Altered States of Consciousness

1. Altered States of Consciousness Chapter 7

2. Objectives • Describe the research related to sleep and dreaming • Define altered states of consciousness, including hypnosis and hallucination • Discuss the effects of drug states and such substances as marijuana and alcohol • Describe research into such techniques as biofeedback and mediation

3. Terms • Biofeedback • Consciousness • Hallucinations • Hypertensions • Hypnosis • LSD • Marijuana • Meditation • Posthypnotic suggestion • REM Sleep

4. Hey there • You are looking around the room and your awareness is drifting to that attractive classmate sitting across the room. • You are reading these words • Everything you think and feel is part of your conscious experience • Consciousness: A state of awareness, including a person’s feelings, sensations, ideas, and perceptions.

5. Introduction • Normal states of consciousness the most active areas of research in psychology? • No this is not the case. The subject that has had a great deal of research in recent years is the study of altered states of consciousness. • Altered state of consciousness involves a change in mental processes, not just feeling more or less alert.

6. Introduction • Since at least the 1960’s, psychologists have been studying altered states of consciousness by having people sleep, meditate, undergo hypnosis, take drugs during laboratory, researchers can observe changes in behavior and measure changes in breathing, pulse rate, body temperature, and brain activity.

7. Sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz • Most people think of sleep as a state of unconsciousness, punctuated by brief periods of dreaming. • Only partially correct • Sleep is a state of altered consciousness, characterized by certain patterns of brain activity.

8. Sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz • Sleep is a major part of human and animal behavior but it is difficult to study because a researcher cannot ask a sleeping person to report on the experience without first waking the person. • Electroencephalograph (EEG)- Machine that records the electrical activity of the brain • By observing sleeping subjects and by recording their brain and body responses, researchers have discovered 2 different types of sleep patterns: • Quiet sleep • Active sleep

9. Stages of sleep • As you begin to fall asleep, your body temperature declines, your pulse rate drops, and your breathing grows slow and even. Gradually your eyes close and your brain briefly emits alpha waves, as observed on the EEG, which are associated with the absence of concentrated thought and with relaxation. Your body may twitch, your eyes roll, and brief visual images flash across your mind (although your eyelids are shut) as you enter Stage 1, the lightest level of sleep

10. Stages of sleep • Turn to page 159

11. Stages of sleep • Stage 1 • Your pulse rate slows more • Muscles relax, but breathing becomes uneven and your brain waves grow irregular • If awakened during stage 1, you would report that your were “just drifting.” • Lasts 10 minutes

12. Stages of sleep • Stage 2 • Brain waves occasionally shift from low-amplitude high-frequency waves to high-amplitude low-frequency waves • Eyes roll slowly from side to side

13. Stages of sleep • Stage 3 • 30 minutes after entering stage 2 • Large amplitude delta waves begin to seep your brain every second

14. Stages of sleep • Stage 4 • Deepest sleep of all • Difficult to awaken in this stage • Large, regular delta waves • State of oblivion • If awaken by a loud noise or sudden movement, you may feel disoriented. • Talking out loud, sleepwalking, and bed-wetting occur in this stage, leave no trace of memory

15. Stages of sleep • On average, a person spends 75% of sleep time in Stages 1-4 • Then REM happens, where your muscles are even more relaxed than before, your eyes begin to move rapidly • REM sleep: The period of sleep during which the eyes dart back and forth (rapid eye movement) and dreaming usually occurs

16. Stages of sleep • REM • Pulse rate and breathing become irregular • Levels of adrenal and sexual hormones in your blood rise, as if you were in the middle of an intensely emotional or physically demanding activity • Face and fingers twitch • Muscles in arms and legs are paralyzed • Brain sends out waves that closely resemble those of a person who is fully awake

17. Stages of sleep • REM • Called active sleep • Stages 1-4 referred to as NREM (quiet sleep) • Or quiet sleep because of the absence of rapid eye movement, which is accompanied by slower pattern of brain waves • During REM sleep that almost all dreaming normally takes place • Lasts for about 10 minutes, after which you retrace the descent to stage 4. You go through the cycle every 90 minutes or so • Each time the period of stage 4 sleep decreases and the length of REM sleep increase, until you eventually wake up • At no point does your brain ever become inactive

18. Handout • Falling a sleep

19. How much sleep? • Newborns • 16-18 hours • Half of it in REM • 16 year olds • 10-11 hours of sleep • Grad school • 8 hours • Men & Women 70 years and older • May need only 5 hours of sleep

20. How much sleep? • Adults average about 25% of their time in REM sleep, and 75% in NREM sleep. • Amount of sleep a person needs may vary, it does appear that everyone sleeps and that both types of sleep are important to normal functioning.

23. Handout • Sleeping a light fantastic

24. Dreams • Everyone dreams although most people only recall only a few, if any of their dreams • 1st few dreams • Usually composed of vague thoughts left over from the day’s activities (Watching TV) • As night wears on, dreams become longer and more vivid and dramatic, especially during REM • Last dream is likely to be the longest and the one people remember when they wake up, although people can rarely recall more than the last 15 minutes of a dream when they awaken

25. Dreams • Researchers have found that after, people have been deprived of REM sleep, thy subsequently increase the amount of time they spend in REM sleep. Thus is appears that a certain amount of dreaming each night is necessary

26. Content of Dreams • When people are awakened randomly during REM sleep and asked what they had just been dreaming, the reports are common and dull • Commonplace settings (even late-night REM) occur in living rooms, cars, streets • The dreams we remember “are more coherent, sexier, and generally more interesting”

27. Content of Dreams • Most dreams involve either strenuous recreational activities or passive events such as sitting and watching • Large percentage of dreams are negative or unpleasant • Anxiety, anger, sadness • We incorporate everyday activities into our dreams • Can manipulate the content of a person’s dreams • Light water spray 42% • Light 23% • Tone 9%

28. Nightmares • Small portions of our dreams • Frightening quality, we usually awaken in the middle of them • Intensity of brain activity to the stimulation of those parts of the brain responsible for emotional reactions

29. Dream Interpretation • Sigmund Freud 1st to argue that dreams are an important part of our emotional lives • Believed that no matter how simple, dreams contain clues to thought and desires the dreamer is afraid to acknowledge or express in waking hours • Said dreams are full of hidden meanings and disguises

30. Dream Interpretation • Nathaniel Kleitman • Pioneer of REM sleep • “Dreaming may serve no function” • Unimportant bi-product of stimulating certain brain cells during sleep • McCarley • “Feeling paralyzed in a dream simply means that brain cells that inhibit muscle activity were randomly stimulated

31. Freud on Dreams • Page 162

32. Top 10 things about dreams • Video

33. Dreams • Dream dictionary

34. Lucid Dreaming • Website

35. Hypnosis • Hypnosis: Is a form of altered consciousness in which people become highly suggestible and do not use their critical thinking skills. • Subjects may recall in vivid detail incidents they had forgotten or feel no pain when pricked with a needle • Subjects are not asleep

36. Hypnosis • Trace like state • Highly receptive and responsive to certain internal and external stimuli • Able to focus on 1 tiny aspect of reality and ignore the rest • Hypnotist • Induces a trance by slowly persuading a subject to relax and to lose interest in external distractions

37. Hallucinations • Hallucinations: Perceptions that have no direct external cause, seeing, smelling, tasting, or feeling things that do not exist • Can produce hallucinations: • Hypnosis, meditation, drugs, withdraw from drugs • People hallucinate while dreaming and when deprived of sleep

38. Drugs and Their Effects • Page 168