Introduction to CourseWeb Site:

http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~kotovsky/85102/home102.html

• Instructor

• TA’s

• Course Secretary

• Major Instructional Strategy and Goals– Depth, higher educ., focus, purpose(s)

• Major Activities

• Story…

Questions• For the first recitation, bring a significant or “big” and real

question about psychology, one that psychology might (or perhaps might not) have an answer to, and be prepared to discuss it a bit and also turn it in to your TA.

Question Example

David Brook’s Example (NYT 8/24/10)-“For example, Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway once gave a speech called “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment.” He and others list our natural weaknesses:

-We have confirmation bias; we pick out evidence that supports our views.

-We are cognitive misers; we try to think as little as possible.

-We are herd thinkers and conform our perceptions to fit in with the group….

To use a fancy word, there’s a metacognition deficit. Very few in public life habitually step back and think about the weakness in their own thinking and what they should do to compensate. A few people I interview do this regularly (in fact, Larry Summers is one). Of the problems that afflict the country, this is the underlying one.”

Sleeping

The ignored behavior!

Defining/describing sleep

• Decreased awareness & interaction with world

• Decreased motility & muscular activity• Characteristic posture• Partial or total decrement in voluntary

consciously directed behavior• Decreased forebrain activity & cortical input

from lower centers

Sleep as a behavior

• Quietude

• Life span decrease

• Brain activity/EEG & reactivity

Theories of sleeping

• Motivation

• Energy conservation

• Restorative

• Memory consolidation

• Adaptive

Brain Control

Hypothalamus: Rostral/Caudal sleep areas– Rostral (stimulate --> sleep, extirpate --> wake)– Caudal (stimulate --> wake, extirpate --> sleep)– Reticular activating system & monitoring – Melatonin (pineal & hypothal.) and diurnal cycle– Suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus

and entrainment to diurnal rhythm “zeitgrabers”– Dement in a cave!

Necessity/Functionality of sleep!

• Arguments for necessity– Regularity– Motivation/crummy feelings– Health involvement (– Hallucination argument– REM recovery– Energy conservation corr. with metabolic rate across

species– Restorative: inc. in SWS in sleep deprived and athletes,

inc. anabolic/dec. catabolic activity– Memory consolidation REM block->poor mem.– Fatal Familial Insomnia (30+ families/thalamic/death)

• Deprivation/human & animal

• Exceptional sleepers

• Hallucination explanation

• Dement study 11 days deprv. Then 16/8

• REM recovery: limited

• Programmatic reduction-->1-2 hr. dec.

• 5.5/60, 1/2 hr per 2 weeks->4.5-5.5 ok and year later slept 1 to 2.5 less!

• Cats in a puddle!

Arguments against necessity

Conclusions

• Adaptive theory seems to win!– The function of sleep is sleep!– Ungulates sleep much less than meat eaters

• Five hours or less (opossums 19-20 hours)

– Accounts for life span decrease as well

Dreaming: What & Why?

Multiple perspectives and much speculation!

Outline

• Dream behavior

• Theories of Dreaming

• Conclusions– What can we learn from our dreams?

• Are they meaningful? True / predictive?

• Basic Methodology (if we have time…)

Dream behavior & description

• Within sleep

• Amount

• Brainwave activity & bodily quietude:the paradox

• REM

Dreams & REM sleep

• Aserinsky-REM

• Dement & Kleitman-Stages

• REM amount & periodicity

• Brainstem cholinergic & adrenergic promoting & inhibiting areas

• Hobson experiment

Some Questions:

• Are Dreams meaningful--what do they mean?• Are the predictive or “true”?• How do they differ from other states?• What is their function do they even have one?• Are they brain functions or mind functions?

Outline

• Characteristics and Descriptions

• Theories of Dreaming

• Conclusions– What can we learn from our dreams?

• Are they meaningful? True / predictive?

• Basic Methodology (if we have time…)

Theories of Dreaming

• Dreams as meaningful events:• Freud

--Poetzel effect

--Aserinsky, Dement & Kleitman implications

• Hall/Cartright• Dreams as random activity (Hobson +)• Synthesis (perhaps)

Psychoanalytic Theory• Mental conflict• Unconscious motivations• Two forces: impulses & defenses• Dreams as a release• Dreamwork and its results

– Latent dream– Manifest dream– Remembered dream

Dreamwork and forgetting as protective mechanisms

Poetzel Effect

Freud & Neuroimaging (Allen Braun)• Limbic system (emotion active during REM)• Prefrontal cortex (working mem. Att’n, logic & self-monitoring)

inactive during REM• Above consistent with dream bizarreness & emotional

disinhibition/wish fulfillment• Visual cortex inactive but higher visual areas active so we

see w.o. visual input• Mark Solms: injured Pons vs. injured Forebrain• Pons-disrupts REM but dreaming goes on, Forebrain-lose

dreaming but REM goes on.

Variations on Psychoanalytic Explanation + Challenges

• Aserinsky, Dement & Kleitman: REM & implications• Hall and Cartwright: Dream Series• Challenging Views • Dreams as random activity (Hobson +)• Synthesis (perhaps)

Other Neuroscience Views

• Crick: Purge extraneous connections

• Evans: Sorting function on day’s events

• Winson: Sorting for survival

• Hobson: random activity & activation-synthesis hypothesis

Hobson: Dream Transformations

• From: inanimate animate character

• To:

• inanimate 21 0 0

• Animate 2 0 7

• Character 0 0 14

Dream CharacteristicsLack of active volition

Absence of ongoing reflective judgment

Limited to phenomena of the immediate present

Diffuse cognitive slippage--dreamlike confusion-transformations of perception, thought, memory, emotion,relationships, etc.

Gaps in experience: 20%Confusion of thought & irrat. intuitions: 41%Problems in sustained attention: 5%Memory deficiencies within the dream: 15%

Overall, even 51% of "clearest dreams" had clouding of cs. --Usually not radical (scz, psychedelic) but rather more like that of waking life

Can even have hallucinations or psychedelic exper. in dreams (as in waking life!) ex. flying 4%, bizarre figures,

4%, changed identity 3%, LSD-like transformations of vision 13%. Mostly visual 47%. Somatic 10%, audit. 14%.

Outline

• Characteristics and Descriptions

• Theories of Dreaming

• Conclusions– What can we learn from our dreams?

• Are they meaningful? True / predictive?

• Basic Methodology (if we have time…)

Conclusions

• Can we obtain meaningful insights about ourselves through our dreams?

• What can we learn from our dreams?• Are they meaningful? True / predictive?