States of Consciousness

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States of Consciousness
Hypnosis
The Courage To Heal - Ellen Bass Laura Davis
The authors weave personal experience with
professional knowledge to show the reader how she
can come to terms with her past while moving
powerfully into the future. They provide clear
explanations, practical suggestions, a map of the
healing journey, and many moving first-person
examples of the recovery process drawn from their
interviews with hundreds of survivors. .
The Courage to Heal is the most harmful work of
slander, ignorance, and lies since The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion and The Malleus
Maleficarum.
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States of Consciousness
False Memory Syndrome
It is possible (actually pretty easy) to get
people to claim they remember things they could
not possibly remember
Studies by Loftus (and others) show how easy it
is to plant information in subjects and have
them report that they remember this information
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States of Consciousness
False Memory Syndrome
A person undergoing therapy is often an ideal
candidate for hypnotic suggestion
- distressed / vulnerable
- in presence of authority figure
- desire to get better / please therapist
Therefore, any recovered memories that appear
during therapy should be treated with extreme
caution
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States of Consciousness
Recreational Drugs and Consciousness
Any drug that induces changes in perception
and/or mood is referred to as a psychoactive drug
Alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, THC, cocaine,
amphetamine, heroin, and other commonly used
recreational drugs have a psychoactive component
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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?
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Sensation and Perception
Psychophysics
Absolute Threshold the minimum intensity of a
stimulus that is detectable (usually 50 correct
detection is the standard used)
For example, how bright does a light have to be
before you can detect that there is a light on
50 of the trials where the light is presented?
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Sensation and Perception
Psychophysics
Raise your hand when you see a green circle on
the screen
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Sensation and Perception
Psychophysics
Difference Threshold the minimum change in the
intensity of a stimulus that is detectable. This
is called a JND (just noticeable difference)
For example, how much brighter does one light
have to be than another light before you can tell
that one is brighter than the other?
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Sensation and Perception
Psychophysics
Raise your hand when you think one square is
brighter than the other
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Sensation and Perception
Psychophysics
Webers Law The difference in physical
intensity required to create a subjective JND is
a constant proportion of the absolute intensity
of the stimuli.
In other words, the JND can be described as a
percentage difference
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Sensation and Perception
Psychophysics
20 increase in mass required in both cases to
produce a JND
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Sensation and Perception
Signal Detection Theory
Signal Detection Theory was developed during WWII
when radar began to be used to detect aircraft
How could radar operators reliably discriminate
between airplanes (signal) and weather
disturbances, birds, equipment malfunction, etc
(noise)?
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Sensation and Perception
Signal Detection Theory
strength
stimulus dimension (e.g., frequency)
How do you decide if a stimulus is signal or
noise?
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Sensation and Perception
Signal Detection Theory
strength
stimulus dimension (e.g., frequency)
Less overlap of the 2 distributions makes the job
easier
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Sensation and Perception
Signal Detection Theory
Below (and/or above) a certain threshold, a
stimulus is classified as noise
If a stimulus exceeds the threshold, it is
classified as a signal
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Sensation and Perception
Signal Detection Theory
Where the threshold is set is a function of
several factors
Attention
Motivation
Experience
Relative importance of false positives and false
negatives
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Sensation and Perception
Signal Detection Theory
Your Decision
False Negative
Correct Affirmation
Reality
Correct Rejection
False Positive
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Sensation and Perception
Signal Detection Theory
Deciding which is worse (false negatives or false
positives) can often be tricky
Imagine that you are developing a test for HIV
False Negative people with the disease will not
know they have it
False Positive people who do not have the
disease will think that they do
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Sensation and Perception
Sensory Adaptation
We have evolved perceptual processes that are
designed to alert us to informative changes in
the environment
Sensory input that is unchanging tends to be
disregarded (most of the time) at higher levels
of processing
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Sensation and Perception
Adaptation to a Stable Retinal Image
Note that the images disappear in meaningful
chunks over time
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Sensation and Perception
Vision
Transduction the conversion of stimulus energy
into electro-chemical signals in the CNS
electrochemical signals
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Sensation and Perception
Vision
Wavelength the objective distance between peaks
of a waveform
Hue (color) the subjective consequence of
wavelength in light
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Sensation and Perception
Vision
Amplitude (intensity) the objective physical
height of waves in a waveform
Brightness the subjective consequence of
amplitude in light
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Sensation and Perception
Vision
Complexity the objective physical composition
of waves in a waveform
Saturation the subjective consequence of
complexity in light
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Sensation and Perception
The Electromagnetic Spectrum
What we see is only a very small fraction of what
is out there
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Sensation and Perception
The Eye
Accomodation muscles change the shape of the
lens to focus on objects at different distances
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Sensation and Perception
The Eye
a) Normal vision (focal point on retina)
b) Nearsighted (focal point in front of retina)
c) Farsighted (focal point behind retina)
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Sensation and Perception