States of Consciousness

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States of Consciousness
Recreational Drugs and Consciousness
Tolerance a decreased effect with repeated
exposure to a drug
Sensitization an increased effect with repeated
exposure to a drug
Cross-tolerance and cross-sensitization
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States of Consciousness
Recreational Drugs and Consciousness
Addiction / Dependence negative withdrawal
effects appear in the absence of the drug
Withdrawal effects tend to be the opposite of the
effects of the drug
Learning plays an important role in drug
tolerance and dependence
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States of Consciousness
Recreational Drugs and Consciousness
The effects of any recreational drug can vary
across individuals and situations
- dose
- multi-drug interactions
- physiology (short long term)
- previous drug experience
- context / environment
- expectations
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States of Consciousness
Recreational Drugs and Consciousness
Recreational Drug Use The Law
- legal and freely available (e.g caffeine)
- restricted access (e.g., alcohol, nicotine)
- non-recreational access (e.g., morphine)
- no legal access (e.g., heroin, LSD)
Is there any justification for these categories?
Should all drugs be legal?
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Sensation and Perception
Sensation The process by which our sensory
receptors / nervous system receives and
represents stimulus energy
Perception The process of organizing and
interpreting sensory information, which enables
us to identify meaningful events and/or objects
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Sensation and Perception
Bottom-Up Processing analysis that starts with
the basic sensory information and moves on to
higher levels of processing (integration of
sensory info)
The kinds of higher-level processing employed can
be determined by low-level (I.e., sensory level)
features of the input
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Sensation and Perception
Top-Down Processing analysis that starts with a
high-level organizational structure, and works
down to sensory level information
The kinds of higher-level organizational
structures used can determine what sensory info
is (or is not) relevant to the task at hand
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Sensation and Perception
Both top-down and bottom-up processing may be
involved in the perception of a physical stimulus
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Sensation and Perception
The perception of motion (low level sensory
feature) activates the relevant high level
concept
Bottom-up
Top-down
MOTION
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Sensation and Perception
The activated concept of animal determines what
low level features will be important / relevant
Its an animal
Bottom-up
Top-down
MOTION
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Sensation and Perception
Psychophysics
How do the objective, physical features of a
sensory stimulus relate to the subjective
experience of those stimuli?
For example, is a 100 watt light perceived as
twice as bright as a 50 watt light?