PSYC 327 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Visual Cortex, Iceberg, Blindsight
22 Dec 2016
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In 1960"s so much attention was on behavior that consciousness was linked to a car"s speedometer it doesn"t make the car go, it just reflects whats happening. After 1960, mental concepts reemerged and people were looking at neuroscience advances with regards to brain activity in relation to sleeping, dreaming and other mental states. Researchers studied consciousness altered by hypnosis and drugs. Consciousness: our awareness of ourselves and our environment. The awareness lets us assemble information from many sources as we reflect on our past and plan for our future. And it focuses our attention when we learn a complex concept or behavior. Ex: when we learn to drive, we focus on the car and the traffic. Soon driving becomes semi-automatic freeing us to focus our attention on other things. Over time, we flit between various states of consciousness, like sleeping, waking and various altered states. Evolutionary psychologists speculate that consciousness must offer a reproductive advantage.
