Theories of Consciousness

Consciousness: Opening the Mind's Eye

• Consciousness encompasses both states of awareness and the content within them.
• It involves subjective experiences of the world and the mind.
• Narcolepsy is a rare, long-term brain disorder, affecting 0.5% of the population, that causes a person to suddenly fall asleep at inappropriate times due to temporary muscle weakness.
• Sleep paralysis can occur to people with and without narcolepsy, where one is fully conscious while drifting off to sleep or on awakening but is unable to move because the muscles are paralyzed. In the past it was considered demons visiting the victims in their beds.
• Consciousness is uniquely personal, making another's experience inaccessible.
• There is Cartesian theatre that describes a mental screen or stage on which things appear to be presented for viewing by the mind's eye.
• Despite challenges in directly measuring subjective experience, direct and indirect approaches, such as examining altered consciousness states, provide insights.

Mysteries of Consciousness

• The hard problem of consciousness is the challenge of explaining subjective experience.
• Scientists include phenomenology to study the subjective perspective, in their understanding of mind and behaviour.
• One is able to examine altered states, such as sleep, intoxication, hypnosis, and meditation.
• The homunculus problem emerges from considering the illusion of control of the mind's eye.
• There is also moral questions raised towards free will, if people are truly responsible if they are simply responding to circumstances out of their control?
• Individuals attribute agency with self-control, planning memory or thought, and experience with pleasure, pain hunger consciousness anger or fear to nonhuman things, called anthropomorphism.
• The problem of other minds is the barrier to perceiving the consciousness of others.
• Qualia encompass personal and subjective experiences.
• Materialism is the physical interpretation of consciousness.

Attention: Focusing Awareness

• Selective attention focuses mental processing on a limited range of events.
• Without is, the observer will get sensory overload
• Attention is what is taking possession by a clear vivid form when simultaneously is something that should go to the mind.
• The information bottleneck has limited capacity for overload which impacts someone trying to concentrate.
• Broadbent’s early filter model filters the amount of mesages for a single speaker.
• An attenuation model by Treisman attenuates or dampens messages relative to the target message.
• The response selection model by Deutsch and Deutsch argues that those with a bottleneck and limited capacity occured before the signals get processed.
• The load model by Lavie explains early and late selection as a consequence of task difficulty
• Covert vs Overt attention: Covert is when it’s possible to look in one direction but pay attention to another location. Conversely Overt is when we shit our gaze

Sleep and Dreaming: Exploring Unconsciousness

• Sleep and dreams are important to the view of consciousness
• Sleep alters the consciousness and puts our cognitive mind to rest
• Dreams are surreal and can be conscious experiences when sleeping
• Dreams can make you fully awake and there is nothing outside you
• Sleep produces a state of unconsciousness in which the mind and brain turn off functions
• As you fall alseep, thoughts of the waking mind are replaced with wandering odd random thoughts called the hypnagogic state.
• Hypnic jerk can occur which is when you have a sudden quiver or drop in consciousness sensation
• The 24 hour cycle is a part of the sleep cycle and is part of a major Rythm of how life is changed.
• A pattern of changes in electricial activity is shown by EEC to produce high frequency in Beta Waves during alertness and low Alpha waves in relation
• There are 5 sleep stages involving different frequency waves (i.e. Theta, spindles k complexes, delta, ect.)
• Delta waves are the deepest sleep stages
• REM sleep cycle is also characterized as a REM rapid eye moment and a high level of brain activity.
• The minimum amount of required sleep a new born needs is up to 16 hours
• The average adult needs up to 7 and a half hours
• Over a life line on avg to 1 to 2 awake with how to relate the cycle
• If Rats are given sleep loss they will have trouble regulating body temperatures
• Immune system which protects us from diseases
• Metablosim- converts into energy
• Three disorders that plague sleep that are well known are sleep disorders, include insomnia, sleep apnea, Somnambulism, Narcolepsy ,and night terrors and paralysis.
• Uncontrollability in sleep can derive from high conscious as well.
• Sleep paralyses- is a condition that affects wake in the middle state Night terrors (affect a state early in the day when sleep is low.)

Dreams and Hypnosis

• Dreams departs dramatically from reality (Being Naked in certain moments and more.)
• the 5 charecterristrs if Dreams You Feel moments Dream thought is illogical Section is from and meaningful Difficulty in remembrance of dream

Alterating Consciousness

• Some theorist say that people with andy dreams and to return is suppressed and more and more
• Some have a view for for dreams when make of sence of the actions

Drug and Consciousness alterations

• the process of drugs that is taking an action that would be well and
• the process that comes with the 55 perrcent

Hypnosis, meditation, extra

• The process where have control when have to make certain action all under way.