Standards

1. Objective Warm Up: How has loss of sleep affected you as a student? Are there any strategies you can use to increase your performance? • Students will be able to assess their current state and diagnosis whether they need to change their sleeping patterns to maximize performance. Standards IVD-1.1 Define states of consciousness IVD-1.2 Describe levels of consciousness IVD-2.1 Describe the sleep cycle. IVD-2.2 Compare theories that explain why we sleep. IVD-2.3 Assess types of sleep disorders.

2. Consciousness • What is consciousness? • Our awareness of the environment and ourselves within said environment • Apart of cognitive neuroscience • Study of the brain and its association with mental processes • Dual processing and the two track mind • Taking in information on a conscious and subconscious level simultaneously • Unconscious parallel processing • doing a task with does not actively need your brain in order to free you brain to do other activities • Examples? • Serial conscious processing • Requiring your active attention in order to fulfill the task at hand • Example: Pat your head and rub your stomach simultaneously

3. Selective Attention something most high school students do not have. • Selective attention • The ability of focus on a specific stimulus and ignore other stimuli • Cocktail party effect – in a crowded noisy room, you can isolate the person’s voice who you are talking to • Texting and driving is selective attention – can (most likely will) lead to car crashes • Selective inattention • When pay attention to a specific task, we may sometimes miss out on a small detail of information • Intentional blindness • Failing to see visible objects when our attention is elsewhere • Change blindness • Failing to notice change in the environment

4. Sleep and Dreams • Sleep is a periodic loss of consciousness • Different than unconsciousness which results from a coma, hibernation or anesthesia • Sleep is based on our 24 hour biological clock where we sleep for 90 minute cycles • Circadian rhythm • The human body’s biological clock • Body temperature varies throughout the day (high in the morning, lowest at night) • Our minds are sharpest when the cycle is at its peak • Does this mean the start of school should be set back a couple of hours and leave later? • With light, there is a suppression of the pineal gland to produce melatonin which makes you sleepy • Due to the invention of the light bulb, our circadian rhythm is now closer to a 25 hour cycle

5. Study finds later school start times improve sleep and daytime functioning in adolescents PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Julie Boergers, Ph.D., a psychologist and sleep expert from the Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center, recently led a study linking later school start times to improved sleep and mood in teens. The article, titled "Later School Start Time is Associated with Improved Sleep and Daytime Functioning in Adolescents," appears in the current issue of the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics. "Sleep deprivation is epidemic among adolescents, with potentially serious impacts on mental and physical health, safety and learning. Early high school start times contribute to this problem," said Boergers. "Most teenagers undergo a biological shift to a later sleep-wake cycle, which can make early school start times particularly challenging. In this study, we looked at whether a relatively modest, temporary delay in school start time would change students' sleep patterns, sleepiness, mood and caffeine use." Boergers' team administered the School Sleep Habits Survey to boarding students attending an independent high school both before and after their school start time was experimentally delayed from 8 to 8:25 a.m. during the winter term. The delay in school start time was associated with a significant (29 minute) increase in sleep duration on school nights, with the percentage of students receiving eight or more hours of sleep on a school night jumping from 18 to 44 percent. The research found that younger students and those sleeping less at the start of the study were most likely to benefit from the schedule change. And once the earlier start time was reinstituted during the spring term, teens reverted back to their original sleep levels. Daytime sleepiness, depressed mood and caffeine use were all significantly reduced after the delay in school start time. The later school start time had no effect on the number of hours students spent doing homework, playing sports or engaging in extracurricular activities. Boergers, who is also co-director of the Pediatric Sleep Disorders Clinic at Hasbro Children's Hospital, said that these findings have important implications for public policy. "The results of this study add to a growing body of research demonstrating important health benefits of later school start times for adolescents," she said. "If we more closely align school schedules with adolescents' circadian rhythms and sleep needs, we will have students who are more alert, happier, better prepared to learn, and aren't dependent on caffeine and energy drinks just to stay awake in class."

6. Question • Do you believe a later start time in school would benefit your ability to pay attention? Explain by citing specific examples.

7. Stages of Sleep • 5 stages within the 90 minute cycle • REM (rapid eye movement) sleep • The stage where dreams occur, muscles relaxed, but other body systems are active • Stage 1 • Slowed rate of breathing, irregular brain wave activity (alpha waves) lasting 5-10 minutes, muscles relax with occasional twitching • Stage 2 • Decrease in body temperature with burst of brain activity lasting for approximately 20 minutes, this marks the beginning of sleep. • Stage 3 • Transition between light and deep sleep. Slowed brain waves begin to appear. This is approximately 10-15 minutes • Stage 4 • Deepest sleep stage where delta waves are the majority of brain activity. This stage is also known as delta sleep. Between stage 3 and 4, they last around 30 minutes combined • Stage 5 • REM sleep

8. Brain Waves and Sleep Stages

9. REM Sleep • Stage 5 of the sleep cycle. • Similar to stage 1 in that you are more alert than stages 3 and 4 • The brainstem stops the messages from being sent to your muscles but the cortex experiences these sensations • Paradoxical sleep – inside awake, outside calm • REM and stage 2 get longer as stage 4 gets shorter as the night goes on

10. If we don’t get enough sleep, what happens? • Less energy • Increases the hunger hormone and it makes fat rather than burning it off through simple sugar • Can suppress immune responses to illnesses • You can be more susceptible to irritability, slowed performance, impaired creativity, concentration and communication as well as slowed reaction time

11. Sleep Theories • Sleep protects • Protected our ancestors from harm • We sleep because our environment tells us to • Sleep helps us regenerate • Restores and repairs brain tissue • During the day, our neurons are used and attacked, sleep helps us regenerate those neurons • Sleep is for making memories • To recapitulate the day’s memories and store them into long term memory • Sleep feeds creative thinking • Dreams help us think of creative ways to attack a certain task. • Find connections we may not have thought of when cognitively awake • Sleep plays a role in the growth process • Pituitary gland releases the growth hormone during sleep

12. Sleep disorders • Sleep Apnea • A sleep disorder where the individual stops breathing during sleep and wakes up due to this stoppage in respiration • Narcolepsy • The individual cannot control when they fall into REM sleep and these “attacks” can happen at any time. • Insomnia • The constant problem of not being able to sleep (either falling asleep or staying asleep) • Night Terrors • High arousal through terrorizing thoughts and feelings during the 4th stage of sleep and these terrors are not usually remembered • Sleepwalking/sleeptalking • Occurs usually in stage 2 or later. • Sleep walkers return to bed themselves unbenouced that they sleepwalk • The more tired a person is, the more likely they will sleepwalk or talk if they have done the action in the past.

13. Dreams and Why do we dream? • Dreams are images, emotions, and thoughts which occur during sleep. • Can be hallucinatory, not make much sense • Usually forgotten within the first few seconds of waking up • Satisfy our own wishes • Your unconscious wishes are the key to understanding your inner conflict. “What you do you want most” comes out in your dreams. • File away memories • Help sift through your daily activities, but must have undisturbed REM sleep in order for this to happen. • Develop and preserve neural pathways • Help develop the neural pathways in infants because of the length they sleep and how much REM sleep they achieve. • To make sense of neural static • When you take in information through your unconscious, your dreams try to make sense of everything (activation synthesis theory) • Reflect cognitive development • Dream reflect their cognitive development, their knowledge and their understanding

14. What is hypnosis? • A social interaction in which the hypnotist suggest to the subject certain feelings, thought or behaviors which will occur immediately. • Can help retrieve information which may be blocked • Can be used for “bad” and harmful acts • By using posthypnotic suggestions, it has helped alleviate headaches, asthma, and other disorders. • An action to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized