PSYCH101 Lecture Notes - Reticular Formation, Inattentional Blindness, Eugene Aserinsky

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH101
• Professor: Richard Ennis

Document Summary

Sleep onset: physiological, heart rate slows down, breathing is irregular, muscles relax (sometimes twitch or jerk too) One theory suggests that the brain is actually testing motor movements during this time of rest: senses close down (vision first, then hearing, then others) Weird, brief, and unusual experiences just before going to sleep. Tend to be very surprising, involves movement, and red is a dominant colour. Most common hallucination involves falling or steeping out into space. Also called paradoxical sleep since the brain is active, but the body is not: genitals are aroused (not caused by dream content necessarily), and continue to be aroused until rem sleep is over. Proposed theories explaining the function of dreams: wish-fulfillment (psycho-analytical theory), dreams provide a psychic safety value and express otherwise unacceptable feelings. They contain manifest content (superficial meaning) and latent (hidden meaning: criticism: Lacks any scientific support and also dreams can be interpreted in many different ways.