PSYC 1020H Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Narcolepsy, Delta Wave, Ibm 7090

• School: Trent University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1020H
• Professor: Wolfgang Lehmann

Document Summary

For 1/3 of our lives, we live in the dream world of sleep. During the day, mood, alertness, efficiency, and consciousness, are in perpetual flux. Consciousness: awareness of oneself and the environment. Biological rhythms: a periodic, fairly regular fluctuation in a biological system, that may or may not have psychological implications. The biological clock in our brains governs the waxing and waning of hormone levels, urine volume, blood pressure, and the responsiveness of brain cells as stimulation. Entrainment is the synchronization of biological rhythms with external cues, such as fluctuations in daylight; these rhythms still occur even without external time cues as they are generated from within. Some rhythms can occur more frequently than others, such as seasonally, daily, monthly, or yearly. Circadian rhythms: a biological rhythm with a period, which occur about every 24 hours. The sleep-wake cycle is the best known example of a circadian rhythm, but there are countless others affecting physiology and performance.