Is general intelligence meant to underlie all intelligence? Is general intelligence, supposedly measured by IQ, meant to underlie all intelligence, be the thing that accounts for all intelligence / ability, or does all intelligence account for general intelligence? Who claims the former, that g is more basic, and why do they claim that?

I think the question matters a little, because, if it doesn't, then IQ scores are a product of learning and teaching successes, rather than vice versa -- given that ability in any sphere [mathematics e.g.] is not innate.

Is general intelligence meant to underlie all intelligence?

I don't know what you are trying to ask.  Are you trying to ask if general intelligence is the basis of all other intelligence?  If this is what you are indeed asking, the answer is no.  Long ago, scientists thought of g, general intelligence to be a number that encapsulates the sum of all of one's different intellectual abilities.  (I know.  It sounds vague and doesn't sound very scientific.)  I don't think they intended to mean that g was like some precursor to each type of intellectual process and thus, the best indicator of a person's intelligence.

  Is g, measured by IQ, the basis of a person's intellectual abilities
  or does a person's overall intelligence lead to a number, g?  Who
  claims the former and why?

I reworded this person's question because it wasn't very clear as written.  I also think the question is almost exactly the same as the first question, except the person also asks who believes in g as the basis of intelligence.

There was once a time that most scientists and other experts in the field of intelligence believed in the concept of g, a number that encapsulates all the intellectual abilities of that person into one simple score.

As it still happens frequently today, in the early 1990's, there was a remarkable discrepancy in what most scientists believed intelligence was and what popular news articles and media such as movies believed.  (This is a topic for a different question but it amazes me sometimes the huge difference between what scientists believe and what the public believes.  I personally don't think this vast difference just happens by accident.  The information conveyed to the public is usually distorted intentionally.)

Anyway, going back.  In 1994, scientists in the field of intelligence were shocked by the public's completely backward notions of what intelligence was.  The media was apparently butchering what scientists were saying.  As a result, some 50 leading scientists and experts in the intelligence community signed a list of statements that was published in the Wall Street Journal, expressing dismay at the media's incorrect depiction of intelligence.  This public statement was titled "Mainstream Science on Intelligence".  It stated facts that were widely accepted by scientists and experts in the study of intelligence.  Some of these statements were:

IQ can be measured well and IQ tests are very accurate.
There are different types of intelligence tests but there is only one type of intelligence.
Intelligence tests are not culturally biased.

Such outrage by the scientific community!  What a shock!  Why would the media intentionally distort what the real science was?

Well, all these questions became moot because something really ironic occurred.
 It was determined that most of the claims made by Mainstream Science on Intelligence were wrong!  It's ironic but no reputable scientist or expert in intelligence today would ever sign that statement that they had once so confidently signed and published in the Wall Street Journal.  Studies made during and after the 1990's, actually disproved most of the statements in Mainstream Science on Intelligence.  Scientists did a complete 180-degree turn.  The lying media turned out to be right!

What's more ironic is that there are now laypeople who believe in the statements made by Mainstream Science on Intelligence.  Not scientists but laypeople who haven't been keeping up with the science.  They are accepting the statements made in the Mainstream Science on Intelligence as true.  They believe things like IQ is an accurate and precise measure of general intelligence, g.  Or, g actually is a great indicator of how smart a person generally is.  Funny, no?

Anyway, the original question had asked who claims that general intelligence underlies all intelligence.  I don't think anyone believes this.  I never heard of anyone who believes that there are some group of genes (aka g) that has an effect on all our intellectual abilities and is the factor that mainly accounts for a person's intelligence.  Next question...

  I think the question matters a little, because, if it doesn't, then IQ
  scores are a product of learning and teaching successes, rather than
  vice versa -- given that ability in any sphere [mathematics e.g.] is
  not innate.

I didn't understand this question.  How did you logically conclude "IQ scores [are] a product of learning and teaching successes" since "IQ scores [are] incorrect representation of intelligence"?  It happens to be true but how did you conclude that from anything you said before or after?  And, what do you mean by vice-versa?  It doesn't make sense.

To set the record straight, there is no such thing as a g that represents the general intelligence of a person.  Just because you are good at one thing, it's been determined that you might not be necessarily good at other intellectual pursuits.  I strongly believe this to be true.  Research has proven it.  And, you personally see instances of this in real life.

Let me also state that an IQ test is also a very inaccurate method to measure intelligence, especially at the tail-end of the distribution on the right side.  Furthermore, please keep in mind that the scientific field of intelligence is actually still in its infancy.  Many basic concepts are still unproven to be true or not.  We are still learning about ourselves.  Current studies include determining what types of events appear in what part of the brain.  It's all so very new.


What is the neurological basis of bipolar disorder? Many sources claim that bipolar disorder is associated with problems in the homeostasis of excitatory neurotransmitters.

Is this true? What are the leading theories about neurological causes for bipolar disorder?

The exact cause of bipolar disorder is unknown (source: NHS). It is believed that there are a number of interacting physical, environmental and social factors that may cause bipolar disorder to develop.

Chemical imbalance in the brain: Bipolar disorder is believed to be the result of chemical imbalances in the brain, and noradrenaline has been implicated (Young et al., 1994). Noradrenalin (norepinephrine) in the central nervous system regulates arousal and modulates reward circuitry and positive reinforcement. Many antidepressant drugs target noradrenergic projections to alleviate symptoms of depression (Trevino et al, 2012). There is evidence that episodes of mania may occur when levels of noradrenaline are too high, and episodes of depression may be the result of noradrenaline levels becoming too low (source: NHS). Reduced serotonin levels have been found too, which is a general hallmark of depression and not specifically related to bipolar disorder (Young et al., 1994).
Genetics: bipolar disorder tends to run in families (Lichtenstein et al., 2009. The family members of a person with the condition have an increased risk of developing it themselves. However, no single gene is responsible for bipolar disorder. Instead, a number of genetic and environmental factors are thought to act as triggers (sources: NHS and Mayo Clinic).
Triggers: A stressful circumstance or situation often triggers the symptoms of bipolar disorder, e.g., physical, sexual or emotional abuse, or
the death of a close family member. These life-altering events can cause episodes of depression at any time in a person's life. Bipolar disorder may also be triggered by physical illness, sleep disturbances, overwhelming problems in everyday life (sources: NHS and Mayo Clinic).

References
- Lichtenstein et al., Lancet (2009); 373(9659): 234–9
- Trevino et al, Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (2012), 2nd ed.
- Young et al., Biol Psychiatry (1994); 35(2): 121–7


How do some humans seemingly naturally have positive or mitigated appraisal of stressful events? Appraisal is how an individual interprets a stressful event or a problem. For recurring problems, I understand that there are neuroanatomical structures that play a role in the appraisal of recurrent problems, problems of a certain type that are encountered frequently. For example, the hippocampus is important in the development of episodic memories, and the amygdala plays a role in fear processing. If we exclude individuals with significant lesions to these areas, we have a population of individuals with these same neuroanatomical structures. However, you can find that some individuals have different appraisals of problems. While these structures are biological intermediaries to cognition, the results are different. How, and why?

For example, this can have implications in sports. Two players of a professional basketball team could both be the most skilled players on their respective teams with a terrible supporting cast of teammates. One player who views this lack of talent as a challenge could take it upon himself to galvanize his teammates and "carry his team on his back", leading to a successful team performance. However, the other player could view his lack of surrounding talent as a detriment, a crutch, and let frustration contribute to his anxiety, leading to a team's downfall.

Moreover, appraisal could lead to nonchalant perspectives of certain problems, which leads to stress reduction in some scenarios. Back to the sports analogies. In sports, it is said that an optimal trait of a quality defender is "short term memory" in the sense that if opponents have scored on them, the defender does not let this event contribute to future encounters defending opponents. That is, the defender does not think to him/herself, "I got scored on last time, oh no", which leads to a compounding lack of confidence and eventually, performance.

A natural psychological explanation could be upbringing or priming, but I can find individuals who grew in stressful environments who can handle stress well, and can't handle stress well. Moreover, I can find individuals who grew in environments where stress was not a significant factor, and again, you can find people who handle stress well and those who don't handle stress well.

The interactions among several factors probably account for variability in reactivity to stressful events, including genetics, epigenetics, early life experience, and culture (e.g., Alexander et al., 2009; Boyce & Ellis, 2005; Francis, Frances, Liu, & Meaney, 2006; Gunthert et al., 2007; Meaney, 2001).  And individual differences are observable at multiple levels of analysis, including behavior, physiology, and brain structure and function.

On the one hand, there is a huge literature on the development of emotion regulation in children (e.g., positive appraisal of stressful events).  For example, there are models charting the complex influence of the family on emotion regulation development, where parenting practices interact with child characteristics to influence emotion regulation success and strategy use (Morris et al., 2007):

Positive (re)appraisal requires good cognitive control and working memory (McRae et al., 2012), which is associated with functional and structural integrity of cortical areas, most notably prefrontal cortex (Goldsmith, Pollack, & Davidson, 2008; Levesque et al., 2004; Lewis & Stieben, 2004; McRae et al., 2012).  And the ability of PFC to dampen negative affect seems to be mediated by functional connectivity with subcortical areas, notably bilateral amygdala (Banks et al., 2007; Buhle et al., 2014; Wager et al., 2008).

Positive reappraisal also benefits from practice, which forms part of the basis of cognitive-behavioral therapy (Beck, 2011; Goldin et al., 2012; Goldin et al., 2013).

Additionally, there is emerging evidence that genes (and gene-environment interactions) are related to emotion regulation strategy use and effectiveness (e.g., 5-HTT, OXTR; Canli & Lesch, 2007; Hariri & Holmes, 2006; Kim et al., 2011).  So genetic factors may promote resilience even in stressful environments.

Conclusion

So as you can see, there is a large host of factors that contribute to one's tendency to appraise (negatively or positively) a stressful situation. And indeed, you may see large within-person variability in the tendency to make positive appraisals, especially as the context changes (Aldao & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2012). Not to mention, positive appraisal may not always be a beneficial way to mitigate stress, and may instead sometimes be harmful or ineffective (Troy, Shallcross, & Mauss, 2013).


Does sleep-talking typically happen during NREM or REM sleep? I have observed some of my mother's sleep-talking and have even attempted to reply / speak to her during such episodes.

In my experience, I have found sleep-talking to be a part of her dream. In some cases, when she sounded panicky, I have even woken her up partially to rescue her from panic, only to have her drowsily explain that she was dreaming.

However this article by Teodora Stoica in the Scientific American (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-do-we-sleep/) says that sleep-talking happens during NREM sleep and not during REM sleep when dreaming occurs:

  Onto stage 3 and 4, characterized by delta waves, the slowest and highest amplitude brain waves, the most unlike waking brain waves. Since delta sleep is the deepest sleep, it is the most difficult stage in which to wake sleepers, and when they are awakened, they are usually sleepy and disoriented. Interestingly, delta sleep is when sleep walking and sleep talking is most likely to occur.

Could the experts here please shed some light on sleep-talking and its relation (or lack thereof) to dreaming?

It seems like there is a common idea that dreaming occurs only during REM sleep, but I'm not quite sure why this persists. Scientists interested in sleep and dreaming have known for a long time that dreams occur in both NREM and REM sleep, and there are many papers comparing NREM to REM dreams.

Cavallero, C., Cicogna, P., Natale, V., Occhionero, M., & Zito, A. (1992). Slow wave sleep dreaming. Sleep, 15(6), 562-566.

A fairly old paper on sleep talking concludes:

  The distribution of sleep-talking incidents by time of night does not differ significantly from a random distribution.

  Sleep talking occurs both in REM
  (rapid eye movement) and NREM (no rapid
  eye movement) stages of sleep.

  Sleep-talking incidents occurring during REM periods were different in character
  from those occurring in NREM periods

Of note, in looking at their data:

  Of the 84 sleep-talking incidents, 7 (8%) occurred in REM periods, 53 (63%) occurred in Stage 2, and 24 (29%) in Stages 3 and 4.

Therefore, it does appear that there are fewer events during REM sleep, but because REM sleep is a smaller fraction of the night this difference is exaggerated.

Related to dreaming,

  Only 2 awakenings were made following REM sleep-talking incidents. Both REM awakenings produced detailed reports of "disturbing" dreams.

and

  By any of the usual criteria, one would say
  that subjects are dreaming while speaking
  during REM periods. All of the recent data
  on the relationship between dreaming and
  REM periods indicate that dreams occur
  during these periods.

However:

  if we accept the NREM
  waking report of mental activity as repre
  sentative of the mental activity that was
  actually occurring during the incident, we
  would describe these mental experiences as
  less "dreamlike" than the REM experiences.

Therefore, it seems like sleep-talking during REM is more associated with dreaming; sleep-talking with NREM may not be, and may be more associated with internal thoughts or just brief arousals.

Rechtschaffen, A., Goodenough, D. R., & Shapiro, A. (1962). Patterns of sleep talking. Archives of General Psychiatry, 7(6), 418-426.


How to interpret HLM analyses looking at work group and individual worker effects? Liden et al (2004, PDF) is an example of a study examining employees in work groups in an organisation. Thus, measures are obtained of both individual workers and of the work groups that they belong too. The data is analysed using multilevel modelling (or what the paper calls HLM).

How can the HLM results in the paper be explained in a way that is meaningful for someone with only a basic level of statistical knowledge?
What resources could help someone with only a basic level of statistical knowledge understand the paper?

Note: The above questions are based on an email I received asking about how to interpret the results of Liden et al (2004). I'll probably add an answer. But I thought others might also have answers, and that the answer might be relevant to others.

The abstract:

  Social loaﬁng was investigated by testing a multilevel model among 23
  intact work groups comprised of 168 employees representing two
  organizations. Results demonstrated that as hypothesized at the
  individual level, increases in task interdependence and decreases in
  task visibility and distributive justice were associated with greater
  occurrence of social loaﬁng. At the group level, increased group size
  and decreased cohesiveness were related to increased levels of social
  loaﬁng. Of particular interest was the ﬁnding that group member
  perceptions of perceived coworker loaﬁng was associated with reduced
  social loaﬁng, opposite of our predictions. We suggested that this
  unexpected ﬁnding may provide evidence of a social compensation
  effect.

References

Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A., & Bennett, N. (2004). Social loafing: A field investigation. Journal of Management, 30(2), 285-304. PDF

Tutorials on HLM

Ultimately the paper assumes that you understand  HLM.
HLM analysis is a bit more complex than multiple regression because it deals with multiple levels of variance.

There are various tutorials and readings that can bring you up to speed:

Woltman et al (2012) in particular provide a quantitative psychology tutorial.
For a textbook treatment you could check out Raudenbush and Bryk (2002).

Interpreting Liden et al (2004)

The study uses a bunch of variables some at the individual level and some at the group-level. There are 168 participants in something like 23 groups (although there may have been some deletion of groups with insufficient interrater reliability).

The study reports individual and group level correlation matrices of these variables. Group level measures are presumably the mean of the individual group members.

The study often mentions $r_{wg}$, ICC(1) and ICC(2). These are all indices of within group rating agreement. A general assumption of multilevel research is that if you are going to aggregate individuals into group level scores, then individuals within groups should be more similar to each other than across groups. Thus, these three indices are used to justify aggregation into groups. See LeBreton and Senter (2008) for a discussion of how interrater agreement indices can be used in organisational research.

The main HLM predicts social loafing from both group and individual level variables. They estimate that 49.99% of the variance in social loafing can be explained by group differences. So in summary, some groups engage in more social loafing than others. Nonetheless, there is still variation in social loafing within groups (e.g., loafers in non-loafing groups, and non-loafers in loafing groups).

The authors then go on to analyse what predicts variation within groups using individual level measures. In Table 3 shows a model with four predictors. For example, it shows that individuals with more task interdependence are more likely to engage in social loafing as indicated by the positive coefficient and the significant p-value. The authors note that they were able to explain 21.81% of the within-group variance in employee social loafing.

Then they report a group level analysis which predicts the variation in average social loafing in groups from other group-level variables. They find for example that larger, less cohesive groups have more group level social loafing. Not surprising, they also find that groups which perceive that others engage in social loafing do in fact engage in more social loafing. They find that 30.72% of the variance in group level variance is explained by these group level variables.

The HLM approach is thus a nice fit to studying workers who are situated in different work groups. You are able to examine both individual and group-level effects. This is consistent with a theory of behaviour in the workplace that says that behaviour is influenced by both individual characteristics as well as group dynamics.

References

LeBreton, J. M. & Senter,J. L. (2008). Answers to 20 Questions About Interrater Reliability and Interrater Agreement. Organizational Research Methods,11, p 815-852.
Woltman, H., Feldstain, A., MacKay, J. C., & Rocchi, M. (2012). An introduction to hierarchical linear modeling. Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 8(1), 52-69. PDF
Raudensbush, S.W. and Bryk, A.S. (2002). Hierarchical Linear Models, Sage
Publications.


Evolutionary game theory in the cognitive sciences Game theory models something very relevant to psychologists (in particular social psychologists): conflict and cooperation between decision-makers. Unfortunately, classical game theory demands that these decision makers are rational (in a mathematically precise sense). This definition of rationality is challenged empirically (by work like Tversky & Shafir) and on a theoretical level (by complexity results on finding or approximating Nash equilibria: a PPAD-complete problem).

Economists and mathematicians (and others) have taken two approaches to overcome this problem. The first is top-down approach of limiting the agent's abilities from an all-powerful rational agent down; this is the bounded rationality approach. The other is the bottom-up approach of evolutionary game theory: start with the simplest agents (that can't even make decisions) and have natural selection, imitation, or another simple dynamic process evolve the population over time. This seems to dove-tail nicely with the biogenic approach to cognition.

Are there examples of the tools of evolutionary game theory being used in social psychology or other sub-disciplines of the cognitive sciences? Is there a survey (or book) on EGT's impact on the cognitive sciences?

Related question

What are good examples of applying dynamical systems in cognitive science?

There are some mentions of Evolutionary Game Theory in this Behavior & Brain Sciences (BBS) article by Andrew Colman (2003). The main article itself only has a brief section on EGT. However, like all BBS articles, there are short commentary articles after the main article. A few of these deal directly with EGT. I was able to find the relevant articles within the larger document by doing a find for "evolutionary game theory".

There are a few references throughout the BBS article to studies within cognitive science using EGT. One particularly relevant one to your question is Colman & Wilson (1997). They modeled antisocial personality disorder in an evolutionary game, to show that stable states arise in a variety of situations in which some of the agents behave antisocially. They treat this as a model for explaining why there seems to be a relatively stable proportion of people who behave in an antisocial manner across societies.


Why does extrinsic motivation sometimes reduce intrinsic motivation? Why is it that if a person likes subject X but then when he gets paid for it he doesnt like it anymore. What causes this?

This effect has been termed Overjustification effect and was originally reported by Lepper, Greene & Nisbett (1973) who studied the influence of rewards on intrinsic motivated behavior.

Some theories hypothesize that the reward reduces the feeling of self-determination, which in turn reduces intrinsic motivation, because the reward induces the feeling of being controlled by the person that offered the reward.

References

Lepper MR, Greene D, Nisbett RE (1973). Undermining children's intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the 'overjustification' hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 28 (1): 129–137. doi:10.1037/h0035519.


Where can I find open data for psychology research on meditation? I would like to know how I can get free access to data obtained from psychological experiments conducted to study the effects of meditation on the brain. Ex : FMRI data and the like

Kaggle has a dataset of an EEG conducted on a meditation group versus a control.
Other than that, if you are looking for the raw datasets of fmri meditation studies, that may be a little more difficult. If you are fine with summary statistics, and some inferential tests (data that has already been analysed), then Google Scholar has many open source papers on the topic.


How many diagnosable mental disorders are included in the DSM? This Wikipedia page says:

  The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the American Psychiatric Association's standard reference for psychiatry which includes over 450 different definitions of mental disorders.

However, I haven't been able to find this information on any credible (government or academic) websites.

Is there a more credible source for determining the number of diagnosable mental disorders in the DSM?

I have not come up with a definitive answer myself as there is a wide range of figures online.

Michael Noll-Hussong states on ResearchGate

  The total number of specific diagnoses was reduced from 172 in DSM-IV to 157 in DSM-5.
  see, e.g., McCarron RM. The DSM-5 and the art of medicine: certainly uncertain. Annals of internal medicine. 2013;159(5):360-1.

I have recently managed to access this referenced article (DOI: 10.7326/0003-4819-159-7-201310010-00688) and it states

  The number of psychiatric disorders decreased from 172 (DSM-IV) to 152 (DSM-5). (This does not include disorders that are “Not otherwise specified” or “Other specified/unspecified.”)

The Huffington Post states that there are over 300 in DSM-5

Because of discrepancies in the information available I have seen, I have therefore, painstakingly gone through my copy of DSM-5 and pages 877—896 provide a

  Numerical Listing of DSM-5 Diagnoses and Codes (ICD-10-CM)

ICD-10 codes are provided for cross-referencing, and I have counted roughly 742 of them by saying that a full page has 45 and there are 20 pages with some listings taking more than 1 line.  The problem with the approximate figure of 742 is that in the list are items such as obesity which are not mental disorders.


What is the consequence for the MBTI in not having a neuroticism factor? This very interesting question:
Do the Jungian Cognitive Functions/ Processes really exist? is dealing with neuroscientific attempts to show Jungian functions and preferences exists. In addition to that question can someone explain the following "Escher infinite staircase" situation.

MBTI is not exactly Jungian theory because they added judging perceiveing dimension. Also there is not neuroticism measured. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_cognitive_functions
MBTI and Big Five is possible to link as same psychological test in research by Costa and McCrea: http://www.leadu-library.com/mj/2007/club/MBTI/MBTI-5factor.pdf

Question:

How is the MBTI possible without neuroticism?

General observations:
As a general observation, I find that the MBTI is very popular in professional development contexts such as team building. In contrast, the Big 5 is very popular in research contexts.
Several obvious reasons exist for this.

MBTI is typically interpreted in terms of types rather than position on a continuum, whereas Big 5 is interpreted as a position on a continuum. Continuous models of personality are a more accurate representation of reality. Types are easier for people to understand and talk about.
MBTI aims to have no "bad poles" and is based on a Jungian theory. The Big 5 aims to describe personality in a parsimonious way and has been empirically developed through large-scale factor analytic work. Thus, MBTI types are more acceptable to people, whereas the Big 5 has a degree of social loading on several factors, in particular this can be seen in neuroticism.

Neuroticism in the MBTI: The McCrae and Costa (1989) study that you cite suggests that neuroticism is poorly captured by the MBTI. Neuroticism is a very robust personality dimension capturing various tendencies to experience stress, anxiety, depression, and various other negative emotions. It is generally the best correlate of many well-being and life satisfaction measures. It correlates highly with many outcomes. Thus, I would find the absence of something like a neuroticism factor to be a major shortcoming of a personality test, particularly were it to be used for research purposes.

References

McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1989). Reinterpreting the Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator From the Perspective of the Five‐Factor Model of Personality. Journal of personality, 57(1), 17-40.


What are the best known causes and treatments for apathy? Has any extensive research been done into what the most common causes of apathy are and are there any treatments with a highly reported success rate? If so, what are these?

For clarification of what apathy is, it is a state of desensitization, where subjects seem to strongly lack any observable moods, and have severely dampened feelings and/or emotions. One well known side effect is that apathetic people often struggle to motivate themselves to perform tasks.

(From wikipedia)

  Apathy is a lack of feeling, emotion, interest, and concern. Apathy is a state of indifference, or the suppression of emotions such as concern, excitement, motivation, and/or passion. An apathetic individual has an absence of interest in or concern about emotional, social, spiritual, philosophical, and/or physical life and the world.

Other questions specifically about apathy: What are the cognitive and neurological bases for apathy?

Some research about pathological apathy I was able to find: https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/26/2/807/2367142/Individual-Differences-in-Premotor-Brain-Systems (here's also an article)

Main causes of Apathy

There are 2 main ways that Apathy can manifest itself, and that is either through a mental health condition, or a physical medical condition. (APA, 2013 p. 682) (IDC-10 Code: F07)

I will list some mental health causes and physical causes below, but the main way of dealing with the apathy would depend on the cause.

Treatment for apathy

The way to treat apathy would be to treat the root cause, where possible, through psychotherapy, psychiatric help and/or other agency support.

I emphasised root cause because where the initial cause found may be substance abuse for example, the substance abuse can be attributed to a different cause (the root cause) which could be a parent-child relationship problem or trauma.

Where apathy persists after treatment

If apathy remains after successful treatment of the root cause(s), then the problem will most likely lie with motivation.

You could look at the question on here about Theories of Human Motivation for information, or just look at various motivational courses, exercises and activities such as these activities.

Breakdown of Main Causes of Apathy

Mental health causes

This is not a full list, but includes,

Separation Axiety Disorder

  When separated from major attachment figures, children with separation anxiety disorder may exhibit social withdrawal, apathy, sadness, or difficulty concentrating on work or play.(APA, 2013 p. 192)

Major Depressive Disorder

  In major depressive disorder, the individual may avoid leaving
  home because of apathy, loss of energy, low self-esteem, and anhedonia. (APA, 2013 p. 221)

Neurocognitive Disorders (NCDs) such as Delirium

  Delirium is often associated with a disturbance in the sleep-wake cycle....The individual with delirium may exhibit emotional disturbances, such as anxiety, fear, depression, irritability, anger, euphoria, and apathy. (APA, 2013 p. 600)

Behavioral-Variant Major or Mild Frontotemporal NCD

  present with varying degrees of apathy or disinhibition. They may lose interest in socialization, selfcare, and personal responsibilities, or display socially inappropriate behaviors. (APA, 2013 p. 615)

Physical Problems Causing Mental Health Problems

This is not a full list, but includes,

Inhalant Intoxication
This can create

  Clinically significant problematic behavioral or psychological changes (e.g., belligerence, assaultiveness, apathy, impaired judgment) (APA, 2013 p. 538)

Opioid Intoxication
This can create

  Clinically significant problematic behavioral or psychological changes (e.g., initial euphoria followed by apathy, dysphoria, psychomotor agitation or retardation, impaired judgment) that developed during, or shortly after, opioid use. (APA, 2013 p. 546)

Other toxic, metabolic, traumatic, neoplastic, or infectious disorders that impair brain function and cognition

  Numerous neurological and other medical conditions may produce the clinically significant behavioral or psychological changes (e.g., belligerence, assaultiveness, apathy, impaired judgment) that also characterize inhalant intoxication. (APA, 2013 p. 540)

Major or Mild NCD due to Traumatic Brain Injury

  may be accompanied by disturbances in emotional function
  (e.g., irritability, easy frustration, tension and anxiety, affective lability); personality changes (e.g., disinhibition, apathy, suspiciousness, aggression); physical disturbances (e.g., headache, fatigue, sleep disorders, vertigo or dizziness, tinnitus or hyperacusis, photosensitivity, anosmia, reduced tolerance to psychotropic medications); and, particularly in more severe TBI, neurological symptoms and signs (e.g., seizures, hemiparesis, visual disturbances, cranial nerve deficits) and evidence of orthopedic injuries. (APA, 2013 p. 625)

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing.


When does a fear of something constitute a phobia? Obviously, not all phobias are made equal. There are some 'phobias' that involve things that are normally do inspire fear in others (such as, famously, spiders). Honestly, I never understood why being scared of things like spiders constituted a 'phobia', since phobias are supposed to be irrational fears, but being afraid of spiders (at least, certain species) is obviously normal and not exactly irrational.

Personally, I often say I have a phobia of ghosts. But do I? I don't believe in ghosts, so I consider it irrational, but 'ghosts' in general don't scare me. The ghosts of Skyrim never scared me, though the ones in certain quest mods do. And I've certainly never found Casper scary, but I could never force myself to enter a location I've heard is haunted, purely because of that label. Old abandoned buildings (particularly houses) also scare me for no reason. Simply being in one makes me want to get out of there as fast as possible. And considering that ghosts in general don't scare me, I'm not sure my weird and obviously nonsensical fear would actually count as a phobia. Its, of course, normal to find ghosts scary. But is it normal to not be able to enter a supposedly 'haunted' location, or an old rotting building, even though I honestly don't see any reason for ghosts to exist. And thinking about that fact doesn't help one bit for some reason.

So, what's the line between being just scared of something and having a phobia towards it?

The DSM-5 criteria for Specific Phobia are:

A. Marked fear or anxiety about a specific object or situation (e.g., flying, heights, animals, receiving an injection, seeing blood).
Note: In children, the fear or anxiety may be expressed by crying, tantrums, freezing, or clinging.
B. The phobic object or situation almost always provokes immediate fear or anxiety.
C. The phobic object or situation is actively avoided or endured with intense fear or anxiety.
D. The fear or anxiety is out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation and to the sociocultural context.
E. The fear, anxiety, or avoidance is persistent, typically lasting for 6 months or more.
F. The fear, anxiety, or avoidance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
G. The disturbance is not better explained by the symptoms of another mental disorder, including fear, anxiety, and avoidance of situations associated with panic-like symptoms or other incapacitating symptoms (as in agoraphobia); objects or situations related to obsessions (as in obsessive-compulsive disorder); reminders of traumatic events (as in posttraumatic stress disorder); separation from home or attachment figures (as in separation anxiety disorder); or social situations (as in social anxiety disorder).

The parts I would highlight are that the fear has to be intense and out of proportion to the actual risk, it has to cause some sort of impairment, and it can't be classified as part of a broader mental disorder.
So, if someone sees a spider at work and is startled by it, you wouldn't call that a phobia by itself from a clinical perspective. You might joke about it among friends and say you have a phobia of spiders, but that's just using embellishing language, it's not a diagnosis.
If someone lives in an area where dangerous spiders are present, and takes reasonable precautions to defend themselves (for example, not walking barefoot outdoors), that would not be a phobia: it's not out of proportion.
However, if someone sees a spider at work and then experiences intense symptoms while at work that interfere with their performance, make them constantly preoccupied that there is going to be another spider, and it's a sustained rather than passing experience, then that's closer to the DSM-5 definition of phobia.
In either case, it's really up to a professional to assess the situation and determine if a diagnosis is warranted.


is it true that people who code think differently? I code websites and I believe the way I think is totally different from most of the others. Not that I think in a better way(a possibility though) but I'm only saying "differently". Do you think it's true? if yes, why?

Well, let's considering what you're asking here.

You're asking if people who code think differently. Well, let's consider those who know how to program. Some people plan what they are going to do, while others take a more dynamic approach. Some people create a 'skeleton' of what they are about to build before they fill in the missing pieces (and will debug each piece as they go), and yet others will create one new method at a time until they have one giant bug-filled product to deal with at the end.

Now pick two arbitrary coders. Do they think differently from each other? Probably. They probably have different approaches, interests, strengths, and weaknesses. But sure, they probably think differently than, say, someone who works in a grocery store.

But then again, take the person who works in a grocery store. They probably have different methods for dealing with shoppers, they probably use different greetings, they may have different strengths and weaknesses, etc.

In fact, I would argue that in instances where you are given a choice, it isn't what you do that teaches you to think; rather, the way you think determines what you do. You may pick up on certain methods out of habit (maybe you see people as variables, or maybe you're quick to decompose your thoughts like you would a program), but on top of learning new skills, those habits you pick up are probably further emphasizing the ways in which you currently think.


How much time is required to relearn a subject after x years? I'm searching for research answering or giving any form of insight to this question:
How long does it take a person to relearn something (any type of learning) when relearning happens x, x+1, x+2...x+n years after initial learning?

I've found some research by Ebbinghaus, but it concerns relearning after 24 hours. The variable in his research is number of repetetion (and not time between initial learning and relearning) which isn't what I'm looking for either.

In particular, I'm trying to figure out the effectiveness of students studying a subject in college, and how long students will need to relearn a subject, if they previously learnt it 5, 10 or 15 years previously.

References

Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. (H.A. Ruger & C.E. Bussenius, Trans.). New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

Suppose a person learns a subject in college and waits for 10 years before learning it again. An exam is given one week after the person relearns the subject. So in this case, the ISI (inter-study interval) is very long compared to the RI (retention interval). The person will definitely forget some of the material after the 10 years. So how long they would need to restudy depends on how much they have forgotten. In this paper, Hal Pashler and others develop a model that predicts the spacing function based on the forgetting function for fixed retention intervals. The forgetting function depends on the type of material being studied and other variables. All other things being equal, it seems that testing/examinations would be one of the more efficient ways of relearning the material.

References

Mozer, M. C., Pashler, H., Cepeda, N., Lindsey, R., & Vul, E. (2009). Predicting the optimal spacing of study: A multiscale context model of memory. Advances in neural information processing systems, 22, 1321-1329. PDF


Is there a (evolutionary) purpose of self-pity? I stumbled across the quote from Charlie Munger;

  Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought, self-pity gets pretty close to paranoia, and paranoia is one of the very hardest things to reverse, you do not want to drift into self-pity.

And while there seems to be a basic agreement that emotions in general have an evolutionary advantage to "anticipate and solve problems and avoid potential pitfalls", I was wondering which positive effects the "disastrous modes of thought" might have.

The discussion on envy clearly shows that there is a envy-spectrum. And certain modes of envy do contain a positive effect.

And while revenge might not lead to peace and harmony I understand its connection from a the evolutionary point of view.

But what purpose does self-pity have?
Why do we feel it?

Short answer
Self-pity may not have any evolutionary benefit, but may instead be part of the social capabilities allowing to feel empathy. Empathy in turn is a crucial component in social interactions. The development of strong social skills in early Hominids is believed to have paved the way for evolution of Homo sapiens, arguably the most successful species to roam the world today.

Background
For a trait to be evolutionary beneficial, it should increase reproductive success. Indeed, self-pity may not have a lot of benefit in that regard, especially when depressive thoughts arise. Note that Mr. Munger, who claims that self-pity is disastrous and paranoid, is a business man and may associate such feelings more from the impact it can have on productive human capabilities rather than re-productive ones.

However, self-pity may be a[n unwanted] side-effect of being able to feel compassion, i.e., the feeling of distress in connection with another person's suffering. In general, self-pity may be the collateral result of being able to allow man to feel empathy, i.e., the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective.

The thing is, being a parent, that kids do not feel a lot of empathy. Especially young kids (<2 years) lack the empathy we see in most adults (barred those with e.g. autism spectrum disorder). Kids do, however, feel a lot of self-pity :) Self-pity seems to be an inborn, relatively unsophisticated emotion. Later, when they grow up, they will develop these egocentric feelings into empathy, by projecting their own emotion (self-pity) onto other people (feeling sorry for someone else). These emotions have to be developed and nurtured through social interactions. Admittedly, I am not a psychologist or evolutionary biologist, but I do reckon that feelings of self-pity are a precursor for feelings of sympathy and compassion and, on a grander scale, for feelings of empathy.

Empathy is believed to be a critical factor in enabling humans and other primates to socially interact with each other (De Waal, 2012). In turn, the social behavior in humans is considered to have been a crucial trait that lead to the success of the human species (Byrne & Whiten, 1989). Social interactions likely helped our ancestors to form social groups, such as extended families and coalitions that promote higher rates of survival and reproduction. Enhanced social structures allowed for the sharing of knowledge across generations. The increasing size of such social groups in turn entailed further social brain development, ultimately giving rise to the present form of the highly social brain of humans (source: Huffington Post). Frans de Waal has written extensively about the mechanisms and benefits of empathy in primates.

References
- Machiavellian Intelligence, Oxford Science Publications (1989)
- De Waal, Science (2012); 336(6083): 874-6


Is consciousness a biological function? I'm watching a TED Talk by John Searle who is claiming that consciousness is a biological function.  Is there any indisputable evidence for or against this assertion?

Consciousness is a broad concept.

In a binary world (conscious/not conscious), biological evidences are irrefutable. For example, a 2009 Brain article stated that "Impaired consciousness during temporal lobe seizures is related to increased long-distance cortical-subcortical synchronization." (Arthuis et al.). A 2012 Lancet Neurology article had the following sentence "the consciousness system,a specialised set of cortical-subcortical structures, maintains alertness, attention, and awareness" (Blumenfeld) - a system that is described on wikipedia. Here, we can see that the binary view of consciousness can be divided into smaller pieces.

Dehaene et al. ("Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: a testable taxonomy", Trends in cognitive science, 2006) proposed a more complex view within a 2 by 2 frame: consciousness is a product perception (weak and strong) and top-down attention (absent and present) - the fully conscious experience arising in the "strong perception/present attention" case. Here again, biological evidences are strong, but the type of the published article (opinion, not a review-type article) says that consciousness is far from being well understood - not even well defined.

An interesting aspect: the first two articles cited here (1st paragraph) are written by neurologists - meaning pure biology. Dehaene et al. (2nd paragraph) are cognitive psychologists and philosophers - a wee bit more of humanities but still biologically grounded. When it comes to philosophy alone, consciousness can completely loose its biological link: William Lycan, for example, argued in his book Consciousness and Experience that at least eight clearly distinct types of consciousness can be identified (organism consciousness; control consciousness; consciousness of; state/event consciousness; reportability; introspective consciousness; subjective consciousness; self-consciousness) (from wikipedia). And when it comes to non-science, the views on consciousness are purely spiritual (The 144 Levels of consciousness).


How can I understand the phenomenon of mood better? I have been trying to understand the psychology of liking, for example a particular object(human or non-human). But I am unable to proceed with my experiments(I am just an amateur) because I myself discover that I like things at one moment and show no interest in them some other moment in time. Most of the things I see depend also on my mood. So it is this aspect called "mood" upon which I request the community members to throw some light upon.

What is the psychology of mood? Are there any books or mature/good reference materials to understand this phenomenon of mood better?

Are you interested in mood, emotion, or affect? Or all three?

Mood is considered a "diffuse" affective state, whereas emotions are "object specific."  If you're interested in this distinction, look up Mathias Siemer's work.  Gerald Clore also does work on mood.

If you're interested in emotions, then this is a bit harder to tell you who to look up.  There's a vast body of literature on many different things relating to emotions.  If you're interested in pure theory, look up Paul Ekman, Klaus Scherer, and Lisa Feldman Barrett.  If you're interested in emotion regulation, look up James Gross.  If you're interested in positive emotions, look up Barbara Frederickson.  The list goes on!  If you want a not particularly comprehensive overview, you can look at the Handbook of Emotions.

If you're interested in affect (arousal and valence), look up James Russell.

Hope this helps.


Can we learn to adapt to image-reversal when being intermittently exposed to them? I know that human vision can get accustomed to reverse vision when wearing reverse glasses for several days. But does it work when we see the reverse image just in certain moments throughout the day? Would it be easier or more difficult for humans to learn use a reverse mirror?

Wearing prism glasses needs adaptation of behavior. That takes time. Wearing them during all waking hours speeds up the process as it forces the wearer to adapt in everyday life. If the subject does not adapt quickly, it's going to be a very hungry, un-showered, immobile and eventually a very unhappy subject, because tasks of daily living become pretty much impossible without adapting to the prisms.

Putting them on for an hour or so per day will not force the subject to cope with it. And even if a training regimen is commenced in that hour, when the subject puts them off the learning process stops. Eventually they may get there, but it is certainly not as effective.


Cingulate cortex vs Limbic lobe are they same or slightly different? I've read the wikipedia article on Cingulate cortex and the article about limbic lobe. Also did web search but it is not clear to me whether they are synonymous or there are slight differences in the parts they include.

UPDATE:

it seems search terms for "limbic system" and "limbic lobe" giving me a different google search result. There also are wikipedia pages on

1. Cingulate cortex,
2. Limbic Lobe ,
3. Limbic System .

where cingulate cortex (1) is confusingly similar to Limbic lobe (2) but Limbic system (3) seem to be different (but inclusive) terminology from limbic lobe (2).

So I want to know if limbic "lobe" and cingulate cortex are synonymous or they differ in the areas they include.

Updated answer:
The limbic lobe (aka limbic cortex) is made up of the cingulate gyrus and the parahippocampal gyrus (so the cingulate gyrus is only part of the limbic lobe). The limbic lobe is part of the limbic system. There is some disagreement over what the limbic system includes, but some of the other areas contained in the limbic system include the subcallosal gyrus, hippocampus, and amygdala.


Phase locking value (PLV) between $x(t)$ and $x(t-T)$ I have been trying to calculate PLV using the hilbert transform (reference). To test if it even works or not, I calculated PLV between $x(t)$ and $x(t-T)$. i find that it drops to zero very quickly as $T$ becomes nonzero as shown in following figure:

Is this as expected? I would expect PLV between $x(t)$ and $x(t-T)$ to be 1. In above graph shift is a normalized quantity such that $T=\rm{shift}\times\rm{length}(x)$

EDIT: thinking about this some more. Let us first define what PLV is. If we define PLV as the phase locking between instantaneous phases of two signals $x(t)$ and $y(t)$ where instantaneous phase is defined according to the analytic signal, then I am not able to derive a mathematical relationship asserting that $PLV(x(t),x(t-T)) = 1$. But then what is the PLV good for? What kind of transformation could be applied to $x(t)$ to yield a $y(t)$ s.t. $PLV(x,y)=1$?

PLV is good for correlating signals that seem out of phase to our measurement techniques due to the digital nature of our recordings but are in sync because of the electro chemical biological nature of the CNS. If you transform two signals into phase you can determine the relatedness of the two signals.

Phase Locking Value NeuroBytes
The schematic below illustrates how PLV is computed in this implementation. Explanation for each step follows.


Do the motivations and fears behind Enneagram have any scientific reasoning? Background

The Enneagram personality typing system defines set of motivations and basic fears for its nine personality types among people.

The system seems to be aimed at personal development of a person, and uses various approaches for the same (like one type integrating into other - which is essentially the person overcoming their basic fears using their motivations in a different manner etc.). For more info regarding the system, look here.

A large part of this system seems spiritual and based on very strange assumptions, but equally strangely - I don't know why or how - many people identify themselves with these basic motivations and fears in a way that doesn't seem like Forer effect - at least to me. The system is flexible enough that a person can identify his/her motivations towards one type and to some extent towards another type.

Questions

Are the motivations and fears for people listed in Enneagram typing system discussed in any other scientific theory about motivations among people?
There doesn't seem to be much of Forer effect taking place because people seem to identify themselves and "grow into other types". If we assume people are basically overcoming their fears doing so, what is the scientific term/explanation for such a process?
Provided we have a flexible system here, people may develop in a more complex manner than by just overcoming their basic fears while integrating/dis-integrating into other type. What are people doing to themselves doing so?

The Enneagram model of personality (Riso and Hudson, 1999) has limited and mixed scientific evidence supporting it. One of the few studies reporting on the model's validity (Newgent et al., 2004) concluded the following in their abstract.

  Results of 287 participants were analyzed. Alpha suggests an adequate degree of internal consistency. Evidence provides mixed support for construct validity using correlational and canonical analyses but strong support for heuristic value.

Newgent et al. (2004)'s interpretation is consistent with my own reading of the limited Enneagram validation literature that exists. However, other validation studies do report their results in more unequivocally positive terms.

One such study claimed that they distinguished Enneagram types using a unique pattern of traits, values and implicit motives, thereby demonstrating that the Enneagram typology provides a way of describing the "whole person" (Sutton, Allinson and Williams, 2013). Another claimed that the enneagram typology appears to have diagnostic, prognostic, and heuristic value for the study of personality structure and dynamics (Wagner and Walker, 1983).

These claims are based on simple statistically significant relationships, however, which is frankly speaking more consistent with the interpretation of Newgent et al. (2004).

References

Newgent, R.A., Parr, P.E., Newman, I. & Higgins, K.K. (2004). The Riso-Hudson Enneagram type indicator: Estimates of reliability and validity. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 36, pp. 226–237.
Riso, D. R., & Hudson, R. (1999). The Riso-Hudson Enneagram type indicator. New York: The Enneagram Institute.
Sutton, A., Allinson, C., Williams, H. (2013). Personality type and work-related outcomes: An exploratory application of the Enneagram model, European Management Journal, Volume 31, Issue 3, June 2013, pp. 234-249, ISSN 0263-2373. doi: 10.1016/j.emj.2012.12.004.
Wagner, J. P. and Walker, R. E. (1983), Reliability and validity study of a Sufi personality typology: The enneagram. J. Clin. Psychol., 39: 712–717.


What are the dangers of using mindfulness-based techniques for individuals suffering from Schizophrenia? I am unable to find much research on the application of mindfulnesss for those suffering from Schizophrenia. A recent study by Chien and Lee (2013) focuses on the application of a psychoeducation program for Chinese patients with Schizophrenia. However, I do not have the pleasure of reading this but findings indicate that it can improve psychosocial functioning (http://www.cme.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleID=1653271).

Though the study show promising results for alleviating symptoms in Schizophrenic patients, I feel - prima facie - that there might be a risk in exacerbating symptoms by educating Schizophrenic patients to adopt a non-judgmental awareness towards positive symptoms such as hallucinations and delusional thinking. I am a supporter of mindfulness-based interventions except I can't seem to find much literature on its limitations and risks for Schizophrenia.

As the neurological and biological evidence around Schizophrenia is far from conclusive, I am narrowing this down to only psychological and ethical risks/dangers that could potentially arise from mindfulness practice and Schizophrenic individuals. For clarity around the theory underpinning Schizophrenia, I would refer to the Theory of Mind as the overarching philosophical foundation for understanding Schizophrenia and interactions with mindfulness practice. A definition is given by Pedersen et al (2012):

  "Theory of mind (ToM), the ability to think about mental states such as
  thoughts and beliefs in oneself and others, is a complex cognitive
  function that requires the integration of information from multiple
  sources. Substantial evidence has accumulated that patients with
  schizophrenia have impaired ToM functions (Sprong et al., 2007; Bora
  et al., 2009) that result in social-interactive deﬁcits."

On a cognitive perspective, what dangers does mindfulness pose to a Schizophrenic individual's ability to discern their self-concept and their relations with the world?

Example

This is purely for illustrative purposes.

X suffers from Schizophrenia and visual hallucinations. X does engage in mindfulness practice regularly. His/her mindfulness practice involves paying non-judgmental attention in the present moment. Initially, X paid too much attention to the occasional visual hallucinations through his mindfulness exercises. This triggered a higher amount of distress and anxiety for X and caused him/her to believe in the 'reality' of the hallucination. It could be said that there may be a potential danger that existed in the initial stages of X's introduction to mindfulness practice.

Questions

What are the dangers of using mindfulness-based techniques for
individuals suffering from Schizophrenia?
What are the mechanisms that make mindfulness practice effective when an individual is experiencing a delusional episode?

EDIT:

I have provided some more information around the scope of the question primarily around what type of 'dangers' could result from the interaction between mindfulness practice and those suffering from Schizophrenia.

References

Chien, W.T., Lee, I.Y.M. (2013). The mindfulness-based psychoeducation program for Chinese patients with schizophrenia. Psychiatric Services 2013

I cannot answer your question, because I'm not an expert on schizophrenia, but I would like to point out that the answer will depend on your theory of schizophrenia.

Post-mortem research on the brains of schizophrenic patients has found consistent anomalies:

widening of the ventricles (meaning a loss of subcortical brain cells)
structural abnormalities in the subcortical temporal-limbic areas such as the hyppocampus and basal ganglia
structural abnormalities in the prefrontal and temporal cortex

CT and MRI research on the brains of living schizophrenics has found similar anomalies:

enlarged ventricles
loss of cortical substance in the temporal and frontal areas
reduced volume in the basal ganglia (nucleus caudatus) and limbic structures

It appears that there is a general atrophy of brain tissue in schizophrenics, and from my non-expert knowledge there is nothing you can do to reverse this. Typical therapy in schizophrenia (today) is to give anti-psychotica to reduce symptoms, behavioral therapy to enhance social abilities, and family therapy to reduce hostility, excessive worrying etc. ("expressed emotion" plays a role in the etiology of schizophrenia). So basically what you do is not "heal" the disorder but alleviate the symptoms and help the patients with their everyday problems.

Since cognitive behavioral therapy (in which the patient is encouraged to consciously deal with his thoughts, including, I'd guess, the paranoic ones) is a normal part of clinical routine with schizophrenia, I don't see why mindfulness could not be beneficial. I believe it might well enhance the CBT in the same way as in the therapy of depression, where mindfulness and CBT are successfully applied in conjunction.


What are the neurobiological factors related to depression? While it is agreed that neurotransmitters aren't the primary "cause" of depression, what other factors are a part of this mental illness that focus on the neurobiological aspects of it?

You can look into the research being done with ketamine as an amazingly fast antidepressant, even for those with severe treatment resistant depression. Other than that, they now think decreased neurogenesis and synaptogenesis are the more direct and important links to depression. There is also some early research into the links between depression and the immune system, as well as people's microbiomes.


What is the role of dendrites in neural computation? I read this article:
https://news.mit.edu/2019/neurons-dendrite-role-computation-0606
My question is about this: “One hypothesis is that dendritic activity will actually sharpen up for representing features of a task you taught the animals, and all the other dendritic activity, and all the other somatic activity, is going to get dampened down in the rest of the cortical cells that are not involved,” Harnett says.
How exactly are neurons that are involved in a task chosen and how exactly is it decided which neurons are then supposed to be dampened?
Probably not a question that can be easily answered, but I wanted to ask it anyway.

I think our best understanding of this (that I can think of) is Hebb's law: Neurons that fire together wire together. Basically, maybe you can think of it like a bit of information is saved in a physical space neurally. So one idea, like your grandmas face, is a combination of many of these bits being activated (This is in reference to the language of thought theory https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/). When trying to make sense of something, the more common connections will activate first and then less common ones, until an answer has been found or the task has been deemed not possible/unimportant.
As for how neurons are chosen, I would say in relation to what is already there. And dendritic connections are dampened the longer they go without linking.
To the best of my knowledge, it's still contested exactly how we encode new information. There is a lot of evidence that certain tasks can be associated to general areas of the neocortex, from neural mapping experiments.


Are there any movies or series involving someone with ADHD? Aside from How I Met Your Mother, The Simpsons (or Finding Nemo, if that counts, which i don't think it does), are there any movies or series involving someone explicitly stated or highly believed to have ADHD? I can't seem to find any on Google.
There are movies or series about schizophrenia such as A Beautiful Mind, bipolar such as Silver Linings Playbook and then there's this, but I can't seem to find any for ADHD.

Of course there are endless speculations on forums everywhere, but these are speculations likely from not properly educated people (e.g. not psychologists).
An example if this question was asking about OCD or Asperger's would be Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. The show or creators have never stated any diagnosis, but people highly believe such. Sheldon even has his own article on psychologytoday.

The problem with ADHD is that it doesn't really have its own trademark indicator, the way that schizophrenia or Asperger's might. There are several different subtypes of ADHD, and they tend to look different from each other, particularly in the instance of ADHD with hyperactivity and ADHD-PI (primarily inattentive). Even then, there are plenty of disorders that mimic the characteristics of ADHD (such as histrionic personality disorder or sluggish cognitive tempo), and so it is really difficult to tell whether or not a character has ADHD, a mood disorder, an anxiety disorder, or something else entirely.

Furthermore, movies like A Beautiful Mind are autobiographical in nature and tend to focus primarily on the disorder and its deleterious effects on an otherwise prominent individual. This is difficult to do with ADHD, because the symptoms of ADHD are often mistaken for laziness, naïveté, sluggishness, rashness, and a variety of other negative personality traits. On the other hand, disorders like schizophrenia are rarely mistaken for personality traits. It is very clear (in the case of John Nash) that there was something going on almost unrelated to the man himself. Take the description of the movie for example:

  The story begins in the early years of a young prodigy named John Nash. Early in the film, Nash begins to develop paranoid schizophrenia and endures delusional episodes while painfully watching the loss and burden his condition brings on wife Alicia and friends.

You would rarely hear such a description of an individual with ADHD, because ADHD is often early-onset, and so the difference between one's natural personality and a neurodevelopmental disorder is not always clear.

On top of that, characters are often portrayed as having symptoms of ADHD, but it is considered to be a part of their personality used for comedic effect. Other times, their ADHD-like characteristics may be attributed to other disorders, such as the case of Cat Valentine in the Disney Channel show 'Victorious', who suffers from bipolar disorder (as per the show's storyline) yet her characteristics are speculatively more along the lines of ADHD, or even dependent personality disorder. This opens up a can of worms to debate against, however, as characteristics can only serve as implications of a disorder, and are not enough to diagnose a person in general. Furthermore, even a professional cannot diagnose a character and call it a day, as characters are under the artistic license of the producers and thus there is nothing definitive a professional can say about them.

In terms of characters, it is speculated that Tigger from Winnie the Pooh has classic ADHD (as seen here, though this is largely meant to be humorous). It is also thought that Winnie the Pooh himself has primarily inattentive ADHD. The character Tony Stark of Iron Man is so highly speculated to have ADHD that I have heard him being used as an 'example' of a superhero with ADHD, so that children who struggle with the disorder can feel more confident about their abilities.

In terms of confirmed characters, I know of very little. After further research, I know that the character Lucy Knight of the show 'E.R.' was on Ritalin (a medication used to treat ADHD). I have also repeatedly read that Luna Lovegood of Harry Potter has ADHD-PI, but I think that her character is too broad for any diagnosis. I don't know if Bradley Cooper's character in Limitless has ADHD or not, as the whole plot seems to be akin to the effects of someone unintentionally taking Adderall.

I know that this isn't a movie or show, but Calvin from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes series is confirmed to have ADHD, as per the creator of the strip and as demonstrated in this comic.

EDIT: Forgot to mention this, but the character Michael Scofield of Prison Break is diagnosed with low latent inhibition, which is often used interchangeably with ADHD.


Are there any cognitive models for visual navigation? I've seen a few neuroscience accounts of visual navigation and many A.I. projects, but no psychologically plausible accounts that actually solve the computational problem (i.e. produce a working model).

Obviously I realize that to ask for a general cognitive model of visual navigation would be too much, but surely someone has done some work on a small sub-domain (e.g. driving, navigating in video games, navigation in specific animals).

Any computational account along these lines would be appreciated, though a connectionist account would be preferred.

I wonder if any of the work using Act-R would be relevant.
See these Act-R publications with accompanying PDFs on

visual search
spatial reasoning and navigation

(apologies if they're not relevant, this is outside my comfort zone)


How are the questions in IQ tests formulated? I would like to know how psychologists come up with the questions they include in an IQ test and how they know that those questions will accurately measure intelligence? How has it been proved that IQ tests do indeed work?

Alfred Binet developed the first intelligence measurement with some psychological validity. He asked general psychological questions from groups discovered by Spearman of varying difficulty based in the (not yet discovered) concept of fluid intelligence to children. Some did well some did not. This led to an age standardized test called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. Which essentially was problems of varying difficulty tested on many different children of diverse backgrounds to create a baseline. Results were grouped by age in order to give a predicted evaluation of common performance ability.

IQ tests do not work as a measurement of success and no one thinks that they do. They do work as a measurement of specifically identified and labeled cognitive ability. They are more useful psychologically in identifying cognitive problems to give treatments or accommodations than providing congratulatory measures to those who perform well.


What are the neurological similarities between humans and primates? I don't know exactly what primate specie is considered to be out ancestor. But the next question regards them.

Assuming that in the beginning *we considered true the remnants of many trial & error tests, the question is straightforward:

Do we have some specific neural processes similar to primates - for example those involving:

Simple comparisons*,
analogies**
you may add another?

Can we go even deeper in the animal's kingdom and find those similarities? How deep?

Any research study (paper) or essay is welcomed. I don't pretend a complete answer but some guidelines.

* like "what is bigger A or B?"
** like "if A is like they maybe B too".

Primate brains are considered to be highly similar to ours. In terms of their structure, it's more appropriate to look for the differences than the similarities.

However, you're asking for cognitive skills and these are mediated by cortical structures, and especially the higher association areas. This is exactly where the similarities are starting to break down, as the cortex, and hence higher order processing has rapidly expanded in human evolution. Notably, the surface area of the cortex has greatly expanded in humanoids through a progressive increase in the number of gyri and sulci ('wrinkles') in the cortical surface. A greater cortical surface correlates with higher cognitive abilities in humans (Fig. 1). This is what sets us apart. Cognition being

  [T]he ability to interpret and connect information that is perceived in the world and to then apply this personal knowledge adaptively to future situations and problems.

While humanoids have exceptionally well-developed cognitive skills, non-humanoid primates do have been shown to exhibit quite sophisticated cognitive capabilities as well. In a review article, Hopper & Brosnan (2012) state that primates have been shown to:

Recall serial lists of images
Select purpose-specific tools and save them for later
Manufacture purpose-specific tools, demonstrating an understanding of causal relations and physical properties
Have intricate social interactions and are known to interact with and manipulate other group members

Reference
- Hopper & Brosnan. Nature Education Knowledge (2012); 5(8): 3

Fig. 1. human brain (top) and chimp brains (bottom) are very similar. Especially the cortex is larger in humans. source: Tes Teach - Brain Project


Can we interconnect with other people mentally during dreaming? In some of my dreams, I have seen people that I know, and I ask them about it the day after and they say that they saw me too. My older sister said that she had exactly the same dream as one of her male friends.

Can we actually connect with other people mentally while sleeping?

Short answer
Telepathy is pseudoscience.

Background
I think you are referring to the phenomenon of telepathy, which can be defined as

  [T]he purported transmission of information from one person to another
  without using any of our known sensory channels or physical
  interaction

and you ask whether telepathy is a scientifically established phenomenon.

Telepathy in general is dismissed as being pseudoscience (Jogalekar, 2013) as it has been debunked in various scientific studies (e.g.
Ayeroff & Abelson (1976)).

Likewise, dream telepathy is considered pseudoscience. It was reportedly first documented by Freud in the 1940s. Freud founded many other pseudo-scientific concepts, including psychoanalysis (Jupp, 1977). Ullman & Krippner from the dream laboratory in Maimonides Medical Center in New York City claimed they had proven the existence of dream telepathy in the 1960s and 70s (e.g. Krippner & Ullman (1970). However, the studies were rightfully challenged. For example, many of their studies were based on a few or even on single subjects (e.g. Ullman & Krippner (1966) and Krippner & Ullman (1970)). Indeed, more recent studies have failed to replicate their findings (e.g.., Belvedere & Foulkes, (1971) and Hearne (1989)).

References
- Ayeroff & Abelson, Personality and Social Psychology (1976); 34(2): 240-7
- Belvedere & Foulkes, Perceptual and Motor Skills (1971); 33(3)
- Hearne, J Soc Psychical Res (1989); 55(814): 271-4
- Jogalekar, Sci Am (August 2013)
- Jupp, Philosophy (1977); 52(202): 441-53
- Krippner & Ullman J Nervous & Mental Disease (1970)
- Ullman & Krippner Int J Neuropsych, 2(5): 420-37


Is there a guide on exactly how to report outputs (regression, anova, correspondence analysis) in APA? I would like to report statistical findings after quantitative data analysis in APA format. Is there a guide on this? I've not been able to find any.

I'm using SPSS but I'm sure it would be similar in SData and R.

You should get the APA Style Manual (currently in the 6th edition).

  Chapter 5 describes the effective use of graphic elements in text. It provides readers with guidance on which graphic element is best suited to the data being delivered as well as detailed instruction on table and figure preparation.

It has lots of examples of how to report individual statistics and how to present common analyses in tabular form (e.g., group differences, correlation matrices, regression models, multilevel models, SEM results, etc.)

For less common analyses, you can often use the tables provided in the manual as a a starting point. You may also like to search the literature for example publications.


Are there any official guidelines of person-centred therapy? I understand that the person-centred therapy is based on humanistic psychology.

Humanistic psychology is sceptical about the use of the scientific method to study human behaviour. Rogers (1965, p. 190) said that: 'it is the dedicated, personal search of a disciplined, open-minded individual which discovers and creates new knowledge ... no refinement of laboratory or statistical method can do this.'

Regarding this I understand that the research for humanistic is mostly qualitative and not quantitative.

What would you refer to as evidence/research for person-centred therapy? Is there any official manual for it?

Rogers, C. R. (1965). Some Thoughts Regarding the Current Philosophy of the Behavioral Sciences. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 5(2), 182–194. https://doi.org/10.1177/002216786500500207

Humanistic approaches to psychotherapy are wide ranging and not just person-centred therapy.  Some allow the scientific approach into the therapeutic discussion, and some don't.
Person Centred Therapy (PCT) is very different to the Freudian approach to therapy, and how the therapy is provided will be dependent on the form of therapy the therapist works within — integrative or pure person-centred.
Is there any official manual?
There is no "official manual" I know of, but you can gain a lot of knowledge on the person-centred approach by reading Mearns, et al. (2013) which was a core reading material in one of the years of my training in integrative psychotherapy.  There is also a YouTube copy of an old documentary showing Carl Rogers demonstrating PCT.
The difference with PCT compared to other forms of therapy is that therapy is not led by the therapist.  Therapy and the sessions are led purely by the client and what they wish to bring to the session — hence the name Person-Centred Therapy.  From a pure person-centred approach, you are not necessarily completely shunning the scientific approach to therapy.  You are just not pushing the scientific approach to therapy towards the client.

Distrust of experts runs deep among person-centred practitioners.  The person-centred counsellor must learn to wear her expertise as an invisible garment in order to be an effective counsellor (Mearns, et al., 2013).

The Counselling Directory (n.d.) also points out the following:

In some psychotherapeutic approaches, the therapist and their observations are deemed ‘expert’. The person-centred approach moves away from this idea, and instead trusts that we have an innate tendency to find fulfilment in our own personal potentials (self-actualisation). By facilitating this, the approach helps the client to recognise their own capacity for not only self-healing, but personal growth too.

What would you refer to as evidence/research for person-centred therapy?
I haven't found a PDF or other form of access to the article as of yet, but according the the abstract, Rogers (1979) discusses the theory and research behind this approach.
Some may consider this form of therapy to be pseudoscientific as it doesn't follow the Popper classification of science (Popper, 1959 & 1963), and some believe that although Rogers put the approach forward as a different form of therapy, it should be seen as a way of working as a therapist in all therapies — with congruence, empathy and unconditional positive regard.
Interestingly though, in an encounter group run by Carl Rogers, he said there were times when he had to break all his own rules, emphasising that it was more important to be spontaneous and real than to be carefully empathic or relentlessly unconditionally positively regarding – meaning that sometimes he would violate the core principles of his own theory of PCT.  He might direct a person on what they must do or tell them forcibly that what they were doing was wrong (Geraghty, 2016).
References
Counselling Directory (n.d.). Person-centred therapy. Retrieved from: https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/person-centred-therapy.html
Geraghty, A. (2016). We need to talk about love. Therapy Today 27(1), pp. 20-23.
Mearns, D., Thorne, B. & McLeod, J. (2013). Person-Centred Counselling in Action, 4th Edition (Counselling in Action Series). London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Popper, K. P. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Routledge.
Popper, K. P. (1963). Science as Falsification. In Conjectures and Refutations, New York: Routledge and Keagan Paul, pp. 33-39
Rogers, C. R. (1979). The Foundations of the Person-Centered Approach. Education, 100(2), 98-107.


Can a biological entity be thought as a simple algorithm? Case-study with the concept of randomness John Von Neuman believed that all organisms can be though of as information-processing systems. He built on the work of Alan Turing (algorithmic) to create simulations of biological entities. This philosophy lead to the use of cellular automaton. This kind of analysis allowed to gain many insights in biology.

Does it make sense to you to reduce the behavior of an organism to the output of an algorithm?

There are several things that are not feasible in algorithmic. Randomness is one of these. Does it seem fair to you to consider that we actually produce pseudorandomness, a function with a chaotic behavior that cycle and might end up repeating itself?

The questions in short:

Can an organism be reduced to as being an algorithm as found in computers?
Can an organism produce randomness (random choice, random behavior) or only pseudo-randomness?

Yes, you can think of biological entities as algorithms, but that doesn't give you any explanatory power.

Unfortunately, most people have little to no understanding of algorithms, and how little actually constraint is imposed on something when you say it is "algorithmic". In particular, there is no restrictions on algorithms that require them to be deterministic. When theoretical computer scientists talk about pseudorandom number generators, they are talking at a much higher level of rigour than any biologist, psychologist, or neurologist ever uses. From their point of view, unless the biological entities you are thinking about are trying to defeat each other's cryptosystems, all random or stochastic events in biology can be viewed as pseudorandom with absolutely no consequence for biological theory. In fact, Keegan's answer that we can think of stochastic events as deterministic events with a mechanism that is outside of our model scope would be equivalent to the worry of pseudorandom versus true-random numbers.

Even if you subscribe to the (silly) Penrose-Hameroff stance that quantum effects in microtubles have a macroscopic effect at the level of consciousness that leads to "true randomness" then that still wouldn't place you outside of algorithmic thinking. You would just have to think in terms of quantum algorithms, which is more difficult mathematically, but a well studied field of computer science. Finally, cstheory extends the notion of algorithms beyond the typical confines of randomness as studied by statistics and most scientists, and looks at rigorous models of non-determinism.

In fact, there are people (for example, I advocate algorithmic philosophy as an extension of standard analytic philosophy) that believe that any communicable theory is inherently algorithmic and ammendable to analysis of cstheorists. Hence, not thinking of something as algorithmic would be impossible.

That being said, is that useful? In general, no. Algorithms are incredibly difficult to study. In the case of the computing machines, we make it easier by separating the algorithm underlying the physics of the hardware from an abstraction that we call the software. This often leads non-cstheorists (as you can see in Keagan's answer) to thinking that the idea of algorithms applies only at this "software abstraction" level. Of course, this is not the case. However, this distinction can be a useful metaphor at times, and much of cognitive science is based on the idea that the mind is software that is at least in principle capable of being implemented by different hardware. This is the philosophical stance of multiple realizability.

Neuroscientists hold this stance much less often, and - as suggested in Keagan's answer - view the mind and brain as non-seperable and best analyzed at the same level. This does not make the process non-algorithmic, it just takes away any handles we have at easily isolating properties of this algorithm.

If we continue this idea further, and just consider an algorithmic black box then we return to the ideas of behaviorism that are now considered passe in the cognitive sciences, but still popular in many parts of biology. In this setting, the black-box algorithm is a correct but completely useless notion. We have mathematical theorems that tell us that if we try to treat algorithms at this level of abstraction then we can never (in general) conclude anything. In this case, we have to be more restrictive than just "algorithmic" or "computable". This can get us to fun cstheory questions like "What is the complexity class most closely associated with what the human mind can accomplish quickly?"


Any link between IQ and a person's ability to create or mimic sounds? Reading some articles about animals and speech, and it just brushes a bit of the neurology of it, but that got me curious:

Is there any link between a person's (or an animal's) mimicry skill and/or their ability to create complex noises just by manipulating their body to their overall intelligence?

Note, I'm not referring to "speech", ie. the actual comprehension and assignment of value to those noises; I'm just curious if the ability and/or the creativity of making and/or mimicking those noises has any correlation.

According to Howard Gardner and his theory of Multiple Intelligence, I can propose that there is no link between IQ and the ability to mimic sound.

The IQ test (originating in the work by Alfred Binet) is not a measure of intelligence pre-se, but rather a measure of the ability of the subject to comprehend in the manner expected.  [Look for Gardner's explanation of the Hammer, Screw Driver and Nail question.]  Gardner proposes that we have the ability to either master or lack in 7 different types of intelligence.  (Not as in one stronger than the other, more like at different levels for each one.)

IQ measures some elements of linguistic, mathematical and spacial intelligence, but does not measure the others.  According to Gardner, the musical intelligence is the ability to comprehend tones, and patterns in sound quicker than others.  I thus propose that mimicking should have some direct correlation with Musical Intelligence, and since Musical Intelligence in not a measure in the IQ test there will be no link.


What is the correlation between the development of the sense of self and the senses? Children develop different senses of self at a couple of different ages. Normally developing children pass the 'Sally-Anne' test at about 4 years of age and the 'Mirror test' at around 18 months. My question refers to these cognitive tests and the relation any loss of sense has on these developmental stages. I'm aware of the case studies of down-syndrome, and autism however i'm currently interested in the effect of blindness, loss of hearing, smell and if the effects of reduced sensory perception causes a delay in when these tests are passed.

This question is quite broad, firstly, because these tests measure different (though interrelated) cognitive faculties and at different developmental stages and secondly because there is a lot to say for each sensory impairment. However, it touches on quite interesting topics for which there have been many studies and I think a summary of the findings can be made without being too big. For this purpose, it will be more useful to talk about the capacities that are associated with the tests rather than just studies with these tests, in order to get the bigger picture. Also , I would like to point that my answer is almost entirely about visual and auditory impairment because that is what I could find. If anyone knows of anything else, feel free to edit my post.

The Sally-Anne test is used by developmental psychologists to test the ability to attribute false belief which is a measure of one's theory of mind. Theory of mind is the "ability to attribute mental states — beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc. — to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from one's own". As you described, this skill is almost fully developed at around 5 years of age.
The Mirror test or Rouge test (specifically for human infants) is used by develompental psychologists to test self recognition/self awareness which can be defined as "the ability to become aware of one’s own mental
and bodily states (e.g. perceptions, attitudes, opinions,
intentions to act) as one’s own mental and bodily states" (Vogeley & Fink, 2003). As you described infants pass this test around 18 months of age, however it has been suggested that self-awareness should not be viewed as a unitary achievement but rather as a process that has successive stages being fully developed at around 5 years of age (Rochat, 2003).

Both these tests have to do with the sense of self as distinct from other beings which according to the proposed developmental pattern that it follows is also not to be treated in a unitary fashion (for a review see Baumeister, 2010 and Geangu, 2008). Theory of mind is more associated with the aspect of self which is called interpersonal self while self recognition as measured by the mirror test is associated with what has been called as bodily self or body image (Geangu, 2008).

So referring to your question about the effect of sensory impairment to these abilities:

Regarding the theory of mind, there have been studies on blind and deaf children.Yagmurlu et al (2005) summarized such studies in their article.

  Research with deaf children has emphasized the role of environment, particularly exposure to
  conversation, in theory of mind development (Peterson & Siegal, 2000). In their review, Peterson and
  Siegal (2000) have shown that children’s access to conversation is correlated with theory of mind
  development. They found that profoundly deaf children with hearing parents who generally have almost
  no access to any communication means until they start school are more severely impaired in theory of
  mind development than orally trained deaf children who use hearing aids or deaf children with deaf
  parents who use sign language from an early age (Peterson & Siegal, 1998, 1999; Woolfe, Want, &
  Siegal, 2002) Further, Peterson and Siegal (2000) argue that early conversations, especially those about
  imaginary or abstract ideas, or about beliefs appear to be necessary cognitive input in theory of mind
  development.

  Research on children with visual impairment also shows that these children are delayed in theory of
  mind development (Green, Pring, & Swettenham, 2004; McAlpine & Moore, 1995; Minter, Hobson, &
  Bishop, 1998; Peterson, Peterson, & Webb, 2000). Visual impairment may limit communication with
  parents due to lack of shared visual experience (Minter et al, 1998), and may also impair understanding
  what is in others’ minds because access to visual cues is cut (Peterson et al., 2000). Despite this
  disadvantage, language skills of visually impaired children continue to improve, and their social
  experiences with peers and teachers become richer, which contribute to a gradual acquisition of theory of
  mind skills (Green et al., 2004)

Reviewing the findings of some of the above studies Malle (2002) suggested that anything that prevents the development of language and communication in general, is likely to cause a delay in the development of theory mind.

Regarding the mirror test, as it is dependent on visual cues alone, I don't think blind people would be able to pass it, while there is no reason to expect that people with hearing or olfactory impairment wouldn't pass it. Of course an inability to pass this test does not lead to the conclusion that blind people and especially congenitally blind people lack a sense of self and specifically a body image. This is likely achieved through different sensory inputs. Geangu (2008) noted that while a perceptual sense of self requires the integration of sensory information such as visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic, it is the proprioception and visual processing of the body that have  higher relevance for the construction of a personal representation of one’s body in space. Bermudez (1998) had a slightly different opinion.

  The developing child may first acquire
  a sense of self when it becomes able selectively to attend , in however ill
  differentiated a fashion , to its individual body parts in the somatosensory
  modality . It would then become acquainted with the internal causal consistency
  of their positions and displacements relative to its own volitions .
  The assumption that the visual channel soon reveals to the infant which
  body parts are its own (Neisser 1978) may be mistaken . Logically , the visual
  channel should soon betray which (body) parts are always present and
  one
  '
  s own and which (external ) objects are present only sometimes
  (Neisser 1978)
  . But the mechanisms for accomplishing this during development
  (Gibson 1969, Bower 1974) may follow rather than precede somatosensory
  attending . Poeck and Orgass (1964a, 1964b) found that blind
  children developed knowledge of their body at about the same age as
  sighted children

Also, maybe blind people can rely on auditory input from early age to form a sense of self and this view is supported by a recent imaging study (Ma & Han, 2011).

So, to conclude this section, while I didn't find enough empirical data on blindness or anything on deafness to support a typical development of self awareness in these people, I don't think there are enough reasons to think that such a developmental delay occurs when these sensory systems are impaired.


Free software to run online visual category learning experiment Is there any open software to support a visualization category learning experiment? It should be open-source, and I can add more functions designed by myself to implement this experiment.

You might want to take a look at jsPsych, which is an open-source JavaScript library for building experiments. There is an example of running a visual categorization task in the documentation for the library.


Can logic be traced back to neurons? In our everyday experience, and in both math and philosophy particularly, there exist some binary order in the sense that some statements can be classified as true or false.

Does this have a specific neural correlation in the brain (classifying a statement as either true or false)? Or in other words, is it possible to correlate the process of assigning true/false with some particular feature of the brain?

Certainly some statements are either true or false. Either it rains or it doesn't. But when you think about many of these statements more carefully, the truth of these statements isn't really binary at all, or the binary fact is largely irrelevant.

Using the weather example, for most people it is not very helpful to know that it doesn't rain when there is a hurricane or it's snowing, both of which wouldn't usually be considered "not rain" by someone who wants to know what to wear. So the answer to "Does it rain?" usually isn't "No", but, for example, "You should take your umbrella because it looks like it might rain later".

The brain also isn't binary. Axons do not either forward an electrical impulse or not, but impulses of different intensities or frequencies. Neurons are often not activated by impulses from a single synapse, but usually by multiple synapses. Synapses do not either send out transmitters or not, but different amounts of them. Functions aren't located in one area, but in multiple areas. And so on.

Logic and maths (and psychological theories) are simplifications of a very complex reality. They provide simple solutions that often work (because life is flexible enough to adapt to a rigid approach), but just as often logic or mathematical (or psychological) approaches to deal with real problems are destined to fail.