SLEEP
o Natural cycles of activity that our body
Consciousness
- Awareness of everything that is going on
around you and things inside your head at any
given time
- thoughts, sensations, and feelings
o needed to organize our behavior
DIFFERENT STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Waking Consciousness
- Encompasses the time we are awake
- Thoughts, feelings, and sensations are clear and
organized
- People feel alert
Altered States of Consciousness
- Differ from organized waking state
- A shift in the quality or pattern of mental
activity
- Fuzzy, disorganized, and bizarre thoughts
- Increased alertness
o especially when under the influence of
a stimulant
- Division of conscious awareness
o Can be dangerous (e.g. driving and
texting)
Two kinds of thought processes:
1. Controlled Processes
- Processes that require our attention to
a fairly high degree (driving, listening in
class, writing notes)
- Should only be done one at a time
- You can do an automatic process with
this at the same time
2. Automatic Processes
- Require far less than a conscious level
of attention (walking, combing your
hair)
SLEEP
- The gentle tyrant (we try to fight it but we
eventually give in)
- One of the body’s biological rhythms
must go through
o Can be monthly (e.g. menstruation)
o Can be short (e.g. heartbeat)
o Daily (e.g. temperature, blood pressure)
o Sleep-wake cycle (circadian rhythm)
▪ Comes from the Latin word circa
(about) and diem (day)
▪ Takes about a day to complete
Hypothalamus
- Responsible for the circadian rhythm
- Contains the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN)
o Structure in the hypothalamus that
influences the release of melatonin
o Sensitive to changes in light
o Controls the pineal gland
o also controls body temperature
Melatonin
- Hormone
- Secreted by the pineal gland
- Suppresses the neurons that keep us awake and
alert
- Used to treat jetlag
OTHER FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE OUR SLEEP:
- Serotonin
- Body temperature
o Higher = alert
o When we’re asleep at night, our body
temperature is at its lowest
How much sleep is needed? It varies.
Adults – usually 7-8 hours Elderly – 6 hours
Old age interrupts sleep
 - Bladder capacity Sleep Deprivation
- Snoring
- The loss of sleep
- Sensitivity to light
- Serious consequences for mental and physical
Microsleeps functioning
- Emotional symptoms
- Brief sidesteps into sleep
- Common symptoms include:
- Lasts only for a few seconds
o Fatigue
- Person is unaware
o Difficulty concentrating
- When you don’t sleep for a while and your body
o Memory problems
is exhausted
o Mood changes
THEORIES OF SLEEP o Paranoia
o Hallucinations
A. Adaptive Theory
- Answers why we sleep at night *We cannot make up for lost sleep
- Sleep is a product of evolution
KINDS OF SLEEP
- Our ancestors evolved different sleeping
patterns to avoid predators’ normal Rapid Eye Movement Sleep (R/REM)
hunting times
- Eyes move rapidly
- In a safe place conserving energy while
- Relatively psychologically active type
predators are hunting at night
o Our brains are active
- Prey animals sleep for a shorter amount of
- Most dreaming takes place
time in order to keep themselves safe
- Little to no moving
(gazelles sleep 4 hours)
- Energy conservation and memory consolidation
- Predator animals sleep for a longer time
- As the night progresses, REM sleep becomes
(lions sleep 15 hours a day)
longer
o Sleep thus becomes more
B. Restorative Theory
restorative/restful
- Answers why we need to sleep in the first
place Non-Rapid Eye Movement Sleep (N / NREM)
- Sleep is necessary to physical health
- Chemicals are replenished - Any stage that does not include REM
- Excess chemicals that can be toxic are - Spans from light sleep to restful sleep to deep
removed sleep
- Cellular damage is repaired - Body is free to move around

ASSOCIATION BETWEEN SLEEP AND MEMORY BRAINWAVES

- Physical changes when forming new memories
o Forming new neural connections
o Strengthened during sleep
o Sleep enhances synaptic connections
among neurons
o Sleep reduces activity of neurons
associated with forgetting
o (people who learn tasks before sleeping
perform better than if they don’t sleep)
o Sleep deprivation = poorer memory
retention
- People have different brainwave activities
depending on the stage of sleep they’re in
- electroencephalograph (EECG)
• Used to record brain activity as people
pass through different stages of sleep
1. Beta Waves
• Very small and fast
• Waves present when people are wide
awake and mentally active
 2. Alpha Waves
• Slightly larger and slower
• Indicate state of relaxation or
drowsiness
3. Theta Waves
• Slower and larger
• Indicate early stages of sleep
4. Delta Waves
• Largest and slowest waves
• Deepest stages of sleep
STAGES OF SLEEP
- Each stage is 90 minutes long *whole cycle is 90 min.
1. N1: Light Sleep
a. Very light sleep
b. Theta wave activity increases
c. Won’t believe they were asleep
d. Hypnogogic images or hallucinations
e. Hypnic jerk
2. N2: Sleep Spindles
a. Brief bursts of activity lasting only a
second or two
b. Slowing down of brain waves
c. Heart rate slows
d. Shallow and irregular breathing
e. May help stimulate neural areas in
which recent memories have been
stored
f. Aware of having been asleep
3. N3: Slow-wave sleep (SWS)
a. Delta waves appear
b. Deepest stage of sleep
c. Hard to awaken
d. Confused and disoriented when awoken
e. Time when body growth occurs
f. Boys sleep more deeply than girls
because of testosterone
g. Bedwetting, sleep walking, night terrors
h. After N3, a person will go back to N2,
then REM
4. R: Rapid Eye Movement/Paradoxical Sleep
a. Eyes move fast in different directions
b. Brain waves resemble beta waves
c. Breathing patterns become irregular
d. Limbs are paralyzed
e. Body temperature increases
f. Bizarre tales and wild dreams when
awoken
g. Cycle repeats after REM
h. 90% of dreams occur here
i. People can also dream in other
N stages
ii. Dreams in REM are more vivid,
more detailed, longer, more
bizarre
i. Sleep paralysis
j. REM Behavior Disorder (RBD)
i. Failure of brain mechanisms to
inhibit voluntary muscles
PURPOSES OF R SLEEP AND N SLEEP
R Sleep
- Emotionally stressful day increases time in REM
- A way to deal with stresses and tensions of the
day
- REM Rebound
o Increased amounts of REM sleep after
being deprived of REM on earlier nights
o Depressants like sleeping pills and
alcohol decrease REM sleep, leading to
fatigue
- Adults only spend 20% of their sleep in REM
- Babies spend 50% of their sleep in REM
o Babies form new neural connections
N Sleep
- Physically demanding day increases N sleep
- Recovery of the body
FACTORS THAT AFFECT SLEEPING PATTERNS
- Stress levels
- Low mood and depression
- Worry or anxiety
- Physical health conditions
 - Medications
- Worry about sleep
*Alcohol and prescription medicine
- Assist in stage 1 and 2 of sleep
- Degrade restoration, stage 3, and REM sleep

SLEEP DISORDERS

Nightmares

- Bad dreams
- Can be terrifying
- Occur during R stages
- Children have more nightmares
o They spend more time in REM
- Usually can vividly remember what happened

Night Terrors

- Rare disorder Sleep Apnea

- State of panic experienced while asleep
- Person stops breathing for more than 10 seconds
- Sit up, scream, run around, flail at unseen
- Followed by a gasping reflex
attacker
- Can cause poor sleep quality, depression, and
- Feel unable to breathe
heart problems
- Occur during N stages
- Dealt with by:
- Most people don’t remember what they were
o Losing weight (obesity causes apnea)
dreaming about
o nasal opening devices
Sleepwalking/Somnambulism o nasal sprays to shrink nasal tissues
o Continuous Positive Airway Pressure
- Episodes of walking or moving around in one’s (CPAP) device
sleep
- Sit up, walk around the house, eating, get into a Narcolepsy
car
- Person falls into REM sleep during the day
- Partly hereditary
- Excessive daytime sleepiness
- Can sometimes be outgrown
- Uncontrollably falling asleep at inappropriate
- Preventing sleep loss regulates sleepwalking
times and places
Insomnia - Occurs especially when experiencing strong
emotions
- Inability to get to sleep, stay asleep, or get - May occur many times without warning
quality sleep - Sometimes might have cataplexy
- Psychological causes o Sudden loss of muscle tone
o Overthinking o Falling asleep while standing up will
o Anxiety cause them to fall
o trying too hard to sleep
- Physiological causes
o Ingesting too much stimulants
o Indigestion
o Aches and pains
DREAMS Some Facts:

- Most dreams reflect events that occur in

Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams:
- Examine dreams to get to early memories
- Dreams represent conflicts, events, and desires
- Dreams are wish fulfillment
o Things we didn’t get to say or do in
wakefulness
Freud’s Two Types of Content in a Dream:
1. Manifest Content
o Actual or obvious content
2. Latent Content
o Hidden meaning
o Expressed in symbols
Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis
everyday life
- Most people dream in color
o people who grew up with black and white
media sometimes dream in black and white
- There are gender differences in the content of
dreams
o Men tend to dream about other men
o Men report more sexual and more
aggressive dreams
o Women report being victims of
aggression in their dreams
o Women dream of males and females
equally, people they know, personal
experiences, family issues

- Dreams are created by higher centers of the

brain to explain the activation by the brain stem
during REM sleep periods
- Dream is another kind of thinking
o Thinking is less realistic because stimuli
is not external but from within person
o Brain searches memories and past
experiences to explain the signals
o Frontal lobes shut down during
dreaming, leading to bizarre dreams
- Brain functions during waking consciousness:
o Pons send signal to the cortex
o The association areas of cortex interpret
those signals as seeing, hearing, etc.
o Results in an experience of reality
- Brain functions during sleep:
o Pons send random signals to the cortex
▪ Not attached to external stimuli
o Brain needs to interpret the signals
▪ Will synthesize an explanation
for the cortex’s activation

Activation-Information Mode

- Revised version to reflect the meaning of our

dreams
- Dreams are influenced by information accessed
during waking hours
- When our brain is trying to make up an
explanation for activation, it will use your
experiences for the past few days (more recent
memories)