State of ConsciousnessAbby, Bebe, Kashi, Shukri

What is consciousness?Consciousness is our awareness of ourselves and our environment. With this we are able to exert voluntary control and communicate with others.

Ex: Performing well learned tasks automatically, such as typing without looking or even running.

Sleep and DreamsBiological rhythm: controlled by internal “biological clocks”

Rhythm of SleepCircadian rhythm: The biological clock; regular bodily rhythms- when the sun rises, our body tends to wake up due to the rhythm of your sleep.

Rem Sleep: Rapid eye movement sleep, a sleep stage which vivid dreams commonly occur.During this stage your muscles tend to be relaxed as well as active body systems.

...Alpha Waves: The relatively slow brain waves of a relaxed, awake stage, which can be determined through the EEG scan.

Sleep: A periodic, natural, reversible loss of consciousness, which we fall into sleep when we grow tired.

Hallucinations: False sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus.

Ex: A person with schizophrenia will experience this, which they will hear or see things that does not exist.

...Delta Waves: The large, slow brain waves associated with deep sleep. ( Stage 3) This is also known as the deep sleep, which last about 30 minutes, however, this stage is hard to wake up from.

An average hour of sleep is 9 hours, which of course everyone else have different sleep patterns. However, with enough sleep we are more refreshed, better mood and perform more efficient and accurate work at school or at work.

Sleep DisordersInsomnia: Recurring problems in falling asleep or staying asleep. This result is 10%-15% of adults complaints about having problems sleeping.

Narcolepsy: Uncontrollable sleep attacks, which the person will suffer from falling into REM sleep uncontrollably.

Sleep Apnea: Temporary difficulty with breathing during sleep, which will cause them to wake up from their sleep often.

Night Terrors: High arousal and an appearance of being terrified. It is similar to a nightmare, however, it is rarely memorable.

Treatments For Sleep Disorders Insomnia: NO alcohol or sleeping pills (this reduces REM sleep)Relax before bed, No Caffeine, Schedule your sleep, exercise but not late evenings Narcolepsy: Drugs Sleep Apnea: Breathing Machine

Sleep Disorder SymptomsInsomnia: Trouble sleeping and staying asleepSleep Apnea:Snoring, High Blood pressure, stop breathing in sleepNight Terrors:sleepwalking

...Dream: A sequence of images, emotions and thoughts passing through a sleeping person’s mind. It is like a movie in your mind, however, you are the director of you it, which your mind controls everything in your dream.

Manifest Content: According to Freud, the remembered storyline of a dream.

Latent Content: According to Freud, the underlying meaning of a dream.

Drugs and ConsciousnessPsychoactive drugs: a chemical substance that alters perceptions and mood, such as taking a diet pill believe that it will help you lose weight, however, that is the abuse of drugs, which it makes you believe that it will benefit your cause.

Depressants: Drugs, such as alcohol, barbiturates and opiates that reduce neural activity and slow body functions.

Stimulants: Drugs such as caffeine, nicotine, amphetamines and cocaine that excites neural activity and speed up body functions.

...Hallucinogens: Psychedelic drugs, such as LSD, that distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input. ( Mind Manifesting drugs)

Barbiturates: Drugs that depress the activity of the central nervous system, reducing anxiety but it can damage memory and judgement.

Opiates: Opium and the derivatives, such as morphine and heroin. They depress neural activity, temporarily lessening pain and anxiety. This drug will shrink your pupils, slow breathing and it makes the user lazy.

StimulantsAmphetamine: Drugs that stimulate neural activity, causing speeded-up body functions and associated energy and mood changes.

Ecstasy ( MDMA): A synthetic stimulant and mild hallucinogen. The effect of this drug is that it makes you feel like you love everyone around when really they are just strangers and a serious effect is dehydration with the combination with dancing can be even more harmful to risk severe overheating and blood pressure increase then eventually death.

LSD: A powerful hallucinogenic drug that blocks serotonin and an experience of seeing kaleidoscopic colors of images and hallucainations.

...THC: The major active ingredient in marijuana; triggers variety of effects including mild hallucinations.

Near-Death ExperienceNear-Death Experience:Altered state of consciousness, reported after a close brush with death

Sometimes these could be similar to drug-induced hallucinations

Ex. Heart Attack

Historic & Contemporary ❖ hypnosis- A social interaction in which one person (the subject) responds

to another person's (the hypnotist's) suggestion that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur. -Post hypnotic suggestions help alleviate headaches, asthma and stress related skin disorders. - It can’t make you do something you don’t want to. - We are all open to suggestions.

- Posthypnotic amnesia: The inability to recall what one experienced during hypnosis, which is influenced by the hypnotist's suggestions.

❖ Hidden Observer: A hypnotized subject’s awareness of experiences.

Hypnotic Phenomena ❖ Anybody can be hypnotised.

❖ Emotional Suggestibility- A suggestible behavior characterized by a high degree of responsiveness to inferred suggestions that affect emotions and restrict physical body responses; usually associated with hypnoidal depth. Thus the emotional suggestible learns more by inference than by direct, literal suggestions.

❖ Physical Suggestibility- A suggestible behavior characterized by a high degree of responsiveness to literal suggestions affecting the body, and restriction of emotional responses; usually associated with cataleptic stages or deeper.

.......❖ Intellectual Suggestibility- The type of hypnotic suggestibility in which a

subject fears being controlled by the operator and is constantly trying to analyze, reject or rationalize everything the operator says.(Dr. John Kappas)

❖ Posthypnotic Suggestion- A suggestion, made during a hypnosis session, to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized; used by some clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviors.

❖ Dissociation- A split in consciousness, which allows some thoughts and behaviors to occur simultaneously with others.

Drug DependenceAddiction: craving for a substance, with physical symptoms; such as aches, nausea and distress following a sudden withdrawal.

- When you continue the use of a drug, you become dependent on it and tolerate its effects. In other words, tolerance is “ the diminishing effect with regular use of the same dose of a drug, requiring the user to take larger doses before experiencing the drugs effect. ( your brain, heart and liver suffer because of your tolerance)

- When you stop the use of drugs you can experience withdrawal. Which is the discomfort and distress that follow. But it is divided into two categories:

- Physical dependence: you experience physical pain and intense cravings

- Psychological dependence: to relieve negative emotions

Major figures in consciousness research

William James:- First man to study the conscious mind- Believed it was a continuous process of thinking- Emphasized stream of consciousness

Sigmund Freud:- Considered dreams the key understanding to our inner conflicts - Believed that a dreams manifest content (storyline) is a censored version of its storyline

(latent content) which represent our unconscious desires

Ernest Hilgard:- Discovery of hypnotic dissociation- theory of the “Hidden Observer”; which is a hypnotized subjects awareness of

experiences, such as pain that goes unreported during hypnosis.