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Consciousness
awareness of yourself and your surroundings
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Consciousness is Subjective
you cannot share it with another person
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Consciousness is Selective
you can be aware of some things while ignoring others
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Consciousness is Divided
you can pay attention to two different things at once
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Consciousness is Continuous
each moment of consciousness blends into the next moment
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Consciousness is Changing
your awareness normally shirft to other things within seconds
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Consciousness is Multi-leveled
ranges from an alert awareness to the relative stupor of deep sleep
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Circadian Rhythms
regular bodily rhythms that occur on a 24-hour cycle
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Hypothalamus
- contains hormone melatonin which helps set sleep-wake cycle
- artificial melatonin can help treat insomnia and depression
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Phase Delay
- pushing sleep cycle back or making the day long
- easier to adjust to
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Phase Advance
shortened day less than 24 hours
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Changing Time Zones
- force you body to adjust immediately to time change
- this helps with jet lag
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Altered State of Consciousness
an awareness of yourself and your surroundings that is noticably different from your normal state of consciousness
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Sleep
- most common altered state of consciousness
- a non-waking state of consciousness which you typically remain motionless and are only slightly responsive to your surroundings
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Stages of Sleep
- NREM sleep, stages 1-4
- REM sleep
- about every 90-100 minutes you cycle through sleep stages
- combined 1-4 stages take 50-70 minutes
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Beta Waves
very fast, low-amplitude brain waves associated with an active alert state of mind
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Alpha Waves
fast, low-amplitude brain waves associated with a relaxed, wakeful state of mind
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Stage 1
- theta waves: irregular, small, rapid brainwaves
- lasts a few minutes
- HR, respiration slow, body temp drops and muscles relax
- you can have sensations of floating, falling, and visual and auditory hallucinations
- wake very easily
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Stage 2
- lasts about 20 minutes
- sleep spindles appear, which are bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain-wave activity
- typically sleep talking occurs here
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Stage 3
begin to move into the deep form of slow-wave sleep
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Stage 4
- delta waves: slow, high amplitude brain waves
- very difficult to wake up
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REM Sleep
- rapid eye movement
- an active phase in the sleep cycle during which dreaming occurs, characterized by rapid eye movements
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Why We Need Sleep
- sleep is essential in maintaining health
- reaction time
- microsleep
- amount of sleep needed
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Dreams
story-like sequences of visual images experienced during sleeps
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Lucid Dreams
dreams in which people are aware that they are dreaming
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Dream As Wish Fulfillment
- psychoanalytic theory of sigmund freud, who said dreams are disguised wishes of the unconscious mind
- the dreamer remembers the surface meaning, or manifest content, of the dream
- the true meaning of the dream, or latent content, is hidden from the dreamer to avoid anxiety
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Dreams As Information-Processing
- off-line dream theory: a theory that dreaming is a time for consolidating and storing information gathered during the day
- you process daily activities
- if rem sleep is interrupted less learning of information occurs
- spend more time in rem after learning difficult material
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Dreams As Interpreted Brain Activity
- activation-synthesis theory: a theory that dreaming is the forebrain's attempt to interpret random neural activity coming from the midbrain during sleep
- left cerebral hemisphere is the brain's interpreter and makes sense of info and dream plots
- the right hemisphere constructs the dream's visual features
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Insomnia
- most common sleep disorder
- chronic inability to fall or stay asleep
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Night Terror
- a panic attack that generally occurs during early-night stage 4 NREM sleep in children between the ages of 3 and 8
- sit up in bed, scream, stare into space and talk without making sense
- seldom wake and have little memory of the event
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Sleepwalking
- a disorder in which a person wanders during early-night NREM sleep
- more common among children than adults
- more common among boys than girls
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Narcolepsy
a sleep disorder characterized by uncontrollable REM sleep attacks durning normal waking hours
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Sleep Apnea
- a sleep disorder in which sleeping individuals briefly stop breathing several times in an hour, interrupting sleep without the person's knowledge
- common among overweight men
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Hypnosis
a state of altered attention and awareness in which a person is unusually responsive to suggenstion
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Enriched Fantasy
person can readily imagine unusual situations that differ form normal reality
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Cognitive Passivity
instead of planning actions, the hypnotized person waits for the hypnotists to suggest thoughts or actions
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Heightened Selective Attention
- hypnotized person focuses attention on the hypnotist's voice and ignores other stimuli
- even pain that is unbearable during normal wakking state is tolerated through this focused attention
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Reduced Reality Testing
hypnotized person tends to accept uncritically hallucinated experience suggested by the hypnotized
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Posthypnotic Amnesia
- when instructed the hypnotized person forgets all or most of what occurred during the hypnotic session
- these memories are restored when the hypnotist later gives a prearranged signal
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Hypnotizability
- the degree to which a person can enter a deep hypnotic state
- children are the most hypnotizable
- 15% of adults are highly hypnotizable about 10% can't be hypnotized
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Neodissociation Theory of Hypnosis
- states that a hypnotized person has two streams of consciousness operating at the same time
- one stream actively responds while the other simply observes
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Social Influence Theory of Hypnosis
hypnosis is a normal state of consciousness in which people act the way they think hypnotized persons are supposed to act
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Meditation
- a mental exercise that focus attention and increase awareness
- zen, transcendental meditation, and relaxation response
- effective treatment of insomnia, anxiety, depression, and drug abuse
- known to reduce negative effects of heart disease and strengthen immune system
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Pyschoactive Drugs
chemicals that change mental processes and behavior
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Drug Abuse
continued drug use despite it interfering with the drug user's behavior or social relationships
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Drug Tolerance
an effect of drug abuse in which greater amounts of the drug are necessary to produce the same result once produced by a smaller dose
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Physical Dependence
the need of a drug to function normally
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Psychological Dependence
a mental and emotional desire for the drug
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Types of Psychoactive Drugs
- depressants
- stimulants
- hallucinogens
- inhalants
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Depressants
- pyschoactive drugs that slow down--or depress--the nervous system and decrease mental and physical activity
- alcohol, sedatives, tranquillizer, and norcotics
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Alcoholism
tolerance and physical dependence resulting form prolonged abuse of alcohol
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Stimulants
- drugs that speed up -- or stimulate-- the nervous system and increase mental and physical activity
- caffeine, nicotine, cocaine and amphetamines, methamphetamine, ecstasy, and Ritalin
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Hallucinations
sensations and perceptions that occur without any external stimulation
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Hallucinogens
psychoactive drugs that dramatically alter consciousness and produce hallucinations include LSD and marijuana
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LSD
- a potent synthesized hallucinogenic drug that is structurally similar to the neurotransmitter serotonin
- last 10-12 hours can have flashbacks
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Marijuana
psychoactive drug that is made from the cannabis plant
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THC
major psychoactive ingredient in marijuana
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Inhalants
- chemicals whose vapors can be breathed in to produce a mind-altering effect
- four categories: volatile solvents, aerosols, gases, nitrites
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