PSY 102 Chapter 5: ch5
17 Nov 2018
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Chapter 5: consciousness
• Susan Clancy: research on individuals who have come to believe they were kidnapped by
aliens – fear that they were abducted – many shared a history of sleep paralysis ( an
experience of not being able to move just before falling asleep or immediately upon
waking up – 1/3 to ½ college students have experienced at least 1 episode of sleep
paralysis
• Sleep paralysis: often related to a disruption in the sleep cycle and often
associated with anxiety or even terror, feelings of vibrations, humming noises,
and eerie sense of menacing figures close to or on top of the immobile person ---
the menace depends on the culture ie: in Thailand, they report a ghost and in
newfoundland, attribute to an elderly witch sitting on the peron’s chest
• Consciousness: our subjective experience of the world and ourselves
• 1/3 of life is spent sleeping – It’s impt for daily functioning and our health
• circadian rhythm: changes that occur on roughly a 24 hour basis in many of our
biological processes, including hormone release, brain waves, body temp and drowsiness
• biological clock: term for the supachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus that’s
responsible for controlling our levels of alertness
• college and uni students need as much as 9 hours of sleep/ night
• if we lack sleep for one night, we’ll feel edgy, irritable, and unable to concentrate well
the next day but after many nights of sleep deprivation might feel more out of it and
accumulate “sleep debt” meaning that we will need several nights of sleeping extra hours
• after 4 days of sleep deiprvation- may start to experience hallucinations and other
adverse health outcomes ie: weight gain, incr risk of HTN, diabetes, heart probs
STAGES OF SLEEP
• 1951: discovery in Nathaniel kleitman’s slepe lab at the university of Chicago of REM
movements during sleep dreaming ie: rapid eye movement (REM)
• when the researchers woke up the participants when they were on REM sleep- report of
vivid dreaming compared to when the researchers woke them up on non REM sleep ( less
likely to claim vivid dreaming- but vivid dreams to sometimes occur during NREM too)
•
• stage 1: light sleep – about 5-10 min where the brain activity powers down to 50%
• producing theta waves, which occur 4-7 times/sec
• theta waves are slower than…
• beta waves- 13 or more times/s when we active alert state
• alpha waves of 8-12 /s when we’re quiet and relaxed
• hypnagogic imagery: scrambled, odd and dream like images that flit in and out of
consciousness – may experience sudden jerks ( myoclonic jerks) of our limbs as if
being startled or falling – in this state we are often confused and this might be
stage and imagery that sleepers misinterpret for human figures
• stage 2;brain waves get slower and sudden intense bursts of electrical activity called sleep
spindles of about 12-14 cycles/s and occasional sharply rising and falling waves aka K-
complexes
• k complex only show up when you sleep ( found in EEG)
• as brain activity reduces, heart rate and temp reduces, relaxed muscles and less
eye movement
• we spend about 65% of our sleep time in stage 2
• stage 3 and 4 sleep: delta waves- slow for 1-2 cycles/s
• stage 3: delta waves occur 20-50% of the time
• stage 4: delta waves occur more than 50% of the time
• having alcohol suppresses delta sleep- making us more tired the next day
• children are good sleepers bc they spend 40% of their time in deep sleep and are
diffciult to awaken – while adults spend only 25% of their time in deep sleep (
sleeping like a baby)
• stage 5: REM Sleep: after 15-30 min , we return to stage 2 before brains shift to high
frequency, low amplitude waves resembling wakefulness
• increased HR, BP and rapid irregular breathing
• generally takes 20-25% of our night’s sleep
• after 10-20 min REM, the cycle starts again
• each night we go thru REM sleep 5-6 times
• dreaming doesn’t ONLY happen during rem but more dreams happens during rem
• rem sleep is paradoxical sleep bc brain is active at the same time that the body Is
inactive and ( paralyze)D
• REM sleep triggered by the NT acetylcholine
• with rem deprivation: REM rebound- the amount and intensity of REM sleep increases-
suggesting that rem is impt for fxn
• **for study with rats, deprived REM sleep rates typically lead to their death within a few
weeks
• 1/200 people have symptoms of RBD ( rem behaviour disorder)—and generally more
frequently for men over 50 – behaviour where an idnvidiual acts out during sleep-
possibly injuring partner
• RBD individual typically have brain stem structures that usually prevent us from
moving during rem sleep but aren’t working well anymore—and could be an early
marker of dementia and parkinson’s disease
• – shogin RBD symptoms has an average of 14-25 yrs before major symptoms of
neurodegenerative diseases occur
• lucid dreaming: aware that you are dreaming – usually bc something odd or impropable is
happening in the dream – generally part of the cerebral cortex involved with self
perceptions and evaluating thoughts increase activity
• opens the possibility fo controlling your dreams and possibly being able to
become lucid during aa nightmare to improve the dream outcome
DISORDERS OF SLEEP
• insomnia: most common sleep disturbance- -- ie: having trouble sleeping, having trouble
going back to sleep during the night, waking up too early in the morning
• 9-15% of peple report severe or longstanding problems
• people with depression, continual pain or other medical dontiions are higher risk
of insomnia
• treatments include: hiding clocks, and sleeping in cool room, going to sleep at
regular times and avoiding caffeiene, naps during the day, reading in bed and
watching tv just before bed
• research has shown that a brief psychotherapy is more effective than Ambien (
popular sleeping pill) and taking lunesta can cause amnesia
• taking sleeping pills long term could lead to dependency – and once you stop
taking it rebound insomnia
• narcolepsy: dramamtic disorder where people experience episodes of sudden sleep lasting
anywhere from a few secs to minutes and less frequently as long as an hour – can sleep
during all sorts of situations – could happen with surprise, elation or other strong
emotions ie: laughing at a joke or engaging in sexual intercourse
• those with narcolepsy fall into REM lseep immediately and dream vivid
hypnagogic hallucinations
• could be genetic
• hormone orexin plays a key role in triggering sudden attacks of sleepiness –
narcoleptics have abnormally few brain cells producing orexin
• sleep apnea- disorder that affects btwn 2-20% of the general population – caused by
blockage of the airway during sleep – sometimes bc snore too loudly, gasp and
sometimes stop breathing for 20s – trouble breathing impacts sleep and cause fatigue the
next day
• sleep apnea typically associated with gaining weight- so docs rcommend weight
loss as a first treatment – for children with enlarged tonsils that prevent fluent
breathing at night may have them surgically removed
• night terrors: typically harmless events that occur mostly exclusively with children—
could happen to adults who are undergoin xs stress
• sleep walking: wakling while fully asleep- involves relatively little activity, but sleep
walkers have ben known to drive cars and turn on computers and possibly in commiting
murder in a case…
• those who are sleep deprived are more likely to exhibit sleepwalking the
following night
DREAMS
• not fully certain the reason for dreaming, but speculate that dreams are involved in
• processing emotional memories
• integrating new experiences with established memories to make sense of create a
virtual reality model fo the world
• learning new strategies and ways of doing things
• simulating threatening events so we can better cope with them in everyday life
• reorganizing and consolidating memories
• freud’s dream protection theory
• dreams don’t surrender their secrets easily but they require interpretation to
reverse the dream work and reveal their true meaning btwn
• manifest content: detail of the dream
• latent: the hidden teal meaning of the dream
• ie: manifest content= dream about getting a flat tire, latent content=
anxiety of loss of status at job
• however, most dreams don’t seem to have hidden meanings and the manifest
content = latent content bc you dream about everyday stuff
• activation-synthesis theory: proposes that dreams reflect brain activation in sleep, rather
than a repressed unconscious wish as freud claimed
• this activation originates in the pons, which the forebrain then attemps to weave
into a story – the active pons sends incomplete signals to the lateral geniculate
