Variations in Consciousness

The Nature of Consciousness
1. Consciousness: The awareness of internal and external stimuli
  1. "Stream of Consciousness" - William James
  2. Consciousness does not come from any distinct structure but rather from activity in distributed networks of neural pathways
2. Mind Wandering: Refers to people's experience of task-unrelated thoughts
  1. Peoples spend 15-50% of their time mind wandering
3. Controlled processes: Judgments or thoughts that we exert some control over (intention)
4. Automatic Processes: It's effects happen without our intentional control or effort
5. EEG (Electroencephalograph): Monitors electrical activity of the brain over time. Measures brain waves (vary in amplitude and frequency)
  1. Divided into four principle bands:
    1. Beta (13-24cps): Normal waking thought, alert problem solving.
    2. Alpha (8-12cps): Deep relaxation, blank mind, meditation.
    3. Theta (4-7cps): Light sleep.
    4. Delta (under 4cps): Deep sleep.
Biological Rhythms and Sleep
1. Biological Rhythms: Periodical fluctuations in physiological functioning (biological clock)
2. Circadian Rhythms: the 24hr biological cycles found in humans and many other species
  1. Persist even when external time cues are eliminated (cycles tend to be longer 24.2hrs)
  2. Daily exposure to light readjusts peoples biological clocks
  3. Melatonin can help realign circadian rhythm
3. Sleep debt accumulates and for everything to return to normal it must be paid back by getting extra sleep
  1. Jet Lag: Getting out of sync with circadian Rhythms
    1. Rule of thumb - Readjustment process takes about a day for each time zone crossed going eastward and 2/3 of a day per time zone crossed going westward
The Sleep and Waking Cycle
1. Devices used for sleep analysis
  1. Electromyograph (EMG): Records muscular activity and tension
  2. Electrooculograph (EOG): Records eye movement
2. During sleep people cycle through a series of five stages
  1. Stage 1: Brief transition stage of light sleep (1-7min) breathing and heartrate slow as muscle tension and body temp decline. Theta waves are prominent
    1. Hypnic Jerks: Brief muscular contractions that occur as people fall asleep
  2. Stage 2: (10-25 min) brief bursts of higher-frequency brain waves called Sleep Spindles. Brain waves become higher amplitude and slower frequency as body moves into a deeper form of sleep called slower wave sleep
    1. Non REM (NREM): Consists of sleep stages 1-4 marked by absence of rapid eye movement. Relatively little dreaming and varied EEG activity
  3. Stages 3 & 4: Consists of Slow-wave Sleep (SWS): high-amplitude, low frequency delta waves. Typically reach SWS in 1/2 hr and stay there for another 30 minutes then cycle reverses.
  4. Stage 5: REM deep sleep. People are hard to awaken. Irregular breathing and pulse rate, muscle tone extremely relaxed, almost to the point of paralysation. EEG dominated by high frequency beta waves that resemble those of an awake and alert person. Vivid dreaming.
3. Sleep cycle is repeated about four times a night
4. Ascending Reticular Activating System (ARAS): Consists of the afferent fibres running through the reticular formation that influence physiological arousal
5. Health issues associated to sleep loss include: hormonal changes, obesity, impaired immune system and increase in inflammatory responses, increased risk for diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease. Less than 7hrs of sleep and more than 8hrs leads to higher mortality rate.
6. Common sleep disorders (78 total):
  1. Insomnia: Refers to chronic problems in getting adequate sleep
  2. Narcolepsy: A disease marked by sudden and irresistible onsets of sleep during normal waking periods
  3. Sleep Apnea: Involves frequent, reflexive gasping for air that awakens a person and disrupts sleep
  4. Nightmares: Anxiety-arousing dreams that lead to awakening, usually from REM sleep
  5. Night-Terrors: Abrupt awakenings from NREM sleep, accompanied by intense autonomic arousal and feelings of panic
  6. Somnambulism (sleepwalking): Occurs when a person arises and wanders about while remaining asleep
  7. REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder (RBD): Marked by potentially troublesome dream enactments during REM periods
The World of Dreams
1. Day Residue (Freud): When contents of waking life often spill into dreams
2. Lucid Dreams: Dreams in which people can think clearly about the circumstances of waking life and the fact that they are dreaming
3. Some cultures view dreams as another type of reality
4. Theories of Dreaming:
  1. Wish Fulfillment (Freud): People fulfill ungratified needs from waking hours through wishful thinking in dreams
    1. The manifest content: Consists of the plot of a dream at the surface level
    2. The latent content: Refers to the hidden or disguised meaning of the events in the plot
  2. The Problem Solving View (Cartwright): We think through major problems in our lives while dreaming
  3. Activation-Synthesis Model (Hobson & McCarthy): A story is created to make sense of internal signals
Hypnosis
1. Hypnosis: A systematic procedure that typically produces a heightened state of suggestibility
  1. May lead to: Passive relaxation, narrowed attention, and enhanced fantasy
  2. Measured by: Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale (SHSS)
2. Hypnotic Phenomena:
  1. Anesthesia: Participants are able to withstand treatments that would normally cause considerable pain
  2. Sensory Distortions and Hallucinations: Visual or auditory hallucinations
  3. Disinhibition: Getting people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do in a normal state
  4. Posthypnotic Suggestions And Amnesia: Suggestions are made that may influence a subject's later behaviour
3. Hypnotic Trance: A special altered state of consciousness
4. Theories of Hypnosis:
  1. Social-Cognitive Theory of Hypnosis: Hypnosis as Role Playing - Hypnosis = normal mental state. Result of expectations and attitudes (Barber & Spanos)
  2. Hypnosis as an Altered State of Consciousness - Hypnotized subjects experience changes in brain activity. Dissociation: A splitting off of mental processes into two separate simultaneous streams of awareness
    1. Stream 1: In communication with hypnotist and the external world
    2. Stream 2: Difficult-to-detect "hidden observer"
    3. Highway Hypnosis: Ability to drive following the rules with no recollection of it due to the /2 streams'
Meditation
1. Meditation: A family of practices that train attention to heighten awareness and bring mental processes under greater voluntary control
2. Can be classified into two main styles:
  1. Focused Attention: Attention concentrated on a specific object, sound or bodily function
  2. Open Monitoring: Attention directed to contents of one's moment-to-moment experience in non-judging and nonreactive ways
3. Physiological Correlation:
  1. Alpha and theta waves become more prominent
  2. Heart rate, skin conductance, respiration rate, oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide elimination decline
  3. Increased activity in prefrontal cortex
4. Long Term Benefits:
  1. Reduce stress
  2. Improve immune response
  3. Improve mental health by reducing anxiety and drug abuse
  4. Increase tolerance of pain
Altering Consciousness with Drugs
1. Psychoactive Drugs: Chemical substances that modify mental, emotional, or behavioural functioning
2. Six Categories:
  1. Narcotics (opiates): Drugs derived from opium that are capable of relieving pain
  2. Sedatives: Sleep-inducing drugs that tend to decrease CNS activation and behavioural activity
  3. Stimulants: Drugs that tend to increase CNS activation and behavioural activity
  4. Hallucinogens: Diverse group of drugs that have powerful effects on mental and emotional functioning, marked most prominently by distortions in sensory and perceptual experience
  5. Cannabis: The hemp plant from which marijuana, hashish, and THC are derived
  6. Alcohol: Encompasses a variety of beverages containing ethyl alcohol
3. Tolerance: A progressive decrease in a person's responsiveness to a drug
4. How they work?
  1. Work primarily by altering neurotransmitter activity in the brain
5. Drug Dependence
  1. Physical Dependence: Exists when a person must continue to take a drug to avoid withdrawal illness
  2. Psychological Dependence: Exists when a person must continue to take a drug to satisfy intense mental and emotional craving for the drug
  3. Both forms of dependence reflect altercations in synaptic transmission
6. Three Primary Ways Drugs Affect Health
  1. Overdose:
    1. CNS depressants are the greatest risk for overdose. Respiratory system grinds to a halt, producing coma, brain damage and death
    2. Fatal overdoses involve heart attacks, stroke or cortical seizure
  2. Direct Effects:
    1. Direct tissue damage, liver damage, ulcers, hypertension, stroke, heart disease, neurological disorders and some types of cancer
  3. Indirect Effects:
    1. Affects attitudes, intentions and behaviour

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Variations in Consciousness

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	Created by Darby Milman about 8 years ago