Chapter 6

• Split-brain patients


  Patients who have had their corpus callosum severed
• States of consciousness


  • Conscious content
  • Awareness of self and environment
  • Meditating
  • Daydreaming
  • Sleeping
  • Drug-induced hallucinating
• Types of attention


  • Active attention
  • Passive attention
  • Focused visual attention
  • Selective attention
  • Focused auditory attention
• Dichotic listening


  Simultaneously attending to two (or more) tasks
• Divided attention


  Simultaneously attending to two (or more) tasks
• Automaticity


  Experience can improve multitasking
• Change blindness


  Failure to notice changes in a visual scene
• Intentional change detection


  Actively looking for changes in a visual scene
• Visual neglect


  Patients not aware of left visual field stimuli
• Sleep


  Periodic, natural loss of consciousness
• Even while asleep, we are processing information outside our conscious awareness
• Stage 1 sleep


  • Light stage of sleep, easy to be awoken
  • Presence of Theta waves away from Alpha waves
• Stage 2 sleep


  • Appearance of sleep spindles and K-complexes
  • Sleep Spindles = brief bursts of activity occurring ~2-5 times per minute during non-REM sleep
  • K-complexes = pattern of neural excitation followed by neural inhibition occurring ~once per minute
• Stage 3 sleep

  • Slow-wave sleep (SWS)
  • Large, slow delta waves
  • Hard to awaken
• Stage 4 sleep (REM sleep)


  • Also known as paradoxical sleep
  • Internally aroused but outwardly paralyzed
• Slow-wave sleep


  • Restoration of the brain
  • Pituitary gland secretes a growth hormone necessary for muscle development
• REM sleep


  • Rebound phenomenon suggests need for REM sleep
  • Protects consolidation
  • Strengthens neural connections that build enduring memories
• Circadian rhythm


  • Internal biological clock of 24-hour cycle of day and night
  • Governs our cycle of waking and sleeping
  • Altered by age and experience
• Dyssomnias


  • Insomnia - inability to fall asleep or to remain asleep
  • Conditioned insomnia - results from associations and conditioning
  • Idiopathic insomnia - caused by neurophysiological abnormality
  • Hypersomnia - excessive sleepiness
  • Sleep apnea - Stopping of breathing while asleep
  • Narcolepsy - Sudden uncontrollable sleep attacks, sometimes lapsing directly into REM sleep
• Addiction


  Compulsive craving of drugs or certain behaviors (such as gambling) despite known harmful consequences
• Tolerance


  With repeated use, desired effect requires larger doses
• Dependence


  Require a drug to maintain normal functioning
• Withdrawal


  Discomfort and distress that follow discontinuing an addictive drug or behavior
• Depressants


  Drugs such as alcohol, barbiturates (tranquilizers), and opiates that calm neural activity and slow body functions
• Stimulants


  • Caffeine, nicotine, cocaine, Ecstasy (MDMA), and methamphetamine that excite neural activity and speed up body functions
  • Dilation of pupils, increase in heart and breathing rates, rise in blood sugar, and drop in appetite
  • Often involves increase in energy and self-confidence
• Functions of Slow-Wave Sleep

  • Restoration of the brain
  • Pituitary gland secretes growth hormone necessary for muscle development
• Functions of REM Sleep

  • Rebound phenomenon suggests need for REM sleep
  • Protects consolidation
  • Strengthens neural connections that build enduring memories
• Attention


  Process of selecting information from the internal & external environments to prioritize for processing
• Passive Attention


  Occurs when attentional properties are set by bottom-up information from the environment
• Active Attention


  Occurs when attentional properties are set by top-down goals of an individual
• Selective Attention


  A form of attention that occurs when a person attends to some information while ignoring other information
• Stimulus Salience


  Refers to the idea that some stimuli in the environment captures attention by virtue of their physical properties
• Attentional Capture


  Occurs when attention is diverted bc of the salience of a stimulus
• Cocktail Party Effect


  Describes a situation associated with selective attention; a person can be engaged in a conversation in a loud room/party and suppress/ignore all the information going on around them and attend to the conversation
• Dichotic Listening Task

  • Listening to one message in one ear, and a different one in another
  • Participants asked to repeat one message & ignore the 2nd, but this is seemingly difficult
• Divided Attention


  Occurs when a person engages in multiple tasks at once
• Automaticity


  Refers to fast & effortful processing of info without conscious thought
• A task or skill is considered automatic when performance isn't impaired by other tasks. Once a skill becomes automatic, attention is freed up to focus on other features in the environment
• Subliminal Stimulus 


  A sensory stimulus that's processed but doesn't reach the threshold for conscious perception
• Subconscious Processing 


  Occurs when we are aware of information from the environment but aren't aware of that it's influencing our behaviour