Unit 9 - Consciousness, Sleep, Dreams and Altered States of Consciousness

Meditation - an altered state of consciousness?

How can meditation help you live a fuller and more balanced life? Andy Puddicombe discusses how it helps him live in the "present moment"... and he juggles a little too.

( http://www.ted.com/talks/andy_puddicombe_all_it_takes_is_10_mindful_minutes.html )

Prosopagnosia: What if you could see normally but could not recognize faces... even your own? 

Writer Oliver Sacks of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" fame has this condition and discusses his latest book about prosopagnosia in this interview from a public radio program called "To the Best of Our Knowledge." You can hear the interview and read the transcript at the following link: 

http://ttbook.org/book/oliver-sacks-facial-blindness 

Videos on Consciousness

Discovering Psychology program 13 "The Mind Awake and Asleep" is at http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/13/e13expand.html 

Discovering Psychology program 14 "The Mind Hidden and Divided" is at 
http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/14/e14expand.html

Starting to meditate? 
Here are links to a couple of online meditation timers. 

http://www.onlinemeditationtimer.com/ 
http://www.yourmeditationtimer.com/timer

It can help you concentrate on your meditation if you don't have to worry about how much time has passed. 

Article: The Meaning of Dreams by Jonathan Winson
Read it HERE - Are dreams symbolic, just random or are they a crucial step in processing memories? 

Hypnosis!

What is hypnosis? A state of heightened suggestibility with real effects in the brain.  

Here is a blog post about what hypnosis ISN'T ... 8 Popular Myths About Hypnosis 


Mouse Party?

What would you see inside the brains of mice who were taking drugs? This interactive website gives you a glimpse inside the brains and synapses of mice on drugs including alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, heroin, meth, ecstasy, and LSD.

Identify how each drug affects the brain. What neurotransmitter(s) does it affect? Is it inhibitory or excitatory? Does it block re-uptake or work some other way? Which parts of the brain are most affected?

You can explore other effects of drugs of abuse here. 

Dream Journal  - You should be making entries into your dream journal every day. If you don't remember a dream from the night, you should write about what emotions or thoughts you had upon awakening. If you don't have anything to enter for a day, you should write about a dream you had some time in the past - even the distant past. 

The point of the dream journal assignment is to get you to pay attention to your dreams and to start to think about various theories of dream interpretation to see if you think they apply. 

Unit 8 Cognition and Language

 Reading assignment:

Bernstein Text Chapter 8 Pp. 275-319

Notes Check and Flash Cards: Mon, Jan 6                      

Unit Quiz: Friday. Jan 17

COMPREHENSIVE FINAL on Tuesday Jan. 21  - (units 1-8)

Read and take Cornell Notes: Make connections! Put in your own words! Write examples, mnemonics.

Key concepts:

Cognition: Evoked Brain Potentials, Formal and Natural Concepts, Prototypes, Schemas, Scritps, Mental Models, Cognitive Maps, Rules of Logic, Propositions, Syllogisms, Formal and Informal Reasoning, Algorithms, Heuristics including Anchoring,  Representativeness, and Availability, Mental Set, Functional Fixedness, Confirmation Bias and other biases.

Language: Grammar, Phonemes, Morphemes, Syntax, Semantics, Surface and Deep Structure of Language, Babbling, Telegraphic Speech

Video about Heuristics: (at http://youtu.be/bKTAUcoKCLo )

Video about Algorithms (at http://youtu.be/6hfOvs8pY1k )

PsykTrek CD-ROM Review Project

The PsykTrek CD-ROM is an interactive course in psychology. It is like a textbook with audio, video and animation. You can use it to review units we’ve already covered, approach our current units in a new way and preview units we haven’t hit yet.

The AP EXAM is on Monday May 5^th  You must have this assignment done by Friday April 4^th. Out of the 56 mini quizzes on the CD you need to do at least 30 during that time. You get to pick which units you want to do and which parts of each unit you want to quiz yourself on. – I suggest using it to review before our Jan 22 Final Exam and then throughout the year.

When you use the CD you will register your name and e-mail address. You will also put in my name as Mr. Cantor and my e-mail address as ptdworkin-cantor@cps.edu. When you take the quizzes the results will be e-mailed to me. Please also record each quiz in the chart below. You must retake a quiz until you have at least 90% in order for it to count. This is an “all or nothing” assignment. If you do at least 30 successful quizzes this will count as a perfect score on an exam worth 50 points. If you do fewer than 30 successful quizzes it will count as a zero.

If you don’t have internet or a CD drive at home you can use the library or a friends house, but you are responsible to do this work outside of class. If you have a computer, but no internet access, you must record evidence of completing each quiz. You can take a screen shot of your results, or print the results page if you have a printer – you can then bring in a USB drive with the screenshots or turn in the print-outs.