a powerpoint about sleep and consciousness. covers concepts of psychology

1. Consciousness
and Sleep
DEFINITION OF CONSCIOUSNESS, LEVELS OF
CONSCIOUSNESS, ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS -
STAGES OF SLEEP, SLEEP DISORDERS, DREAMS, HYPNOSIS,
MEDITATION, PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS ( PPT 1)

2. Your best quote that reflects your
approach… “It’s one small step for
man, one giant leap for mankind.”
- NEIL ARMSTRONG

3. consciousness
Consciousness : A person’s awareness of everything that is going on around him or her at any given
moment, which is used to organise behaviour including your thoughts, sensations, and feelings.
Consciousness is generally defined as your awareness of the outside world and of your mental
processes,thoughts,feelings,and perceptions
In a very real sense, to understand consciousness is to understand what it means to be who we are.
Waking, sleeping, dreaming, daydreaming, and other forms of conscious awareness make up the
part of the human experience.

4. All patients after general anaesthesia given certainly appear to go to sleep, but there is no reliable
way of knowing whether they are actually unconscious.
In rare cases, patients have conscious awareness of pain and remember the trauma. Although their
surgical wounds heal, these people may be psychologically scarred by the experience and may even
show symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder.
According to doctors consciousness is an awareness that is demonstrated by any ability to recall an
experience.

5. States of consciousness
The characteristics of consciousness at any particular moment.
For example, suppose you were aboard an airliner flying from New York to Los Angeles.
The pilot calmly scans instrument displays while talking to an air-traffic controller.
In the seat next to you, a lawyer finishes her second cocktail while planning a courtroom strategy.
Across the aisle, a young father gazes out the window, daydreaming, while his small daughter sleeps
in his lap, dreaming dreams of her own.
All these people are experiencing different states of consciousness. Some states are active, and some
are passive.

6. The daydreaming father lets his mind wander, passively noticing images, memories and other mental
events that come to mind.
Like the pilot, the lawyer actively directs her mental processes.
In her case, though, as she evaluates various options and considers their likely outcomes, she is
altering her state of consciousness by sipping alcohol.
Generally, people spend most of their time in a waking state of consciousness.
Mental processing in this state varies with changes in attention or arousal

7. While reading, for example, you may temporarily ignore sounds around you.
Similarly, if you are upset or bored or talking on a cell phone, you may tune out important cues from
the environment, making it dangerous to perform complex activities such as driving a car.
Levels of consciousness
Conscious level : The level of consciousness at which mental activities accessible to awareness occur.
E.g.: information about yourself and your environment that you are aware of

8. Nonconscious level: The level of consciousness at which reside processes that are totally inaccessible to
conscious awareness.
E.g: body processes controlled by the mind that we’re not aware of. you are not directly aware of your brain
brain regulating your blood pressure.
Subconscious level: information of which we aren’t consciously aware
Ii) must exist due to behaviour
Iii) proof: priming and mere exposure effect
Priming is a phenomenon whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a
subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. For example, the word NURSE is
recognized more quickly following the word DOCTOR than following the word BREAD.

9. Unconscious level : some events/feelings that are unacceptable to the conscious mind are repressed
into it
Other mental activities can alter thoughts, feelings, and actions but are more difficult to bring into
awareness .
Sigmund Freud suggested that these unconscious activities,especially those involving unacceptable
sexual and aggressive urges, are actively kept out of consciousness.

10. Altered states of consciousness
An altered state of consciousness occurs when there is a shift in the quality or pattern of your mental
activity.
Thoughts may become fuzzy and disorganized and you may feel less alert, or your thoughts may take
bizarre turns, as they so often do in dreams.
Sometimes being in an altered state may mean being in a state of increased alertness,as when under
the influence of a stimulant.
You may also divide your conscious awareness, as when you drive to work or school and then wonder
how you got there—one level of conscious awareness was driving, while the other was thinking
about the day ahead.

11. This altered state of divided consciousness can be a dangerous thing, as many people who try to drive
and talk on a cell phone at the same time have discovered.
Driving and carrying on a phone conversation are both processes that should demand focused
attention and it is simply not possible to do both at once in a safe and efficient manner.
Studies have shown that driving while talking on a cell phone, even a hands-free phone, puts a
the same degree of risk as driving under the influence of alcohol

12. There are many forms of altered states of consciousness. For example,
daydreaming,
being hypnotized,
or achieving a meditative state are usually considered to be altered state

13. In an altered state, mental processing shows distinct changes unique to that state.
Cognitive processes or perceptions of yourself or the world may change, and normal inhibitions or
self-control may weaken.
In fact, judgments about the status and meaning of certain states of consciousness vary considerably
across cultures.
For instance, hallucinations, which are perceptual experiences (such as hearing voices) that occur
without sensory stimuli.
If it is due to an eye disorder may be ashamed to seek the medical help they need to solve the
problem

14. If mental patients hallucinate,they often feel stress and selfblame and may choose not to report their
hallucinations.
Among the Moche of Peru, however, hallucinations have a culturally approved place.
When someone experiences illness or misfortune, a healer conducts an elaborate ritual to find causes
and treatments.During the ceremony,the healer takes mescaline,a drug that causes hallucinations.
These hallucinations are thought to give the healer spiritual insight into the patient’s problems (de
Rios, 1989).
In many other tribal cultures, too, purposeful hallucinations are respected, not rejected (Grob &
Dobkin de Rios, 1992).

15. Stages of sleep
Sleep researchers study the brain’s electrical activity during sleep by taping tiny discs to a person’s
scalp and connecting them to an electroencephalograph, or EEG.
The resulting EEG recordings, often called brain waves, vary in height (amplitude) and speed
(frequency) as behavior or mental processes change.
The brain waves of an awake, alert person are irregular, small, and closely spaced; that is, high
frequency and low amplitude.
A relaxed person with closed eyes shows more rhythmic brain waves occurring at slower speeds,
eight to twelve cycles per second (cps).
During a normal night’s sleep, your brain waves show distinctive and systematic changes in amplitude
and frequency as you pass through various stages of sleep.

17. According to the American Association for Sleep Medicine (AASM) classification, there are 5 stages of
sleep:
Stage W: Wakefulness
Stage N1: Relaxed Wakefulness
Stage N2: Light Sleep
Stage N3: Deep Sleep, or Slow-Wave Sleep (SWS)
Stage R: REM Sleep: Dreaming
The N in N1–N3 refers to Non-REM sleep. N1 and N2 stages have been combined into one stage called
Sleep.

18. Each sleep stage is characterized by changes in our physiology.
Light sleep almost covers half of our sleep time.
When you drift into sleep, you first go into the lighter stages of Non-REM sleep.
Through these stages you move into REM sleep.
This fairly predictable progression from Non-REM sleep to REM sleep is called a sleep cycle.
In these 90–110-minute sleep cycles you sleep throughout the night.

19. REM sleep:
This is a sleep stage in which the brain is active but the body is paralyzed.
Vivid dreams happen during REM sleep and your heart rate and respiration rate are increased.
In terms of brain activity, REM sleep resembles wakefulness.
REM sleep is linked to the circadian rhythm of our body temperature:
our core body temperature starts to drop off when we fall asleep and reaches a nadir ( lowest point ) in
the early morning hours.
If you go to bed much later than usual, you may skip the first cycles of sleep (including regenerative deep
stages) and even go straight to REM sleep.

20. PHYSIOLOGY OF REM SLEEP
Characterized by eye movements, waking levels of heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, and brain
waves, but near paralysis in muscles
Rapid Eye Movements
Loss of muscle tone
Low amplitude mixed frequency EEG
Limited thermoregulation ( homeostasis) , shivering or sweating
Elevated heart rate
Elevated respiration rate

21. EXPERIENCES DURING REM SLEEP
Vivid dreams
Erections and blood flow to the genitals
FUNCTIONS OF REM SLEEP
Learning and problem solving
Memory consolidation
Mental health

22. Stage N1 Sleep
It is a transition stage between wakefulness and the deeper stages of sleep.
It is easy to wake up from this stage.
During N1 one is aware of his surroundings but become increasingly relaxed as you drift off to sleep.
PHYSIOLOGY OF N1 SLEEP
Core body temperature drops at sleep onset
Slow eye movements
Lack of sleep spindles in the EEG

23. EXPERIENCES DURING N1 SLEEP
Hypnic jerks : (sudden involuntary contraction of the muscles of the body which occurs when a
person is beginning to fall asleep, often causing the person to jump and awaken suddenly for a
Illogical thoughts when drifting off to sleep
Reduced awareness of surroundings
FUNCTIONS OF N1 SLEEP
Transition from wakefulness to the deeper stages of sleep

24. Stage N2 Sleep
It is a stage of light, regenerating sleep.
It is still relatively easy to wake up from this stage of sleep.
Duration of this stage is : With 8 hours of sleep, that is 3.5–4 hours of N2 stage sleep per night.
PHYSIOLOGY OF N2 SLEEP
Presence of EEG patterns: K complexes and sleep spindles
K complexes are large waves that stand out from the background and often occur in response to
environmental stimuli such as sounds in the bedroom.
Sleep spindles are brief bursts of fast activity that appear something like the shape of an "eye" as
rapidly increase in amplitude and then rapidly decay
Decreased heart rate & blood pressure
No eye movements

25. EXPERIENCES DURING N2 SLEEP
Fragmented dreams
Brief arousals from sleep
FUNCTIONS OF N2 SLEEP
Rest and recuperation ( recovery from illness or sleep)

26. Stage N3 Sleep
Stage N3 sleep, deep sleep or slow-wave sleep (SWS) is the most rejuvenating and restorative sleep
stage.
During deep sleep, the glymphatic system removes waste, such as neurotoxins and beta-amyloids, from
from the brain.
The glymphatic system is a functional waste clearance pathway for the vertebrate central
nervous system (CNS)
The amount of deep sleep declines with age. Older adults often report waking up more often during
the night which is linked to the decline of deep sleep.

27. PHYSIOLOGY OF N3 SLEEP
EEG: slow-wave brainwaves
Decreased heart rate
Decreased blood pressure
Release of growth hormone
No eye movements

28. EXPERIENCES DURING N3 SLEEP
Very difficult to wake up from deep sleep
If awoken, disorientation and grogginess
FUNCTIONS OF N3 SLEEP
Cell repair and rejuvenation
Replenishing glycogen
Long-term memory
Removal of waste from the brain: glymphatic system