Lecture 6 Consciousness Flashcards
(29 cards)
Medical definition of consciousness
Awareness demonstrated any ability to recall experience.
Psychological definition of consciousness
Awareness of the outside world - Awareness of one’s mental processes, thoughts, feelings and perceptions.
What is the theatre view of consciousness?
- Consciousness is a single phenomenon
- Supported by the laws of psychophysics
What is the ‘mind and brain’ problem?
Whether it falls under dualism (mind and brain are different) or materialism (mind and brain same thing).
What is the parallel distributed processing models (PDP)?
Describes the mind as processing many parallel streams of information which interact to create unitary experience of consciousness. Supported by separate functions of different brain regions.
What are the 3 central questions of the study of consciousness?
The mind body problem, whether it is a unified phenomenon or several different ones and third is the relationship between conscious and unconscious activities.
Who is William James and what is he responsible for?
Founded the first US Psych lab at Harvard Uni. Responsible for the ‘functionalism’ approach which entails the roles of consciousness guiding people’s ability to make decisions , solve problems etc. How the ongoing stream of consciousness help people adapt to their environments.
What functions does consciousness serve?
Monitoring mental events (self and environment) - inner and outer world for potentially significant perceptions, thoughts, emotions.
Regulating thoughts and behaviour
What is the essence of awareness and attention in conscious experience?
Awareness is a limited capacity.. aware of only a small fraction of stimuli around us.
Attention refers to what we focus our attention on. Acts like a filter to which only important info is processed.
What are the different levels of conscious experience?
Conscious level, non-conscious level, preconscious level, unconscious level
Difference between non conscious level and unconscious level?
Non conscious level are physiological processes that you cannot be directly aware of existing.
Unconscious refers to mental activities that can alter thoughts, feelings and actions.
What does the cognitive unconscious include?
preconscious and unconscious or subconscious
Characteristics and roles of Consciousness
Consciousness has a limited capacity, allows flexibility, organiser and director, redistributes activation of various networks active, making choices, integrates information ‘see the big picture’, creates theory of who we are, of our experiences.
What does the unconscious entail?
Unwanted thoughts, impulses, drives (Freudian slip), automatic unconscious heuristics, implicit association, intuition
What is preconscious
Mental events that can be brought to conscious awareness. e.g if someone asked for your phone number but you weren’t consciously thinking of it beforehand.
What is split brain?
Where corpus callosum is severed and two hemispheres of brain function independently.
What is prosopagnosia?
Impairment to consciousness - inability to recognise faces, linked to damaged temporal lobes.
What is anterograde amnesia?
Impairment to consciousness, inability to form new memories, linked to damage of the hippocampus e.g can learn new skills but cannot recall doing so.
What are the different states of consciousness?
Waking consciousness, altered states of consciousness (sleep, psychoactive drugs, hypnosis).
Where is consciousness distributed throughout the brain?
Hindbrain and midbrain most important for arousal and for sleep. Prefrontal cortex for conscious control and info processing
What are the elements of sleep, as a conscious state?
Altered state of consciousness - NREM sleep (4 stages) and REM sleep.
What are the functions of REM sleep?
- Affects alertness and mood
- Improves neurons’ sensitivity to norepinephrine
- Strengthens nuronal connections
- Solidifies experiences and new skills
- May improve creativity
NREM sleep?
Breathign deepens, heartbeat slows and blood pressure drops as the person descends through four stages of sleep characterised by low to high brain waves.
Last two stages called slow wave sleep (difficult to waken).
What does sleep deprivation lead to?
Poorer learning, memory, iq scores, compromised immune system, poorer emotional processing, mistakes at work, car accidents.
