HUL261: Introduction to Psychology

EKANT YADAV
2017CE10100
May 10, 2021

Altered State of Consciousness

Consciousness is referred as someone’s awareness towards his/her thoughts, feelings, mem-

ories, sensation and environment. We can, therefore, say that the principles of consciousness
are basically based on an awareness of self and of the world around us. This awareness is
subjective in nature and unique for everyone. When we are fully aware of our actions and
surroundings, then it is knows as waking consciousness. Most of our lives are spent in wak-
ing consciousness.
Altered state of consciousness describes a situation or state of being when one is not
fully aware of their actions or surrounding. Everyone goes through at least some altered
states, such as sleep, fatigue, and euphoria etc. However, some people experience signifi-
cantly altered states, such as those associated with strokes and other forms of brain damage.
Different methods can alter the human consciousness, such as meditation, hypnosis, sleep,
drugs, and illness, etc. Some of them are explained in following sections.

Sleep

Our lives are influenced by regularly occurring cycles of behaviour known as Circadian
rhythms. Many biological activities are associated with this rhythm. Sleep is also one of
them. It occurs on a time period of 24 hr. During nighttime a hormone melatonin is re-

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leased which is associated with becoming sleepy. Sleep is also influenced by amount of
daylight to which you are exposed.
Sleep creates a unique state of consciousness because when one is asleep, his brain re-
mains active. The pattern of brain waves are recorded by monitors, like electroencephalo-
gram (EEG). This activity is marked by Alpha and Beta waves. Beta waves are very high in
terms of frequency but low in terms of intensity but when we start to relaxing these waves
changes into alpha waves. In contrast to beta waves, alpha waves are high in terms of inten-
sity but low in terms of frequency (Diener Robert and Teeny Jake, 2021). Sleep is a series of
stages in which a person’s brain goes through several phases, each lasting about 90 minutes.
These stages are divided into two main categories. The first of them is Rapid eye movement
(REM) sleep which is account for about 25% of our total sleep cycle. REM sleep reduces
our awareness of external activities and causes our muscles to shut down. In terms of brain
waves, it is similar to wakefulness. Dreams also happen in REM stage. The second category
is non-rapid eye movement (NREM). In NREM, brain waves become very slow and respon-
sible for deep sleep. It further divided into three categories, each responsible for different
brain activity.

Dreams

Dreams are a succession of images, thoughts, sounds, and emotions that we experience
while we sleep. Dream occurs in REM stage. Our dreams are often related to our day-to-
day activities, our experiences, our fears, and our failures. There are many theories which
supports the meaning and significance of dreams. One of them is activation-synthesis theory
of dreaming which states that dreams are our brain’s interpretation of out random different
memories (Hobson and McCarley, 1977).
So, the exact meaning and cause is still debatable but one thing is sure that dreams
are necessary and everyone dreams. whenever if someone is awaken from REM stages he
becomes very less active in his activities until he become able to dream again.

Hypnosis

Hypnosis occurs when a person is placed in a hypnotic state, usually by way of hypnotic
induction. The most common ways to induce hypnosis are suggestions for deep relaxation,

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focused attention, and closing of the eyes. Once the subject has closed their eyes, the pro-
cedure continues with suggestions for a variety of imaginative experiences.
Hypnosis can be used for a variety of uses including medical purposes and weight loss,
treatment of anxiety etc. It also used to change unwanted behaviours like quit smoking and
alcohol etc.
Hypnosis relies on the power of suggestion. Thus some people are easy to hypnotize while
some are very difficult. In 1965, Ernest R. Hilgard performed a test on several participants
and found out that around 20% people are completely unresponsive to hypnosis and they
cannot be hypnotized while 15% people are very easy to hypnotize (Hilgard Ernest, 1965).

Meditation

Meditation is a voluntary mean to achieve alter consciousness through mental exercise. In

meditation, an individual focuses on something specific like, an object, breath or some body
part etc. The main aim of meditation to release all tensions and worries and achieve a state
of well being and peace. In many religions, meditation holds special place.
Many brain imagining studies have performed on meditation. These studies have sug-
gested that meditation tends to decline in the heart rate and oxygen consumption. Medita-
tion leads to more alpha and theta waves which creates more relaxed physiological states
and leads the mediator into deeper states of consciousness and relaxation.

Psychoactive Drugs

A psychoactive drug is a special kind of chemical which alters a person’s consciousness and
changes his mood. These drugs are capable of altering someone’s capability of thinking,
judgement, emotion and perception etc.
There are different kind of drugs available. Some drugs are commonly available in our
daily consumable things like coffee, Cold drink and chocolates etc. Some drugs are found
in pills like aspirin, sleeping pills etc. But there are some recreational drugs also which are
used to create some states of consciousness which are pleasurable and helps to escape our
normal consciousness.
The use of this kind of drugs is illegal and they can create very severe side effects and
they can be very dangerous if they are regularly used for a long period of time.

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New Insights in the Study of Consciousness

1. Studies on the mechanism of general anesthesia

Our cell membranes consists clusters of lipid. These lipids are in a form of tightly packed ball.
When these cells come in contact of chloroform, their diameter and area starts increasing
and these balls scatter like billiards balls. So, this temporary exposure to anesthesia changes
the original structure of the lipid molecules and back again. And this process continues back
and forth, finally leading to cause of unconsciousness (Pavel et al., 2020).

2. Split brain: divided perception but undivided consciousness

The split-brain syndrome is caused by partial or functional degeneration of the corpus cal-
losum linking the left and right hemispheres of the brain. In the study performed by Pinto,
two patients who had undergone a full callosotomy were selected. Two different tests were
performed on both of them. In the first test they were asked to sit in front of a screen and
different images were shown at different locations on the screen. Then they were asked at a
particular object was appeared or not on the screen. In the second test they had to correctly
name the object and then they have to indicate the object using their hand. The main aim
of the study was to determine whether the patients were able to correctly indicate the object
of left visual field with left or vice versa. But surprisingly both patients correctly indicated
all images with hands and verbally.
So, the results show that although the two hemisphere of our brain are completely dis-
connected from each other because of split brain, but still the brain work as whole produce
only one conscious agent (Pinto et al., 2017).

3. Dreaming also occurs during NREM sleep

Scientists from Aalto University and the University of Wisconsin developed a new technique
to examine the effects of dreaming or not dreaming on brain activity in people in restful
NREM sleep. Results shows that some people also dream in the NREM sleep. Researchers
found that people with dreams during NREM sleep have brain activity closer to that of awake
people than those without dreams. EEG generated from the research demonstrated that the
magnetic pulses produced by the brain were shorter in people who didn’t dream than in

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people who did dream. There was also an observation that the more detailed a dream’s
description, the more similar the EEG was to that measured with awake people (Nieminen
et al., 2016).

4. Why does the brain remember dreams?

Many people remember their dreams every morning, but others seldom do. According to
new research, the person with high dream recall scores has a more active temporoparietal
junction, a hub of information processing. High activity of this region create extra sleep
wake fullness means they are more awaken during sleep. Additionally, high dream recallers
dream more than low dream recallers (Eichenlaub et al., 2014).

5. Hypnosis changes the way our brain processes information

Our brain processes and shares information within various parts during waking hours, so we
can respond to external stimuli more quickly. Researchers at the University of Turku found
that the brain becomes less integrated during hypnosis and different brain regions act in-
dependently. During waking states, the brain shares information with different regions, but
during hypnosis, this process gets disrupted and the different brain regions do not function
as cohesively as they used to (Tuominen et al., 2021).

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References

Diener Robert and Teeny Jake. 2021. “States of Consciousness | Noba.”.

URL: [Link]

Eichenlaub, Jean Baptiste, Alain Nicolas, Jérôme Daltrozzo, Jérôme Redouté, Nicolas Costes
and Perrine Ruby. 2014. “Resting brain activity varies with dream recall frequency be-
tween subjects.” Neuropsychopharmacology 39(7):1594–1602.
URL: [Link]

Hilgard Ernest. 1965. Hypnotic susceptibility . New York: Brace & World.
URL: [Link]

Hobson, J. A. and R. W. McCarley. 1977. “The brain as a dream state generator: an

activation-synthesis hypothesis of the dream process.” American Journal of Psychiatry
134(12):1335–1348.

Nieminen, Jaakko O., Olivia Gosseries, Marcello Massimini, Elyana Saad, Andrew D. Shel-
don, Melanie Boly, Francesca Siclari, Bradley R. Postle and Giulio Tononi. 2016. “Con-
sciousness and cortical responsiveness: A within-state study during non-rapid eye move-
ment sleep.” Scientific Reports 6(1):1–10.
URL: [Link]/scientificreports

Pavel, Mahmud Arif, E. Nicholas Petersen, Hao Wang, Richard A. Lerner and Scott B.
Hansen. 2020. “Studies on the mechanism of general anesthesia.” Proceedings of the Na-
tional Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117(24):13757–13766.
URL: [Link]

Pinto, Yair, David A. Neville, Marte Otten, Paul M. Corballis, Victor A.F. Lamme, Edward H.F.
De Haan, Nicoletta Foschi and Mara Fabri. 2017. “Split brain: Divided perception but
undivided consciousness.” Brain 140(5):1231–1237.
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Tuominen, Jarno, Sakari Kallio, Valtteri Kaasinen and Henry Railo. 2021. “Segregated brain
state during hypnosis.” Neuroscience of Consciousness 2021(1).
URL: [Link]