out the day's events and consolidate our memories
• physiological theory - regular brain stimulation from REM sleep may help develop and preserve neural pathways
• activation synthesis theory - REM sleep triggers impulses that evoke random visual memories which our sleeping brain weaves into stories
• cognitive theory - theory that dream content reflects dreamers' cognitive development: their knowledge and understanding