People can be awake, asleep, stuporous, or comatose, or have other whole-brain physiological states {mental state}| {state of mind}. Mental state is mainly about consciousness level. Mental state depends on arousal level and awareness level. Mental states have no oscillation, growth, or decay.
Mental states are processing states. Mental states are not physical states, because same mental state can have different physical forms.
types
Mental states can be conscious, experienced, and subjective and result in experience, pain, sensations, emotions, and moods. Conscious mental states can be similar, such as seeing red and seeing orange, or different, such as seeing blue and seeing red or seeing and hearing.
Mental states can be pre-conscious or below awareness threshold.
Mental states can evaluate or categorize perception states and body states: arousal level, emotion type, success or failure, and pleasure or pain.
Natural mental states include awakeness, drowsiness, light sleep, dreaming, REM sleep, and deep sleep. Awakeness has high arousal and high awareness. Drowsiness has medium arousal and medium awareness. Light sleep has low arousal and low awareness. Dreaming has low arousal and high awareness. REM sleep has low arousal and medium awareness. Deep sleep has very low arousal and very low awareness.
Damage, disease, drugs, or exceptional circumstances cause impaired mental states. Impaired mental states include coma, vegetative state, minimally conscious state, and locked-in syndrome. Coma has no arousal and no awareness. Vegetative state has high arousal and no awareness. Minimally conscious state has high arousal and low awareness. Locked-in syndrome has high arousal and high awareness. Drug mental states include coma and anesthesia. Anesthesia has almost no arousal and almost no awareness. Exceptional mental states include hypnosis, sleepwalking, near-death experiences, and mystical experiences.
People in waking states {awakeness} are conscious and experience sense qualities. Awake includes automatism, pain, pleasure, sense qualities, thinking, and threat. Just before or after sleeping, consciousness has low alertness and arousal.
cause
Awakeness results when brainstem nuclei excite cortex and thalamus non-specifically. Medial column receives, along pyramidal tract, from cortex, cerebellum, and senses and sends, in ascending reticular activating system, to intralaminar thalamic nuclei, which send to striatum and cortex to activate cortex and control waking and sleeping.
control
Pons reticular activating system controls awakeness. It has norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, and acetylcholine secreting neurons with pathways to brainstem neurons. Reticular activating system neurons can inhibit afferent axons from senses and efferent axons to muscles.
sleep
Hypothalamus superchiasmatic nucleus starts NREM sleep and controls progress through NREM sleep. REM sleep activation goes from pons to lateral geniculate to occipital lobe.
People can be conscious and have no sensations and no awareness {non-consciousness}|. Most actions, body functions, brain functions, and perceptions have non-consciousness, such as during reflexes, eye saccades, eye blinks, attentional blinks, sense habituation, sense saturation, orientation response, flight-or-fight responses, fast innate responses, instinctual behavior, habits, walking, reaching, and skilled movements. Voluntary motor actions and skills are not conscious. Non-conscious activities make few errors, have high speed, have one type and do or find one thing, and do not vary. Non-conscious activities can happen in parallel. Non-conscious activities cannot inhibit behavior. Conscious and non-conscious contents do not affect or interfere with non-conscious activities.
semi-conscious
Biofeedback can control heartbeat rate, extremity temperature, and extremity sweating, but people have no voluntary muscle or gland control, do not feel anything specific, and do not know how control works. People cannot feel or control blood chemical concentrations, even with biofeedback.
conscious then non-conscious
Learning to swim, bicycle, play sport, or perform skilled actions is under conscious control, but, after learning, these activities do not use conscious control or attention to bodily feelings.
conscious or non-conscious
Performing skilled procedures, such as reading, can be automatic or can use attention. Skilled behaviors, situations involving divided attention, somnambulism, and involuntary regulatory responses can happen with or without consciousness. Stimulus intensity below objective-threshold level is too low for perception. Stimulus intensity above objective-threshold level causes perception. At subjective-threshold level, people begin to detect sense qualities [Dehaene et al., 1998] [Morris et al., 1998] [Morris et al., 1999] [Whalen et al., 1998].
always conscious
Behaviors can be always conscious, such as remembering, deciding, willing, choosing, and talking to oneself [Berns et al., 1997] [Cheesman and Merikle, 1986] [Cleeremans et al., 1998] [Curran, 2001] [Destrebecqz and Cleeremans, 2001] [Ellenberger, 1970] [Holender, 1986] [Jacoby, 1991] [Kolb and Braun, 1995] [Merikle, 1992] [Merikle et al., 2001] [Reingold and Merikle, 1990].
cognition
Memory uses non-conscious activities. Perception uses non-conscious activities. People can have perception without consciousness [Marcel, 1983] [Marcel and Bisiach, 1988] [Merikle et al., 2001] [Peirce and Jastrow, 1885] [Sidis, 1898].
zombie
Perhaps, people can be always non-conscious, like rocks, plants, and invertebrates. It is possible to imagine people doing everything we do but like zombies.
Stimuli can be near sensation or perception threshold, other stimuli can mask them, or brain can be in low-alertness low-consciousness states, so feelings, sensations, and perceptions are secondary, weak, or below awareness {subconsciousness}|.
In lucid dreaming, hypnotic regression, mental flow, religious ecstasy, mystical visions, and psychic states {exceptional human experience}, people can feel unity with nature [White, 1990].
When awake, people can perform skilled or random behaviors without consciousness {automatism}|. People cannot remember automatisms. Deep sleep or disoriented state can follows automatism.
Epileptic mental state lasts for several minutes, is in temporal lobe, impairs awareness or has unconsciousness, and involves chewing, smacking lips, moving arms or hands in organized but purposeless patterns, laughing, acting scared, and using isolated words.
Sleepwalking is automatism [Callwood, 1990].
After hypnosis, people can perform skilled behaviors on command.
Obsessive love can involve excited mental states {ecstasy, state}.
Mental states {higher consciousness} can have higher-than-normal alertness, sensation, perception, and awareness. Inspiration is awake and conscious but unaware.
People can go into trances {hypnosis, state} {mesmerism}, in which they are susceptible to dissociation and/or suggestion [Lynn and Rhue, 1991]. Perhaps, hypnosis involves dissociation [Janet, 1929] [Prince, 1906]. Newer theory {neo-dissociationist theory} {neo-dissociation theory} attributes hypnosis to dissociation. Conscious perception and/or behavior have inhibition, but unconscious perception and action continue [Hilgard, 1986].
biology
Nerve signals reach cerebral cortex and cause normal-amplitude electrical responses, so only conscious sense responses decrease or dissociate. Electroencephalograms are similar to awake EEGs and do not resemble sleep EEGs. Suggestion can lower anterior-cingulate-cortex activity and lower pain. Sulfones and urethane cause hypnosis.
effects
Hypnosis can influence human performance and provoke sense deception, hallucination, anesthesia, analgesia, and post-hypnotic amnesia. Dissociations, not suggestions, cause hypnotic anesthesia and analgesia. Suggestion can affect waking state, as well as hypnotic state. Hypnotized subjects do not perform actions against their morals.
When hypnotized, people seem to suppress self. Hypnotist can assume executive control. When hypnotized, selves {hidden observer} still know what hypnotized body is doing and feeling.
Hypnotized people know everything but do not let the knowledge into consciousness. In hypnosis, nerve signals reach cerebral cortex and cause normal-amplitude electrical responses, so only conscious sense responses decrease or dissociate. When hypnotized, people unconsciously know what hypnotized body is doing and feeling. Hypnosis is conscious and experiences sense qualities but is unaware.
Hypnosis does not increase long-term memory retrieval. Long-term memories retrieved under hypnosis are unreliable. Memories about early infancy are probably not true. People can remember what happened while under hypnosis.
Hypnosis can cause physical effects. Stomachs can swell in phantom pregnancies. Limbs can become stiff. Blisters can appear where people think that heat was. Stigmata can appear on hands. Itching can start.
Hypnosis does not confer special strength or abilities.
Hypnosis cannot cure organic nervous or mental illnesses.
behavior
Hypnotized people explain strange actions by rationalizations {trance logic}. Hypnotized people do not introspect.
Hypnotized people can choose not to do suggestions and can stop hypnotized states. People act as they think they should.
Hypnosis often involves playing roles, and roles can be just acting. Perhaps, hypnosis involves role-playing or faking. If people have hidden observers, they are also role-playing or faking [Colman, 1994] [Spanos, 1991] [Wagstaff, 1994].
properties
Hypnosis has enhanced suggestibility. Hypnosis has sustained mental concentration. Hypnosis restricts attention to small field. Hypnotized people have less time sense. Hypnosis voluntarily suspends initiative and will. Hypnotic trance involves identification with others. Hypnosis has incomplete contact with reality. Hypnosis reduces self-consciousness and critical appraisal.
Hypnosis is a social situation with subject and hypnotizer. Hypnotic trance involves rapport between subject and hypnotist. Hypnotist personality does not make much difference.
requirements
Medical hypnosis requires sympathetic but authoritarian relationship between doctor and patient and cooperative attitude by patient. Hypnosis requires passivity. Hypnotic trance involves ability to pretend and fantasize.
Hypnosis susceptibility correlates with treating fiction works as real, identifying with parents strongly, blurring fantasy and reality, pretending, and believing people. Alternatively, hypnotic susceptibility increases if people have same temperament as opposite-sex parent, equally in males and females. Leisure-activity similarity is more important than work or professional-value similarity. If people do not identify with either parent, they are not susceptible to hypnosis.
Motivation is not enough for hypnotizing. Hypnosis does not require relaxation. Imagination has no relation to hypnotizing.
factors
Children between 8 and 12 hypnotize more easily than older or younger children. Children below age 8 cannot concentrate. Children above age 12 are more critical. Women and men are equally hypnotizable and hypnotize to same depth [Lynn and Rhue, 1991]. Personality type does not correlate with hypnosis.
comparisons
Hypnosis is not like sleep or dreaming. Hypnosis involves lethargy, drowsiness, and diminished contact with reality, like sleep. However, muscles do not relax, and reflexes are normal.
Both hysteria and hypnosis involve dissociation.
After prolonged low stimulation, people feel stress, have poor eye focusing, lose visual size constancy, lose visual shape constancy, have hallucinations, and become disoriented {sensory deprivation state} {sensory deprivation reaction}. Sensory deprivation states are conscious, with experienced sense qualities, but unaware. The "I" or self persists through sensory deprivation. Sensory deprivation can cause mental confusion, paranoid delusions, fear, and panic, but some people welcome sensory deprivation. People can see subjective phosphene sparks or light patterns after deprivation.
From coldness or drugs, body functions can slow greatly {suspended animation}|.
Hypnosis-like or automatism-like states {trance} can be conscious, with experienced sense qualities, but unaware. Tribal shamen can go into trances. Hypnosis and sleepwalking are trances.
People can have sense perception in the absence of, or unrelated to, external stimuli {hallucination, state} [Ffytche et al., 1998] [Frith, 1996] [Green and McCreery, 1975] [Manford and Andermann, 1998] [Vogeley, 1999]. In hallucinations, red can seem blue, high voice can sound low, sweet can seem sour, and pain can be pleasurable.
Visual hallucinations are most common and typically show real persons. People see hallucinations as objects in space but know them to be false perceptions. Colors are typically reds, oranges, and yellows [Siegel and Jarvik, 1975] [Siegel and West, 1975] [Siegel, 1977] [Siegel, 1992]. Motions in hallucinations are often rotations or radial motions [Siegel and Jarvik, 1975] [Siegel and West, 1975] [Siegel, 1977] [Siegel, 1992]. Spirals and wiggly lines, circles, concentric figures or tunnels, webs, repeated lines, and intense colors are common in hallucinations [Bressloff et al., 2002] [Cowan, 1982] [Klüver, 1926]. People can have sound hallucinations [Gurney et al., 1886] [Sidgwick et al., 1894] [West, 1948].
behavior
People are passive during hallucination and feel that they have no control over recurring images and obsessions. The "I" or self persists through hallucinations.
perception
Other information cannot correct hallucinations. People cannot distinguish hallucination from perception {argument from illusion, hallucination}, except later by comparison and memory. Perception, dream, and hallucination experiences and sense qualities are similar.
causes
High arousal, low vigilance, perception impairment, reality-testing impairment and reduction, high expectation, long wakefulness or busyness, sickness, starvation, sensory deprivation, prolonged low stimulation, sleep deprivation, and rituals with rhythmic movements or sounds cause hallucinations.
Dreaming has visual hallucinations, such as hypnagogic hallucination and hypnopompic hallucination. Hypnosis can provoke hallucinations. Prolonged isolation causes anxiety and hallucinations. People with autistic thinking have hallucinations. People with paranoia have hallucinations. People with schizophrenia have hallucinations, typically voices talking to or about them.
Perhaps, memory release or imagination inhibition, when normal sensory data flow stops or changes, causes hallucinations [Jackson, 1887].
Launey-Slade Hallucination Scale indicates if people are susceptible to hallucinations.
causes: biology
Temporal-lobe stimulation can cause hallucinations. Anti-opiate drugs and phenothiazines cause hallucinations.
Epileptics can have autoscopy. People with migraine headaches can have autoscopy. Females have more hallucinations.
comparisons
Illusions are perceptions that look different than actual metric measurements. Illusions and hallucinations have similar sense qualities.
Imagery is distinguishable from hallucination. Imagery is under voluntary control, while hallucination is not. Hallucinations are about unreal or idiosyncratic objects or events, while imagery is about physical and cultural reality [Frith, 1995] [Slade and Bentall, 1988].
Near-death experiences are similar to autoscopic hallucinations.
People can see their clear, monochromatic, transparent, life-sized, and moving mirror image {doppelganger} {autoscopy}|. People typically see face, head, and/or trunk at one meter for several seconds. Social factors can determine forms that ghosts take. Images copy postures, facial expressions, and movements. Autoscopy lasts several seconds. Autoscopy occurs mostly at late night or dawn.
Autoscopy can happen during stress, fatigue, or disturbed consciousness. Delirious patients with parieto-occipital lesions, people with migraine attacks, and epileptics can have autoscopy.
People who become blind can hallucinate {Charles Bonnet syndrome} [Ffytche, 2000] [Ffytche and Howard, 1999] [Ramachandran and Blakeslee, 1998].
Out-of-body experience can involve seeing one's own body {heautoscopic experience}.
People can have visions when in danger, in hospital, or during attempted suicide {deathbed visions} {near-death experience}| (NDE). Near-death experiences can have tunnels or entry into darkness, out-of-body experiences, bright lights or emergence into light, peaceful and loving feelings, strange worlds, life-history memories, and choices to go back to the living world [Moody, 1975] [Morse, 1990] [Morse, 1993] [Parnia and Fenwick, 2002] [Parnia et al., 2001].
There can be peaceful feelings, out-of-body experiences, entries into darkness, visions of light, and emergences into light {Greyson NDE scale} [Ring, 1980].
Experiences can be regressions to childhood states. Mind feels love, peace, acceptance, and pureness, with focused attention, no criticism, and no available alternatives. Most near-death experiences are pleasant, but some are like hell [Parnia et al., 2001] [van Lommel et al., 2001].
stages
People first hear noises or move fast down tunnels or valleys. Then they feel that they are outside body but in same physical environment. Loneliness and timelessness feelings follow, with low emotions. People are invisible to others and cannot communicate. People feel no weight or other sense qualities. People feel peace, calm, joy, and love. People can know others' thoughts. Then friends or relatives that have died already come as spiritual helpers. Among them is a being of light, with personality. This being asks mental questions about readiness for death. Then people see a fast, accurate summary of their life from childhood to present. Then a barrier or border, a no-return line, approaches. However, people feel that they should go back and live, because it is not yet time, they have not yet done something, or people are calling them back. Then, preceded by unconsciousness, return to physical body is through head. Afterward, people feel that they must try to learn and love, with no fear of death or judgment and no worries about heaven or hell.
causes
Perhaps, unusual brain states cause near-death experiences {dying brain hypothesis}, as anoxia, stress, and fear activate brain [Blackmore, 1993].
Brain is often clinically dead or damaged {brain dead}, but experience can have happened before that [van Lommel et al., 2001].
No drugs cause near-death experiences [Parnia et al., 2001] [van Lommel et al., 2001].
comparisons
Near-death experiences are similar to high brain carbon-dioxide levels. Near-death experiences are similar to well-being feelings caused by brain endorphins. Near-death experiences are similar to autoscopic hallucinations. Near-death experiences are similar to LSD experiences. Near-death experiences are similar to sensory isolation experiences. Near-death experiences have no typical physiological symptoms [Parnia et al., 2001] [van Lommel et al., 2001].
Hallucinating people can see world from locations outside physical body {out-of-the-body experience} {out-of-body experience}| (OBE). One-fifth to one-quarter of people have at least one OBE during their lifetimes, often as children. Out-of-body experiences typically last from seconds to minutes [Blackmore, 1992] [Green, 1968]. Out-of-body experience can involve heautoscopic experience. Imagined-world model or representation replaces normal perceptual model. From above, people see imagined models. Models project what people see from another viewpoint. People feel that they perceive from positions different from head position [Alvarado, 1982] [Alvarado, 1992] [Blanke et al., 2002] [Grüsser and Landis, 1991] [Morris et al., 1978] [Penfield, 1955] [Penfield, 1958] [Tart, 1968].
If original body stays behind, people feel that they are in body or have no body [Green, 1968].
The experience feels like real life, not like dreams, and is often life-changing [Gabbard and Twemlow, 1984].
causes
Muscular relaxation, exhaustion, monotonous sounds, and certain drugs can disrupt both sense input and body image to make OBE. Out-of-body experiences typically happen when people relax and voluntary muscles are not moving, so internal stimulation is low. Body image lessens, as in drowsiness [Blackmore, 1992] [Green, 1968]. OBE can happen when outside stimulation is low.
People can have out-of-body experiences in depersonalization reactions.
Drugs that relax body and reduce body image can induce out-of-body experiences [Morse, 1990] [Persinger, 1983] [Persinger, 1999] [Shermer, 2000].
Near-death experiences often involve out-of-body experience.
Perhaps, out-of-body experiences involve temporal lobe [Morse, 1990] [Persinger, 1983] [Persinger, 1999] [Shermer, 2000].
comparisons
OBE relates to hypnotizability [Blackmore, 1996] [Gackenbach and LaBerge, 1988] [Irwin, 1985].
OBE relates to imagination, absorption, and belief in psi [Blackmore, 1996] [Gackenbach and LaBerge, 1988] [Irwin, 1985].
More lucid dreaming correlates with more out-of-body experiences [Blackmore, 1996] [Gackenbach and LaBerge, 1988] [Irwin, 1985].
Out-of-body experience is like vivid dreaming. OBEs are like dreams that people know are dreams. Out-of-body experiences are similar to stage one dreaming.
factors
OBE has no relation to age, education, gender, mental health, or religion.
Hallucinations {pseudohallucination} can be as vivid and immediate as perceptions, but people do not realize they are false. Pseudohallucinations are subjective responses to isolation or intense emotional need.
Patients can have few reflexes, no reactions to sense stimuli or body signals, no awareness, no arousal, no consciousness, no experiences, no voluntary movements, and no waking {coma, mental state} {comatose}|. Patients keep eyes closed. Patients typically do not recover.
causes
Both-hemisphere brainstem-nuclei trauma or oxygen deprivation can cause coma. Posterior upper brainstem arousal-system damage can cause coma. Coma always involves anterior and posterior intralaminar thalamus nuclei damage. Rostral pons and dorsal midbrain damage, or mesencephalic reticular formation and thalamus damage, causes coma for one to seven days. Paramedian thalamic damage causes long-term coma [Giacino, 1997] [Plum and Posner, 1983] [Schiff, 2004] [Schiff and Plum, 2000] [Zafonte and Zasler, 2002] [Zeman, 2001].
Metrazol induces coma but is no longer used in psychiatric treatment. Insulin induces coma.
Patients can sleep and wake, have some sensory reactions, have some voluntary movements, and have some self or environment awareness {stupor} {minimally conscious state}. Stuporous means semi-conscious, semi-aware, and few sensations.
causes
Damage to cortico-striatopallidal-thalamocortical loop disconnects frontal lobes, basal ganglia, and thalamus. Bilateral anterior medial cortex, basal ganglia, and basal forebrain damage causes stupor.
A schizophrenia type involves excitement and then stupor.
types
Bilateral anterior-medial-cortex, basal-ganglia, and basal-forebrain damage, typically from anterior cerebral-artery aneurysm, can cause no motion, except to look around (akinetic mutism). Medial-caudal-thalamus, medial-dorsal-mesencephalon, caudate-nucleus, globus-pallidus, and medial-forebrain-bundle damage can cause no memory, slow behavior {slow syndrome}, and apathy.
Extensive temporal-lobe, parietal-lobe, and occipital-lobe junction damage can prevent self or environment awareness but allow coordinated behavior (hyperkinetic mutism).
Patients can have no voluntary movements, can have no reactions to sense stimulation or body signals, can have intermittent arousal and eye opening, and can sleep and wake {vegetative state}|. They can have reflexes and eye blinks [Celesia, 1997] [Laureys et al., 2000] [Laureys et al., 2002].
causes
Both-hemisphere brainstem-nuclei trauma or oxygen deprivation can cause vegetative state. Permanent vegetative state patients have bilateral thalamic damage but little cerebrum damage.
time
People can stay in vegetative state more than 30 days {persistent vegetative state}. People can stay in vegetative state for much longer {permanent vegetative state}.
People can be in mental states in which they have no voluntary movements, have no sensations, have no perceptions, have no awareness, do not experience sensations, have no event or object memories, and have no functioning mind {unconsciousness, state}|. Unconsciousness is not awakeness, sleeping, coma, stupor, nor vegetative state. Body functions automatically. Unconscious people cannot use habits or perform voluntary behaviors. Unconscious people have no sensations or perceptions. Unconscious people cannot use declarative memories. All mammals can become unconscious, and ability to become unconscious indicates previous consciousness [MacIntyre, 1958].
causes
Unconsciousness occurs when people are asleep and not dreaming, have received a brain concussion, have finished an epileptic episode, have anesthesia, or have fainted.
Trauma from high physical pressure, such as concussion, causes brainstem damage. Low blood-oxygen concentration, low blood-glucose concentration, low blood flow, and low blood pressure affect brainstem. Blood nitrogen-gas bubbles can affect brainstem neurons [Forster and Whinnery, 1988] [Rossen et al., 1943] [Whinnery and Whinnery, 1990].
People can learn to suspend physical and mental responses to stimuli {meditation}. Typically, learning to meditate takes practice over long time. People can suspend judgment, analysis, planning, and emotion. People can ignore anxiety. People can feel nothingness, silence, self-expansion, transcendence, immanence, divine knowledge, enlightenment, cosmic consciousness, oneness, samadhi, or satori [Deikman, 1966] [Deikman, 2000] [Farthing, 1992] [Newberg and D'Aquili, 2001] [Wallace and Fisher, 1991] [Watts, 1957]. People can feel that there is no self, because responses are low [Austin, 1998]. Meditation is conscious but unaware, with experienced sensations. Mental states achievable by meditation can have or appear to have no representations.
Meditation is not daydreaming or drowsiness, because it involves alertness, concentration, and control [Fenwick, 1987]. True meditation does not block outside stimuli from consciousness.
concentration
Meditation concentrates on objects, locations, actions, or thoughts. Meditation suppresses attending and orienting. While concentrating, people ignore thoughts or attend to other thoughts without further thought.
Concentration can be on thoughts, narratives, or descriptions, such as Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola [1500 to 1600] or Four Divine Abidings of Theraveda Buddhism. Four Divine Abidings are kindness, compassion, happiness, and calm.
Concentration can be on images or their properties, as in Tantric-Buddhism and Tibetan-Buddhism Vajrayana, including guru yoga.
Concentration can be on koans, as in Zen-Buddhism Rinzai School and Soto School. Mumonkan or Gateless Gate and Hekiganroku or Blue Cliff Record have koans.
Concentration can be on mantras, as in Hinduism and Transcendental Meditation. The Jesus Prayer of Eastern Orthodoxy is mantra-like.
Concentration can be on actions, such as breathing.
Concentration can be on locations, such as mandalas or points between eyes.
biology
Meditation does not change left brain/right brain activity [Austin, 1998] [Fenwick, 1987] [Newberg and D'Aquili, 2001] [Ornstein, 1977] [Ornstein, 1992] [Ornstein, 1997].
Meditation EEG differs from sleep or awakeness EEG. EEG theta and delta rhythms increase during meditation. Right and left hemispheres synchronize more [Bagchi and Wenger, 1957] [Kasamatsu and Hirai, 1966].
methods
Meditation requires low light and sound. Meditators can face blank walls in quiet rooms. Meditators can concentrate on one stimulus, such as attending to breathing, saying mantras, saying koans, or looking at low-contrast objects. Meditation can use repeated movements, like thumb touching fingertips in succession or breathing from abdomen, not chest [Austin, 1998].
comparisons
Meditation often leads to daydreaming, but then it is not meditation [Austin, 1998] [Fenwick, 1987].
Meditation often leads to sleeping, but then it is not meditation [Austin, 1998] [Fenwick, 1987].
In religion, prayer can be meditation.
Resting is just as good at reducing arousal and dealing with stress as meditation [Farthing, 1992] [Holmes, 1987].
religion
Meditation is common in various religions [Ornstein, 1986] [Ornstein, 1992] [Ornstein, 1997] [West, 1987].
Zen Buddhism has hua tou, shikantaza, and zazen. Meditation can use prayer wheel. Meditation exercises can develop concentration to achieve pure insight and tranquility {vipassana nana}. Meditation can achieve serenity and mindfulness {sammapatti, meditation}, the highest dhamma.
In Hinduism, magic sound repetitions {mantra} can concentrate mind on gods. Om Mani Padme Hum {jewel in center of lotus} is a Hindu mantra. Icon contemplation can concentrate mind on gods. Yoga is meditation. Meditation and concentration try to identify human mind with, or allow possession by, God or truth. Meditation reveals true self, by reaching stages.
The Sufism Islam branch is a mystical philosophy and uses meditation for personal union with God. Sufism is about divine illumination, not behavior. Meditation is to attain higher-reality knowledge.
Meditation uses sitting positions. Standing up is too stimulating, and lying down leads to sleep. Good sitting positions {lotus position}| can have no tension or pain but keep meditator alert {full lotus position} {half lotus position} {Burmese position}. Meditators can sit on low benches with knees on floor and lower legs under bench. Hands can be palm up or palm down, on knees or in lap.
Concentrative meditation {hua tou} pays attention to one object or event, such as breathing or chant.
Meditation methods {shikantaza} can be just sitting, being attentive to everything.
In Zen Buddhism, open meditation {zazen} is consciousness without response, with open eyes looking at a plain wall.
In Zen, the pure-consciousness state can stop breathing {chi shi}. While person is still conscious, nerve-activity level reduces until breathing stops, for 30 seconds, and then normal breathing resumes.
People can have unwilled ineffable insightful feelings {mystical state} {mystical experience}. People feel spiritual or divine presence, deep meaning, and/or unity with universe. People feel that everything is blissful, joyful, simple, and clear. People can feel nothingness, silence, self-expansion, transcendence, immanence, divine knowledge, enlightenment, cosmic consciousness, oneness, samadhi, or satori. Mystical experience can seem sacred or holy [James, 1902] [Kennett, 1972]. Mystical states are conscious but unaware with experienced sensations.
levels
Mystical experience can have different stages or levels. People can have insight into non-physical existence or divine and good power {awakening, mystical}. People can choose to become pure, live correctly, and discipline self to reach divine level {purgation}. People can receive enlightenment or feel divine presence or ultimate reality {illumination, mystical}. People can feel that self is preventing them from reaching ultimate level or that effort is never enough {dark night, mystical}. People can feel loss of self and unity with ultimate {union, mystical}. People can feel that they have no more self. People can feel surrounded by colored light. People can feel calm, bliss, and joy. People can experience all physical reality intensely. People can experience consciousness clearly and purely.
properties
During mystical experience, people are passive with no will or identity. People feel outside time and space or experience unlimited space and eternal time. People can sense a happy, ineffably good, complete, and dominant spirit, or an evil, horrible, and repulsive spirit.
People have mystical experience from half-hour to several hours.
causes
Depression and despair can trigger mystical state, as can meditation, prayer, nature, art, music, and worship.
LSD and psilocybin cause mystical experiences.
memory
People cannot describe or think about mystical feelings that they had before [Underhill, 1920].
People can feel immortal and/or infinite {cosmic consciousness}, at one with universe [Bucke, 1901] [Stace, 1960].
People cannot know God {docta ignorantia}, because he combines opposites. People can know the infinite only mystically [Nicholas of Cusa, 1440].
Unseen power or mysterious light {flash, mysticism} {illumination, mysticism}, felt in head, seems to possess tribal chieftains, priests, or medicine men.
In Hinduism, Kundalini yoga takes practitioner through stages {lotus ladder} from everyday dullness, to sex, to power and achievement, to compassion, to self and sex conquest, to god-like vision, and to pure ecstasy.
Religious and mystical selfless states end {Ozeanische Selbstentgrenzung} {oceanic boundary loss}.
People can feel that they receive insight {prophecy} {revelation, mysticism} from God or angel. Prophecy is knowledge about mystical experiences [Avicenna, 1020]. However, different revelations reflect personal lives and contradict each other.
Ecstasy can involve religion {religious ecstasy, mystical}. Mystical experience is often religious experience. People can feel that they experience something, beyond physical world or throughout physical world, that is divine, powerful, and good. People can feel God's presence [Hardy, 1979] [Persinger, 1999]. People can feel that they have no individual self but are part of something divine. People can feel possession by spirits. Religious ecstasy is conscious but unaware.
Buddhism
In Buddhism, ecstasy is one Eightfold-Path component. Buddha felt nirvana and nothingness, with no individualness and total mystical knowledge. In Shin Buddhism in China or Pure Land Buddhism in India, meditators can repeat mantras {nembutsu} {namu amida butsu} about the Cosmic Buddha (Amida) to try to reach nirvana, feel insight about themselves, and go beyond ordinary life and consciousness to the pure land. Emptiness {netti} with no thoughts or sensations is pure consciousness or being. The Cosmic Buddha combines the Buddha of Boundless Light (Amitabha) with the Buddha of Boundless Life (Amitayus). The actual embodied Buddha was Shakyamuni Buddha.
Christianity
Gianlorenzo Bernini depicted religious ecstasy in his Ecstasy of St. Theresa sculpture. In Christianity, people can feel God and have deep knowledge and understanding, as described by Ekhart.
Perceptions and facts mirror the finite, so people can know the finite world by perception. Finite world is contingent and temporal. Concepts mirror the infinite. Infinite world is absolute and without time. People cannot know the infinite, because finite and infinite have no relations. People cannot know God (docta ignorantia), because he combines opposites. People can know the infinite only mystically [Nicholas of Cusa, 1440].
Greek mythology
Asia-Minor and Greece cult {cult of Dionysius} was about nature, ecstasy, and passion [-600 to -450].
Hinduism
In Hinduism, people can feel bliss {tasting the sweetness} {savikalpa samadhi} in awareness of god. Devotional yoga {bhakti yoga} concentrates on god and its qualities. Atman joins with Brahman {becoming the sweetness} {nirvikalpa samadhi}. People can feel insight about themselves, going beyond ordinary life and consciousness, with no thoughts or sensations, only emptiness. In the Advaita School, this is the highest meditation state. Kundalini yoga takes practitioner through lotus-ladder stages from everyday dullness, to sex, to power and achievement, to compassion, to conquest of self and sex, to vision of God, and to pure ecstasy.
Judeo-Christian
Ecstasy allows miracles and prophecies. In this mystical state, people have feeling of knowing, not only desire to know. People can prepare for this state and be worthy, by love, truth, faith, prayer, and will and sense suppression. However, ecstasy is God's gift [Philo Judaeus, 40].
Sufism
Islam has a mystical philosophy that uses meditation for personal union with God. Sufism is about divine illumination, not behavior. Meditation is to attain higher-reality knowledge. Sufism has seven stages to salvation: repentance, abstinence or fear of God, piety and detachment, poverty, patience or ecstasy, trust in and surrender to God, and contentment.
Taoism
In Taoism, tao (way or path) is transcendent, as ultimate reality, and immanent, as universe itself. Tao is order, serenity, and grace in life. Tao emphasizes simple living, with no desires, much contemplation, and few activities. Taoism values spontaneity, naturalness, and openness. In Esoteric Taoism, tao is psychic power of societal links and so relates to mysticism. In popular Taoism, tao relates to magic.
Brain chemical cycles cause awakeness and sleep {sleep, state}. Sleep can be unconscious or have dreaming.
causes
Monotony, warmth, and restricted movement make people sleepy. Waiting for something that cannot happen yet can make people sleepy. Regular physical exercise, good-quality firm mattress, warm but ventilated room, malted milk drink, and sexual satisfaction at bedtime promote good sleep. Deep sleep can follow epilepsy.
causes: biology
Melatonin induces sleep at night {sleep inducer} and maximizes just before morning. Neurosteroid induces sleep, can be analgesic at high concentration, and comes from cholesterol or progesterone. Sleep peptide is in brain, cerebrospinal fluid, and cerebral blood and can induce sleep.
Brain stops making monoamine neurotransmitters. Monoamine oxidase breaks down monoamines. Monoamines no longer excite motor neurons, and acetylcholines excite motor neurons. However, monoamines still go to eye-muscle nerves. When asleep, amygdala inhibits pons, which activates medial medulla, which inhibits motor neurons.
awake
When awake, forebrain inhibits amygdala, which excites pons, which inhibits locus coeruleus, which excites muscles. Monoamines block sleep by exciting motor neurons. At awakening, acetylcholine is low, and serotonin and norepinephrine are high.
brain
Arousal system, hypothalamus, locus coeruleus, raphé nuclei, and reticular nucleus affect sleep. During NREM sleep, thalamus-cortex pathways have inhibition. During REM sleep, thalamus-cortex pathways have no inhibition but receive only small input.
Pons reticular activating system has norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, and acetylcholine secreting neurons and has pathways to brainstem neurons. Reticular activating system neurons can inhibit afferent axons from senses and efferent axons to muscles.
animals
Higher invertebrates and chordates have rest phases. Sleep is only in vertebrates. Fish and amphibia sleep briefly or just rest. Ancient reptiles have only NREM sleep. Recent reptiles and birds have NREM sleep and some REM sleep. Mammals have NREM sleep and more REM sleep. Mammals who are more immature at birth have more REM sleep. For mammals, REM sleep is at highest percentage at birth and decreases with age. Larger mammals sleep more. In dolphins, one hemisphere NREM-sleeps for several hours, then other hemisphere NREM-sleeps, so they can continue to breathe.
Sleep is an instinct. Sleep evolved separately from dreams [Horne, 1988].
amount
In all species, sleep amount is directly proportional to waking metabolic rate. Animals with higher body temperatures, shorter reaction times, and more fat sleep longer. Birds and mammals that are not secure from predators sleep only for minutes at a time. Predators, who can sleep safely, sleep longer.
Newborns sleep 80%, with seven or eight naps per day. 12-to-18-month-old toddlers sleep 50%. Three-year-old children sleep 40%, and REM sleep is 20% of sleep. Teenagers and adults sleep 30%. Older adults have shorter and more broken sleep.
In adults, sleep amount is proportional to body weight.
purposes
Sleep causes more protein synthesis and less cellular work and so aids growth. Perhaps, sleep simplifies brain processes by removing alternative pathways. Perhaps, simple brain-activity patterns repeat and return neurons to sense and motor readiness.
A sleep-like state {animal hypnosis} can follow extreme stimulation.
People who have little sleep {sleep deprivation} cannot stay awake, have frequent small sleeps, fail to notice things, and have no attention. After little sleep, attention fails first. Little sleep for many days can cause rising temperature and then death. CX717 maintains performance after sleep deprivation. Inadequate sleep causes most fatigue.
People can get up from sleep and walk automatically {somnambulism}| {sleepwalking}. For example, children can walk half-asleep to lavatory and return to bed. Sleepwalking is an automatism and can be without consciousness [Broughton et al., 1994] [Callwood, 1990] [Jacobson et al., 1965] [Kavey et al., 1990] [Masand et al., 1995] [Moldofsky et al., 1995] [Puccetti, 1973] [Revonsuo et al., 2000] [Schenck and Mahowald, 1998] [Vgontzas and Kales, 1999]. Sleepwalking is unconscious and unaware, with no sensations.
properties
Sleepwalking lasts up to 30 minutes. Sleepwalking has purposeful movements. People can avoid obstacles and return to bed. They typically have poor coordination, are clumsy, and are unreliable. Sleepwalkers do not go anywhere unusual. Motions are smaller than normal. Eyes are open. Somnambulism can happen during orthodox sleep early at night, with large slow EEG waves, because muscle output has no inhibition. Sleepwalking occurs more in deep sleepers.
Sleepwalking can have talking. Night terror can accompany sleepwalking.
factors
Sleepwalking is more frequent with daytime anxiety.
Sleepwalking is more common among children.
Sleepwalking is hereditary.
comparisons
Sleepwalking trances are like hysterical dissociation. People look dazed, preoccupied, and unresponsive.
memory
After waking, people do not remember sleepwalking.
Dreams {dreaming} are free association narratives about self, with typical movements and surroundings [Aristotle, -350] [Cavallero and Foulkes, 1993] [Krakauer, 1990] [Louie and Wilson, 2001] [Malcolm, 1959]. Dreaming is unconscious and unaware but experiences sensations. In dreams, consciousness does not monitor cognitions.
sleep
Dreams can happen during rapid-eye-movement deep sleep [Hobson et al., 1998].
Orthodox sleep has little dreaming. Non-rapid-eye-movement-sleep dreams are mostly when first falling asleep or before waking. People remember them as well as REM-sleep dreams, but they are less interesting and have different subjects [Braun et al., 1998] [Hobson et al., 1998].
Sleep evolved separately from dreams [Horne, 1988]. Perhaps, dreams just happened when sleep evolved [Flanagan, 2000].
properties
Dreams are typically about play, recreation, and home, not current events, work, or exotic things. Dreamers are in the action, not just watching things happen. Dreams are not just watching a show. Dreams typically have strangers and friends, who are typically same age as dreamer. Family members appear less often. Both sexes appear equally. People typically change into someone else.
Almost all dreams have movements, with movement illusions. Dreams never violate arithmetic or geometry laws. Dreams have conscious episodes, each with consistent features. Episodes have no connections. However, people can distinguish one night's dreams from other-night dreams.
Dreams do not have reading, writing, or conversations between people, but may have implied conversations. People never dream rational analysis, only associations. Dreams tend to project meaning onto stimuli.
Dreams seem like movements in and through real scenes during stories, but typically have false perceptions and false beliefs, with poor memory.
One-third of dreams have color. People can always have or never have color dreams.
Complex dreams commonly have incongruity, unspecified objects, and some discontinuity. Adults and children have same proportions of discontinuity, unspecified objects, and incongruity. Adults have more complex and bizarre dreams than children do. Children's dreams are more about family and friends.
emotion
Dreaming has mostly anxiety, less frequently joy, and even less frequently anger. One-third of dreams have happy feelings. Dreams are mostly pleasant but can have anger and apprehension. Sadness, shame, and remorse are infrequent. Least common emotions are affection and eros. Erotic dreams are less than 10% of adult dreams.
Dream misperceptions can increase anxiety, and anxiety can increase misperceptions. One-third of dreams have strong anxiety and fear. Two-thirds of dreams have anxiety, fear, guilt, or sadness. As dreams continue, they get sadder. Dreams with anxiety do not have penile erections.
Dream emotion levels correlate with heart rate and skin potential. If heart beats faster and breathing rate increases, dream has anxiety. Dreams have more aggression than waking life. Emotional reactions to dream events are appropriate. Men and women have same dream emotions.
movements
Jerky eye movements, limb twitches, face twitches, middle-ear muscle twitches, and sudden respiratory changes are phasic REM-sleep components. Muscle relaxation and penile erections are tonic features. As night progresses, REM periods contain more phasic components, and dreams are more active and less passive. Limb movements relate to dreams with movement. Small face, finger, head, and limb twitches, with most other muscle activity suppressed, show dream is about running, flying, or swimming. Dreams have rapid eye movements that can follow dream movements. Large eye movements relate to dream content [LaBerge, 1985] [LaBerge, 2000]. Dreams have dilated pupils.
perception
Perception during dreaming uses same brain regions as perception during awakeness. The strongest dream perception is visual. Dream visual images are typically in color. Audition perceptions are weak. Touch, temperature, taste, and smell perceptions are very weak.
brain damage
People blind since birth have only auditory dreams. If blindness is in primary cortex, dreams have no seeing. Secondary-cortex-damage blindness allows seeing in dreams.
People are faceless in dreams of people who cannot identify faces [Kaplan-Solms and Solms, 2000] [Solms, 1997].
Patients with hemi-neglect cannot see dream right or left half.
development
20-week-old fetuses have REM sleep, indicating dreaming [Empson, 2001].
causes
Dreams are about recent events or ongoing problems. Events around sleeper during dreams often are in dreams. Human brain can respond to word meanings during sleep and have related dreams. Depressed people have dreams that contain failure and loss.
comparisons
Dreams have more characters and settings than fantasies. Unlike fantasies, dreams are not menacing and do not cause paranoia. In dreams, people often change into someone else, which never happens in fantasies.
Dreaming is like delirium, not dementia. Dreams have time and place disorientation, visual hallucinations, distractibility, attention deficit, recent memory loss, and insight loss, like hallucinations. Dreaming is like organic mental syndrome, such as caused by drugs or Alzheimer's disease.
Out-of-body experiences are similar to stage one dreaming.
behavior
Dreams do not change awake behavior [Hobson, 2002].
will
People cannot will dreams, though they can will in dreams if not in deep sleep. People cannot be responsible for dreams, so dreams cannot be sins.
interpretation
Dream-interpretation theories are invalid [Hobson, 2002] [Webster, 1995].
purposes
Perhaps, dreams help consolidate memories [Hobson, 2002] [Vertes and Eastman, 2002]. Perhaps, dreams help clear brain memory circuits and help to selectively forget [Crick and Mitchison, 1983].
Perhaps, dreams are activity rehearsals and are like playing or practice [Humphrey, 1983] [Humphrey, 1986] [Humphrey, 1992] [Humphrey, 2002].
Perhaps, dreams are rehearsals or practice against threats {threat simulation theory, dream} [Rossetti and Revonsuo, 2000] [Revonsuo, 2000].
brain
Dreams start in pons-geniculate-occipital (PGO) system, which locus-coeruleus catecholamines activate. Pons controls reticular activating system [Braun et al., 1998] [Hobson et al., 1998]. Perhaps, dreams are forebrain interpretations of midbrain signals. During dreams, brain blocks sense input.
If people are conscious or dreaming, high-amplitude electroencephalography waves arise in pons, radiate to geniculate body, and then go to occipital cortex.
Brainstem is active in REM sleep, and REM sleep has different transmitters from NREM sleep. Brainstem multiple motor-pattern generator excitations cause increased sense qualities [Empson, 2001].
Dreams have low cortex output and input, so brainstem inhibition from cortex is low. During dreams, cortex has no motor-neuron output. Area V1 and areas nearby deactivate during dreaming, while fusiform gyrus and medial temporal lobe activate. For dreams to have sense qualities, such as sight, sense primary cortex must be functioning. Removing visual cortex causes visual dreams to cease. If area V1 has damage, people can still have visual dreams.
Frontal cortex has low activity during dreaming.
Idle thinking {daydreaming}| can be conscious but unaware and experience sensations. While awake and in unchanging environments, people talk and daydream more, and then talk and daydream less, in 90-minute to 100-minute cycles. Drug frontal-lobe damage makes people have no daydreaming.
People can dream that they are waking {false awakening}. During false awakening, people can hallucinate {metachoric experience}.
As people fall asleep, they can have brief dreamlets {hypnagogic hallucination} {hypnagogic image}. Images can be vivid. Human will can control hypnagogic states [Maury, 1848].
As people wake up, they can have brief dreamlets {hypnopompic hallucination} {hypnopompic image} [Mavromatis, 1987].
Dreams have two levels, actual dream {manifest dream level} and unconscious symbolizations {latent dream level}. Perhaps, symbols are repressed wishes.
In some dreams {lucid dreaming}|, dreamers know that they are dreaming [Blackmore, 1992] [Gackenbach and LaBerge, 1988] [Green, 1968] [Hearne, 1978] [Hobson, 2002] [van Eeden, 1913]. More lucid dreaming correlates with more out-of-body experiences.
Children age 10 to 14 can have terror, shrieking, and sleepwalking {night terror}| {pavor nocturnis} in orthodox sleep early at night. Night terrors are more frequent with greater daytime anxiety. People never remember night terrors in the morning.
Scary dreams {nightmare}| are about anxieties and can happen during REM sleep, later at night. Having nightmares is hereditary.
People can have trouble sleeping {sleep, problems}. Depression has shortened sleep, with no deep non-REM sleep and earlier, longer, and more intense first REM sleep. Fever-causing peptides from bacteria increase non-REM sleep but not REM sleep.
Nighttime bed urination {bed-wetting} can happen during orthodox sleep early at night. It is more frequent with daytime anxiety.
During sleep, brain may not inhibit motor neurons {REM-sleep behavior disorder} (RBD). Pons lesions can allow movements during REM sleep.
Paralysis {sleep paralysis}| {night nurses' paralysis} can begin before REM sleep or stay after REM sleep, as well as when just falling asleep or in narcolepsy [Parker and Blackmore, 2002] [Spanos et al., 1995]. In sleep paralysis, people can be afraid, hear noises, float, or feel presences, weight on chest, touches, or vibrations [Cheyne et al., 1999] [Persinger, 1999].
Daytime sleepiness, muscle-tone loss, and/or consciousness loss {narcolepsy}| can follow laughing or stress.
Brain pathway that causes muscle-movement loss during sleep has changes. Forebrain inhibits amygdala, which excites pons, which inhibits locus coeruleus, which excites muscles. Amygdala inhibits pons, which activates medial medulla, which normally inhibits motor neurons.
Perhaps, narcolepsy is an autoimmune disorder [Guilleminault et al., 1976] [Guilleminault, 1976] [Siegel, 2000].
Narcolepsy relates to an antigen {human leukocyte antigen} (HLA).
Hypocretin peptide neurotransmitter mutations can cause mammalian narcolepsy.
In people with narcolepsis, anger, fear, laughter, anticipation, or joy can cause sudden voluntary-muscle relaxation {cataplexy}| [Wu et al., 1999]. Cataplexy maintains consciousness.
When sleeping, people go through four non-REM-sleep stages {sleep cycle}, separated by short REM-sleep periods. Sleep cycles last 90 minutes and have short dreaming stage 1, then stage 2, then stage 3, then stage 4, then stage 3, then stage 2, then dreaming stage 1, and then waking. In stage 1, heart rate and respiration rate increase, and brain is active [Dement, 1972]. Sleep gets deeper through the night. Deep sleep is greatest at 2 AM.
Awake/NREM-sleep/REM-sleep cycle has different properties at each stage {AIM model}. Sleep-cycle stages have different Activation levels, Input and output, and neurotransmitter Modulation.
activation
Activation is from pons reticular activating system and has pathways to nearby brainstem areas, thalamus, and spinal cord. Awakeness and REM sleep have high-frequency low-amplitude EEG waves. NREM sleep has low-frequency high-amplitude EEG waves. Stage II NREM sleep has distinctive sleep-spindle EEG.
Cortical regions differ in activation cycles, input, output, and modulation. Hypothalamus superchiasmatic nucleus starts NREM sleep and controls progress through NREM sleep. REM sleep activation goes from pons to lateral geniculate to occipital (PGO). Reticular formation blocks spinal-cord sense and motor activity during REM sleep [Hobson, 1989] [Hobson, 1994] [Hobson, 1999] [Hobson, 1999] [Hobson, 2002] [Hobson et al., 1998].
input and output
Reticular activating system neurons can inhibit afferent axons from senses and efferent axons to muscles. For awakeness, input comes from outside, and output goes to muscles. For NREM and REM sleep, inputs only come from inside, with no muscle output.
modulation
Modulation is by norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, and acetylcholine secretions from pons reticular-activating-system neuron axons. Awakeness has high norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine and low acetylcholine. REM sleep has low norepinephrine and low serotonin but moderate dopamine and high acetylcholine. NREM sleep has neither high nor low neurotransmitter levels.
Cholinergic axons go to amygdala and multisensory posterolateral cortex and fire when eyes move.
cycles
Sleep has four or five cycles. First cycle has long deep NREM sleep and short REM sleep. Last cycle has long REM sleep and short shallow NREM sleep.
Regular sleep {orthodox sleep} {non-rapid eye movement sleep}| {NREM sleep} {light sleep} has only small eye movements.
properties
Consciousness is not present in slow-wave sleep. NREM sleep has little dreaming but seems to have "thinking". Both REM and non-REM sleep can have talking. Words relate to thoughts or dreams.
amount
NREM sleep is 80% of human sleep.
animals
Only vertebrates have NREM sleep. Ancient reptiles have some NREM sleep. Recent reptiles and birds have NREM sleep and little REM sleep. Mammals have NREM sleep and REM sleep.
In dolphins, one hemisphere NREM-sleeps for several hours, then other hemisphere NREM-sleeps, so they can always breathe.
causes
Melatonin, which brain makes more at night, promotes NREM sleep. During NREM sleep, acetylcholine changes from low to high. During NREM sleep, serotonin and norepinephrine change from high to low.
NREM sleep releases growth hormone, decreases adrenaline and corticosteroids levels, and increases cortisol and testosterone.
Raphe-system serotonin acts on thalamus layer-five and layer-six neurons to start light sleep.
Serotonin constricts pupils.
biology
NREM sleep has low frontal cortex activity, low cortical activity, high limbic activity, and high forebrain sleep-on-cell activity.
In NREM sleep, nerve cells synchronize at low frequency.
Hypothalamus superchiasmatic nucleus starts NREM sleep and controls progress through NREM sleep.
purposes
Perhaps, non-REM sleep reduces free-radical damage.
Sleep {paradoxical sleep} {rapid eye movement sleep}| {REM sleep} {deep sleep} can have dreaming.
properties
REM sleep has limited consciousness. REM sleep has detailed dreams. Both REM and non-REM sleep can have talking. Words relate to thoughts or dreams. REM sleep completely relaxes most body muscles and stops many reflexes but has rapid eye movements. In men, REM sleep has penis erections. During REM sleep, mammals have no temperature control.
amount
Paradoxical sleep is 20% of sleep.
20-week-old fetuses have REM sleep, indicating dreaming. For mammals, REM sleep is at highest percentage at birth and decreases with age. Three-year-old children and adults sleep 20% in REM sleep.
REM sleep diminishes with anxiety.
Recent reptiles and birds have NREM sleep and little REM sleep. Mammals have NREM sleep and REM sleep. Mammals who are more immature at birth have more REM sleep.
causes
REM sleep has high acetylcholine, from brainstem, but low serotonin and norepinephrine, from sense input.
REM sleep diminishes with adenosine, barbiturate, benzodiazepines, depressants, interleukin, and sedatives.
biology
REM sleep has high limbic activity, low cortex input and output, no sense input, and no motor neuron output. REM sleep-on cells are highly active. REM sleep has faster brain blood flow than wakeful rest.
Awakening sense thresholds are highest in REM sleep, except for stage-4 sleep.
REM sleep activation goes from pons to lateral geniculate to occipital lobe (PGO).
factors
Men and women have same REM-sleep activation system and REM sleep amounts. In mental defectives, REM sleep percentage is proportional to intelligence level.
purposes
Perhaps, REM sleep is for monoamine decrease. REM sleep is probably not for readiness or memory consolidation.
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