PSYCH 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Sleep Deprivation, Light Therapy, Sociobiology
Document Summary
Circadian rhythms daily cyclical changes in terms of your state of arousal. Daylight stimulates it to reduce release of melatonin (key substance for having us have more/less brain arousal sleeping) Darkness inhibits reduction (more melatonin for sleep) Seasonal affective disorder people who live in long period darkness (north and south hemispheres) which is essentially that they have too much melatonin because of darkness all the time. This reduction in brain arousal levels leads to depression (can take medication to alter naturally occurring level of melatonin as well as light therapy) Injury to hypothalamus leads to a destruction of the circadian rhythm. Vast individual difference: larks vs. night owls. We have different brain waves as we move deeper and deeper in sleep we have slower waves. Rem rapid eye movement what we are like during sleep. Paradoxical (lots of activity going in sleep eyes are moving dramatically trying to track something in visual field)
