Psychology Sleep and Dreaming

• Stage 2 (Late Night)


  Slower theta waves with bursts of activity
• Stage 3 (Deep Sleep)


  Slow delta waves mixed with faster waves, the stage between light sleep and deep sleep
• Stage 4 (Deep Sleep)


  All waves are slow delta waves, very hard to wake someone
• Stage 5 (REM Sleep)


  Rapid eye movement, dreaming occurs in this stage, sensory blockade and movement inhibition
• Types of bodily rhythms

  • Circadian (daily 24hr cycle e.g. sleep wake cycle)
  • Ultradian (period less than 24hrs e.g. sleep cycle)
• Circadian rhythms


  Connected to a 'master clock' in the 'suprachiasmatic nucleus' (SCN) in the hypothalamus which sends signals to regulate activity throughout the body
• The SCN is highly sensitive to light which is why the circadian rhythms are closely connected to day and night
• Sleep Wake Circadian Rhythm

  1. During high light levels/day the SCN sends signals to generate alertness and keep us awake

  2. At night the lack of light causes the SCN to initiate the production of melatonin by the pineal gland
• Internal Influences on Sleep - Hormones

  Factors which come from within the body are known as endogenous cues to sleep
• Melatonin


  A hormone produced by the Pineal gland, when melatonin levels increase this signals the need for sleep, production of melatonin is triggered by darkness
• Miles et al (1997) found that a blind man's bodily rhythms were 25 hours suggesting that even without light internal factors govern our circadian rhythm
• Research found that hamsters with their SCN removed had random sleep wake patterns suggesting the SCN plays a key role in setting a biological clock
• ACTH


  A hormone which affects sleep (connected with feeling stressed) and its shown that people with insomnia have more of this
• Melatonin explanation has practical explanations. Melatonin tablets can help people suffering with insomnia
• People can override the influence of internal factors of sleep with drugs and caffeine so internal factors cannot fully explain our sleep patterns
• Problems generalising the findings from animal studies, human brain may work differently
• Problems generalising the findings from blind people to the rest of the population
• External Influences on Sleep -Zeitgebers … Light

  Other factors that affect the sleep wake cycle and sleep cycle are external, known as exogenous cues or zeitgebers, the main zeitgeber is light
• Understanding how zeitgebers like light affect sleep has led to practical applications like advising shift workers to darken their bedroom at night
• Siffre (1975) found that without light as an external cue to sleep the human sleep cycle is actually set to around 18 to 52 hrs
• Inutis who live in the arctic circle have similar sleep patterns all year round despite spending around 6 months in total darkness. This suggests endogenous factors may override external changes in light
• Explanations for Narcolepsy


  Lack of hypocretin (hormone which keeps us awake) research suggests that 95% of the hypocretin producing neurons in a person with narcolepsy brain are destroyed, Genetic influence- variations in chromosome 6 thought to be linked to narcolepsy
• Insomnia


  Difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, not feeling refreshed on waking, irritability and inability to concentrate, problems with memory
• Explanations for Insomnia


  Lifestyle - frequent jet lag or shift work, mental/physical ill health, side effects from medication or food and drink like alcohol or caffeine
• Activation Synthesis Theory


  1. During REM sleep sensory blockade prevents sensory info from coming into the brain and movement inhibition also occurs

  2. Neurons in the brain are randomly activated, there are random impulses arriving from the pons which give information as if it were from the senses (ACTIVATION)

  3. The brain makes sense of the random thoughts it generates (SYNTHESIS)
• Research evidence shows that when in sleep labs people experience increased activity during REM sleep yet muscles are paralysed and no sensory info is being taken in. This supports the idea that dreams come from the brain making sense of random thoughts that are the product of internally generated information
• Young children below the age of five, report having very few dreams and that their dreams are not very active however they have the normal amount of REM sleep, suggesting dreams are not just linked to REM sleep
• It has been found that patients who have brain damage to their brainstem don't stop dreaming. This is an issue because even though the usual signals aren't being sent they still have dreams
• Rather than being random people can link their dreams to events in the previous day suggesting the firing of neurons isn't just random
• Freud argues that dreams aren't just random activation rather a form of wish fulfilment which has meaning
• People often have recurring dreams which suggests that dreams aren't just random surges of stimulation and could be linked to unconscious or anxieties and worries from the day
• Many people report lucid dreaming which is where people are aware that they are dreaming and can control their dreams which would suggest that they aren't random
• Manifest content and latent content


  Manifest being the content that the dreamer remembers and the latent being the true meaning/ understanding of the dream which is being hidden by the manifest content
• Dreamwork


  The unconscious mind's attempt to keep the latent content of the dream hidden, consisting of condensation, displacement, and secondary elaboration
• To develop his theory Freud gathered lots of detailed qualitative data from real patients. His findings therefore and his theory can be said to be high in validity
• Freud's theory and subsequent treatment of psychoanalysis highlighted the importance of the unconscious mind and offered a unique way of studying it through analysing dreams meaning that it has useful practical applications with therapists helping patients work out what is in their unconscious mind and so that any distressing fear/ desires can be dealt with
• Each individual analyst can have totally different interpretations, meaning Freud's theory and the treatment of psychoanalysis is completely subjective
• Freud's theory cannot be easily tested, it isn't possible to objectively measure the unconscious mind meaning the theory isn't scientific
• Dreamers may recall details from their dreams inaccurately reducing the validity of subsequent analysis- secondary elaboration means that the dreamer may not have accurate dream content on which an analyst can base their analysis
• Hans' Phobia of Horses


  Particularly didn't like horses with black bits around the mouth, Freud thought the black bits might be his father's moustache and the horse could be a symbol for his father, the fear of horses showed hans' unconscious fear of his father because his father would be angry at him for wanting his mother