consciouness

A moment to moment of awareness that have of ourselves in our environment
A sense of awareness that is very present
You must be aware of yourself in the environment
Consciousness is very much a personals experience
It can't really be measured
a way of experiencing internal and external events
moment to moment awareness of ourselves and out environment

Others cannot directly know our reality and vice versa
What our own awareness and the way that we see ourselves and environment is very hard to articulate and explain no matter how hard you explain it to someone
Part of the problem is that your awareness is continuously changing
Your awareness of yourself in certain environments will be different in another environment

Ever-changing
Continuous stream of mental activity despite many stimuli

Mind is aware of its own consciousness
no matter what your awareness is focused on you can reflect on the fact that you are the one who is conscious of it

Bright spot on the stage focus at a time
focusing on one thing at a time

a practice of being conscious allows us to be even more aware of ourselves in our environment and so it is continuously ever changing and dynamic

self reports, physiological EEG, behavioral

Talk to people using talk therapy and understanding for them how to describe their inner experience
Its very direct but it is not verifiable
There is no way to know if its true or not

These are objective and measure wave lengths so they will be able to measure brain activity but they will not be able to indicate what the person is experiencing subjectively
Measure the link between bodily states and brain activity

They are not direct because we are not actually asking people about their consciousness
Performance on tasks
Need to infer state of mind

id, superego, ego

This structure is fully conscious meaning that It affects our personality in ways that you are not even aware of
Demands immediate gratification by gaining pleasure, avoiding pain and reducing tension which is what Freud referred to as the pleasure principle
This is the only personality structure present at birth

Mostly unconscious
Similar to what we refer to as the conscience operating on the moral principle
To satisfy this structure we must never do, think or feel no wrong
When we do wrong the superego ensures that we feel guilty

Serves as the executive
Operates on the reality principle dealing with the demands of reality while trying to satisfy the ID and the superego
The ego is essentially our conscious selves or who we perceive ourselves to actually be
The ego has the ability to unconsciously distort our reality what we call defense mechanisms

Mental events that we are currently aware of
Things you are currently paying attention to
Things that are easily recalled like what is your friends name

Outside of your current awareness, easily recalled
What you had for dinner last night

Things not brought into conscious awareness under ordinary circumstances
These thoughts and experiences fall into categories of unacceptable urges
Things you want to do that you feel like you have to hold yourself back from
Traumatic memories
Things that are tied to anxiety, pain and guilt

Rhythmic daily cycles e.g. sleep, wakefulness
What you can see here is that changes in body temperature and alertness are kind of mirroring each other during awake times they are on the high end and during sleep times they are on the low end
humans have adapted to a world with a 24 hour day-night cycle, every 24 hours our body temperature, certain hormonal secretions and other bodily functions undergo a rythmic change that affects out mental alertness and readies our passge back and forth between states of wakefulness and sleep. these are called circadian rhythms

A circadian rhythm is the regular fluctuation in certain body functions from a high point to a low point within a 24 hour period and vice versa
Moring person vs night person
Environmental changes that can impact our circadian rhythm
In Canada we get the sunrise later in the winter and that can impact the way people wake up
Its called seasonal affective disorder and may start to make changes in the way that we feel
It stems from the fact that we require the sun to wake up and we are not getting the sun
When your jet lagged or if you gain or lose an hour that will impact your circadian rhythm
Night shift work so if you are working in a hospital and they have night shift work they drive home in the morning and now that they have seen the sun it is harder to reset their clock

The circadian rhythm is regulated by the Suprachiasmatic nuclei
SCN neurons link to pineal glands which are the glands that secrete melatonin
Melatonin is directly regulated by the circadian rhythm
Neurons in the SCN are really active during the day time
Their job is to inhibit melatonin secretion and raise body temperatures and alertness
Neurons in SCN become inactive at night
It allows melatonin secretion to be released and melatonin promotes sleepiness and relaxation

We cycle through the stages every 90 minutes
Brain waves, other physiological responses change
Beta waves occur when we are awake and alert (15-30 cps) (high frequency)
Alpha waves occur when we are relaxed and drowsy (8-12 cps) (low frequency)

Stage 1- light sleep, theta waves (3.5-7.5 cps), it takes a few minutes, some body jerks and can be easily awakened

Stage 2- sleep deepens, muscles are more relaxed, harder to awaken, sleep spindles (1-2 second bursts of rapid brain activity)

Stage 3- sleep deepens, delta waves (0.5-2 cps)

Stage 4- delta waves dominate pattern, stage 3 and 4 together are called slow wave sleep, repeat through cycle spending less time in 2 and 3 and more in 4

After stage 4 the person goes back through earlier stages
Stage 3, then 2 but not another stage 1
Instead a new stage appears

Rapid eye movement
Your waves become super fast again even though you are sleeping because you have higher arousal almost at daytime levels in cycle per second
Frequent dreaming
It is also called Paradoxal sleep because the body is aroused but you are sleeping soundly
physiological changes
Heart rate increases
Breathing more rapid and irregular
Brain wave activity increases
Rem sleep paralysis- difficult for voluntary muscles to contract
When you feel like your awake but your muscles find it hard to contract so you feel like you are paralyzed

Involvement of several brain structures
Falling asleep is regulated by the basal forebrain and regions of the brainstem
Rem sleep is regulated by brainstem (reticular formation)
Limbic system activity increases
There is a lot of neurons firing creating an association near the visual cortex so the motor cortex becomes active wanting your eyes to move but because the motor cortex is active the signals are blocked
Decrease in the activity in the prefrontal cortex
Changes in season
Shift work stress affect your sleep
Noise increases arousal and increases heart rate
When there is noise while you are trying to sleep it decreases time in deep slow wave sleep
Noise increases time in less restful sleep

We sleep less as we age
In infancy from the moment you are born until you are about 2 years old you have the most rem sleep
50% of the time that you are sleeping you are in rem sleep and you are sleeping around 16 hours per day
The amount of rem sleep decreases as we age but the non rem sleep stays pretty much the same

The restoration model explains sleep and the way that sleep recharges our body and allows us to recover from fatigue mental and physical
Evidence in mildly supporting
Sleep about 10 minutes longer on the days that we exercise
So if the restoration model was true and we had a lot of physical fatigue we should sleep a couple extra hours because of fatigue
Adenosine (cellular waste product) may play a role in decreasing alertness
evolutionary circadian models- sleep is adaptive, we sleep when we need to because of the amount that we need to survive
Sleep is like our ability to survive in relation to our environmental demands
Mechanism for conserving energy (metabolic rate 10-25% slower during sleep)

Insomnia- chronic difficult in falling or staying asleep
Narcolepsy- extreme day time sleepiness and sudden uncontrollable sleep attacks
Rem sleep behavior disorder- when the paralysis in rem is absent causing movement. When the body cannot move and it feels like you are awake but the paralysis is experienced in the body during rem sleep because the motor cortex is blocked
Sleep apnea- when there is a pause in breathing. Often found in individuals with copd or who smoke. Also found in people with obesity
Sleep walking- people who walk in their sleep. Happens during stage 3 and 4. cannot happen during rem sleep because the motor cortex is blocked
Night terrors- frightening dreams that arouse the sleeper to a near panic state
Nightmares- feelings of strong terror, fear, distress and extreme anxiety

Dreaming can occur at any stage
Activation synthesis theory says that we dream because there is activation and synthesis that takes place
Activation is just the neural activity that takes place
Synthesis is the brain making sense of this
So activation synthesis theory says that your brain synthesizes or proceeds the best fit in story response to neural activation or some sort of neurons that are firing
The cognitive approach helps us to find solutions to personal problems and concerns that show up during our sleep
Dreams and waking thoughts are produced by the same systems in the brain

Wish fulfillment
Gratification of unconscious desires / needs (sexual & aggressive urges)
Two important concepts
Manifest content
“Surface” story of dream
Latent content
Disguised psychological meaning of dream