A few years ago, I remember my cousin thought he had an issue with his sexual organs due to the constant frequency of arousal when asleep. He used to wake up every morning aroused, and in case he woke up abruptly at night, he found himself aroused despite the fact that he did not have any sexual thoughts in his mind before sleeping or having a sexual dream. His view was that he needed assistance as the problem emerged right from his teenage years and continued without any change occurring in his life. He approached my closest uncle to ask for assistance and understand whether he was normal or he needed assistance. Whenever there were visitors to his home, he did not want to share his bedroom with anyone else despite him being his closest cousin or friend. What was evident was that he was isolated from the rest of his peers. I was not able to understand or appreciate the connection between sleep and sexual arousal among teenagers and young adults. The course has helped me understand the body changes that the body undertakes when we sleep.
Analysis #1
According to Myers (2012), sleep happens in stages with each stage having distinct activities. The sleep cycle is said to occur every ninety minutes. One of the common agendas is that the sleeping brain remains active and tends to have its biological rhythm (Myers, 2012). The Rapid Eye movement Sleep (REM) is characterized by rapid brain waves, increased heart rates, rapid breathing. There is also increased eye activity behind the closed lids. Myers (2012) continues to argue that except during those periods when one has a scary dream, their genitals become aroused mainly during the REM sleep. This happens regardless of whether the dream that one has is sexual or not. After reading this concept, I was able to understand why my cousin complained of having regular erections, especially during mornings.
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The morning erection that my cousin complained about and thought to be a problem came from the last REM period of the sleep pattern just before he woke up. As outlined by Myers (2012), sleep-related erections usually outlast the REM periods in young adults, which explains why my cousin had an erection every morning that made him isolate himself thinking it is a problem, which diminishes as one age. The implication is that a young adult may have erections half of the time he is asleep while an older adult may only experience an erection for a quarter of the time he is asleep. As an extension of the research, it is evident that most of the men who have erectile disorder have sleep-related erections indicating that the problem is not to do with their genitals.
From the analysis done by Myers (2012), I think my cousin was having a common problem, which affects most of the men regardless of the age. This comes from the cortex part of the brain remaining active despite one being asleep. The psychological analysis of the sleep stages has been essential in understanding how brain activity changes as well as the biological aspects of the body during sleep ( Costa, Costa, & Pestana, 2017) . Sexual arousal is just one of the biological changes that the body undergoes because of being in the REM sleep stage. This cycle with which the sleep stages recur indicates that one may have genital arousal every once in every 90 minutes and young men, the erection may extend past REM sleep as was the case with my uncle.
Event #2
I remember a time when I was left alone at home, as my parents rushed to assist our neighbor with an emergency. As I was cycling along the pavement, I met two men who looked like strangers and had shouting tattoos on their necks. The two men looked at me as I passed by as they continued with their walk. One of them carried a tool packed wrapped in a brown paper. Fifty metes from where I met the two men was a truck that looked strange, as I had not seen it around. Upon realizing that I had noticed them, the truck started moving slowly towards the direction of the men. I got a weird feeling that the men wanted to break into a home based on the tool that the man was carrying. This made me ride my bike towards our neighbor’s house to inform my mother of the incident and the potential harm. My first impression of the two men was that they were not up to any good based on the way they dressed or looked at me. A few minutes after reaching our neighbor's house, I heard police sirens rushing towards the direction the two men had followed. It later became apparent that the two were thieves and had broken into a home and left with appliances only for the owners to realize as the men left the compound. Learning about sensations and perceptions has helped me understand why I reacted the way I reacted regarding the weird feeling of fear that I got upon seeing the men. I was also able to understand the speed at which the brain processes information in our environments based on our senses to create meaningful outcomes.
Analysis #2
The sensation is the process through which information is brought from the outside world or the environment to the body. In almost all cases, the process is passive in that one does not have to be conscious of what is happening ( Goldstein & Brockmole, 2016) . On the other hand, perception is an active process through which the brain selects, organizes and interprets what is brought as information from the environment. When sensation occurs, the sensory organs absorb the energy coming from the stimulus. It is followed by the conversion of the energy into neural impulses sent to the brain. During perception, the brain organizes performs the organization of the information and translates the same information into a meaningful result.
Based on the event analyzed above, it is clear that my mind first sensed fear from the physical appearance of the two men and the way they looked at me ( Goldstein & Brockmole, 2016) . This information was taken to the brain that generated the perception that they were not for any good, which made me rush towards the direction of my mother. As outlined in the text, sensation, and perception enable human beings to be able to make use of their senses in the right manner to make meaning of the world they live in ( Mather, 2016) . A stimulus has to be within the absolute threshold level to have an impact on an individual. For example, the fact that I was left alone at home enabled the stimuli of seeing a stranger affect me and perceive them as harm-intended. Therefore, if I had my parents with me, then the probability of me even noticing their strange looks would have diminished, as the stimuli would have been below my threshold level.
References
Costa, R., Costa, D., & Pestana, J. (2017). Subjective sleep quality, unstimulated sexual arousal, and sexual frequency. Sleep Science , 10 (4), 147-153.
Goldstein, E. B., & Brockmole, J. (2016). Sensation and perception . New York, NY: Cengage Learning.
Mather, G. (2016). Foundations of sensation and perception . New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Myers, D. G. (2012). Exploring psychology in modules (9th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
