Chapter 4: Consciousness and Sleep

One’s subjective experience of the world, resulting from brain activity.

Coma, which is a minimally conscious state Brain Death, an absolute and unconscious state in which the brain is completely inactive Locked in syndrome: Where the mind is conscious howver the body is unresponsive unresponsive wakeful state: where a subject appears to be awake but is unaware of tehir surroundings and largely unresponsive to stimuli–thus still technically unconscious

A TBI is an impairment of mental functioning , behavior and consciousness due to severe trauma to the head– its the cause of 30% of injury related deaths and varies in intensity

Activity in these various brain regions come together to inform conscious awareness:

False. It can result in loss of conscioussnes sthough

This study investigated patients in a state of coma to see whether or nott they were still aware of their surroundings and could mentally respond to stimuli– When asking a patient to imagine something, their neural patterns changed in a way that could indicate responsiveness to surrounding and thus concluding that people in comas are in a minimally conscious state

A coma (medicall induced or otherwise) is a state of liminal or unconsciousness that allows the brain to rest and let the body recover from injury

Minimally responsive state is when the subject appears unconscious and is unable to communicate but their neural patterns indicate that they are still responsive to stimuli and aware of their surroundings– they often cannot move but are NOT paralyzed Unresponsive Wakeful State is when a subject appears to be conscious but is unresponsive to stimuli anfd is unaware of their surroundings

Brain Death occurs when the brain is no longer producing activy and there is no function in any region of the brain and is irreversible—though often with life support this persons heart and organs are still functioning Locked in Syndrome is when the subjects brain activty is just fine however the rest of their body in unresponsive to voluntary movement, thus they are conscious in a trapped state

A cognitive ability that allows you to focus on one subject or stimulus whilst drowning other stimuli out

This is the human tendency to, when focusing our attention on one subject, be unaware of massive changes in our surroundings. This is because our brain can only pprocess slo much stimuli at a time and tends to omit things it deems unnecessary

Autonomic Processing is a routine function that doesnt really acquire attention its almost like muscle memory in a way and often tryung to be attentive to this can disrupt the rhythm of the function such as breathing or walking Controlled Processing are functions and actions that are fairly complex to carry out thus our brains need to allot some attention to it to complete the action

Subliminal perception is the unconscious reception of stimuli that affects our conscious state and decision making

Circadian Rhythm is the bodies natural clock that controls our sleeping and waking cycles as well as our hormones and body temperature

The SLEEPLESS gene is an regulates a protien that reduces action potentials in the brain. When removed, avg amt of sleep reduces 80%. Its spoeculated that this gene is what regulates what sleep is the standard amt for every individual person

The retinohypothalamic pathway is a neural path that helps regulate our circaidian rhythm as it constains suprachiasmatic nuclei, a type of neuron which is sensitive to light and dark, triggering sleep and wakefulness

Molecular Oscillators are proteins located in the retinohyothalamic pathway that also help regulate circadian rhythm by adjusting autonomic rhythm and the timing of arousal and rest Differences in molecular oscillations, when measured, show varying waves of large scale brain activity– which we call brain waves

Delta: Slowest hz of 0.5-4 and related to Slow Wave Sleep (SWS) which is a deep dreamless sleep Theta: a drowsy. medatative state of 4-8 hz– a phsyological state of rest but not yet sleep Alpha: 8-13 hz of wakeful rest Beta: 13-32hz asscociated with normal wakefulness anfd conscentration Gamma: 25-140hz of intense concentration and attentiveness; high cognition and problem solving or dreamful Rapid Eye Movement Sleep (REM Sleep)

Primary State is when youre aware of your sense of self in your dreams and secondary is when you are both aware of your sense of self, AND aware that you are in a dream

REM : increased cortical activity, lucid dreaming , skeletal pralysis SWS: decreased cortical activity, no dreams nor paralysis

inform the relationship(s) between administered doses of the drug, and the effectiveness, or lethality, of these administered doses. • visualized on a graph where the x axis is amount of drug administered and y is the effectiveness of the response

-The drugs binding affinity -repeated administrations - proper dose response curves

the properties of the substance’s molecules and whether said properties are more or less compatible with intended receptor targets (ie. How much does the drug like its target)

• have properties that increase the probability of the drug molecule to activate its intended target • even if this drug is administered at low doses, the molecules are MORE likely to bind to its intended target