1. And all the other parts of consciousness
Sleep and dreams
And all the other parts of consciousness

2. Consciousness is…
alertness; being awake vs. being unconscious
self-awareness; the ability to think about self
having free will; being able to make a “conscious” decision
a person’s mental content, thoughts, and imaginings
To explore the nature of consciousness, it helps to first choose a definition.
In the text, consciousness is defined as: “our awareness of ourselves and our environment.”
Click to reveal bullets and definition
Humans uniquely may have a narrative experience of that awareness, with identity as part of the narrative. We can react to a noise AND tell a mental story about how we reacted, even if a strict behaviorist might see that story as irrelevant. We see the foot at the end of the bed as part of ourselves; if we had a tail, we would not chase it. People can look in a mirror and see not just a set of features but a face, a self.
“seeing one’s foot (and sniffing it) may be a dog’s level of awareness.”
Instructor: Other comments for the class or for the slide, clarifying the word “awareness” in the definition:
This chapter is concerned with:
the quality our mental experience.
the role of the brain in that experience.
the way that experience is affected by the two tracks of mental experience.
the way that experience is altered by
sleep.
hypnosis.
psychoactive drugs.
Psychology was once defined as “the description and explanation of states of consciousness.” Now, consciousness is just one topic among many for psychologists. Cognitive neuroscience allows us to revisit this topic and see how the brain is involved.
Aren’t animals aware of their environment?
If so, is our awareness different?...
Possibly…because we have (uniquely?) a narrative experience of that awareness.

3. Forms of Consciousness
No animation.
Instructor: Students can be asked, “Where in this table would you put marijuana use? Or ‘blanking out’ during trauma?”

4. Brain and Consciousness: Findings and Debates
What is going on in the brain that generates our experience of consciousness?
Brain and Consciousness: Findings and Debates
Finding
Some rare “unconscious” patients have brain responses to conversation.
Automatic animation for “Finding” sequence, click to show “Debate” sequence.
Instructor: It is easy to draw the wrong conclusions from this finding, such as turning anecdotes into generalizations, or thinking that all unconscious patients have an inner conscious life.
Debate: This view doesn’t tell us how synchronized brain activity creates the human level of self-awareness. However, it may show when enough of the brain is involved that it may feel like a unified experience that we can notice, as opposed to “unconscious” activity such as how we position a leg movement on stairs so that our foot lands on the next step.
One View
Synchronized, coordinated brain activity generates consciousness, or at least is a sign that conscious activity is occurring.
Implication
Don’t judge a book by its cover when it comes to consciousness.

5. Conscious vs. Unconscious Activity: The Dual-Track Mind
Conscious “high” track:
our minds take deliberate actions we know we are doing
Examples: problem solving, naming an object, defining a word
Unconscious “low” track: our minds perform automatic actions, often without being aware of them Examples: walking, acquiring phobias, processing sensory details into perceptions and memories
Example in the book (borrowed from the Sensation and Perception topic:
Automatic processing: Conscious “high” track says, “I saw a bird!”
Unconsciously, we see:
Automatic animation for high track and low track. Click to show start of example. Click again to show the rest of the example.

6. Think before you act?
In one study, students showed brain activity related to pushing a button BEFORE they were aware of their decision to push the button.
Does this mean the “decision” is an illusion?
What experiment from the beginning of the semester does this remind you of?
Why Have Two Tracks?
Possible benefit: not having to think about everything we do all at once
Examples
You can hit or catch a ball without having to consciously calculate its trajectory.
You can speak without having to think about the definitions of each word.
You can walk and chew gum AND carry on a conversation.
Click to reveal bullets and then sidebar with bullets.
Third bullet: this is similar to Wilhelm Wundt’s experiment in the late 1800s, in which participants were quicker to push a button about seeing the ball fall than they were about being aware of hearing the ball fall. The delay is not for the same reason…hopefully this generates a good discussion, maybe even about whether free will is an illusion. However, the facts bring us back to the two-track topic; that conscious awareness of an action is not as fast a process as simply taking the action.

7. Unusual Consequences of Having a Dual-Track Mind
Blindsight
Selective
Attention
Selective Inattention
Inattentional blindness
Change blindness
Choice blindness
Click through to reveal all text boxes.

8. Blindsight Describing the mail and the slot:
Case Study A woman with brain damage, but NO eye damage, was unable to use her eyes to report what was in front of her. BUT, she was able to use her eyes to help her take actions such as putting mail in slots. What are the two mental “tracks” in this case?
Describing the mail and the slot:
the “high road,” or conscious track, in this case known as the visual perception track
Judging size and distance well enough to put the mail in the slot:
the “low road,” or unconscious, automatic track, in this case known as the visual action track
Click to show question after reading the case study, then click to show each track.
The high road was broken; when asked, the woman was unable to recognize, name, and discriminate between objects. However, the low road worked; when carrying out an action like putting the mail in slots, she could judge width and depth.
Question to test reading and understanding: how does the hollow face illusion (fig. 3.4 in the text) show the difference between what is going on in our visual perception and action tracks?
Answer: Our perception track makes an error about whether the face is concave or convex, but our action track gets it right, reaching in to the concave face to touch a speck on the “mask.”

9. Selective Attention and Conversation
There are millions of bits of information coming at our senses every second.
So, we have the skill of selective attention; our brain is able to choose a focus and select what to notice.
Selective Attention and Conversation
The good news: we can focus our mental spotlight on a conversation even when other conversations are going on around us. This is known as the cocktail party effect.
The bad news: we can hyperfocus on a conversation while driving a car, putting the driver and passengers at risk.
Click to reveal bullets:
Whether driving and talking, or chewing gum and walking, there is a limit to how much we can pay attention to simultaneously. Generally, this is a good thing, or we could not follow a conversation in a crowded room.
Luckily, much of driving is “low road,” automatic activity, but many decisions require actual conscious attention. Driving while talking on a cell phone has been demonstrated to be much more distracting than a conversation in a car… maybe because you’re imagining a different location?
If we have a two-track mind, is texting while driving okay, because we can do each in a separate track? How about talking on a cell phone? How about talking to someone in the car with you? Wherever you draw the line, this example brings up the fact that the two tracks are not completely separate from each other; there still is a limited (finite?) amount of attention available.

10. Selective Inattention: Selective Inattention:
Selective Attention: what we focus on, what we notice
Selective Inattention:
what we are not focused on, what we do not notice
Selective inattention refers to our failure to notice part of our environment when our attention is directed elsewhere.
Selective Inattention:
inattentional blindness
change blindness
choice blindness
Click to reveal text boxes.

11. Inattentional Blindness
Various experiments show that when our attention is focused, we miss seeing what others may think is obvious to see (such as a gorilla, or a unicyclist).
Some “magic” tricks take advantage of this phenomenon.
Click when you are ready to have the unicyclist pop out.
To the students: “You may think you would notice the gorilla in the video, but probably only if you weren’t following the directions to count all the bounce passes from the white shirted player to black shirted player.”
It is not possible to get free permission to show this particular video, but there are lots of videos on YouTube under “inattentional blindness.” My favorite: search for “color changing card trick.”

12. Change Blindness The Switch
Two-thirds of people didn’t notice when the person they were giving directions to was replaced by a similar-looking person.
Click to fade pictures and show question.
Instructor: Pictures fade first so that you can test what students were paying attention to. Those who claim to know the answer: ask what changes they recall. Then, be sure to comment that if students don’t know what clothing changes happened, that’s a GOOD thing; it’s a sign that they were using their selective attention to notice the concepts on the slide. You could add that those who admitted not noticing were showing their ability to resist hindsight bias and the overconfidence error they learned about in the previous chapter.
Another click brings the pictures back.
By the way, did you notice whether the replacement person was in the same clothes or different clothes?

13. Choice Blindness
In one experiment, people chose their favorite among two jams. But when the jar’s contents were deceptively reversed and tasted again, people described the same jar’s contents as their chosen jam.
The researcher flips the divided containers, so that the next taste from that jar is actually the other jam.
No animation.
Instructor: Discuss if this is simply an example of change blindness, or a sub-category of change blindness, or something different because of the choice involved. Because people were tested by being asked to explain their preference after the second taste, this result might be explained by cognitive dissonance.

14. Sleep as a State of Consciousness
How Do We Learn About Sleep and Dreams?
We can monitor EEG/brain waves and muscle movements during sleep.
We can expose the sleeping person to noise and words, and then examine the effects on the brain (waves) and mind (memory).
We can wake people and see which mental state (e.g. dreaming) goes with which brain/body state.
When sleeping, are we fully unconscious and “dead to the world”?
Or is the window to consciousness open?
Consider that:
we move around, but how do we stop ourselves from falling out of bed?
we sometimes incorporate real-world noises into our dreams.
some noises (our own baby’s cry) wake us more easily than others.
Click to reveal all text and bullets.
Instructor: In the sidebar, the third strategy is the way in which the brain waves and eye movements of REM sleep were discovered to be associated with dreaming.

15. Daily Rhythms and Sleep
The circadian (“about a day”) rhythm refers to the body’s natural 24-hour cycle, roughly matched to the day/night cycle of light and dark.
“Larks” and “Owls”
Daily rhythms vary from person to person and with age.
General peaks in alertness:
evening peak—20-year old “owls”
morning peak—50-year old “larks”
What changes during the 24 hours?
Over the 24 hour cycle, the following factors vary, rising and falling over the course of the day and night:
body temperature
arousal/energy
mental sharpness
Click to reveal all text.
Instructor: Light affects this rhythm through a process involving the brain; more about this later when we talk about WHY we sleep.

16. Stages and Cycles of Sleep
There are four types of sleep.
Sleep stages refer to distinct patterns of brain waves and muscle activity that are associated with different types of consciousness and sleep.
Sleep cycles refer to the patterns of shifting through all the sleep stages over the course of the night. We “cycle” through all the sleep stages in about 90 minutes on average.
Click to reveal all text.
Next, we will learn about the various stages, and then look at the cycles of how these stages typically occur over a night’s sleep.

17. Falling Asleep: From Alert to Alpha
Eyes Closed
No animation.
Alpha waves are the relatively slow brain waves of a relaxed, awake state.

18. Falling asleep
Yawning creates a brief boost in alertness as your brain metabolism is slowing down.
Your breathing slows down.
Brain waves become slower and irregular.
You may have hypnagogic (while falling asleep) hallucinations.
Your brain waves change from alpha waves to NREM-1.
Click to reveal bullets.

19. Non-REM Sleep Stages Getting deeper into sleep… but not dreaming yet
On click, after you have reviewed the stages in general, the label for sleep spindles in NREM-2 will appear.
Stage two brain wave patterns have been called theta waves, and NREM-3 involves delta waves.
NREM-3 is slow wave sleep, the former stages 3 and 4 combined--deep sleep.

20. What happens during REM sleep?
Eugene Aserinsky’s discovery (1953): dreams occurred during periods of wild brain activity and rapid eye movements [REM sleep].
Heart rate rises and breathing becomes rapid.
“Sleep paralysis” occurs when the brainstem blocks the motor cortex’s messages and the muscles don’t move. This is sometimes known as “paradoxical sleep”; the brain is active but the body is immobile.
Genitals are aroused (not caused by dream content) and stay this way after REM is over.
Click to reveal bullets.
So, do we act out our dreams? Not unless you have a sleep disorder. Sleepwalking doesn’t usually occur during REM sleep, unless you have a sleep disorder (or have rare reactions to some sleep-inducing medications).

21. Stages of Sleep: The 90 Minute Cycles Through 8 Hours of Sleep
The length of REM sleep increases the longer you remain asleep. With age, there are more awakenings and less deep sleep.
NREM-1
NREM-2
NREM-3
No animation.

22. Why do we sleep? What determines the quantity and rhythm of sleep?
The amount and pattern of sleep is affected by biology, age, culture, and individual variation.
Age: in general, newborns need 16 hours of sleep, while adults need 8 hours or less
Individual (genetic) variation: some people function best with 6 hours of sleep, others with 9 hours or more
Culture: North Americans sleep less than others, and less than they used to, perhaps because of the use of light bulbs
The circadian rhythm is hard to shift (jet lag).
This rhythm can be affected by light, which suppresses the relaxing hormone melatonin.
Light and the brain regulate sleep.
Click to reveal bullets.
Jet lag, and the tough time getting up the first day of work after a vacation, are caused by the way our body clock stays set.
Rather than take melatonin supplements to get sleepy, you can raise your levels of melatonin just by turning lights down low for an hour or so before going to bed. Note: this brain/hormone information is not in this edition of the text, so you may want to delete this information.

23. Why do we sleep? What does sleep do for us?
Sleep protected our ancestors from predators.
Sleep restores and repairs the brain and body.
Sleep builds and strengthens memories.
Sleep facilitates creative problem solving.
Sleep is the time when growth hormones are active.
Click to reveal bullets.
More details on each of the above points:
Small, defenseless animals hide and sleep a lot, often feeding at night when predators can’t see them as well. Animals too large to hide and be protected by sleep may have evolved to sleep very little.
Regarding the animal sleep chart: notice that the animals who burn a lot of calories, generating free radicals, need sleep to repair tissue.
3) Not only does sleep allow recent memories to become strengthened, but the connections we are not using get pruned. During sleep, no new interfering information is introduced.
4) Sleep is the ultimate incubation period for problem solving, regardless of whether we get ideas in our dreams.
6) Growth hormones are also important for muscle development.

24. Effects of Sleep Loss/ Deprivation
Research shows that inadequate sleep can make you more likely to:
lose brainpower.
gain weight.
get sick.
be irritable.
feel old.
No animation.
Instructor: Another way of stating this is that, “Sleep deprivation makes you dumb, fat, sick, grumpy, and old.”
More details you can use:
Dumb: impaired concentration, creativity, communication, and memory; more errors and less awareness of making errors
Fat: slow metabolism, decreased ghrelin (hunger), decreased leptin (suppresses appetite), increased cortisol
Sick: suppressed immune system, more likely to get sick from exposure to germs
Grumpy: depressed mood, irritability
Old: alters metabolism and hormonal function in ways that mimic aging such as high blood pressure and memory impairment

25. Sleep Loss Effects by Body System
No animation.

26. Sleep Loss/Deprivation=Accident Risk
Accident Frequency
Sleep loss results in more accidents, probably caused by impaired attention and slower reaction time.
No animation.
Notice the scales on this slide, with the bottoms chopped off to emphasize the change. In addition, the difference between fall and spring is much greater than the difference being shown. Still, there is an abrupt change apparently attributable to decreased or increased sleep.

27. Are these people dreaming?
Sleep Disorders
Are these people dreaming?
Night terrors refer to sudden scared-looking behavior, with rapid heartbeat and breathing.
Sleepwalking and sleeptalking run in families, so there is a possible genetic basis.
Insomnia: persistent inability to fall asleep or stay asleep
Narcolepsy (“numb seizure”): sleep attacks, even a collapse into REM/paralyzed sleep, at inopportune times
Sleep apnea (“with no breath”): repeated awakening after breathing stops; time in bed is not restorative sleep
Click to reveal bullets.
Narcolepsy: note that sleeping pills can cause dependency, with rebound insomnia.
Narcolepsy is NOT simply falling asleep a lot; with true narcolepsy, the attacks happen no matter how well a person sleeps, although stress makes the attacks more likely.
Sleep apnea is NOT just snoring, although snoring is associated with obstructive sleep apnea. Breathing might stop for up to a minute, leading to lower oxygen levels.
Kids experiencing night terrors may have eyes wide open but they are not awake. Night terrors and sleepwalking are NOT taking place in REM sleep; in fact they take place in the deepest NREM-3 sleep. This means sleepwalkers are generally NOT acting out dreams, and kids having nightmares are NOT the kids having night terrors. (If a student says, ‘I remember having night terrors,’ they are not understanding the concept.)
These behaviors, mostly affect children, and occur in NONREM-3 sleep. They are not considered dreaming.

28. Dreams What We Dream About
the stream of images, actions, and feelings, experienced while in REM sleep
What We Dream About
Dreams often include some negative event or emotion, especially failure dreams (being pursued, attacked, rejected, or having bad luck).
Dreams do NOT often include sexuality.
We may incorporate real- world sounds and other stimuli into dreams.
Dreams also include images from recent, traumatic, or frequent experiences.
Click to reveal bullets.
A more elaborate definition of dreams: “an unfolding sequence of thoughts, perceptions, images, and emotions that typically occurs during REM sleep; notable for fantastic imagery, discontinuities, incongruities that the dreamer delusionally accepts, but has later difficulty remembering.”
What We Dream About: (Psychoanalytic Theory)
Sigmund Freud believed there was often a hidden “latent content” (conflicts, worries, and urges) underneath the symbolic “manifest content” (the plot, actions, and images recalled) of dreams.

29. Theories about Functions of Dreams
Theory
Explanation
Wish fulfillment (psycho-
analytic theory)
Information-processing
Physiological function
Activation-synthesis
Cognitive-developmental theory
Lacks any scientific support; dreams may be interpreted in many different ways.
Dreams provide a “psychic safety valve”; they often express otherwise unacceptable feelings, and contain both manifest (remembered) content and a latent content (hidden meaning).
But why do we sometimes dream about things we have not experienced?
Dreams help us sort out the day’s events and consolidate our memories.
This may be true, but it does not explain why we experience meaningful dreams.
Regular brain stimulation from REM sleep may help develop and preserve neural pathways.
The individual’s brain is weaving the stories, which still tells us something about the dreamer.
Click to show the explanation of each theory and a critical consideration.
REM sleep triggers impulses that evoke random visual memories, which our sleeping brain weaves into stories.
Does not address the neuroscience of dreams.
Dream content reflects the dreamers’ cognitive development—his or her knowledge and understanding.

30. Another Possible State of Consciousness: HYPNOSIS
“Your arm may soon feel so light that it rises…”
Text definition: Hypnosis is a social interaction in which one person (the hypnotist) suggests to another (the subject) that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur.
Alternate definition: Hypnosis is a cooperative social action in which one person is in a state of being likely to respond to suggestions from another person.
This state has been called heightened suggestibility as well as a trance.
Controversy: does this social interaction really require an altered state of consciousness?
Click to reveal all text.
The following comments flesh out and modify the definition.
Implied in this definition of hypnosis, stated elsewhere in the text, but not stated in this definition:
that the subject is showing some compliant response to these suggestions. If the subject was just walking around or laughing, it would fit the above words but would it be hypnosis? Attempted hypnosis, maybe.
That the subject is in some state which at least looks different than someone participating in a conversation. For example, suggestions are made in psychotherapy, but only a tiny percentage of psychotherapy sessions involve hypnosis.
That both people are entering into the social interaction willingly; this clarifies the point that someone can not trick you or force you into hypnosis, or “make” you do strange things.)
Controversies, also covered in upcoming slides but mentioned here in case you decide to delete those slides:
What does this state of heightened suggestibility depend upon?
subject qualities (some people are more easily hypnotized)
hypnotist behavior (does the swinging watch really do it)
role expectation (I’ve agreed to hypnotism; I should comply as a subject)
Is this state of heightened suggestibility truly a different state of consciousness?

31. Types of Hypnotic Suggestions
perceptions
The subject may be led into changes in:
(“The headache is fading away.”)
behavior
(“Your arm might rise by itself.”)
emotions
(“You are feeling more relaxed and confident.”)
Automatic animation.
All of these types of suggestions can of course occur without hypnosis; for some people, being in the hypnotic state/situation makes them more likely to follow the suggestions.
attitudes
(“I get nutrition from food, and get comfort from friends.”)
memory
(“You got lost in a mall as a child.”)

32. Induction Into Hypnosis
The Highly Hypnotizable
20 Percent
How do some people get so hypnotized that they can have no reaction to ammonia under their noses?
• These people seem to be more easily absorbed in imaginative activities.
• They are able to focus and to lose themselves in fantasy.
• The hypnotic induction method may happen to work just right.
Hypnotic induction, the inducing of a hypnotic state, is the process by which a hypnotist leads someone into the state of heightened suggestibility.
A swinging watch and recitation of the words “you are getting sleepy” are not necessary.
Click to reveal all text and sidebar.
Induction could simply consist of a string of suggestions to slowly tune out distractions and gradually comply with more suggestions.

33. Theories Explaining Hypnosis
Divided Consciousness Theory Hypnosis is a special state of dissociated (divided) consciousness of our dual-track mind.
Social Influence Theory
Hypnotic subjects may simply be imaginative people who go along with the “subject” role they have agreed to play.
Automatic animation.

34. Benefits of Hypnosis for Some People:
What Hypnosis Cannot Do:
work when people refuse to cooperate
bestow ‘superhuman’ abilities or strength
accurately boost recall of forgotten events (it is more likely to implant false recall)
blocking awareness of pain, even enough for surgery without anesthesia
reducing obesity, anxiety, and hypertension
improving concentration and performance
Click to reveal all bullets in each column.

35. Effects of Alcohol Use Chronic Use: Brain damage Impact on functioning
Slow neural processing, reduced sympathetic nervous system activity, and slower thought and physical reaction
Reduced memory formation caused by disrupted REM sleep and reduced synapse formation
Impaired self-control, impaired judgment, self- monitoring, and inhibition; increased accidents and aggression
Click to reveal bullets and example.
Expectancy effects, related to the placebo effect: Some of these effects can happen even when people only THINK they are drinking alcohol.
See if students can see what is different between these two brains (the shrinkage of brain tissue, increased size of fluid spaces).

36. Caffeine adds energy disrupts sleep for 3-4 hours
can lead to withdrawal symptoms if used daily:
headaches
irritability
fatigue
difficulty concentrating
depression
Click to reveal bullets.

37. Nicotine
The main effect of nicotine use is ADDICTION.
No animation.

38. Table 3.5 A Guide to Selected Psychoactive Drugs Myers: Psychology, Tenth Edition Copyright © 2013 by Worth Publishers