hello everyone and Welcome to our next chapter we're going to be talking about States Of Consciousness today so let me go ahead and share my screen and we'll go ahead and get started all right so Consciousness States Of Consciousness let's start off by defining some terms so what is consciousness well Consciousness is your awareness level uh are you aware of something are you not aware of something and that can come from your either your external world something that you're exposed to or can come from something internal a sensation a thought a feeling an emotion um so it's really just your understanding of what's going on outside of you and inside of you and what that does therefore is it creates a level of arousal now arousal has this like sort of definition within popular culture of you know of being sexual and natural in nature now that is true like you know sexually aroused is a thing of course but there's other ways to be aroused and it's one of those words you have to say a few times and hear a few times outside of the sexual sort of connotation to really sort of understand this true meaning right like you arouse any time that you are stimulated by something right whether that be something that is uh something you should be fearful of something that you need to get away from right or something that you should be drawn towards like something that's motivating inspirational um thought provoking inspiring right those are all levels of arousal um they just might not necessarily be sexual in nature and they might not necessarily be high levels of arousal they might be low levels of arousal but if we think about sort of what regulates that right why do we sort of go through a day and we're sort of you know homeostasis and just kind of relax and just kind of taking information and all of a sudden you know we're aroused um to run away from something or be drawn towards something or click on something or watch something right well that is um all regulated by the reticular activating system the reticular activating system is what sort of brings us back and forth between these Energy Systems and allows us to sort of shut down at night when we're ready to sleep and wake up in the morning and be engaged in something um you know when we're ready to go and one of the ways that we can artificially sort of stimulate that that uh that system is by using caffeine which stimulates which is um it simulates andesene actually is an antagonist to Anderson so what it does is essentially takes away that that uh regulating mechanism of the reticular activating system and then all of a sudden you just do this flood of energy so caffeine is not something that all of a sudden gives you energy what it does is it removes this capability of the brain to self-regulate the arousal State and now you're just basically aroused all the time again not necessarily sexually and so um what happens with habituation right with tolerance of of this is now all of a sudden this particular activating system might actually stop reproducing the energy that it needs to right because this anocene is not the message is not being um is not being received right or it's actually effects are not working anymore okay because of habituation so what you can see is not only do you sort of have this extreme state of arousal when you first use caffeine but you can actually see a dissipation of this of this arousal State without the use of caffeine um and so that's why people need to drink more and more cups of coffee more more Rebels Monster Energy drink whatever it is to elicit the same response um so it's really one of those you know it's the most commonly used drug in in American culture and it's one of those that you just really want to understand you know why it is that you're using it and as you go through life it's work effects are much less uh efficacious obviously the more you use it and the more that you need it you know it's not going to be there for you and then there's side effects and things like withdrawal symptoms like headaches and things like that and things like palpitations in your heart and things so it's one of those where yeah sure when you're young it's great and it really helps you get the energy that you need but you know if you're starting to use it on the weekends too when you don't need it you know just because you're trying to avoid the symptoms of the side effects well that can really start to you know uh you know be a cost to you as you get as you get older so it's one of those things I try to educate my college students as much as possible to why why we use it what system it affects and you know sort of what can happen long term uh okay so when we start looking at levels of awareness right which therefore you know are correlated or related to our levels of arousal right we have our first and highest level of Consciousness um and that is essentially you are deeply focused on something you see this picture here this this this lady she's she's you know in a state of relaxation in a sense where she's getting her hair done however to avoid boredom she's doing like a crossword puzzle or something like that so in order to do a Sudoku or a crossword puzzle or some kind of math equation or in class you're trying to follow the professor and you're really interested in what he or she has to say or you're trying to articulate a thought you know that's a very high level of Consciousness right so you're very you're very controlled you're bringing all your energy systems on board and again that's where you would want caffeine if you felt like you were not at the high enough level right because your drowsy or sleepy or whatever but again we don't want to abuse that because we really want it there when we need it kind of thing and this is where we have executive function right this is when we when somebody sits us down and asks us questions about our life and what we want to do and what we want to major in and where we want to go well that's executive function right so you're starting to actually try to use that prefrontal cortex to try to problem solve and relate to things and make real big decisions right and so you're really focused here right it requires a ton of attention you got to pay attention to your environment and if you're not paying attention to your environment and just you're just paying to your attention to your own internal um sort of feelings and maternal emotions you can miss something right so the point is when you're in this environment you want to be highly aware of what's going on right in a state you should want to be highly aware of what's going on your environment and what's going on internally now the next level down from there is a low level Consciousness now you're awake here um you're living your life you're doing your thing however you're on sort of autopilot and we all know what this feels like we spend a lot of our day in autopilot where we're sort of going through the motions right and and putting little at attention and focus into what we're doing right so um you can do this like like walking to class or walking to your car is a great example of this right you've done it so many times you just have to use a little bit of higher Consciousness to remember where you parked and then from there it's all on autopilot doing the dishes at home usually a lower level of Consciousness listening to a podcast usually a little lower level Consciousness watching television YouTube lower level consciousness until there's something that you really really want to learn and really really want to focus on you're you're not really on the edge of your seat you're just sort of absorbing the world around you and that can lead to missing things right because you're not paying attention maybe you're walking and talking on your cell phone or walking look at your cell phone and so obviously that's a much lower level of Consciousness than you would be if you were highly focused on paying attention um daydreaming would be another version of this like you know when you're singing class and your professor is boring and you're just not engaged in or maybe just the materials boring to you or you don't understand it you oftentimes will sort of go into your own space and and sort of have wandering thoughts and thinking out um out loud or just thinking to yourself now obviously what's going on with your sleep and um what's going on with your general energy levels might affect this right because if you don't have a lot of energy to stay focused for that whole time you might drift back to that lower level Consciousness that's a conserve energy now we also have Altered States Of Consciousness these are not this is not sleep yet right where this is like a different version of Consciousness you're still awake okay um now one of those could be drug States right so caffeine is kind of one of those but um depends on how much you're using but really more we're talking about cannabis um you know MDMA um you know tobacco a little bit but also alcohol right so you start looking at okay now you're awake and you're you're sort of living your life right but you have a different perception right it could be hallucinogenic it could be just an altered state of consciousness could be a higher level of dopamine or even serotonin and it's just it's just affecting your world and it's not the regular day-to-day um higher versus lower level of consciousness now fatigue and illness can also kind of play into the site um where if you're really tired right you you might really struggle to get to higher levels of consciousness even though you want to right so let's say you're driving and you're exhausted and you're starting to drift in in and out of sleep right that phase in between being awake and being asleep is called the hypnagogic phase and it's almost almost sounds like hypnotism right hypnagogic where it's one of those things where you're just sort of you're sort of there right you're sort of with it but you're not right you can drive a car to a point and then you actually fall asleep and then that's very dangerous right so that's a a considered an altered state of consciousness right you're where you're still kind of a wearing environment that's let me say your name or you're on an airplane falling asleep and the um you know the flight attendant starts talking the lights come on okay you're awake and you kind of lost a little bit of track of time but you weren't quite asleep yet that's considered a lower State of Consciousness or alternate State of Consciousness trauma accidents right so people could be awake in a car accident scenario and talking to emergency workers but they have no memory of that event right because it was so emotionally overwhelming to them that they've sort of left their Consciousness for a moment um and and another another preferred version of it in sort of an altered state of consciousness meditation and hypnosis hypnosis would be another version of that right where you're still awake but you have a different sense of what's going on around you and internally and mental disorders you can have a psychotic break psychotic episode where now you're no longer yourself and you could be having a major depressive disorder you could be having those genetics um you know sort of a symptom of one of these disorders or state of one of these disorders so there's a very a lot of ways that it can be an altar state right and then you have sort of something called it's not necessarily about whether or not you are awake or asleep but more has to do with sort of your awareness level right so um it's not a Consciousness State it's it's a it's what level of awareness do we have so the subconscious awareness is where you are paying attention to something um and there's something there there's something that you are being drawn towards and you're not sure why so parallel processing could be something where you're processing two pieces of information at the same time and the one that you're not processing for the moment is sort of on the back burner okay so uh an example of that would be when you're trying to look at something and you're looking at one of those images that sort of has two different versions of it right so it might be you know um a picture that that has one way of looking at it could be um seeing you know two faces looking at towards one another and the other one could be a vase right that could be an example of parallel processing where you're you start shifting in between you know the other one's there but you know you're not sure um you know how to get to it sometimes um sleeping dreams is another version of that where you know you have this information that bubbles up at night and all of a sudden it's on your conscious um sort of recollection or your awareness level but then a charter drifts away and you kind of say well where did that come from well it came from right below your level of Consciousness right below your level of working memory and and it sort of brought from your from your sort of deep stores of of your long-term memory into your working memory for a moment and you sort of try to process it and you know it's confusing to you where you weren't sure where it came from and it's it's not you don't have a deep awareness of why that's there no awareness is completely unconscious right so this is something where maybe something happened to you when you're a child and you have no idea that it happened right and yet it still affects your personality right it still affects something that that the way that you actually interact with your environment and so it's hard in that scenario the subconscious is less hard because you can talk to a psychiatrist a psychologist a therapist you can bring up your dreams you can bring up your fears and they can try to help you get right below the surface whereas when it's a no awareness scenario you know we don't really know where that memory came from and we can artificially we can recreate memories but that's dangerous because we don't know you know if that reconsolidation of a false memory is going to lead us to more harm than good so you have to be very careful there so this this chart for me is really helpful when I saw it as an undergrad because essentially breaks down our brain waves and to the different levels of awareness on different levels of consciousness I'm sorry so you have this sort of beta waves which is those high level thinking ways and Alpha ways this is the two that you're awake right and then Altered States Of Consciousness could be anywhere in here but just sort of depends on what what it is we're talking about fatigue drug induced Altered States Of Consciousness but then you fall asleep and between the two of Alpha and stage one you have that hypnagogic phase right where you're falling asleep and then this is where we start talking about sleep right stage one stage two stage three and stage four now um stage one actually gets replaced uh by by REM sleep uh when we finally are coming out of a phase of sleep so let's talk about that a little bit um in a second so what can we process at the same time remember awareness is important for arousal right so multitasking is this idea that we're going to pay attention to two things at once and it's a lot less effective than we think especially when you're young uh younger people tend to think that they have really amazing multitasking capabilities however when they go through life and they experience their first accident they've experienced their first missing piece of information it starts to Humble people and they start to realize oh I'm not as good as I once thought and we can do experiments and show them you know how they're Limited in their capabilities but it's it's one of those things that life just has to kind of happen so you can sort of make sense of oh okay I'm not as skilled as I thought I was but with that being said there are actually two types of multitasking um this is important information for you to start to internalize and that is one is divided so when you divide your Consciousness okay imagine you take this this pie and you have a certain level of conscious awareness that you can pay attention to in a moment right so you know maybe I can listen to Somebody speak and at the same time I can draw okay so that would be considered divided Consciousness I'm putting a little bit of energy into dividing uh into um into drawing and a little bit of energy and to listen to my professor speak okay so that's divided right now divided requires that the two stimuli are different so for example you couldn't listen to a professor and listen to a conversation outside those that's the same pathway in however you can listen to a professor and you can knit and you can draw at the same time because those are two different things however when you start to a good another good example this would be driving you are driving and you're listening to the radio you're listening to a podcast and you're into it and you're driving you're doing two things at once you're dividing your consciousness now when one of those two things gets really intense that's when you need to start focusing more on that so a good example of that would be your driving and you're going into a rainstorm a snowstorm and all of a sudden now you have to give a hundred percent of your energy to driving because if the radio is even on right or if somebody's talking in the back seat or you're talking on the phone you need to hang up you need to turn the radio off because you can't afford to divide that Consciousness at all same thing with what's going on on the radio or what's going on on the phone if it's a really intense conversation you're having an argument with somebody on the phone you might not want to be driving the car because now all your attention is on the argument you're no longer focused on the task of driving so people actually don't want to pull over in that scenario and just focus on the conversation right maybe you're having a breakup or getting fired or getting a job you know opportunity or something like that a job interview don't do that while you're driving right that's that's going to divide your Consciousness and you only have so much that you can give in that higher level of Consciousness at one time now shifted Consciousness is is different in the sense that now you're going between two things that are requiring the same mechanism of of awareness so now we're talking about the scenario of you're listening to your professor and trying to listen to what's going on outside of the hall or you're trying to read a PowerPoint in class and read you know something that's somebody's posting on Instagram or something like that it's the same pathway now you literally have to shift Consciousness okay so a classic example of Shifting Consciousness where you go from one to the other you can't pay attention to both is driving and texting so you can't pay attention to the road and pay attention to the text at the same time even if you have the phone up while you're driving and looking out the window and looking back and forth right then you're shifting your Consciousness you're not dividing it right you're not giving the road a little bit of attention and the text a little bit of attention like you were when you were driving and listening to a podcast or having a conversation on the phone via your Bluetooth no now you're actually averting your gaze from the road to your phone and that is that is to Consciousness that's way more dangerous because for however long you're not paying attention to the road you know you're you're you're you're endangering your lives and others now obviously you can still have you know automated Technologies like on your car like you know automated stopping and Lane detection and adaptive cruise control those are expensive Technologies right now as as this video gets older and that information gets more and more advanced it'll become more readily available right now it's mostly in premium type cars but that can help you but that's not you right that's like that's the technology doing same thing with audio texting right you're talking and you're just you're texting back and they you listen to the text you're being read to you via Siri and then you record your text message back that's divided Consciousness right but I'm literally I'm talking about you literally looking at the road looking at the phone that is just typically Consciousness and that's one of the reasons why you know deaths are going up in terms of um you know motorcyclists and cyclists and pedestrians being hit because obviously you know people are focused on their phones and they're not seeing what's going on the road but when they hit you know the hit a person hit a child and not you know they don't survive so it's one of those things where I think for you hopefully you listen to this and go okay I understand now if there is a way I can make it divided and pay attention to both things at once um which I can't do by looking at the road and looking at the cell phone that's two different things I'm talking about using technology right like talking to your phone using Siri things like that if you can do that right then you're dividing Consciousness as long as the road is not traffic right and not snow and rain right and as long as the information that you're trying to text back or talk back is not overwhelming again not typing right not looking but using audio um then then it might be okay right but as soon as one of those two things gets intense then you might be in trouble