Exam will be 65 multiple choice questions Sleep and dreaming o Altered state of consciousness forms of experience that depart from the normal subjective experience of the world and the mind Hypnagogic pre sleep state Hypnopompic waking state o Sleep cycle Circadian rhythm naturally occurring 24 hour cycle actually 25 hours Brain wave patterns change EEG beta alpha theta and delta waves 5 stages of sleep 1 4 and REM REM rapid eye movements and a high level of brain activity o Dreams occur most often during REM o Electrooculograph EOG an instrument that measures eye movements o The body is immobilized o see textbook figure 5 11 for brain waves during sleep cycle o Note that REM waves are similar to beta waves o REM is a really important stage in consolidating information and feeling rested o A lack of sleep cuts off the amount of REM sleep you get o Video sleep and sleeplessness Hypertension and diabetes are linked to a lack of sleep Humans average 7 hours of sleep at night less than in the past Modafinil is a drug invented to treat narcolepsy it targets localized parts of the brain allowing humans to still function well o Sleep needs deprivation We get about 1 hour of sleep for every 2 we are awake Memories and learning deteriorate unless sleep occurs REM sleep deprivation has the most detrimental effects followed by slow wave sleep stages 3 4 o Sleep is an adaptive behavior Restoration sleep deprivation o Dreams What do dreams mean Microsleeps if you are extremely tired you may fall into a very light sleep for a short amount of time e g when driving for too long We don t really know but there are hypotheses The activation synthesis hypothesis neurons randomly fire while sleeping and our brain is consolidating information a dream is an attempt to make sense of this Dreams are illogical b c the prefrontal cortex is inactive The visual association cortex is active which is associated with imagining and remembering as opposed to the part of the brain assigned to actual vision The motor cortex is active only to repress movement Evolved threat rehearsal strategies dreams evolved for higher order mammals to practice avoiding threats Hypnosis an altered state of consciousness characterized by suggestibility and the feeling that one s actions are occurring involuntarily o The essence of hypnosis is in leading people to expect that certain things will happen that are outside their conscious will o Susceptibility varies greatly subject to agreeableness o It is used as entertainment but it can also help w pain relief relaxation o There is some conscious control involved it is just a deep state of relaxation o Video on hypnosis o Brain activity Unique patterns of brain activation PET scan of subjects performing 3 tasks 1 perception heard a sentence 2 imagination imagined hearing a sentence said again Results 3 hallucination listened as a hypnotists suggested the sentence was o The right anterior cingulate cortex was activated area involved in attention o This area was just as active in participants hallucinating those actually hearing the sentence o This is not found in people not highly hypnotizable Sensation perception o They are related but separate o Sensation simple stimulation of a sense organ o Perception the organization identification and interpretation of a sensation in order to form a mental representation making sense of the sensation What we expect to see hear affects what we actually see hear e g stereotypes etc o Basic process of sensation Modification via accessory structures e g lens of an eye is an accessory structure that changes the light by e g outer part of the ear is an accessory structure that collects sound focusing it Transduction Process of converting energy into neural activity Occurs at sensory receptors Sensory receptors respond especially to changes in stimulus intensity Encoding Encoding is the translation of physical stimulus properties into patterns of neural activity that specifically identify those physical properties Final output is action potentials firing down sensory neurons Representation in cortex The thalamus is the relay station for all sensory information except smell Contralateral to the part of world sensed o E g vision for each eye the right visual field is processed by the left hemisphere and the left visual field by the right hemisphere The human eye Light passes through the cornea to the pupil iris surrounds it to the lens accommodation and to the retina phototransduction o Accommodation the process by which the eye maintains a clear image on the retina adjusting the amount of light o Retina the light sensitive tissue lining the back of the eyeball Myopia nearsightedness due to improper accommodation Hyperopia farsightedness due to improper accommodation Blind spot where the optic nerve is there are no light receptors Fovea the point of central focus on the retina Phototransduction in the retina o 2 types of photoreceptor cells in the retina contain light sensitive pigments that transduce light into neural impulses Cones detect color red green blue operate under normal daylight conditions allow us to focus on fine Rods become active under low light conditions for o The retina has layers of cells including the bipolar cells the retinal ganglion cells in addition to the rod and cone layers Large concentration of cones in the center at the Rods are distributed more evenly Information is transferred from rods and cones to detail night vision fovea bipolar cells Then to ganglion cells Then to the optic nerve and to the occipital lobe Explained in the Blue Man Group video Distal stimulus from the outside environment e g seeing a skier Proximal stimulus in the brain o Perceptual process Involves construction of the world Involves Selection of sensory output our brain ignores some stimuli Organization of sensory output Interpretation of sensory output based on our experiences attitudes preferences social situational contexts we interpret things differently change blindness video We aren t watching for changes in color so we don t notice when the people s shirts the tablecloth and the backdrop change Context effects change in perception based on context E g 12 A 13 C 14 Subliminal messages e g linking alcohol to sex based on messages in the shapes of the ice cubes in commercials E g video of people watching a video and asked to count the number of passes of a basketball who didn t see the man in a gorilla suit walk through