PSY 101 Lecture 10: Consciousness and the Two-Track Mind
Document Summary
Consciousness: our awareness of ourselves and our environment. Physiologically induced occurrence: hallucinations, orgasm, food or oxygen starvation. Psychologically induced occurrence: sensory deprivation, hypnosis, meditation. Cognitive neuroscience: the interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with our mental processes, including consciousness. One of the first psychologists to recognize this was sigmund freud. Freud argued that much of our behavior is driven by unconscious drives. Patients with a condition called blindsight have no awareness whatsoever of any stimuli but can process aspects of a visual stimulus, such as location. Selection attention: a mental spotlight that focuses conscious awareness on a very limited aspect of all that you experience. If we"re distracted, we can miss things that happen right before our eyes, a phenomenon called inattentional blindness: missing something when attention is directed elsewhere, failure to notice existence of something unexpected. Sleep and dreams biological rhythms and sleep. Circadian rhythm: occurs on a 24-hour cycle and includes sleep and wakefulness.
