Consciousness: our awareness of ourselves and our environment
Cognitive neuroscience: interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with cognition
Dual Processing: The principle that information is often simultaneously processed on separate conscious and unconscious tracks.
Blindsight: a condition in which a person can respond to a visual stimulus without consciously experiencing it
Selective Attention: the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus
Inattentional blindness: failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere
Change Blindness: failing to notice changes in the environment
Circadian Rhythm: biological clock
REM Sleep: rapid eye movement sleep, a recurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur.
Alpha Waves: the relatively slow brain waves of a relaxed, awake state.
Sleep: periodic, natural, reversible loss of consciousness
Hallucinations: false sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus
Delta waves: large, slow brain waves associated with deep sleep.
Insomnia: recurring problems in falling asleep or staying asleep
Narcolepsy: a sleep disorder characterized by uncontrollable sleep attacks.
Sleep Apnea: sleep disorder characterized by temporary cessations of breathing during sleep and repeated momentary awakenings.
Night Terrors: sleep disorder characterized by high arousal and an appearance of being terrified; unlike nightmares, night terrors occur during NREM-3 sleep within two or three hours of falling asleep and are generally not memorable
Dream: a sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person’s mind. Dreams are notable for their hallucinatory imagery, discontinuities, and incongruities, and for the dreamer’s delusional acceptance of the content and later difficulties remembering it.
Manifest Content: according to FREUD, the remembered story line of a dream
Latent Content: according to FREUD, the underlying meaning of a dream
REM rebound: the tendency for REM sleep to increase following REM sleep deprivation
Hypnosis: a social interaction in which one person suggests to another that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, behaviors will spontaneously occur.
Posthypnotic suggestion: a suggestion made during a hypnosis session to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized. Used by some clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviors.
Dissociation: a split in consciousness, which allows some thoughts and behaviors to occur simultaneously with others.
Psychoactive Drug: a chemical substance that alters perceptions and moods
Tolerance: diminishing effect with regular use of the same dose of a drug, requiring the user to take larger and larger doses before experiencing the drug’s effect
Addiction: compulsive drug craving and use, despite
