What are the factors that make the membrane more permeable to Potassium ions than Sodium or Chloride (or any other ions)? I'm just into my first week of Neuroscience and reading about membrane/action potential. It is my understanding that when the membrane potential changes, it is more K+ ions move across the membrane compared to other ions to bring it back to equilibrium because the membrane conductance to K+ is higher, which makes the other ions have less of an impact on the membrane potential (which is also why the resting potential is closer to K+ than Na+). Can any of you list the factors that makes the membrane more permeable to K+? Is it proportion of channels or any inherent characteristics of K+ ions? Thank you :)

The two-pore-domain potassium channels. There is otherwise nothing intrinsic in the membrane that makes it more permeable to potassium, but the membrane contains these channels which are referred to as "leak" channels because they are not voltage-gated and are always open. These allow cells to turn the concentration gradient maintained by the sodium-potassium ATPase into an electrical gradient.
Other channels are also present and can contribute to the membrane potential at rest, but the two-pore potassium channels are typically the largest contributors.
Most of what you've written as background in your question is only applicable to rest so be sure to consider that as you learn about action potentials and post-synaptic potentials. What is true is that if you were to hold a cell at 0 mV without any voltage-gated channels, you would see much more potassium leaking out than other positive ions moving in, and this is why the inside becomes more negative (establishing the resting membrane potential). The resting potential is the potential at which the net charge of ions flowing across the membrane is equal: that is, there are just as many positive ions flowing out at rest as there are flowing in. If anything else were true the cell would not be at equilibrium and the membrane voltage would continue to change until it were true.


What happens at sampling rates lower or higher that the Nyquist rate? I do understand that for a signal to be properly sampled, it has to be done on the Nyquist sampling rate. What I do not understand is, what happens at sampling rates lower rate than the Nyquist rate, and at rates higher than the Nyquist rate, for that matter.

Short practical answer

  for a signal to be properly sampled, it has to be done [at] the Nyquist sampling rate

Up front: sampling at the Nyquist frequency is the bare minimum rate to reproduce the frequency of the input signal. Dependent on your demands, I would advise to go at least 2 times that, if not more, to reproduce amplitude and shape of the signal. In other words, higher sampling rates yield better reconstructed signals.

Background
The problem is that in this digital age, analogue signals are sampled digitally, i.e. at fixed sampling rates. The Nyquist criterion states that the sampling rate should be at least twice the target frequency of the signal.

Suppose the target signal is a simple sinusoid with a frequency f (Fig. 1). And let us start with the worst-case scenario, namely a digital sampling rate (SR) equaling f. In this scenario, we end up with a straight line in the digitally recorded signal (upper panel).

In case we slightly increase the SR to 4/3 the result is not much better (lower panel).

In fact, it is not until we we go to doubling the SR to 2 times f, that we obtain a saw-tooth with a frequency equaling the input signal. The shape is, however, unlike the input signal, but at least we have the target input frequency right. However, this does not mean we can faithfully reproduce the signal. For one thing, the amplitude of the input signal will depend on the phase shift between SR and the signal. From here on, you can imagine that going to 4 f will substantially improve the reconstructed signal in terms of shape and amplitude (see, e.g. this web page of Cardif Universiy).

Fig. 1. Discrete sampling of an analogue target signal. source: National Instruments


Is procrastination associated with overweight? I came to think of how working out requires a will to "get things done". Some people are successful in their career while working regularly out at the same time, and some people are procrastinating both exercise and career related actions. To "get things done" often takes some physical effort as well, which may make a difference in body fat.

Is there be an association between overweight and general procrastination/lack of motivation?

No. An association between overweight and procrastination appears to have no direct empirical support to speak of.

The most direct evidence I can find on the matter was a study into industrial workplace productivity's association with overweight, which found a very small (approximately 1%) loss in productivity over other workers associated with moderate or extreme obesity, but this was explained in terms of decreased ability and increased time to perform physical tasks (Gates et al., 2009) rather than self-regulation, motivation or time management. In particular,

  Moderately or extremely obese workers (BMI 35) experienced the greatest health-related work limitations, specifically regarding time needed to complete tasks and ability to perform physical job demands.

It does appear there have been some conceptually similar economics investigations into whether overweight is associated with engaging in hyperbolic discounting more generally (Scharff, 2009), but overall, there does not seem to be any empirical reason for believing that overweight is associated with procrastination in any practically meaningful sense.

References

Gates, D. M., Succop, P., Brehm, B. J., Gillespie, G. L., & Sommers, B. D. (2008). Obesity and presenteeism: the impact of body mass index on workplace productivity. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 50(1), 39-45.
Scharff, R. L. (2009). Obesity and hyperbolic discounting: Evidence and implications. Journal of Consumer Policy, 32(1), 3-21.


What is the exact meaning of a "calculating" person? I am not a psychologist so forgive the dumb question. I frequently read the "calculating" sign attributed to people with anti-social behavior like psychopaths, but I fail to understand what this word exactly mean. According to Merriam-Webster, calculating is "marked by prudent analysis or by shrewd consideration of self-interest". However, I am not sure I understand what exactly is bad about this. Surely we are all better off doing some prudent analysis about the situations we are in, no? Would you just jump into a job without analyzing whether it is good for you or not? How about when you decide to get married, do you just jump into a marriage without thinking about the possibility of the success of the marriage? Perhaps the second part of the definition is negative, I mean the "self-interest" part, but then this sounds like being selfish, as opposed to how this word is commonly attributed to antisocial or even criminal behaviour.
Looking at it differently, the opposite of the definition above is perhaps "marked by no analysis and consideration of self-interest." Now yes, the second part seems altruistic, but the first part is something that no one would want.
I am sure I am missing the obvious, perhaps it is because English is not my main language, so I would appreciate some explanation on this word from a psychology perspective.
Thanks

The thesaurus may assist.  The Synonyms of 'calculating' are: artful, astute, calculative, canny, conniving, crafty, cunning, deceitful, devious, dexterous, dirty, disingenuous, foxy, guileful, machiavellian, manipulative, scheming, shrewd, slick, slippery, sly, subtle, underhand, unscrupulous, and wily.
Acknowledging that everyone pursues self-interest to an extent, the intent of the definition appears to suggest that a 'calculating' person has little empathy or consideration of others.
Synonyms extracted from Merriam-Webster and Oxford.


Objective differences between extroverts and introverts What are the empirical, measurable, objective differences between extroverts and introverts?
I'm not interested in self-report studies, only objective measurements.

The lexical approach may assist. The lexical hypothesis states that, ‘All aspects of human personality, which are or have been of importance, interest or utility, have already become recorded in the substance of language’(Cattell, 1943) and, ‘When an idea is important, people are likely to have a word for it … the more important something is, … the more words there are likely to be’(Miller, 1996). The atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour uses a lexical approach to visualise words using the axes of affiliation and dominance (Mobbs, 2020).
Synonyms are:
Extrovert: affable, companionable, cordial, demonstrative, exhibitionist, expansive, extroverted, exuberant, friendly, genial, good-humoured, gregarious, lively, outgoing, show-off, showman, sociable, social, socialite, socializer, uninhibited, unreserved.
Introvert: introspective, introverted, loner, private, recluse, remote, reverse, secret, secretive, shrinking violet, solitary, standoffish, unobtrusive, wallflower.
The visualisation of extrovert and introvert according to the atlas approach is shown below:

Therefore, the empirical, measurable, objective differences between extroverts and introverts are:

Both introversion and extroversion are neither dominant or submissive behaviours.  Dominance is roughly equivalent to agency for those familiar with Bakan's definition.

Introverted behaviours are those which isolate the individual from others.

Extroverted behaviours are those which connect the individual to others.

Note: The extroverted behaviours occupy a single cell of the atlas whereas the introverted behaviours occupy two cells.  I would interpret this as an opportunity for improved classification in future editions of the atlas.
References
Cattell RB. The description of personality: basic traits resolved into clusters. J Abnorm Soc Psychol. 1943; 38: 476–506. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054116
Miller GA. The science of words. New York: Scientific American Library; 1996.
Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877
Declared interest: I am the author of the atlas paper.


"Nested Neurons": Are they biologically plausible? Is there any evidence for neurons existing within other neurons in humans or other organisms? From what little I've learned about physical neuroscience while learning to build neural nets, I don't see how one neural cell could actually contain another, as a nested structure implies; on the other hand, I figured I'd ask, because neuroscientists have discovered such a wide variety of neuron types, exhibiting all kinds of fascinating behaviors and structures. Furthermore, I suppose it's conceivable that the complex firing of neurotransmitters might be interpreted in a hierarchical way, akin to nested neurons.

The reason I'm asking is entirely practical: I've recently discovered that there may be certain advantages to treating neurons as nested structures when performing data and object modeling of neural nets. I'm interested in finding out if such nesting could be biologically plausible and if so, how I could go about finding more information on the topic. I've performed Internet searches and looked through the threads at StackExchange and can find nary a reference to the term "nested neuron."

Edited to Add (from the comments section, by request):

I'm asking whether neuroscientists currently possess any evidence for biological nested neurons. It's a very simple yes-or-no thing; either professional neuroscientists have such evidence in hand or they don't.

Disregarding the feasibility of neurons within neurons in silico, the answer to

  Is there any evidence for neurons existing within other neurons in humans or other organisms?

from a practical, biological point of view is no.

The literature point-of-view
The strongest argument against the neuron embedded (I'll deliberately not say "nested" as it has a computational and statistical taste to it) in another neuron is: I've never heard of it. I could cite every single neuro textbook I have not mentioning the phenomenon, but I'll wager that doesn't make too much sense, hence this unreferenced argument.

The physiological view
Neurons need a membrane potential to operate, e.g., to fire action potentials, or change their membrane in a graded manner. That membrane potential is, with perhaps an exception or two, always negative. That is, inside negative, outside neutral. A neuron within a neuron would provide inhospitable living conditions for the former. The latter wouldn't be too happy either. The former will not be able to build up the normal gradient of high Na+ outside the cell, and a high K+ inside, as the enveloping neuron would try to do exactly that same thing. The inner cell would thus build up a gradient (push Na+ out) and the enveloping cell would again transport the Na+ out. For K+ the reverse would happen (see Na+,K+-ATPase for background). In short, the inner cell would not be able to build up a membrane gradient, while the outer cell would have to deal with a pesky parasite messing up its ionic homeostasis. The inner cell would die, as many processes vital to the cell need a gradient (ion transport of nutrients along the membrane, disposal of garbage) and the outer cell would then finally be a happy neuron, barred the debris in its insides.

The teleological view
Physically embedded neurons don't make sense. Simply, because neurons exist, basically, to convey information from one neuron to the next. The textbook example of a neuron (Fig. 1) has an input part (the dendritic region), a space-traversing part to cover distance (the axon) and an output part (the axon terminal). Any processing occurring within the neuron is done primarily by logic operators such as summation, subtraction and integration (through the dendritic tree collecting information) and gain control (inhibitory or excitatory influences in dendritic region, cell body or axonal part). But in the end, a neuron is designed to get information from A to B. Therefore, a neuron within a neuron doesn't make sense from a neurophysiological vantage point.

Fig. 1. Textbook example of a motor neuron. The neuron receives information from higher motor areas in the dendritic region and stimulates the muscle using action potentials. Rate code is used to regulate the strength of muscle contraction. source: Obes DVR Lists.

Reference
- Purves et al. (eds.) Neuroscience, 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates (2001). The Ionic Basis of Action Potentials


How much of brain power consumption is for information As previously answered on this site, the brain uses 20W of power. However, how much of this power consumption is for information processing and how much of it is for maintenance of biological conditions for information processing, such as temperature regulation?

According to "Tightly coupled brain activity and cerebral ATP metabolic rate" which is summarised in the Scientific American article "Why Does the Brain Need So Much Power?", conscious computation accounts for 50% of the brain's power consumption. From the Scientific American article:

  Chen and his colleagues used MRS specifically to track the rate of
  adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production, the primary source of
  cellular energy, in rat brains. MRS employs a magnetic resonance
  imaging (MRI) machine programmed to pick up particular elements in the
  body—in this case, the three phosphorus atoms in each ATP molecule...

  The team noted that when the lab rats were knocked out, they produced
  50 percent fewer ATP molecules than when they were mildly
  anesthetized.The ATP produced when the brain is inactive, says Chen,
  seems to go mostly toward cell maintenance, whereas the additional ATP
  found in the more alert animals fueled other brain functions. He
  speculates that only a third of the ATP produced in fully awake brains
  is used for housekeeping functions, leaving the rest for other
  activities.


Why is solo dancing not as popular as contra and partner dancing? I have been to dance lessons. They only taught partner dancing and cobtra dancing. No solo dancing was taught at all. In Sweden where I'm from solo dancing is kind of unpopular. In music on the other hand you have both solo and ensemble being popular.
What are some psychological theories that speak about this in some way or another? And what theories are generally accepted as scientific.

Should be something associated with Courtship Display. Not entirely sure if this explains entire thing fully. There might be some other factors.


Which areas of the brain make up the brain stem? I am trying to learn the anatomy of the brain and am getting rather confused. When it comes to the brain stem, I have seen some sources say that it consists of the midbrain (mesencephalon) and hindbrain (rhombencephalon). However from what I understand, the hindbrain consists of the metencephlon, which is comprised of the pons and cerebellum, and the myencephalon (medulla oblongata). So these sources seem to say that the brain stem contains the cerebellum. However I have also seen sources say that the brain stem consisists of the medulla oblongata (myencephalon), midrbrain (mesencephalon) and pons, so it excludes the cerebellum.

The brain stem comprises the medulla, the pons and the midbrain, according to Kandel's extremely authoritative Principles of Neural Science. This is equivalent to the midbrain and the hindbrain minus the cerebellum, which is probably where the confusion stems from.

  Kandel, E. R., Schwartz, J. H., & Jessell, T. M. (Eds.). (2000). Principles of neural science (Vol. 4, pp. 1227-1246). New York: McGraw-Hill.


How accurate are diagnoses on Autism to Children under 3 years old? I have a son with autism. He was diagnosed under 3 years old. 2 years old to be exactly. After I doubted several pediatricians that claimed that wouldn't be a valid diagnose after 5 years old. I discovered by myself that it wasn't entirely true. I've read that specialists would diagnose under 2, or even, babies. I want to know because other parents say their doctors say to wait from 2 to 3 years old or even more.

There was a study which examines the exact question you posed.  This study, which was conducted by Stone et al. (1999) compared accuracy of diagnosis of autism and a pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS).
With regard to autism, the study suggested 2 conclusions:

(1) the identification of an autism spectrum disorder can be made reliably in children below the age of 3; and (2) the specific diagnosis of autism can be made reliably in children under 3 years, as long as the diagnosticians have experience evaluating young children.  The latter conclusion is presented more tentatively, given the limited sample of clinicians employed in the present study. Further study of the impact of experience on diagnostic reliability at young ages, using lager samples of clinicians, would shed additional light on the issue.

Regardless of the initial diagnosis, the large majority of children remained on the autism spectrum at the 1 year follow-up.

Of the children who received a diagnosis of autism at age 2, 96% remained on the autism spectrum at age 3, and 72% retained the specific diagnosis of autism. Although the results suggest that symptomatology improved for 28% of these children, only 1 child (4%) improved to the extent he "left" the autism spectrum.

They also pointed out that diagnostic stability did not vary as a function of whether the same or a different clinician made the Time 2 diagnosis, proving further support for the robustness of the diagnosis.
Additional Information after issues surrounding debate were raised.
With regard to the debates over autism, there is a factsheet on the debates at autism-help.org and the debate covers the causes of autism (genetics etc), lack of definitive test for autism

due to the significant variance of symptoms among people with autistic traits, as well as a lack of knowledge about the etiology of the condition. Those with Asperger syndrome may be highly functional cognitively but lack ‘social’ skills, whereas others with so-called “profound Autism” may be non-verbal and deficient in elementary skills.

and there are issues surrounding the diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome as opposed to autism.

[M]any autism spectrum adults and neurotypical (non-autistic) allies in the autism rights movement do not consider Autism to be a disorder, but simply a different way of perceiving and behaving. These people believe that at least some of the difficulties encountered by people with Autism may result from prejudice and lack of accommodation from society.

Stone et al. (1999) is cited in over 200 papers including many over the past 5 years.  One of them is Roberts, et al. (2019), where they also point out that ASD can be reliably diagnosed by 24 months, although the average age of diagnosis is 2 years later.
Clark, et al. (2018) also highlights that early diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder is considered best practice, increasing access to early intervention.  They investigated the school age outcomes of children who received an early, as opposed to later, diagnosis of ASD.  The abstract highlights that:

Children diagnosed early accessed more intervention, demonstrated better verbal and overall cognition at school age, were more likely to attend mainstream school and required less ongoing support than children diagnosed later.

So while raising the debates about autism diagnosis in the last 20 years is a valid argument, it does seem that the 1999 paper still stands as valid, even though changes were made in the DSM with the publication of DSM-5.  But then again, when you look at following studies,

DSM-5 resulted in 47.79% fewer toddlers being diagnosed with ASD compared to those on the DSM-IV. Toddlers diagnosed according to DSM-5 exhibited greater levels of autism symptomatology than those diagnosed with DSM-IV, but the latter group still exhibited significant levels of autism symptomatology(Matson, et al. 2012).

So has the change created a problem where some are no longer diagnosed when they should have been?  That would be open to opinion I believe.
References
Clark, M. L. E., Vinen, Z., Barbaro, J., & Dissanayake, C. (2018). School age outcomes of children diagnosed early and later with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 48(1), 92-102. doi: 10.1007/s10803-017-3279-x
Matson, J. L., Kozlowski, A. M., Hattier, M. A., Horovitz, M., & Sipes, M. (2012). DSM-IV vs DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for toddlers with autism. Developmental Neurorehabilitation, 15(3), 185-190. doi: 10.3109/17518423.2012.672341
Roberts, M. Y., Stern, Y., Hampton, L. H., Grauzer, J. M., Miller, A., Levin, A., ... & Estabrook, R. (2019). Beyond pass‐fail: Examining the potential utility of two thresholds in the autism screening process. Autism Research, 12(1), 112-122. doi: 10.1002/aur.2045
Stone, W. L., Lee, E. B., Ashford, L., Brissie, J., Hepburn, S. L., Coonrod, E. E., & Weiss, B. H. (1999). Can autism be diagnosed accurately in children under 3 years?. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 40(2), 219-226. doi: 10.1111/1469-7610.00435


How would self awareness be limited without languages Is it possible to posses a self awareness without having any sort of language at hand, not even a personal sign system. How would such an languageless experience be like?

I am not sure if this can be correlated, but how would be the experience or awareness of an Infant before gaining self-awareness and language.

If we think of self-awareness as an evolved brain circuit phenomenon, its existence probably has little dependence on language in particular.  This is evidenced by the fact that Alzheimer patients loss of self-awareness, as well as changes in self-awareness due to injury are associated with the frontal lobe.  That's not to say that the self and self-awareness aren't heavily modulated by language (as are most mental constructs!)  There are several non-human animals that pass the self-awareness test but most of them are creatures that many consider to be closer to the intelligence of humans than other animals (namely, great apes, elephants, and dolphins).  Consequentially, many of these animals have also developed methods of communication, though language might be too strong of a word.

Finally, such a dependence would imply that the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has some legitimacy (especially when it comes to the self) but there's been no evidence found in support of the strong version, and most cognitive scientists favor the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.


Is there any file format standard for EEG data? I have started to do some research on EEG analysis. One of the challenging things I have found is the variability on the formats for the EEG files.

What do you do when you receive data your software does not support? Is it reasonable to ask the collaborators to convert the data to another format? Do you modify your software to incorporate the details of the new format?

Is there any EEG format out there that is considered standard? Do the EEG manufacturers provide converters to that format in their software?

Thanks,

-drd

As far as I know, short answer is no - there is no gold standard for EEG files. But EEG is a time series (amplitude) from several channels. So the most common way to represent it is columns as electrodes and rows as points of time. I think almost all software is possible to read such structure as txt file. But EEG is not only time series. Usually it is important to have additional channel with event markers. It make the situation a little bit tricky. But usually popular software is able to read most of EEG data formats and it's not difficult to write a custom function for reading your data.


How can we realize when a sociological question is impossible to answer? In my language there is a famous common sense statement which tells the populations are swinging back and forth from one extreme to the other.

The idea behind is that, at a sociological level, the influence of many psychological factors (such as the dichotomous thinking and similar cognitive distortions) are leading the  populations to tend to big breaks and changements.

Would it be possible to investigate it from a sociological point of view? How can we realize when a sociological question is impossible to answer?

Short version: A question is possible to answer sociologically if and only if its scale and region (informally speaking, its context) are completely defined and its variables of interest are operationalized.
Long (really long) version: The following answer may be colored by my quantitative background, but if you give me the benefit of the doubt here and there, this should generalize fairly well. My apologies for any untoward implications in advance.
Is my question amenable to empirical inquiry?
This is more than a question unto itself, but I will try to keep it as brief and general as possible while still answering the sociology-specific question. Sociological questions must be amenable to empirical inquiry. A question is amenable to empirical inquiry if and only if:

The variables of interest have been operationalized. If we are interested in "society," how exactly do you measure change in society? (I strongly recommend reading mfloren's excellent answer in the link.)
The region of interest has been completely defined. If we are interested in "society," where exactly should we start measuring our variables of interest?

There are (very) different views on how to interpret the evidence so collected, a fair covering of which is beyond the scope of this answer. In the cognitive sciences, I would say the dominant views tend to be in line with falsificationism and/or instrumentalism. Broadly speaking, this area is covered by the study of epistemology.
What is the scale of my question?
A question's scale refers to the level of detail involved. How "big" is the question? Informally speaking, the scale of an empirical question conveys information about the characteristics of the spacetime region we are investigating, and what level of precision/detail we are investigating it at.
Example: Cosmological or Quantum?
A prototypical example here that I think most people are familiar with from basic physics would be the cosmological scale—the largest known scale—and its opposite, the quantum scale, which is the smallest known scale. Informally speaking, the "physics scale" runs from least energy involved to most energy involved.
This is the simplest to understand because most of physics can be captured by how much energy is involved. In the biological sciences, it becomes more complicated. We might talk about trophic levels in a conceptually similar way when asking questions about ecologies, but we might also talk about the embryonic or neural scales for other questions. In other words, they are, in a very direct sense, different facets of the same "object." In general, the closer we get to a first-person human level of analysis, the more difficult it becomes to sufficiently define questions, and the further away we get, the easier it becomes.
Sociobehavioral science: Within or between individuals or groups?
In the social and behavioral sciences, we tend to look at the amount of people involved, the qualitative relationship between those people, and whether we are interested in the question at the intra-individual, between-individual, intra-group and/or inter-group level. As with the cosmological and quantum scale, or embryonic and neural scales, these are not ontologically distinct—scales are a strictly epistemological concept. Informally speaking, a question is sociological if it is a question about the collective behavior of relatively large groups of people (i.e., if regions and variables are defined relative to other 'groups' rather than in terms of their constituents' individual behavior or minds).
What field is appropriate for my question?
Once we have defined the scale and region (or area) of our question, and we have operationalized our variables of interest, we can say whether a particular  field is an appropriate context for situating our question in. If our question is, "How do modern bridges hold up so much weight?", then we could situate this in terms of quantum physics, but doing so would be a grossly excessive level of detail, so we'd probably want to use engineering instead.
So it is for the study of behavior and the human condition: it is important to use the right tool for the job. (Actually, I prefer to liken fields to painting styles, but the tool metaphor tends to get the job done faster, and I feel like this has already gotten long enough.)


Satisfaction from music due to correct prediction of a sound Ive randomly thought about a vague idea that perhaps the satisfaction I experience when listening to music is due to my brain correctly predicting a next sound in a sequence.

Do you think that has any theoretical truth to it? If so, what do you think an evolutionary reason to feel satisfaction after predicting a sound?

Another observation is that listening to unfamiliar music, for example a classical music sequence, is not satisfying to me. I'm not sure if I can appreciate its beauty that so many people see. What about that?

I'm not sure if that's the right place bu I just wanted to share my thoughts. Is there any interesting writing on that? I'm also not sure which tags to use-please feel free to categorise my question or point me to another forum for discussion. Thanks!

That's pretty much the core argument of
"On the joys of perceiving: Affect as feedback for perceptual predictions" (2015) Chetverikov & Kristjánsson.
It's a fun read, I think you might enjoy it.

Obviously music and other arts pull a bunch of other affect levers as well, not just this one. And "correct predictions" might not be the best way to characterize this particular lever: maybe the pleasure comes from being predictive rather then predictable
cf. Braem, Senne, and Trapp (2019) "Humans show a higher preference for stimuli that are predictive relative to those that are predictable."
Familiarity with a music style confounds the two, they both go up as you get a feel for the style. There's obviously something going on with curiosity/exploration/novelty also being pleasurable, but I don't think it's clear yet if you get that 'for free' with the predictive account or if an intrinsic reward for exploration should be its own thing.

Anyway, long story short there's some literature that looks a lot like your 'random vague idea', it's incomplete ongoing work, but it sure looks like it might be going somewhere interesting. Enjoy!


Why does the Elaboration Likelihood Model not account for truthfulness of the message? This is a sample problem with the answer I am stuck on:

  Question: According to the elaboration likelihood model, which of the following does NOT predict whether a message will be persuasive?

  A.  The length of the message
   B.  The attractiveness of the person delivering the message
   C. The truthfulness of the message
   D.  The trustworthiness of the person delivering the message

  Answer: The correct answer is C. According to the elaboration likelihood model, the truthfulness of the message itself is not actually a characteristic used to determine whether a message will be persuasive (choice C is correct). The message characteristics (including length) do predict persuasiveness (choice A is wrong), as do the source characteristics (including the attractiveness and the trustworthiness of the person delivering the message; choices B and D are wrong).

Wouldn't the truthfulness of the message still be a factor, since it is a characteristic of the message itself (via the central route with message characteristics)? I get why the other answers are wrong. I don't get why C is correct.

Not my area, but an interesting question.

The Elaboration Likelihood Model appears to divide messages between that which is true and that which is persuasive.  If you are intent on determining whether a message is true, it must go the rough the central route which will take protracted effort.

However, very often we are less interested in what is true and more interested in taking cues from others so that we avoid the laboursome effort of intensive thought.

To answer your question, if the message is persuasive, then no about of truth or falsity of which you are unaware will influence you.

I could not see it in the article, however, I imagine that if you were a priori aware that a message is false, you would naturally be more circumspect about allowing a false argument to be persuasive.

Modern advertising seems to revolve around persuasive arguments rather than truthful arguments (I'm not saying they are false, but the investment effort is making the commercial persuasive rather that factual).

The following except from Kitchen (2014, page 2034) clarified the issue for me.

  The premise of ELM is that when elaboration likelihood is high, information
  processing will occur via the central route. Resultant attitude formation, change or endurance is derived from extensive consideration of the message arguments and will be more persistent (Haugtvedt and Petty, 1989) and predictive of an individual’s subsequent behaviour (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983). When elaboration likelihood is low, processing occurs via the peripheral route. The peripheral route to persuasion requires little cognitive effort, instead relying upon peripheral cues such as source credibility and heuristics (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983). As such, attitudes formed via the peripheral route are relatively unaffected by argument quality, are temporary in nature, and are not as predictive of subsequent behaviour as those formed using the central route (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983).

Kitchen, P. J., Kerr, G., Schultz, D. E., McColl, R., & Pals, H. (2014). The elaboration likelihood model: review, critique and research agenda. European Journal of Marketing.  https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-12-2011-0776


Are there emotions that motivate pattern completion? I have been studying musical "tension." Musical tension essentially refers to the "expectations" one builds up in a melody that are then "released" when a stimulus matching the expectation occurs. For example, if you play the white notes on a piano in order CDEFGAB, you have a "tension" that motivates you to finish the scale and play C to complete the pattern.

I am aware pattern completion occurs in the brain and have seen a few biological models of this. For example, with attractor network models of human memory. So I am not surprised obviously that pattern completion occurs. But this example with musical tension highlights how there is an emotion (aka drive or motivation) that compels me to complete the pattern. When I hear the sequence CDEFGAB, I am compelled to finish the sequence.

My Question

Can someone provide me of examples of canonical models of emotions influence on pattern completion? I would like to learn example mechanisms as to how, on a circuit level, emotion would influence pattern completion.  I am particularly interested in examples relating to common forms of human creativity like visual art, problem-solving, etc., but any examples will do.

Canonical models of emotions in relation to pattern comclusion can not be provided.

The emotional of the musical sequences completion are directly related to the tonality.

Emotions related to the tonality are presented in the semantic memory.

It is possible the study of a partial mapping that relates tonality and emotions.

The best text, in my opinion, is:
Sloboda, John, A. (1985). The Musical Mind: The Cognitive Psychology of Music.
This is a compilation of numerous research in this area, others very interesting books can be found of this author.


When is higher confidence predictive of less accuracy? Normally, when an individual is more confident in a particular response (e.g., memory decision, general knowledge answer), he or she is also more likely to be accurate. There are also studies in which higher confidence is generally demonstrated to be unassociated with higher accuracy.

Are there any studies which demonstrate that the more confident an individual is, on average, the more likely he or she is to be incorrect?

This may not answer your question directly, but is related:

Kruger and Dunning (1999) conducted a study in which people performed a variety of 'tests' in different domains, such as logical reasoning, grammar, and humor. After taking a test, participants were asked to judge their performance relative to other test-takers, and to estimate their objective score on the test (how many questions were answered correctly).

What they found was that the subjects who performed the worst actually overestimated their performance the most. If you take their performance estimate as a proxy for confidence, then  it supports your hypothesis-- but only to a relative degree. That is to say, participants who performed poorly did not estimate their ability to be better than good performers and vice versa; however, those who performed the worst were more confident in their ability. It's a bit confusing, and D&K can explain it better-- there's actually a paragraph in their article (second to last) which relates their findings to work on overconfidence.

The explanation that Kruger and Dunning give for this effect is that the metacognitive ability to assess one's performance is a correlated with actual performance on the same task. Thus, somewhat paradoxically, those who perform poorly may be unaware of their poor performance, due to their inability to predict how well they did.

  Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How
  difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated
  self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77,
  1121-1134.


Can information in the media increase fear of something? I'm working on an essay trying to link an increased fear of something with information received from the media about it and I'm trying to find out if there are any studies on the matter.

Let me give an example:

An african-american sees news about cops shooting other black men in the US.
Is he now more afraid of running into police?

Another:

A person sees news about a friend being arrested for his political opinions
Is she now more afraid of expressing her opinions?

To me it seems that both are true, but I'm looking for studies that could confirm it or deny it.

Can information in the media increase fear of something?
Yes of course, let's see what these learning processes are.

Common processes employed by psychology in order to explain the development of anxiety, fear and phobias are the vicarious learning processes (modeling, observational learning and social learning).

Vicarious learning, although the terms observational learning and social learning are more commonly used:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observational_learning

These processes of learning have been well developed (Albert Bandura, a Canadian psychologist, is recognized as the professional who most impulse these learning processes, his investigations are often misinterpreted since one of the most famous ones also dealt with violence, his investigations are also misinterpreted in their objectives, it must be said that their research always had clinical objectives) and are commonly used for different purposes in learning, here we refer specifically to learning processes developed by a third person (such as a person who sees something on TV ) about situations and events that happen to other people.

In relation to frequency these learning processes are developed as commonly as classical conditioning or instrumental learning and are commonly employed in explanations of phobias, since many people with significant clinical problems with phobias have never experienced a situation (a person can develop a phobia to fly without having ever experienced any negative experience, or related incident, aboard an airplane), that is, these learning processes are based on information that the person has obtained from the story of other people's experiences.

Of course the increase or development of anxiety or fear (and others) is mediated by contructs or common causes in the study of psychology: estimates of possibility and frequency, locus of control, expectations (very specifically in phobia expectations about the control of object or phobic situation), and many others.

When searching databases, it may be more productive to use the term phobia than fear:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/?term=vicarious+phobia&cmd=DetailsSearch

About possible neuroanatomic related structures:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2555428/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4907690/

You may also be interested in social hypotheses and theories related to the media:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultivation_theory


Term/phrase for remembering the negative over the positive I work in UX (user experience) which involves a lot of psychological principles to various degrees and came across an interesting thought about bad experiences.

My question is, is there some kind of common term or phrase for a person that remembers past negative situations more clearly than positive ones?

I was thinking of the example of news reports about plane crashes. The percentage of negative incidents across the world is minute but since people only hear about the negative, this is how they perceive the majority. Therefore their memory of the bad news stories will outweigh their memory of their last successful flight. This can cause people to see air travel as dangerous.

There are probably better examples of this but I hope that makes sense.

There isn't a name (that I am aware of at least) for a person who has this experience, but the concept is referred to as negativity bias.

Negativity bias is a general phenomenon, though certainly individuals can vary as to how strongly they are influenced by negative rather than positive events/information.


How does an understanding of the brain explain why people experience strong emotional responses to major sporting events? Anyone know studies or theories that explain how massive competition events between countries or parties, like the Soccer World Cup Tournament finals or Olympic Games affect our brains?
Why do people suffer so much over these events?

I want to understand the fact that people get so excited or so depressed about that events that have no real impact in their lives. Seeing people cry because their teams lose is incredible, and I think that these reactions are unconscious and must have an explanation involving how these events affect out brains.

This is only a partial answer (since the question scope is so large) but it is one of my favorite empirical findings.

It turns out that simply watching your favorite team win or lose has physiological impacts. Specifically, if a team you are rooting for wins, your testosterone levels will increase, and they will decrease if your team loses. This was demonstrated by Bernhardt, Dabbs Jr., Fielden, & Lutter (1998). In two experiments, they measured testosterone levels in male sports fans before and after watching their team win or lose. In both experiments, people who were rooting for the winning team showed an increase in testosterone relative to their testosterone level before the match, while people who were rooting for the losing team showed a corresponding decrease in testosterone.

This doesn't explain why we get so invested in sports, but it might help us understand some of the extreme reactions that sports fans have after a particularly exciting match.


How to random assign subjects to a group without any equipment? I am working with a clinician and need her to randomly assign patients into one of two groups with the goal of having roughly equal numbers in both groups. The clinician does not have access to a random number generator and it would be inappropriate for her to flip a coin before the allocation. We initially decided upon using the second hand on a clock and splitting on the top/bottom half of the minute, but the exam room does not have a clock and she does not wear a watch.

We are thinking of splitting on the first letter of the first name which is on the patient's chart. We would then flip every couple of weeks whether the first half of the alphabet was in group A or group B. Is this a reasonable approach? Is there a better one? If we go this way, what letter do we split on to give roughly equal sizes?

If the patient has given you some kind of ID number (soc#, drivers license, patient number, birthday month... most any number) just split by even/odd.

If we assume that such numbers are sequential or randomly assigned, then there should be no large bias, or association with any patient characteristics.

If you have two or more numbers available, you could add the last digits and see if that is even or odd.


Is there a relationship between viewing and committing war crimes Recently, I’ve been curious if there’s any relationship between someone committing war crimes and previously viewing them.
For example, the War in Afghanistan is considered asymmetrical warfare, where the enemy has no rule book in regards to international law, and the soldier has the international law as well as their own set of rules of engagements (RoE) to follow. As time goes on, many of their comrades are wounded or killed from seemingly preventable things if they didn’t have to follow a set of rules of engagement while the enemy were ignoring them (using children in wars, indiscriminate weapons, hiding in civilian crowds).
Considering this then, is there a link between longer exposure to ‘dirty’ war fighting (not following international law) and the ability to carry out said rules of engagements without emotional compromise.
It seems logical that as you witness warcrimes committed against yourself or the people around you, that the chances of you breaking your own RoE to have a (relatively) fair playing field against the enemy starts to increase. Particularly for soldiers in sustained combat.
I don’t really have any research on this from what I’ve tried to find. I’m a mechanical engineer by trade so probably way out of my depth, so if there are good places to look for this kind of material, I’d be happy to have it sent to me. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated too!

It may have to do more with the group norms and what they deem as acceptable behavior, this might be what drives actions that go against established rules.
There was a very limited study from a few years ago that looked at how members of a paramilitary group in Columbia evaluated situations morally, the findings illuminate some cognitions in the group, that might provide some insight into breaking RoE.
In the study, Baez et al. (2017), show that what might be driving cruel behaviors in this group is that their moral reasoning is skewed, where their cognition seems to gravitate towards an "ends justify the means" approach. The paramilitary members stood out from a comparison of criminals, in that the paramilitary members viewed accidental harm as more heinous than intentional harm. The intentional harm being quite cruel, with their actions meant to cleanse the streets of vulnerable people (drug addicts, homosexuals, prostitutes, and the homeless). The group's cognition seemingly dictated by their own moral norms which they then adapt to.
A note on the study is only one particular paramilitary group was investigated, so the generalizability of the results is uncertain, the findings may only apply to this particular group.
Reference:
Baez, S., Herrera, E., García, A. M., Manes, F., Young, L., & Ibáñez, A. (2017). Outcome-oriented moral evaluation in terrorists. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(6), 0118. doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0118


Synesthesia hearing to see Can a synesthetic person, also known as a synaesthete, see sounds even when that person is actually blind? If so how does the brain interpret a picture without a vision?

In order for your 2 questions to be answered I have taken each question in turn.

Can a synaesthete see sounds even when that person is actually blind?

According to Steven & Blakemore (2004), there seems to be 2 forms of visual synaesthesia which blind people can experience.  That is Coloured-Braille synaesthesia, and Coloured-hearing synaesthesia for letters, numbers, and words (including time-related words) This is also known as Chromesthesia (see also this Wikipedia Article).  All quotes below are from Steven & Blakemore's study article, and there is one point of note with the study.

  The synaesthesia described by our subjects is most likely idiopathic (ie of early onset, as opposed to acquired after blindness) because all of them report having had synaesthesia for as long as they can remember (ie from prior to the onset of blindness). Furthermore, three of the six subjects have one or more first-degree relatives who are sighted and have synaesthesia (suggesting a genetic aetiology for the phenomenon)

I haven't come across any study where people blind from birth can experience synaesthesia, yet it doesn't mean it cannot happen.  The question then of course would be how the colours could be relayed to someone studying the case as the person blind from birth would not have any colour references to go by.

Coloured-Braille synaesthesia

This is where the blind person sees colours whilst reading Braile.

  One subject, JF, reports experiencing coloured Braille. For JF, the tactile sensation of each Braille character immediately evokes a synaesthetic impression of an array of tiny coloured dots, "like an LED display", corresponding to the Braille character. However, he does not see colours when he feels other textures or objects with his fingers, nor when he touches dots arranged in shapes or spatial arrangements not related to Braille.

Coloured-hearing synaesthesia (also known as *Chromesthesia* or sound-to-colour synesthesia

This is where heard sounds automatically and involuntarily evoke an experience of colour.

  All six of our subjects have coloured hearing for words relating to time (throughout this paper, 'time' refers to days of the week and months of the year, but not to hours, minutes, or seconds). Some have coloured hearing for all words and many have coloured hearing for spoken letters and numbers. Furthermore, several subjects also see these percepts as vague shapes, forming spatially localised patterns in their "mind's eye".

Coloured-hearing synaesthesia seems to be different in each of the cases in Steven & Blakemore's study, including how with JF,

  When JF moves his eyes or head from left to right, his colours remain stable in space, but if he rotates his whole body, the array of colours moves with him. Hence the synaesthetic phantoms are body-centred, not oculocentric or head-centred.

I would recommend reading this study article as I found it interesting.

How does the brain interpret a picture without a vision?

It seems that synaesthetes see colours because the visual cortex is stimulated by the sensation which triggered it. (Steven & Blakemore, 2004)

  In a single-subject fMRI study, Aleman and colleagues (2001) reported significant activation of human striate cortex when a synaesthete experienced illusory colours in response to hearing words. An earlier positron emission tomography (PET) study, however, had shown activation of visual-association cortex but not primary visual cortex in coloured-word synaesthesia (Paulesu et al 1995). Nunn et al (2002) recently supported this conclusion with their finding that cortical areas thought to be involved specifically in colour analysis (V4/V8), but not earlier visual areas, are activated when coloured-hearing synaesthetes listen to spoken words. Despite some differences in these results, it seems clear that parts of the visual cortex are activated when synaesthetes experience spurious visual sensations.

As long as there is no damage to the visual cortex, if other conditions are set for it within the brain connections, all that is needed is the correct stimulation within the visual cortex for colours to be seen.

  Sadato et al (1996), using PET, demonstrated that the visual cortex is activated when (non-synaesthetic) late-blind subjects read Braille, and others have reported activity in visual areas during non-Braille tactile discrimination in the blind (Büchel et al 1998; Burton et al 2002). Not only was primary visual cortex activated during Braille reading in the blind, but extrastriate cortex was also activated, including areas in the fusiform gyrus with Talairach coordinates corresponding to V4, which normally processes colour vision in sighted subjects (Burton 2003; Burton et al 2002). Again, this unusual visual cortical activation appears to be functionally significant, since TMS of the primary visual cortex has been shown to disrupt the ability to read Braille (Cohen et al 1997; note that TMS of V4 is not currently feasible), and it might somehow account for the fact that tactile acuity is enhanced in blindness (Goldreich and Kanics 2003)

References

Steven M. S., & Blakemore C. (2004). Visual synaesthesia in the blind. Perception 33(7), 855-68PMID: 15460512 DOI: 10.1068/p5160Free PDF available from semanticscholar.org

References in quotes from Steven & Blakemore (2004)

  Aleman A, Rutten G-J M, Sitskoorn M M, Dautzenberg G, Ramsey N F, 2001 "Activation of striate cortex in the absence of visual stimulation: an fMRI study of synesthesia" NeuroReport 12 2827—2830

  Büchel C, Price C, Frackowiak R S, Friston K, 1998 "Different activation patterns in the visual cortex of late and congenitally blind subjects" Brain 121 409—419

  Burton H, Snyder A Z, Conturo T E, Akbudak E, Ollinger J M, Raichle M E, 2002 "Adaptive changes in early and late blind: a fMRI study of Braille reading" Journal of Neurophysiology 87 589—607

  Burton H, 2003 "Visual cortex activity in early and late blind people" Journal of Neuroscience 23 4005—4011

  Cohen L G, Celnik P, Pascual-Leone A, Corwell B, Faiz L, Dambrosia J, Honda M, Sadato N, Gerloff C, Catala M D, Hallett M, 1997 ``Functional relevance of cross-modal plasticity in blind humans" Nature 389 180—183

  Goldreich D, Kanics I M, 2003 "Tactile acuity is enhanced in blindness" Journal of Neuroscience 23 3439—3445

  Nunn J A, Gregory L J, Brammer M, Williams S C R, Parslow D M, Morgan M J, Morris R G, Bullmore E T, Baron-Cohen S, Gray J A, 2002 "Functional magnetic resonance imaging of synesthesia: activation of V4/V8 by spoken words" Nature Neuroscience 5 371—375

  Paulesu E, Harrison J, Baron-Cohen S, Watson J D, Goldstein L, Heather J, Frackowiak R S, Frith C D, 1995 "The physiology of coloured hearing: A Positron Emission Tomography activation study of coloured-word synaesthesia" Brain 118 661—676

  Sadato N, Pascual-Leone A, Grafman J, Ibanez V, Deiber M P, Dold G, Hallett M, 1996 "Activation of primary visual cortex by Braille reading in blind subjects" Nature 380 562—568


Is there a difference between ADD and ADHD? These terms are often used interchangeably.

Is there a difference?

They are interchangeable.  ADD was a term used throughout most of the 80s and ADHD aftewards.  In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 1980 (DSM-III) published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) it was named ADD and the name changed to ADHD in the 1987 edition, DSM-III-R (which I can find no online sources of).

ADD has been used to describe a sufferer without the observable hyperactivity but it is still essentially the same thing.  Which leads to the confusion.

Terms used to describe the condition include:

Before 1980, hyperkinetic reaction of childhood
1980-1987, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
1987, Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder ADHD
1994, ADHD was disected into subtypes, predominantly inattentive (ADHD-PI or ADHD-I), predominantly hyperactive-impulsive (ADHD-PH or ADHD-HI), and combined type (ADHD-C).


Can you catch up on sleep over the weekend? The lack of sleep has many negative effects associated with it. Maintained sleep deprivation results in a degraded performance over time (in this case reaction time).

Assuming one needs 8 hours of sleep each night, but during the weekdays he only sleeps 6, is it possible to catch up on those lost hours of sleep during the weekend?

There is evidence that 'recovery sleep' is different from ordinary sleep. Carskadon and Dement (2005) measured a sleep pattern that favors Slow Wave Sleep (SWS) after 38 hours without sleep. Personally I also experience it takes me longer to wake up after being sleep deprived, which makes me believe at least your body is trying to make up for something.

A study by Gumenyuk et. al (2011) concludes:

  Reduced time in bed is associated with deficiency of the neuronal
  process associated with change detection, which may recover after one
  week of sleep extension, whereas attention-dependent neural processes
  do not normalize after this period of time in habitually short
  sleeping individuals and may require longer recovery periods.

It gives an indication recovery of some symptoms is possible, but recovery time is not equal for all symptoms. However, the participants in this study seem to be habitual short sleepers.

A more recent study (2015) by Brice Faraut concludes "[...] data suggests a 30-minute nap can reverse the hormonal impact of a night of poor sleep, [...]".

I am wondering whether it is possible to recover from the lost hours over the week during the weekend entirely. E.g. if you lost 8 hours, by sleeping 8 hours more during the weekend. The notion of sleep dept still seems to be up for debate, but perhaps there is more certainty on short term (1 week) effects?

Carskadon, M. A. and Dement, W. C. (2005). Normal human sleep: an overview, chapter 2, pages 13–23, pp. 13-23 In Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine Elsevier Saunders, Philadelphia (Free PDF)
Gumenyuk V, Roth T, Korzyukov O, Jefferson C, Bowyer S, Drake CL. (2011) Habitual short sleep impacts frontal switch mechanism in attention to novelty. Sleep. 2011 Dec 1;34(12):1659-70.
Napping Reverses the Salivary Interleukin-6 and Urinary Norepinephrine Changes Induced by Sleep Restriction

Well, to be able to answer your question affirmatively, we'd have to know all the effects of sleep deprivation, including the long term ones, and those are still are not fully accounted for.
However I did find some more recent research that addresses the question of weekend sleep recover on some parameters. Pejovic et al. found (quoting from the abstract):

Serial 24-h IL-6 plasma levels increased significantly during sleep restriction and returned to baseline after recovery sleep. Serial 24-h cortisol levels during restriction did not change compared with baseline, but after recovery they were significantly lower. Subjective and objective sleepiness increased significantly after restriction and returned to baseline after recovery. In contrast, performance deteriorated significantly after restriction and did not improve after recovery. Extended recovery sleep over the weekend reverses the impact of one work week of mild sleep restriction on daytime sleepiness, fatigue, and IL-6 levels, reduces cortisol levels, but does not correct performance deficits. The long-term effects of a repeated sleep restriction/sleep recovery weekly cycle in humans remain unknown.

The good news is that on most measures there was recovery after the weekend, and this is consistent with other studies e.g. with that by Faraut on hormonal measures. I still find their performance finding rather shocking, so it's perhaps worth taking note at exactly what performance they looked at; it was basically just the PVT:

It's indeed a good question how many more nights of leisurely sleep would cause PVT to recover. I strongly doubt the impairment is permanent. Alas the study by Pejovic et al. didn't have any follow-up after the weekend.
A similar study was conducted prior by Banks et al., and they made a prediction on PVT recovery, but it still hasn't been confirmed

Neurobehavioral deficits induced by 5 nights of sleep restricted to 4 h improved monotonically as acute recovery sleep dose increased, but some deficits remained after 10 h TIB [time in bed -- my note] for recovery. Complete recovery from such sleep restriction may require a longer sleep period during 1 night, and/or multiple nights of recovery sleep. [...]
PVT fastest reaction times were projected to require a sleep dose of more than 13 h TIB (11 h TST [total sleep time -- my note]) to intersect the control condition. However, the confidence intervals for intersection with control group levels were large for all outcomes presented

I found one more recent animal study on the matter, by Deurveilher et al., which used a rat version of PVT, with rather different results

A 28-h period of the 3/1 chronic sleep restriction (CSR) protocol [sleep reduced to ~60% of normal as result of this protocol -- my note] disrupted performance on a sustained attention task in rats, as sleep deprivation does in humans. Performance improved after longer [one week -- my note] periods of CSR, suggesting allostatic adaptation, contrary to some reports of progressive deterioration in psychomotor vigilance task performance during CSR in humans. However, as observed in humans, there were individual differences among rats in the vulnerability of their attention performance to CSR.

Below are the graphs from the paper on the week-long CSR, which shows the remarkable allostatic adaptation on PVT, but not on weight loss.

So I'm guessing the jury is still out how quickly humans recover or if they may even adapt to sleep deprivation on PVT. I'm guessing that given the other effects of sleep deprivation, controlled longer-term studies in humans are probably going to be difficult to come by...
I've also consulted the 6th edition (2017) of Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine; its chapter on sleep deprivation (and recovery) has among its authors two of the co-authors (the lead and the PI--Dinges) of the Banks study I already mentioned. So its conclusion are somewhat similar.

Few studies have examined recovery sleep after periods of
sleep restriction. [...] Although participants felt that their functioning
was restored, with subjective reports of sleepiness and
performance recovering to baseline, subjective measures do
not appear to accurately parallel objective measures of neurobehavioral
recovery. These findings suggest that more than
2 or 3 nights of extended sleep may be needed to return neurobehavioral
functions to baseline levels. [...] Overall, work to date suggests that complete recovery from
a period of sleep restriction may necessitate a sleep opportunity
of more than 10 hours or more than 3 days if sleep is
restricted to 8 hours a night. In addition, different aspects of
performance and neurobehavioral function appear to recover
at different rates, with different trajectories.

That combination finding is additional based one other study they highlight, by Rupp et al., which did look at longer recovery periods; the summary from the book

Rupp et al extended the recovery period
to five 8-hour sleep opportunities, following a week of sleep
restricted to 3 hours of time in bed each night. Despite the
extra recovery nights, performance still failed to return to
baseline levels. In a second group that extended their sleep
prophylactically to 10 hours of time in bed before the period
of sleep restriction, performance declined at a slower rate and
recovered to baseline more quickly, suggesting that sleep
restriction and recovery vary as a function of prior sleep.
Therefore, sleep extension or supplemental nap sleeps can be
used as a prophylactic measure or countermeasure to lessen
the performance effects of sleep deprivation during periods of
extended wakefulness or sleep deprivation.

Looking at the actual article, the 5 recovery days were 8 h TIB (probably because the author works at an army hospital), which for me personally would still count as mild sleep deprivation (less than 8 hrs actual sleep = TST), and which is somewhat odd contrast with opening statement in the paper that 8 hours of actual sleep are considered non-deprived. But that seems to be the only study using a longer recovery period to date. Below is a graph from that paper:

The two tests are part of PVT. And description of the two groups:

“Extension” group (nightly TIB = 10 h) or a “Habitual” sleep group (usual nightly TIB).
To determine Habitual Sleep schedules for volunteers assigned to the Habitual Group, actigraphic estimated total sleep time on weeknights (Sunday through Thursday nights; nights excluded if followed by a holiday or weekend) was determined, and 15 min were added to the average (to avoid inadvertently sleep restricting volunteers) and rounded up to the nearest 5 min for the final TIB amount. Bedtime was determined by subtracting TIB from the 07:00 rise time (i.e., a subject averaging 7 hours 15 min of sleep would have a bedtime of 23:45).

Frankly I find that being able to bank on sleep prior to deprivation, not just recover it thereafter, even more interesting. Also despite the obvious (and statistically significant) difference in PVT between groups,

No group differences in subjective sleepiness were evident during any phase of the study.

And also another finding

For both PVT variables, younger individuals showed a steeper slope of performance deterioration during sleep restriction and steeper slopes of improvement during the transition from sleep restriction to recovery and during recovery compared to older individuals.

Honestly I'm a bit concerned about overfitting because this was a small study (two dozen participants). However they say in their discussion of related research that this observed interaction/influence (of age) is consistent with other studies. Perhaps it goes along with the received wisdom that older people [need to] sleep less.
Another paper derived from the same study of Rupp et al. looked at math throughput and task acquisition (tested using ANAM, which presents a significant learning effect) and found that their observations mostly mirror those for PVT, except that presleep wasn't as significant as recovery sleep for this math/learning test.

Finally, it's generally accepted (see e.g. Pilcher and Huffcutt) that sleep deprivation influences mood even more than either cognitive or motor performance, however it seems that the recovery is quicker (perhaps owing to the hormonal one?), at least in older people, cf. Reynolds et al.:

While the increase [in Total Mood Disturbance -- my note] tended to be greater in women, in both groups self-ratings of mood returned to baseline after 1 night of recovery sleep.

References:

Pejovic et al. (2013) Effects of recovery sleep after one work week of mild sleep restriction on interleukin-6 and cortisol secretion and daytime sleepiness and performance

Banks at al. (2010) Neurobehavioral Dynamics Following Chronic Sleep Restriction: Dose-Response Effects of One Night for Recovery (This is the study referred to in a CNN blog.)

Deurveilher et al. (2014) Psychomotor Vigilance Task Performance During and Following Chronic Sleep Restriction in Rats

Rupp et al. (2009) Banking Sleep: Realization of Benefits During Subsequent Sleep Restriction and Recovery and Sleep history affects task acquisition during subsequent sleep restriction and recovery

Pilcher and Huffcutt (1996) Effects of sleep deprivation on performance: a meta-analysis

Reynolds et al., (1986) Sleep deprivation in healthy elderly men and women: effects on mood and on sleep during recovery.


Is using tensorflow for Spiking neural networks a "good" idea? I recently started working with Spiking Neural Networks and was hoping for some input from others. I saw there were many libraries/platforms specifically made for working with SNN's (Brian, PyNN, NEURON, etc...) however I was wondering if there were any tradeoffs in using plain, old popular Tensorflow for SNN implementation. Is there a reason that it is underresearched? Has anyone tried or working on this?
Thanks for any feedback anyone can offer,

One of the key issues with spiking neural networks is that while SNN are computationally more powerful than the so called 2nd generation neural networks (artificial neural networks), they are also computationally 'much' more expensive. This means you need a lot of computational power to effectively use them, and limits their use by the wider data science community and therefore the development of the method, which is mostly stuck in research groups. Many of whom are working on the issue of efficiency, while IBM amongst others is working on the hardware issue.
Another issue for the poor adoption and development of SNNs is that, at the time of writing, they are not able to effectively conducting supervised learning. So while SNNs are good at dealing with specific  tasks for which they have been hard coded, they are not generally applicable to a wider range of problems without considerable coding. By comparison ANNs are highly versatile and easily applicable to a wide range of data science problems. It has been suggested elsewhere that for SNNs to be general purpose, we would need to more accurately mimic learning in the mammalian brain in order to conduct supervised learning tasks. There are recent steps in the right direction that take a simplified approach by adding a reward process in to the NN, which in my opinion (with a background in 'reward systems') is a good start. But this is all very recent compared to ANNs, and really the 'further research is required' slogan strongly applies before SNNs are more widely adopted within both data science and computational psychology/neuroscience. Although as you can see here the TensorFlow community is starting to work on utilising SNNs. Google (TensorFlow) itself is well onboard with studying SNNs, and is one of the strongest leaders in the field of machine learning, so you should expect to see a lot more work from google here, which will spread the the wider data science community. With that said I cannot see a reason not to use TensorFlow, it is, however, worth looking into IBMs ML offerings too given there interest in developing hardware for SNNs, and how Snap ML out performs TensorFlow.
In summary, SNNs are computationally powerful in theory, but are computationally expensive compared to ANNs with current technology. SNNs also have a supervised learning problem which means that this need to be developed to allow SNNs to be used more generally, and wider adoption. This would lead to more use of SNNs and therefore more development. SNNs are likely a future of machine learning as research and technology develops, but its currently mostly limited to academic investigation and understanding.


A formal term for overcoming something, or getting over something I am trying to find a correct psychological term for a specific type of behavior.

When a person is trying to distance themselves from past suffering by projecting an idea of "I'm over it" to others. Trying to convince others and maybe even themselves that they've overcome something.

For example, a person who has suffered depression is trying to project an idea of "I'm over it and never going back" to another person suffering from depression.

A similar example would be about two people dealing with divorce or breakup and one person tries to project that they are over it not wanting to feel the pain or suffering that the other person is experiencing.

Is it distancing? Is it disengagement?
Since there are different types of distancing, some positive some negative, what type is this?
Is it overcompensating?
Or something else completely?

The term you are looking for is probably dissociation.

There is a range or continuum of experiences that can be subsumed under "dissociation", going from mild to pathological. On the pathological end of the continuum, for example, there is dissociative identity disorder.

Dissociation is technically a kind of defence mechanism. See for example the article Dissociation Isn't a Life Skill on Psychology Today. The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation has a long list of Dissociation FAQs.


What is the definition of pathology? While trying to get more information for my previous question, I found several different definitions for the terms "pathology" and "pathological." While under normal circumstances I'd be inclined to say the latter stems from the former, there seems to be heavy connotation where terms such as "pathological liar" are concerned.

One of the definitions at dictionary.com states:

  Caused by or evidencing a mentally disturbed condition

Seems a bit vague, to me. Can anyone clarify this?

I think the answer can actually be found in the Dictionary.com link you cite:

  -ological; suffix;
  used to form adjectives; belonging or relating to a particular type of scientific study;
  e.g. biological, technological

And (taken from Wikipedia):

  The word pathology is from Ancient Greek πάθος, pathos, "feeling, suffering"; and -λογία, -logia, "the study of".

So pathological would be:

  an adjective describing a thing that belongs or relates to suffering or the feeling of suffering.

(literally translated, of course)

So we can see that it's not just disease-related (suffering) but also mental health-related (feeling of suffering).


How is at called when a person can't feel the sense of recognition? I meet a person who doesn't feel a sense of recognition. When for example forgetting a name, and you give them a few choices, they can tell you whether one of the choices feels "right" through a corresponding bodily sensation.

How is it called when a person can't feel such a sense of recognition?

There are several conditions associated with a disconnect between the feeling of recognizing something, the ability to name something, the ability to react to something appropriately, etc. called agnosias.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosia

EDIT: See also "capgras delusion", which is possibly a more extreme version of what you're describing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capgras_delusion


How to ask in a survey for emotional vs. rational personality In a survey I would like to find out the correlation between different factors based on the personal dimension "being more emotional vs. rational".
Are there any known studies with items that could be used to differentiate between those two personalities or validated items in general about this topic?

I know that Helen Fisher, who is a love researcher, has developed a four factor personality model where two of the factors are quite relevant to your question. See (Fisher et al, 2015) for some general information regarding the personality model. The two factors that are relevant to your question are called (1) analytical/tough-minded, and (2) Prosocial/empathetic.

I will now show a few of the questions that load on the two factors:

Analytical/Tough-minded:

I pursue intellectual topics thoroughly and regularly
Debating is a good way to match my wits with others
I am intrigued by rules and patterns that govern systems
I am more analytical and logical than most people
I am able to solve problems without letting emotion get in the way
When making a decision, I like to stick to the facts rather than be swayed by people’s feelings

Prosocial/Empathetic:

I like to get to know my friends’ deepest needs and feelings
I highly value deep emotional intimacy in my relationships
Regardless of what is logical, I generally listen to my heart when making important decisions
After watching an emotional film, I often still feel moved by it several hours later
I am very sensitive to people’s feelings and needs
I feel emotions more deeply than most people

See (Fisher et al, 2010) for the rest of the questions. She has also conducted some research on the neural correlates of these personality types which might be of interest, see (Brown et al, 2013).

Another thing you may look at is the empathy and systemizing quotient, see for example (Groen et al, 2015). I believe the idea was originally developed by Simon Baron-Cohen.

This is far from a comprehensive answer, and I don't know how solid and well-established the research it. However, it may be a helpful starting point for you.

References:

Fisher, Island, Rich, Marchalik, Brown (2015). Four broad temperament dimensions: description, convergent validation correlations, and comparison with the Big Five. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01098

Fisher, Rich, Island, Marchalik (2010). The second to fourth digit ratio: A measure of two hormonally-based temperament dimensions. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2010.06.027

Brown, Acevedo, Fisher (2013). Neural Correlates of Four Broad Temperament Dimensions: Testing Predictions for a Novel Construct of Personality. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0078734

Groen, Fuermaier, Den Heijer, Tucha, Althaus (2015). The Empathy and Systemizing Quotient: The Psychometric Properties of the Dutch Version and a Review of the Cross-Cultural Stability. DOI: 10.1007/s10803-015-2448-z


Can you get addicted from using topical or local anaesthetics to ease pain? I've been wondering if there was such a thing as developing some kind of physical or psychological dependence on things that relieve pain. While we often hear about opioid addiction, which is primarily physical, I wonder if someone could psychologically be hooked on using something like lidocaine to numb every bruise or injury they get, just to numb the pain.

I did hear that cocaine was once used as an anaesthetic, but it was also physically addicting.
This makes me wonder if physical withdrawal and hunger cravings are similar.

Short answer
Basing an answer strictly on the DSM-V criteria, local anesthetics may, purely hypothetically, be associated with a mild form of addiction. But realistically, I think it is unlikely that a person (ab)using a topical anesthetic will ever be medically diagnosed as having a substance abuse disorder.

Background
I think the question hinges on the definition of [drug] addiction. The APA addresses addiction in DSM-V by the following criteria (entered in shortened form for brevity):

  A minimum of 2-3 criteria is required for a mild substance use
  disorder diagnosis, while 4-5 is moderate, and 6-7 is severe [...]

  Taking the opioid in larger amounts and for longer than intended
  Wanting to cut down or quit but not being able to do it
  Spending a lot of time obtaining the opioid
  Craving or a strong desire to use opioids
  Repeatedly unable to carry out major obligations at work, school, or home [...]
  Continued use despite [...] social or interpersonal problems [...]
  Stopping or reducing important social, occupational, or recreational activities [...]
  Recurrent use of opioids in physically hazardous situations
  Consistent use of opioids despite [...] physical or psychological difficulties [...]
  [Development of t]olerance [...]
  [Development of w]ithdrawal [symptoms]

In contrast to opiates, lidocaine has no rewarding or addictive properties. As a result, lidocaine can be used systemically and on a long-term basis for the treatment of chronic pain (Yousefshahi et al., 2017). In fact, lidocaine, has equally effective anelgesic effects in people addicted to opioids as in normal controls (Hashemian et al., 2013). Because lidocaine is a local anesthetic without central effects, and taken together with above findings, we can safely rule out the occurrence all of the criteria except, perhaps, the first three. Those first three may be, at least hypothetically, possible when topical or systemic application relieves some sort of untolerable pain. Given that meeting 3 criteria meets the definition of a mild substance abuse disorder (mild addiction), I wouldn't rule addiction to topical anesthetics out completely. It does seem unlikely, though.

Cocaine has strong addicitve effects, because of it's pronounced effects in the central nervous system - it is associated with strong feelings of reward and euphoria. It rapidly induces tolerance as well as dependence; a school book example of a substance of abuse. Lidocaine is a cocaine derivative that still exhibits its anelgesic properties, without its psychoactive component (Small, 2009).

References
- Hashemian et al., J Emerg Trauma Shock (2014); 7(4): 301–4
- Small, Subst Use Misuse (2009); 44(13): 1888-98
- Yousefshahi et al., Anesth Pain Med (2017); 7(3): e44732


Has the Open-Source Psychometrics Project been well received by the community? I am not a psychologist/psychology student, but I've just recently discovered the Open-Source Psychometrics Project, and I think it's great.

To my untrained eyes, it seems like they have solid methodology and are collecting a huge amount of data: https://openpsychometrics.org/_rawdata/

But I'm wondering how it's been received by the research psychology community?

Is it considered a reputable data source?

Have there been any serious evaluations of its methodology or data?

As a matter of anecdote, I've used some of this data for teaching purposes, and I've heard of others doing the same.

As Bryan notes, there is a list of journal articles that have used the data: https://openpsychometrics.org/_rawdata/cited/ This includes many well-regarded journals in personality and individual differences research.

One main limitation is that the data tends to be based around single scales. In contrast, I imagine in a lot of uses cases for potential publications rely on relating multiple scales with each other.

That said, I imagine these datasets could be useful for examining various general questions about scale properties and test structure. You could also  look at  demographic correlates of test scores. And the data would be interesting if you were interested in the psychometric properties of the specific tests that are reported.

A second limitation is that there seems to be limited information about the nature of data collection and data cleaning. That said, for many purposes, a massive online convenience sample of online participants may be useful.


Biologically plausible cognitive model of Wisconsin card sorting task As discussed previously, there are a wide range of models that have been applied to the Wisconsin card sorting task. However, which one is most biologically plausible? That is, uses a realistic model of neurons, respects the constraints of the human brain and maps readily onto experimental data.

Amos (2000) and Monchi et al. (2000) use the similar approach of assigning each card attribute to a node and using mutual inhibition to choose the right one. Although their models are biologically plausible and make many neuroanatomical predictions, they are functionally implausible. Their networks are created for the unique purpose of of completing the WCST. This type of specialization isn't found in the brain as far as I know. I'm also having a really hard time understanding on Monchi is using Leaky-Integrate-Fire neurons to compute functions, but that might be a topic for another question.

Rougier et al. (2005) use Leabra, which has been criticized for it's lack of biological plausibility. For further elaboration on these criticism, which is mostly centered around the biologically-implausible use of a Winner-Takes-All computational block being used, check out How to Build a Brain by Chris Eliasmith.

Bishra et al. (2010) only define symbolic rules. There's no neuroanatomical mapping. Consequently, although they claim tuned parameters could predict performance, there doesn't seem to any definition of where these parameters come from.

In conclusion, although none of the approaches are perfectly biologically plausible, Amos and Monchi seem to definitely come out on top. Although hard-coded concepts such as the possible parameters for matching are totally acceptable, a model that integrates with a larger more general system while remaining biologically plausible would be ideal.


What is the closest scientific branch to cognitive science? I was thinking about studying this awesome science but, unfortunately, it's not being taught anywhere in my country (Czechia). What is the closest scientific branch to cognitive sciences?

As @Lucianopaz said in his answer, this question is very broad and depends on what area of Cognitive Science you are interested in.

Cognitive Science is an "umbrella term" or a "collective term" for many different sciences.

As the link I provided says, there are 6 main sciences within the collection;

Philosophy
Linguistics
Anthropology
Neuroscience
AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Psychology

but within those sciences there are branches.

Take Psychology for example, and you could specialise in Social Psychology, Behavioural Psychology, Criminal Psychology... the list goes on.

You need to work out what interests you within this collection of sciences to work out what you want to study in college and university.


Term for "That feeling that in a game you don't get items that you really need" I've heard people in games mention that the game is programmed so that when you really need an item the game will not give it to you. You only get items that you don't currently need.

I think this is BS and it's peoples minds playing tricks on them. What is the term for this kind of trick playing your brain does? It must be related to the awareness you have of a particular item when you need it and the anxiety associated with the situation every time you don't get it.

Sounds like an example of the availability heuristic.

  Availability heuristic: The process whereby judgments of frequency or probability are based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind.

You're more likely to notice when you don't get your way, which makes that event stand out to you. That combined with how people tend to not notice how frequently things do go our way because there isn't a negative emotion associated with that experience (I would assume) could make it seem like the game is rigged. Then again, I don't know anything about video game design so it could be part of how it is programmed.


Is there a correlation between facial features and personality? Background: From block buster movies, to Snow White and the Seven Dwarf's, characters with certain personality and mental traits are portrayed looking a certain way. For example, the clumsy one has big ears or the antagonist has dark hair and the protagonist has a strong jaw line. These characteristics seem to be pretty consistent over time and in different types of media.

Do facial/body features shape the brain or does the brain shape the body or are they completely separate with no connection?

Question:
Is there a correlation between facial features and personality?

Inheritability of facial features

Let's start with the origin of specific facial features. Below is a table which shows averaged heritabilities for a range of facial quantitative traits from a large number of studies, from the review by Kohn (1991):

where $h^2$ is the narrow-sense heritability. You can clearly see that heritability in the majority of the features is well above 0.5, in fact the overall mean from all the features is 0.72 (with standard deviation 0.18). To put it in the context, this review shows that facial features are typically more heritable than behavioural traits (usually less then 0.50), but less heritable than the height (0.8-0.9). At this point we can conclude that a substantial part of the variability in facial features can be explained by the inheritance (i.e. genetic factors).

Cognitive aspects of physiognomy

As @Xurtio pointed out, physiognomy gained and lost popularity several times in history. In general, modern science is sceptical towards the traditional approach to physiognomy (i.e. specific facial features correlate with objective personality traits). However, there is a strong interest in attribution of personality traits to specific facial features. Hassin and Trope (2000) conducted a number of experiments examining the cognitive aspects of physiognomy. In examining "reading from faces" authors demonstrated that physiognomic information changes the interpretation of verbal information. The more ambiguous this information is, the more perceivers use the face. Furthermore, even when asked to, participants were unable to ignore people's faces while simulating decisions regarding personnel selection, although they are quite sure that they are able to do so (Hassin and Trope, 2000). Finally, physiognomic information makes us highly overconfident about our judgments - our confidence in physiognomy-based judgments far exceeds the actual accuracy of these judgments.

We all know that face is powerful information channel that is used to communicate a broad spectrum of emotions, more or less universally across cultures (Ekman et al., 1971). We also have dedicated brain areas specialised in decoding facial information, for example Face Fusiform Area (FFA) that contributes to facial recognition (Sergent et al., 1992). It is therefore not surprising that we all attribute so much to the specific facial features. And that we are biased in making personality judgements based on facial features, as showed by Hassin and Trope (2000).

Regarding the direct correlation between facial features and objective personality traits, there are no systematic empirical studies that support such links (as for September 2015).

References

Kohn, L. A. P. (1991) The Role of Genetics in Craniofacial Morphology and Growth.
Annual Review of Anthropology 20, 261-278.

Hassin, R., Trope, Y. (2000) Facing faces: Studies on the cognitive aspects of physiognomy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 5, 837-852.

Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1971). Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17(2), 124–129.

Sergent, J., Ohta, S., MacDonald, B. (1992) Functional neuroanatomy of face and object processing. A positron emission tomography study. Brain 115, 1, 15–36.


Difference between the cingulate gyrus and the cingulate cortex I am doing an analysis of the brain of the Creature in Frankenstein by looking at its actions and experiences from a scientific perspective. For this, I was wondering:

What is the difference between the Cingulate Gyrus and the Cingulate Cortex?
What is the function of these structures?

Short answer
The cingulate gyrus and cingulate sulcus are the two components that make up the cingulate cortex. The cingulate cortex is involved in emotions, self-control, and problem solving.

Background
In terms of the anatomy of the cingulate area in the brain the following nomenclature is important:

Cerebral cortex: the few-millimeters of superficial layer of the brain with its characteristic foldings in higher animalia;
The cortical foldings result in the formation of sulci and gyri (plural for sulcus and gyrus). Sulci are grooves, gyri are ridges. These wrinkles increase the cortical surface and allow more neurons to be packed onto the brain. Cortical neurons are important for higher cognitive functions, explaining why higher primates have a high density of sulci and gyri.
The cingulate cortex comprises one sulcus and one gyrus: the cingulate sulcus and cingulate gyrus (Fig. 1) (Kandel et al., 2000). Hence, the cingulate gyrus is part of the cingulate cortex.

Regarding the functions associated with the cingulate region - The cingulate cortex is an integral part of the limbic system. The limbic system is the emotional control center of the brain. The cingulate cortex as such is involved in emotional self-control, focused problem solving, error recognition, and adaptive response to changing conditions (Allman et al, 2001). Especially the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has received special attention, as it connects the limbic system with the “cognitive” prefrontal cortex. The ACC is thought to integrate the neuronal circuitry for affect regulation and a locus responsible for affective disorders (Stevens et al, 2011).

Fig. 1. The cingulate cortex comprises one sulcus and one gyrus. source: Wikipedia

References
- Allman et al, Annals NY Acad Sci (2001); 935: 107-17
- Kandel et al., The anatomical organization of the central nervous system. In: Principles of neural science 4the ed. (2000)
- Stevens et al., J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci; 23(2): Spring 2011


Is implicit and explicit memory a useful distinction? In principle I understand the distinction. Implicit memory is not consciously recollected but has an automatic character i.e. while I'm solving a task in math, I'm automatically using the concept of numbers and maybe even counting which I have stored in my memory. Explicit memory on the other hand is the conscious recollection of particular bits of memory, like explicitly counting up to ten or maybe remembering my birthday.

What I'm wondering is this: Isn't this distinction somewhat arbitrary? Even if I consciously use a certain piece of memory to solve a task, isn't it the case that I still don't know how I manage to access this particular memory? And is this even only about memory? To me it seems that everything can be stored in some way (how I breathe, my birthday and the range of things I do when taking a shower) and isn't that the only type of memory we have? Shouldn't the distinction then be about how we use the things we have memorized? I mean is there evidence that implicit memory is stored in a structurally different way than explicit memory? Or am I focussing on the wrong question?

I'm asking this question out of pure interest as a cognitive linguist who doesn't have much to do with memory right now.

No, the distinction is real, not arbitrary. Implicit and explicit memory show different hallmark behavioral characteristics. A good overview of the difference between explicit and implicit memory is available in the MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences. The wikipedia page on implicit memory also has some useful information.
Perhaps the most important piece of evidence we have for this distinction is not behavioral, but from a double dissociation in neuropsychology: some brain damaged patients have impaired implicit memory but intact explicit memory, whereas others have impaired explicit memory but intact implicit memory (e.g. Gabrieli et al, 1995). This is possible because implicit and explicit memory are thought to have separate neural substrates (e.g. Squire, 1992).
There are a lot of questions in your second paragraph and I'm not quite sure I follow. But to be clear, implicit/explicit memory is not the only distinction one can make on memory systems. It is one of many.

Gabrieli, J. D., Fleischman, D. A., Keane, M. M., Reminger, S. L., & Morrell, F. (1995). Double dissociation between memory systems underlying explicit and implicit memory in the human brain. Psychological Science, 6(2), 76-82.
Squire, L. R. (1992). Memory and the hippocampus: a synthesis from findings with rats, monkeys, and humans. Psychological review, 99(2), 195.
Chicago


Are social intelligence and emotional intelligence the same thing? Emotional intelligence and EQ are often used as phrases for social intelligence.

Are they really the same? Would social intelligence always imply emotional intelligence and vice versa?

These terms are defined by the underlying theory of Intelligence.  For example:

Social Intelligence (SI) comes from a definition by Edward Thorndike in 1920.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) (or EQ - Q=Quota) first appeared in a 1964 paper by Michael Beldoch, later by Goleman.
Then there is Interpersonal & Intrapersonal Intelligences from Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence theory.

Generally speaking, they pertain to similar concepts with some overlap from theory to theory.  When speaking of this type of intelligence it is often recommended to cite the theory the discussion is based on.