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Consciousness
Psychology 1106
5/23/2017
Introduction
One of the early definitions of psychology
was ‘the study of consciousness’
 How do we study the unobservable
 Behaviourism took over
 Big problem is, how do you define it?
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Self awareness?
 How do you measure that?
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Some thoughts
Conscious processing = effortful
processing done serially
 Unconscious processing = automatic
processing, done in parallel
 Things become automatic over time
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Sleep and dreams
Daydreams are not sleep
 Fantasies
 Ok
 Fantasy prone personality
 4% of the population
 Replaced by drugs and violence?
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Circadian rhythms
24 hr clock
 Sleep and wakefulness cycle
 Clock can be set and reset
 Jet lag
 Exercise and sex
 Pineal gland and SCN play a role
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sleep
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There are rhythms
within sleep too
90 min or so cycle of
dreaming
Five stages of sleep
Alpha to delta
REM
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REM
25% of the night
 Eye movement
 Hallucinations
 Genital arousal
 Everybody dreams
 We need REM
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Without REM
Tired
 Immune system depressed
 Creativity drops
 Trouble concentrating
 Slowed performance
 Misperception
 HGH is released during sleep
 So insomnia is a big deal
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Sleep disorders
Insomnia as mentioned
 Narcolepsy
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Drop right into REM
Sleep apnea
Deprived of O , less slow wave sleep
 Potentially fatal
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Night terrors
Stage 4
 Mostly kids
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2
Dream On
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Male female differences
Number of characters
 Sex of characters
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External stimuli can have an effect
 May be able to learn simple associations
 NOT taped material (Eich, 1990)
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Why do we dream?
Safety valve? (Freud)
 Learning?
 Physiology?
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Brain gets stimulated
 Makes sense of random stimulation
 Probably a good guess
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Hypnosis
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Myths debunked!
DOES NOT work on everyone
 DOES NOT enhance recall
 DOES NOT make you do stuff against your
will
 DOES NOT cure diseases, drug dependence
 DOES alleviate pain (makes sense)
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Could be a social phenomenon
 Could be divided attantion
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Drugs
Alter our inner mental life, so seems
appropriate to discuss here
 Tolerance
 Dependence
 Addiction?
 Is this a disease?
 Mesolimbic dopamine system
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Depressants
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Stuff that slows you down
Alcohol
Benzodiazepines
Barbiturates
Opiates
Brain activity slowed
Disinhibition
Pretty dangerous, could slow you down too
much...
expectations
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Stimulants
Amphetamine
E
 Coke
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Caffeine
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Both block reuptake
Block a neuromodulator
Nicotine
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Hallucinogenics
Acid
 ‘shrooms
 PCP
 Don’t operate on the reward system but
they are fun anyway!
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Pot
Cannabis sativa
 Dangerous?
 Birth defects?
 Negative tolerance?
 Everything is funny
 You are not nearly as deep as you think
you are when you are high
 Has many good side effects
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