1. States of Consciousness
Understanding Consciousness
Sleep, Dreams & Sleep Disorders
Hypnosis & Meditation
Drugs that Alter Consciousness

2. Understanding Consciousness
How would you define consciousness?
Freud?
Jung?
Modern Psychological Theorists

3. Understanding Consciousness
Consciousness is our awareness of ourselves and our environment.
It has also been described as a person's awareness of everything that is going on around him or her at any given moment.
Waking Consciousness is a state in which thoughts, feelings, and sensations are clear, organized, and the person feels alert.

4. Understanding Consciousness
Historical Context:
Influence of Behaviorism in first half of 20th century focused on the observable.
Neuroscience advances in 1960’s led to brain activity studies in sleep, dreaming and altered states of consciousness

5. Levels of Consciousness
Conscious Level: A person is aware of mental events at a given moment.
Preconscious Level: A person's mental events that are outside of his/her current awareness can be brought into consciousness voluntarily (i.e., by remembering).
Nonconscious Level: A person does not normally perceive or control mental processing consciously (e.g., blood pressure).

6. Levels of Consciousness
Unconscious Level: Theorized by Sigmund Freud, but did not prove to exist, that holds repressed memories/desires.
Carl Jung believed that the unconscious mind is connected with a collective unconscious that contains ancestral memories.

7. Altered States of Consciousness
These are where there is a shift in the quality or pattern of mental activity as compared to waking consciousness.
Hypnosis, meditation, sleep, and psychoactive drugs, all produce altered states of consciousness.
Altered States Video

9. Sleep Patterns and Sleep Theories

10. Biological Rhythms and Sleep
Our bodies have an internal clock called the Circadian Rhythm.
Latin: circa = about diem = day
We roughly follow 24-hour pattern
Sleep cycles are about 90 minutes each

11. Biological Rhythms and Sleep
Age and experience can alter circadian rhythm.
Most teens & young adults are evening-energized owls.
Most older adults are morning-lover larks

12. Sleep Stages
Sooner or later, sleep overtakes us but brain remains active.
Sleep is the periodic, natural loss of consciousness – distinct from unconsciousness resulting from a coma, general anesthesia or hibernation.
We cycle through 4 stages every 90 minutes.

13. Sleep Stages
NREM-1: transition from awake to sleep, slowed breathing and irregular brain waves. May be accompanied by fantastic images, a sense of falling or floating.
NREM-2: deeper relaxation of about 20 minutes, bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain wave activity called sleep spindles.

14. Sleep Stages
NREM-3: very deep sleep that lasts about 30 minutes, brain activity of large slow delta waves. Hard to awaken.
REM: Rapid Eye Movement stage, heart rate increases, breathing becomes more rapid. This stage is marked by dreams – often emotional, story-like and hallucinatory.

16. Five Functions of Sleep
1. Sleep protects – animals and humans evolved different sleep patterns to avoid predators. 2. Sleep Restores – brain tissue is restored and repaired, resting neurons repaired, cellular damage repaired.

17. Five Functions of Sleep
3. Sleep rebuilds memory – it strengthens and stabilizes neural memory traces. 4. Sleep feeds creative thinking – you’ve heard the phrase “sleep on it.” Insight is facilitated by working on something then sleeping.

18. Five Functions of Sleep
5. Sleep supports growth – the pituitary gland releases growth hormone during sleep. Sleep can also dramatically improve one’s athletic ability.