PSYO 1011 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Circadian Rhythm, Melatonin, Startle Response

• School: Dalhousie University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYO 1011
• Professor: Leanne Stevens,Shelley Adamo,Kevin Duffy,Jennifer Stamp

Document Summary

Topics of the day: characteristics of consciousness, circadian rhythms, sleep. Consciousness: what is consciousness, awareness of one"s surroundings and of what is in one"s mind at a given moment. It is (1) subjective, (2) dynamic, (3), and self-reflective: there is no way of knowing what someone else"s" consciousness is. If you remove the scn of a rat, the rat will no longer have a schedule of sleeping. It will sleep and be awake but these periods will be random and have no pattern. If you transplant a scn into a rat from another rat then you can restore the patterns. If you live to 70 this means you have spent 21 years asleep: some animals need sleep in order to survive, ex. Infants will sleep for 16 hours: half of it is rem sleep, 18 year olds sleep for 8 hours.