Modules 7

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Modules 7 Consciousness and Attention
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Consciousness

• Our awareness of ourselves and our environments.

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Dual Processing

• Our perceptual neural pathways have two routes.
  The newer cortex routes (i.e., to Primary Visual
  cortex) produce conscious seeing. An older
  brain stem route responds to reflex like the
  orienting reflex (directing your attention
  towards something important).

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Blindsight

• In the absence of a working visual cortex
  pathway (V1), a persons dorsal pathway can
  identify some qualities (i.e., movement, emotion)
  in the absence of the conscious experience of
  seeing.

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• Unconscious pathway is faster
• Conscious processing is
• more skilled

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Selective Attention

• The ability to select some aspects of our sensory
  input to attend to while tuning other aspects
  out.
• Cocktail Party Phenomenon

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Selective Attention and Multitasking

• Our attention can shift from one task to another
  and back (time sharing attentional recourses).
• If two tasks compete for attentional resources
  performance in one or both will be impaired.

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Driving and Conversing

• Brain activities in areas vial to driving
  decreased 37 while attending to a conversation.

Cell phone users 4X higher risk of accidents.
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Selective Inattention

• Count the passes.
• Failure to notice some stimulus that is in plain
  sight. This stimulus is usually unexpected but
  fully visible. People can falsely believe that
  they do not experience inattentional blindness.
  This is due to the fact that they are unaware
  that they are missing things.

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Module 8

• Sleep and Dreams

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• Circadian Rhythms
• Alertness patterns over the day
• governed by suprachiasmatic nucleus
• body temperature fluctuations
• clock reset by light (keeps it to 24 hours)
• No light cues ? 25 hour cycle
• Morning People and Night People

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Melatonin - hormone released by pineal gland.
Sedative effect. Light suppresses melatonin
release Darkness increases melatonin
release Will Taking Melatonin help you sleep?
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Stages of Sleep Electroencephalograph (EEG)
- measures electrical activity of brain
areas. Beta Waves - Wakefulness - choppy
short waves. Hypnagogic Hallucinations
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Slow Wave Stages (1, 2, 3, 4 SWS)
Alpha Waves Waves become larger and more
rhythmic. Neurons fire in synchronized pattern.
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• REM (Rapid Eye Movement Stage)
• Beta waves return (like wakefulness)
• Paradoxical Sleep
• ? Visual cortex and frontal lobe activity
• Brain Stem blocks Motor
• messages thus muscle activity
• suppressed.
• - Dreams occur.

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Over the sleep period - cycle through
stages REM periods become longer. Stage 4
periods become shorter.
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• What function does sleep serve?
• Protective Function
• Night Time is more
• Dangerous!

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• 2) Sleep Supports healing growth
• Pituitary releases Growth Hormone
• Facilitates healing!

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Can we get by with less sleep? Yes, but reduce
slowly (15 mins. less per week). What Happens
when sleep reduced? Become more efficient
sleeper - fall asleep faster. - Same amount of
time in REM and Stage 4 as with 8 hours sleep.
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• Sleep Deprivation
• - circadian rhythms govern alertness
• - sleep does not need to be fully replaced
• REM rebound
• NREM Rebound
• Peter Tripp 200 hours of Sleep deprivation

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Cognitive functions - Loss of NREM has little
effect - Loss of REM - impaired
concentration - moodiness - health
problems
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How can I increase Sleep?

• Getting up earlier is often difficult and trying
  to go to sleep when not tired is near impossible.
  Add sleep by going to bed about 15 minutes
  earlier for a week, then add another 15 mins. Etc.

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Benefits of Getting Enough Sleep

• Lowered risk of depression
• Decreased risk for Obesity
• - decreased ghrelin (hunger arousing hormone),
  and increased Leptin (hunger suppresser).
• - increased cortisol (stress hormone) leads
  to storage of fat.

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• Lower risk of viral infections and cancer.
• Longer life expectancy
• Increased attention and vigilance

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Dreams (R.E.M.) Everyone dreams (some dont
remember) What Happens during dreaming. 1)
Thoughts come into consciousness. 2) Try to make
sense of them.
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Functions of REM SLEEP

• 3) Sleep helps restore and rebuild fading
  memories of the days experiences.
• - memory consolidation
• 4) Creative Problem Solving and Thinking

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Do Dreams have meaning? 3 views. 1)
Activation-Synthesis Theory - random firing
of neurons - produce random thoughts -
we try to make sense of them Evidence dreams can
be bizarre!
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2) Cognitive View Thoughts involve current
experiences and concerns day baggage -
evidence We can solve problems in our sleep.
Content often related to our current
experiences.
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• 3) Psychoanalytic View.
• Symbolic messages from repressed
• areas of our minds.
• Dream Interpretation
• Psychoanalytic symbols.
• Manifest content vs. latent content

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Common Dreams Scared and cant move. Anxiety
Dreams Dreams have personal meaning!
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Major Sleep Disorders Insomnia inability to
sleep or to stay asleep Hypersomnia inability
to stay awake Sleep Apnea intermittent
stoppage of breathing
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Somnambulism - (Sleep walking) - failure of
the muscle suppression mechanism to
fully activate. Narcolepsy - associated
with upset or excitement. - may be
inappropriate muscle suppression
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Module 9 Hypnosis

• When you're under hypnosis
•  increase in absorption.
• focused attention.
• disattention to extraneous stimuli.
• reduction in spontaneous thought.

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• Social-Influence Theory of Hypnosis
• Theory that powerful social influences produce a
  state of hypnosis.
• Physiological state does not change under
  hypnosis.
• Is Hypnosis just a placebo effect?
• Eich (1989) when subjects led to believe they
  were hypnotized when they were not they acted
  then same as when hypnotized.

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Divided Consciousness View

• Dissociation a split between different levels
  of consciousness (i.e., blocking neural input
  from conscious awareness).

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Stroop Effect
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• Raz (2005) selected highly hypnotizable
  subjects and a control group of 'resistant'
  subjects. They were given the post hypnotic
  suggestion that when they entered a brain scanner
  (fMRI) and heard his voice some days later, the
  words they saw before them would appear as
  nonsense and they were only to report on the
  colors of the words.

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• Resistant showed Stroop, hypnotized did not.
• Hypnotized reported that the words did indeed
  appear to be gibberish.

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• Comparing brain scans, Raz found that in the
  first group, the area of the brain responsible
  for decoding written words was suppressed as was
  the activity of the anterior cingulate cortex one
  of whose functions is conflict resolution.
• This did not occur in the resistant group.

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Hypnotic Pain Relief Pain Relief - Two
components Physical (parietal) response no
change Emotional (frontal) response
decreased