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States of consciousness vocabulary
States of consciousness vocabulary
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ince I have just woken up, I have been through many states of consciousness in the last 24 hours. Consciousness is the subject experience of perceiving oneself and one’s surroundings, according to the textbook. Every day, we fall in and out of consciousness when we sleep for the night, nap, and daydream. All of these depend on the levels of brain activity we are emitting. Brain activity is very important when measuring consciousness. Such as when a person is in a coma, a vegetative state, or brain dead, we use brain activity to decide on all these factors. If we are sitting in a EEG, a shortened version of 'electroencephalograph': a machine that reads brain activity, we can’t measure our brain activity at all times of the day to see where we sit in consciousness. Luckily, because of the heavy research that has already been conducted, we have a good guess of what is going on throughout the time of going to sleep, waking up, and walking through the day.
To talk about the cycle of my day would be to talk
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There are times when it is difficult for me to go to sleep, but it’s usually my own fault. Usually, I am more than a morning person than a night person. This has come in handy when I was in Basic Military Training for the U.S. Air Force, waking up at 5:45am. Even in high school, I would wake up early and get to school at least half an hour before I really needed to. Although I am a morning person, I do not enjoy getting up early. It may take a while for me to pull myself out of bed, but once I do, I’m ready for the day. I wouldn’t count myself out from being a night person either. I often stay up late to do my work, which isn’t always bad work. I pride myself in being able to mash out an essay at one in the morning and it not looking like a disaster the next day. So if I really had to categorize myself, it would be an intermediate person. I feel like I do my best work at around five in the
Chapter 4 discusses the several states of consciousness: the nature of consciousness, sleep and dreams, psychoactive drugs, hypnosis, and meditation. Consciousness is a crucial part of human experience, it represents that private inner mind where we think, feel, plan, wish, pray, omagine, and quietly relive experiences. William James described the mind as a stream of consciousness, a continuous flow of changing sensations, images thoughts, and feelings. Consciousness has two major parts: awareness and arousal. Awareness includes the awareness of the self and thoughts about one's experiences. Arousal is the physiological state of being engaged with the environment. Theory of mind refers to individuals understanding that they and others think,
In W.E.B Du Bois’s “Double-Consciousness and the Veil”, he talks about the Negro’s viewpoint in the emancipated world. He illustrates the way that black people are able to view themselves from two perspectives. He shows the struggle that black people have to balance out in order to make it in society. I will be explaining what the theory of double-consciousness is and what Du bois felt like it meant for black people.
As we all know, sleep is an important part of our lives. Without the proper amounts and type of sleep, fatigue and other problems can arise. Generally, we can clearly distinguish between a sleeping person and a person that is awake. With sleeping disorders, the distinction between an awake person and a sleeping person becomes more intriguing. What is the difference, how does it relate to the I-function and consciousness? Each sleeping disorder has its own unique answer to this question. It is essential to understand sleep to fully appreciate it. However, many aspects of it remain a mystery. We do have some degree of understanding of sleep. Within our sleep cycle a type of unusual sleep occurs, REM sleep. During this cycle the periods of REM sleep are interspersed with slow wave sleep in alternation. Each period of REM sleep (there are usually 4 or 5 periods a night) lasts for approximately 5 to 30 minutes. During these periods a sleep paradox occurs. An enormous amount of brain activity takes place; this is sometimes even more activity then when awake. This clearly indicates that sleep is not simply to rest our mind and not to think. So, during this period our brains are extremely active, yet there is usually no input or output. During this period, along with the random eye movement (REM), there is a complete loss of muscle tone. Essentially, at this point, the motor system is paralyzed (normally the body inhibits any movement). The autonomic nervous system also alters its behavior. The regulation of body temperature is lost and the blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rates shows increased variability. REM sleep can be detected by measuring the electrical activity of the brain with an electroencephalogram. At this point, the EEG will show the same pattern of activity as when the brain is awake.
I will commence by defining what makes a mental state conscious. This will be done aiming to distinguish what type of state we are addressing when we speak of a mental phenomenon and how is it, that can have a plausible explanation. By taking this first approach, we are able to build a base for our main argument to be clear enough and so that we can remain committed to.
Flow is not a tangible reward for doing well in an activity, it is not a state of being you can achieve from a drug, or a type of mindset that certain people have. Flow is a state of consciousness. But before Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi can define flow, the definition of consciousness must be presented. Consciousness is the awareness of ourselves and our environment. This is so important to know because what breaks the threshold to achieve flow is when one is not conscious of himself or the environment. According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, flow is a completely involved, focused state of consciousness, with diminished awareness of self and time,
In normal sleeping patterns a person usually passes through five phases of sleep, the fifth being REM. The sleeping human passes cyclically through these five phases throughout a night's rest. These phases can be defined in electrical activity of the brain; much like the activity of the heart is often defined. The technique of measuring the electrical activity of the brain is call Electro-encephalogram, or EEG. When the electrical events of a person's brain are graphed on a electrical magnitude versus time axis the graph of a person who is in different stages of being asleep or awake appear to have different levels of electrical activity occurring in the brain. (See (14))
Researches state that 90% of people with severe depression have insomnia. Waking up early in the morning is a classic sign of depression, along with having difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep. Laboratory studies show that depressed people spend more time in REM sleep and less time in slow-wave sleep. Which can increase
Renner, T., Feldman, R., Majors, M., Morrissey, J., & Mae, L. (2011). States of Consciousness. Psychsmart (pp. 99-107). New York: McGraw-Hill.
On week days I tend to be in bed around 11:00pm and plan to be asleep by midnight. Falling asleep by midnight is usually accomplished on each weeknight, with an occasional late night study session. I am fortunate enough to be able to sleep later than I have been in past semesters. We have not had our usual 6:00am morning team lifting for crew and I do not have many early classes. It is not difficult for me to wake up once I hear my alarm in the morning. When I know I have something to complete or somewhere to be I am able to jump right out of bed and get ready. While filling out my Stanford Sleepiness rating times, I was able to give myself scores bet...
Let the stream begin. Some body, some things, life and me, communicated the idea to talk now, not to leave it, to stay, and face up to the past, the places, the people, the pain, the many reasons why I left my home and family, all those years ago, to become a drug addict, an alcoholic, a wanderer, move nomadically from house to house, year to year, to live inside a prison, real and imaginary. I met hell. I met the devil. I met them both inside my head. I found out the hard way that humans could easily imagine evil. The path forward comes from the push to write and to deal. Yes, I felt happy in between the miserable spaces. My family helped me to survive and still do now, even more so than before. Without them, I would not exist, for in the darkest moments I realised that they kept me breathing. I want the virtual picket fence, ideal partner, children and career. They may or may not eventuate. Now as I regroup, look upon me with sober, straight and clear eyes, I can have anything. I walk to a lake, to sense nature, to allow the anxiety to live on these pages, to take shape, and mould into a form that speaks atonement.
The Theory of Mind-Body Dualism is the view that there are two different kinds of things or substances that make up human beings: a physical body and a non-physical mind or soul. “Many dualist believe that a materialistic account of the mind is insufficient to explain everything we want to about the nature of mind and that the mind can be ‘embodied’ or ‘disembodied’” (Mind Body Dualism 1 Notes). Two famous arguments that breaks down dualism a little is The Argument from Conceivability says that the mind can exist without a body like a “disembodied mind” and the body cannot exist without a mind. And The Argument from Divisibility saying the mind cannot be identified with body because the body is divisible while the mind is indivisible.
“Consciousness is defined as everything of which we are aware at any given time - our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions of the external environment. Physiological researchers have returned to the study of consciousness, in examining physiological rhythms, sleep, and altered states of consciousness (changes in awareness produced by sleep, meditation, hypnosis, and drugs)” (Wood, 2011, 169). There are five levels of consciousness; Conscious (sensing, perceiving, and choosing), Preconscious (memories that we can access), Unconscious ( memories that we can not access), Non-conscious ( bodily functions without sensation), and Subconscious ( “inner child,” self image formed in early childhood).
Sleeping and Dreaming Despite the large amount of time we spend asleep, surprisingly little is actually known about sleeping and dreaming. Much has been imagined, however. Over history, sleep has been conceived as the space of the soul, as a state of absence akin to death, as a virtual or alternate reality, and more recently, as a form of (sub)consciousness in which memories are built and erased. The significance attributed to dreams has varied widely as well.
The way that each individual interprets, retrieves, and responds to the information in the world that surrounds you is known as perception. It is a personal way of creating opinions about others and ourselves in everyday life and being able to recognize it under various conditions. Each person’s perceptions are used as a kind of filter that every piece of information has to pass through before it determines the effect that it has or will have on the person from the stimulus. It is convincing to believe that we create multiple perceptions about different situations and objects each day. Perceptions reflect our opinions in many ways. The quality of a person’s perceptions is very important and can affect the response that is given through different situations. Perception is often deceived as reality. “Through perception, people process information inputs into responses involving feelings and action.” (Schermerhorn, et al.; p. 3). Perception can be influenced by a person’s personality, values, or experiences which, in turn, can play little role in reality. People make sense of the world that they perceive because the visual system makes practical explanations of the information that the eyes pick up.
Technological advancements such as the electroencephalograph (EEG), that can measure activity of the sleeping brain, have facilitated various theories to explain the necessity of and the purpose of sleep. Sleep studies measure brain waves (EEG), eye movements (EOG), and muscle skeletal activity (EMG) using a polysomnography.