What Are Various Stages of Sleep in Neuroscience Flashcards

Stage 1: Theta waves (occur 4-7times per second), brain activity powers down by 50% or more
State 2: Sleep spindles (about 12-14 cycles a second), K-complexes (appear only when we’re asleep)
Stages 3 and 4: Delta waves (1-3 cycles a second)

High frequency, low-amplitude waves resembling those of wakefulness. Increased heart rate and blood pressure, rapid and irregular breathing. Brain is most active and vivid dreaming most occurs.

Experience of becoming aware that one is dreaming, challenges the idea that we’re totally asleep or totally awake. Sometimes accompanied by ability to control dreams.

Insomnia:Difficulty falling and staying asleep, an estimated 9-15% of people, brief psychotherapy is most effective treatment
Narcolepsy:Disorder characterized by the rapid and often unexpected onset of sleep, instantly plummets into REM sleep
Sleep Apnea: Disorder caused by a blockage of the airway during sleep, resulting in daytime fatigue, can be very dangerous
Night Terrors: Sudden waking episodes characterized by screaming, perspiring and confusion followed by a return to deep sleep, most prevalent in children
Sleepwalking: walking while fully asleep, most common in childhood, occurs in stage 3 and 4 sleep

Stimulant:Drug that increases activity in the central nervous system, including heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure àNicotine, Cocaine, and Amphetamines
Narcotic:Drug that relieves pain and induces sleep àheroin, morphine and codeine
Psychedelic Drug:Produce dramatic alterations in perception, mood and thoughtàhallucinogenic, Marijuana, LSD

Split-Brain Effect: The left side of the body is controlled by the right hemisphere and vice versa, the split brain patient can only talk about information received from the right visual field AND is unaware of information received by the right hemisphere. Yet they can act on that information unconsciously.
Broca’s Area: Located on left side of brain
Wenicke’s Area: Responsible for speech, located on left side of brain
Corpus Callosum: Bridge that communicates information between the two sections

It is processed in the right hemisphere

People who have their brains lessioned can only communicate what they see in their right visual field because that information is transmitted to broca and wenickes areas where the information is translated into speech

People who can choose what they see in their left visual field even though they have no conscious ability to understand why they made that decision, that is because they cannot voice their unconscious action.

In the Michael Gazzaniga video, the actor makes up a reason as to why they decided to pick something they saw in their left visual field. They unconsciously knew to pick it but since their hemispheres are not connected they are unable to voice their unconscious actions.

Joe, who saw a bird in his right visual field and the word, Orange, in his left visual field? He was not aware of seeing something in his left visual field (the orange), but he could report that he saw a bird (in his right visual field). (This is evidence that conscious awareness is a function of overt speech.) When asked, he used his left hand (under the control of the right hemisphere) to pick up an orange pen and draw an orange (evidence that he could make complex choices and make complex actions out of conscious awareness.) When asked why he drew an orange, he said, that it was too hard to draw a bird (evidence that the left brain speech centers make up explanations for behavior that are plausible but not real.)

Modal model of memory- sensory store then paying attention to it then it goes to STM and to keep it in STM you need to rehearse it and then it is encoded to LTM and can be retrived from LTM
Attention: paying attention to a sensory stimuli
Rehearsal: Repeating information to extend the duration of retention in short-term memory
Encoding and Retrieval: Process of getting information into our memory banks and the reactivation or reconstruction of experiences from our memory stores
Maintenance Rehearsal: Repeating stimuli in their original form to retain them in short-term memory
Elaborative Rehearsal:Linking stimuli to each other in a meaningful way to improve retention of information in short-term memory

Sensory Memory is the brief storage of perceptual information before it is passed to short-term memory, capacity is very large, duration is very short. Sperling study flashed 12 letters at a time for 1/20^th of a second, participants could only recall letters when they were only asked focus on an individual row.

Echoic:Auditory sensory memory, last 5-10 seconds
Iconic: Visual sensory memory, last about a second

Short-Term Memory:Memory system that retains information for brief periods of time- while we’re thinking about, attending to or actively processing. Capacity is 7 plus/minus 2, duration is 15 seconds
Chunking:Organizes lists of information into recognizable “chunks” or portions
Magic Number: 7 plus or minus 2
Petersons asked participants to memorize three letter strings after 3-18 seconds