Why do people talk fast in presentations when nervous? I was at a professional development seminar today, and the presenter, while being interesting and knowing his subject admitted to being nervous and was speaking very fast.  I know I do this when I am giving presentations, despite knowing my audience and my subject.

Why is it that a lot of people will speak faster when nervous?

I am experienced presenter, my job is to show presentation, organize educations and trainings to different people, with different personality traits in different situation. Until now I collected more the 700 hours of presentation and more then 120 hours of presentation education. In the beginning I had also that problem, but I overcome it by exercise. Now I am completely relaxed when present.

In my opinion cause of this is social anxiety in self presentation:
Here is one research, but I am sure you can find several more if you look to literature section.

Social anxiety, self-presentation, and the self-serving bias in causal attribution [1980].

Also people get aroused because if they think that other judge them, especially if they do not present a lot... here is model how people conclude others judge them

Mood and judgement: The affect infusion model (AIM) [1995]

EDIT: In this case 'fast talking' is indicator of public speaking fear, so you cant using 'public speaking fear' as cause of 'fast talking' because it will be circular definition. Here is a try to explain this in S-O-R paradigm:

State anxiety patterns for public speaking and the behavior inhibition system [2009]

I don't know exactly what is happening in brain but I assume that something is happening in giri of the hippocampus (working memory) which is overloaded with information of judging environment and accommodate presentation, but also have significant role in speech production.


What speaker is commonly used for low-latency audio stimulation We need to purchase a new speaker for audio ERP study, so the sound should be played in lowest possible latency with lowest possible jitter. I have seen quite a few suggestion on the OS/driver/sound card part, but it seems that there is less information about how to choose the proper speaker.

What is the common latency between the the time point when the sound card actually start sending out signal, and the time point when the speaker actually start vibrating? And are there any point that we should take care when choosing the speaker?

There is generally an intervening stage between the sound card and the speaker, the amplifier. From the output of the amplifier to the speaker, there is an electrical signal traveling at like 0.01C that then drive the speaker via an electromagnet. The transmission and transduction time is essentially zero. Further, you can safely ignore any jitter.

For powered speakers, or amplifiers, there are all sorts of models. Some might have some built in filtering that could introduce a delay, but it is probably negligible.


Term for urban citizens tuning out their surroundings? I cannot for the life of me remember the term for citizens in an urban environment filtering out stimuli when in public as a regular and unconscious part of their lives.

For example commuters riding public transit and not noticing crimes or events around them because they have learned to tune out other people.

Habituation: habituation is the first word that comes to my mind (but see also Desensitisation).

  Habituation is a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations.

For example, the first night that you sleep in a new house, you will typically notice many noises. Over the course of a few nights you learn to progressively react less and less to the common noises as you learn that they are non-threatening and do not need to be attended to.

Information reduction:  There's also some interesting research on information reduction as a learning mechanism. For example, Haider and Frensch have research that shows how individuals gradually ignore task information that is seemingly not relevant to performance. Thus, part of performance improvement is attending to task relevant information. Of course, when you arbitrarily manipulate a task to all of a sudden make what was irrelevant into relevant information, accuracy suffers. Relating this cognitive psychology finding to urban behaviour, people learn that 99.9% of the time noises can be ignored during the night, but one night the noise indicates that someone needs help; a person might ignore the noise because they've learnt that it generally can be ignored.

Bystander effect: Note that the above mechanisms are typically implicit cognitive mechanisms. There is also research on diffusion of responsibility that links in more to social psychology. This has been used to explain some people's failure to help in urban settings.

References

Haider, H., & Frensch, P. A. (1996). The role of information reduction in skill acquisition. Cognitive Psychology, 30(3), 304-337.


Do people like those who are similar to them and why? Questions

Is it true that people 'like' those who are similar to them?
Why is it so? Is there an evolutionary explanation?

Since you mentioned that you want an evolutionary explanation, there is one available. In biology the effect of providing benefit towards potential non-kin based on an arbitrary marker is known as the green-beard or armpit effect. In a social human setting, if the marker is arbitrary social construct it is usually known as ethnocentrism. This sort of behavior is studied in game theory in the context of cooperate-defect games (typical example: Prisoner's dilemma) and usually called conditional altruism.
It has been shown that conditional altruism evolves in a simple spatial agent-based model and promotes cooperative behavior (Hammond & Axelrod, 2006a 2006b). The effect does not create cooperation, but if there is another mechanism for creation of cooperation (say spatial factors in the H&A model) then ethnocentrism helps maintain it and extend the range of parameters under which cooperation can occur (Kaznatcheev & Shultz, 2011).
In humans, this ability to cooperate only with others of similar culture is believed to require a significant amount of cognitive ability. In fact, some even suppose that it could have been one of the factors that drove towards the increasing complexity of our brains. Unfortunately, Kaznatcheev (2010a) shows that the ethnocentrism of the sort present in the H&A models is not robust to increase in the cost of cognition. Thus, in humans (or simpler organisms) the mechanism allowing discrimination has to have been in place already (and not co-evolved) or be very inexpensive.
The above examples dealt with the prisoner's dilemma (PD) which is a typical model of a competitive environment. In the PD cooperation is irrational, so there conditional altruism allowed the agents to cooperate irrationally (thus moving over to the better social payoff), while still treating those of a different culture rationally and defection from them. This doesn't seem as bad, but Kaznatcheev (2010b) shows that the mechanism of ethnocentrism is robust across different games (not just PD) including ones where cooperation is rational. In those games conditional altruism produces an irrational defection from the out-group. Thus, from an evolutionary stand-point this is a two-edged sword: it can cause unexpected cooperative behavior, but also irrational hostility.
References

Hammond, R., & Axelrod, R. (2006a). Evolution of contingent altruism when cooperation is expensive. Theoretical Population Biology, 69, 333-338.

Hammond, R., & Axelrod, R. (2006b). The evolution of ethnocentrism. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50, 926-936. (pdf)

Kaznatcheev, A. (2010a). The cognitive cost of ethnocentrism. In S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd annual conference of the cognitive science society. (pdf)

Kaznatcheev, A. (2010b). Robustness of ethnocentrism to changes in inter-personal interactions. Complex Adaptive Systems - AAAI Fall Symposium. (pdf)

Kaznatcheev, A., & Shultz, T.R. (2011). Ethnocentrism Maintains Cooperation, but Keeping One's Children Close Fuels It. In L. Carlson, C, Hoelscher, & T.F. Shipley (Eds), Proceedings of the 33rd annual conference of the cognitive science society. (pdf)


Possibility of perfect virtual reality Is it biologically possible to build a "perfect" virtual reality, in which the person in that world cannot distinguish it from the real world? (e.g. as in the movie The Matrix)

From my knowledge (which is very limited), we perceive everything as a result of electrical activity within nerves. If we were able to encode/decode the patterns of the electrical activity and understand how the brain communicates with and intercepts all the nerves between the brain and the other parts of the body, would this mean that a perfect virtual reality is possible?

If you look at the phenomenon of lucid dreaming, where people consciously explore their dreams, you will recognize that perfect virtual reality is possible with the biology that is already in place.

The lucid dreaming related phenomenon called "false awakening" is another piece of evidence for perfect virtual reality. When a lucid dreamer experiences a false awakening, it is indistinguishable from reality. A person  wakes up in the same bed. walks through replica rooms. Such person may use restroom, brush teeth, start making breakfast, then wake up in reality. The only two consistent differences between a false awakening and reality would be inability to see consistent time on a digital display and inability to adjust light levels with light switches. The defining characteristic of false awakenings is that they trick the dreamer into thinking the dreamer is interacting with reality.

I should probably mention that expert dreamers, those who keep a dream journal and train to remember dreams, experience their dreams more intensely. As such, it is not uncommon to hear of "hyper-real" dreams, which are more visually and cognitively clear than baseline reality.


Are we different or same? I don't know if this is the right site to ask this, if not sorry for that I am new here......
I am wondering if two childs from different parents from different regions are kept in a completely empty room, do they behave same or different and for why(for the genes? and they are just children, like pure children without any experience because if it will not they must behave differently for environmental experiences, right?)?
And if they behave in a same way, what if we make a huge area with every needs of living, an ideal environment to grow in the same way then everyone will learn the equal things and experiences so nothing wrong will happen.(like a utopia)
And I am thinking this to do with a medium number of people. If I do this with a large number of people will anomalies happen?
If they are not equal then there must be the factor genes will come to show the features but if the environment is right then will not the features work in a same manner?
If my question sounds silly, sorry......

Welcome to Psychology.SE.
When you ask

if two childs from different parents from different regions are kept in a completely empty room, do they behave same or different

that is a question which is heavily debated in Psychology. It all boils down to the nature vs nurture or nature vs environment shaping behaviour.
Your question is definitely not silly and as it stands, the answer is very much open to opinion but you can get some information on the debate from the link provided above.
See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture
https://behavioralscientist.org/the-end-of-nature-versus-nurture/
https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/nature-versus-nurture
https://www.softschools.com/examples/science/nature_vs_nurture_examples/482/
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-nature-versus-nurture-2795392


Why do we always wake up at the climax of our dreams, even when it is an alarm that wakes us? I know that it probably has something to do with the fact that our dreams didn't really end at the same time our alarm clock rang, our brains just make us think so for some reason.

There are two possibilities. One is that we do tend to wake up more at the climax of dreams, and that somehow our dreams can sync up with external input like an alarm clock so that the climax of the dream occurs at the same time as the alarm going off. The second is that this doesn't actually happen; the alarm is just as likely to go off at the climax of the dream as it is at any other point.

If the second situation is true, then why do you end up feeling like you always wake up at the climax of the dream? One explanation is confirmation bias. This is an established bias of human memory, in which we selectively remember events that confirm our ideas, and neglect the events that disconfirm them. In this situation, you have the idea that you always wake up at the climax of dreams, so your memory is biased towards times where you actually did wake up at the climax of dreams. However, there are likely many times where you woke up not during the climax of the dream, but these are less memorable because they don't fit your expected pattern.


How to record mouse-pointer fixations? I'm planning an experiment in which participants will respond to a stimulus by using a mouse to click somewhere on a computer screen. I'm interested in analyzing the strategies participants use to generate their responses.

On theoretical grounds, I expect the main strategies to be associated with a particular type of mouse movement trajectory, in which the mouse moves through a sequence of "fixations" prior to the final click. By "fixation" I mean a mouse movement to a certain spot (or small area) for purposes of "marking" the spot in the participant's mind. I expect fixations to be associated with the mouse cursor pausing or stopping within a small area (though it might not stop entirely), or by a sudden sharp change in direction without a pause.

How can I extract a succession of such "fixations" from the raw mouse cursor trajectory (i.e., positions & time stamps)?

I think the key term here is dwell time. There is abundant literature on this. For example, Sample et al. (2008), go into quite some detail as to how to calculate this. In a nutshell, it basically boils down to defining a cluster of pixels around the mouse pointer tip. If the mouse cursor stays within those bounds, the clock should start ticking. A certain time-based cutoff criterion (say a few hundred milliseconds) could mark it as a dwell.

Reference
- Sample et al., Geospatial Services and Applications for the Internet (2008), Springer


Grid cells : Between what is the correlation of autocorrelogram measured? In their seminal paper Hafting, Torkel, et al. "Microstructure of a spatial map in the entorhinal cortex." Nature 436.7052 (2005): 801-806. the Mosers have discovered the grid cells.

To show the existence of these cells, they have counted spikes as a function of location, plotted (figure 1.b) a rate map and finally the most known figures of autocorrelogram which beautifully visualize the grid response pattern of these cells.

Auto-correlation is measured between a signal and itself (e.g. when one of the signals is shifted in time). My question is, what is the signal from which the autoelectrogram is calculated and what are the different states of that signal, between which the correlation is calculated (explanation is given at the paper's methods section, but it still didn't help me much).

Autocorrelation is calculated between the spikes-histogram and itself.

The experiment is carried out while the activity of a specific neuron is recorded.

Histogram - An animal runs in a circular arena which we divide into multiple squared bins, whenever the cell fires (i.e. generate an action potential) 1 counter is added to the location (the bin) in which the animal is currently located.
Autocorrelation - Two instances of the spikes histogram are observed such that one is "placed on-top of the other" and the correlation between the two instances is calculated.

When the two instances are perfectly aligned, their
autocorrelation is 1 (they perfectly match).
Now we start moving one of the instances. The match between the two instances is not perfect (the autocorrelation is smaller than 1) but because there are peaks (at the spikes-histogram) all across the arena, if we shift one of the instances such that it would be "on top" of another peak (e.g. each peak is aligned with the peak directly to its right) the autocorrelation would, once again, equal 1.
(τX,τY) - The shift of one of the instances is carried out for every value of x and y of the arena (i.e. for every phase) and the value of autocorrelation for each (τX,τY) shift of the first instance relative to the stationary second instance is plotted - this is what the autocorrelation figure shows.

What should we learn from the autocorrelation figure - That the cell response is indeed represented by a grid. The figure exemplifies that when the spikes histogram is shifted in a single full period (i.e. to the next peak) it fully matches itself, so the grid pattern indeed characterize similarly the whole arena (tessellating it).


Personality traits associated with finishing other people's sentences? I read in a North American undergrad psychology textbook, that people who tend to finish another's sentences tend to be emotionally intense. I think "emotionally intense" is the wording that they used. The impression that was given is that the type of person tends to swing moods more often or to a larger degree; they're more emotional.

Can someone cite the study? And does anyone know any other traits of people who like to finish another's thoughts?

Several factors may influence a person to finish off other peopla's sentences.
- The person may be stressed (and some people stress more often than others, thus stress may cause some people to do this more often)
- ADHD is said to cause an impatience, making the clients finish off other people's sentences:
http://www.healthline.com/health/adult-adhd
- A person may have a lot of energy, spending a bit of this energy on finishing off other's sentences.
- The speaker and the listener might ble close to eachother, and know eachother very well, maybe the listener was "just thinking of just the same thing"..

Whether or not I can find sources on "emotionally intense" people doing this, depends on how one defines being "emotionally intense". You could probably call any of the above examples emotionally intense people...


What's the difference between flaws of character and a personality disorder? Okay, I have read this question and 2 answers and I don't believe these are the same questions.  It's not about legal status or the moral appropriateness of punishment by society.  And it's not about the neural basis of volition (and how that can get messed up, physically), I don't think.

It's more like why isn't some personality disorder (like narcissistic or borderline) simply considered a character flaw?  Like: that narcissist is arrogant and conceited and brags because he wants to be and likes it.  Or: that borderline is demanding and manipulative and hateful because she wants to be and it serves her.  So that is the first question.

The second question is how to relate with these troubled persons? When does one hold the other personally accountable for their decisions and actions and when does one go into treatment mode as a caregiver would a patient or a dependent loved one?  Caregiver is flawed human being with their own issues and not professional in any field related to psychology or mental health.

But, outside the domain of the law and criminal responsibility, how should a regular "civilian" or "layperson" relate to persons (immediate family, extended family, coworker, friend or acquaintance) with NPD or BPD?  When should a person treat the NPD or BPD as a selfish asshole (with moral judgement and sometimes disdain) and when as a sick or weak person that is perhaps just very needy (and/or difficult)?

There is a clear definition of what a personality disorder is. The Wikipedia article on Personality Disorders lists the criteria given in the DSM-5 and ICD-10. Take a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_disorder

If you don't understand those definitions, please edit your question accordingly.


Can reading a non-fiction book with great curiosity account to taking a break? In our day to day life, especially at work(in Office say a software company), due to the nature of work, it requires a lot of attention and deep involvement in the system/code. It is popular belief that taking breaks increases one's productivity.

Considering that in order to take a break, a person spends 30 minutes reading a non-fiction book, on his/her favorite topic, totally unrelated to office work, will it account to taking a break. Or due to the huge context switch, will it actually lead to more curiosity and distraction from office work and affect productivity inversely?

A lot depends on your definition of what constitutes 'a break'. Many are likely to argue a break involves relaxing, a 'fun' pastime, which in another question on this site has been discussed to be beneficial for the work environment in the case of social activities:

  ..., having fun at work was perceived to positively
  influence workplace relationships to a moderate-high degree,
  contribute to managing stress to a moderate degree, improved job
  satisfaction to moderate degree and was reported to have a little more
  than neutral, direct impact on workplace effectiveness. These outcomes
  must however be examined in the context of results, suggesting not
  only are different types of fun activities enjoyed more, but different
  types of activities are highly salient in relation to the particular
  organisational variable measured.

However, these results do not seem to generalize to your scenario, as you seem to be more interested in taking a break from ongoing work and potentially switching to other mentally demanding individual work.

Therefore I believe the following study on multitasking—the interleaving of several primary tasks—which are
executed one at a time) by Adler and Benbunan-Fich (2012) measures results more in line with what you are after.

  Our results show an inverted-U pattern for performance efficiency
  (productivity) and a decreasing line for performance effectiveness
  (accuracy).

There is thus an optimal amount of task switching which leads to the highest productivity. However, increased levels of multitasking lead to a significant loss in accuracy, indicating a trade-off between productivity and accuracy.

These results thus seem to confirm that in at least the context of the study switching to a different task can improve productivity, in line with increased effectiveness when taking 'a break'. To which degree (and if at all), however, will depend highly on the specific tasks and work environment. For example, a follow-up study by the same authors (Adler and Benbunan-Fich, 2015) shows that subjective task difficulty is a determining factor: easy tasks
benefit from multitasking by increasing stimulation, whereas hard
tasks decrease performance as the result of an overload in mental
workload.

Adler, R. F., & Benbunan-Fich, R. (2012). Juggling on a high wire: Multitasking effects on performance. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 70(2), 156-168.
Adler, R. F., & Benbunan-Fich, R. (2015). The effects of task difficulty and multitasking on performance. Interacting with Computers, 27(4), 430-439.


What are the appraisals tendencies for fear and anger? I understand the actions tendencies for fear and anger. For example: We might verbally insult someone when we are angry. We might feel like running away when we are afraid.

According to appraisal theory, each specific emotion leads us to make assessment or evaluations. So, based on this theory, I don't quite understand what would would be the appraisals for fear and anger?

Examples of appraisals which evoke the emotion of Fear may include dangerous and harmful situations which results people to experience fear. Appraisal of unfair treatment is one cause of Anger which may lead people to behave in an uncertain or unpredictable way both physically and verbally.


Why do we say that some animals have consciousness and some don't? For example, I have heard many say that ants don't have consciousness but humans do. I have always thought that our bodies/brain works more like computers (inputs and outputs). An analogy I can give (may not be the best) is that ants are like calculators and humans are like computers. It's the same idea of input and output but the outputs we give are a lot more complex.

How can we definitely say that we are conscious and not responding to inputs albeit much more complexly than ants?

This reminds me of a similar question I answered a few weeks ago. Not exactly the same situation, but the leading theory is that it comes down to complexity.

I'll start out by saying that we don't know for sure what animals are conscious or even what consciousness is, exactly. In fact, it's not even possible to prove without a doubt that you or I are conscious.

We do mostly seem to have a general intuition of what consciousness is, and which things are or are not conscious. Probably most people would say that an ant does not possess consciousness, and the complexity argument would back that up. While ants do have brains, the structure of their brains is very different from the brain of a mammal. Most people would say that a human has consciousness; from experience for one thing. How about a killer whale, a monkey, or even a human infant? There might be less of a consensus in these cases. In my opinion, we should err on the side of consciousness whenever possible.

Lastly, I get what you're saying with the computer analogy, but the human brain is so much more complex than a computer and it definitely works differently than any kind of man made computer. Even some of the new chips that are built to mimic networks of neurons are missing a lot of what is going on in vivo. There are interactions occurring between living neurons that aren't fully understood yet. A more accurate analogy would be that the human brain is like a high-end future computer-like object and an ant nervous system is like a very low-end future computer-like object. One difference between high-end and low-end future computer-like objects might be the ability to experience consciousness.


Do children learn to play musical instrument more easily than adults? People say that it is harder for adults to learn to play instrument, because their muscle became stiff. Is there evidence for this claim?

Roughly speaking, most forms of learning become harder as one ages. Probably the most relevant aspect for your question is learning fine motor skills:

  most studies revealed that performance gains in fine motor tasks are diminished in older adults


Are males more likely to view homosexuals as mentally ill than females? It's generally accepted that males tend to have a more negative attitude toward homosexuality than females:

Three studies conducted with students at six different universities revealed a consistent tendency for heterosexual males to express more hostile attitudes than heterosexual females, especially toward gay men. (Herek 1998)
Men were more negative than women toward homosexual persons and homosexual behavior, but the sexes viewed gay civil rights similarly. Men's attitudes toward homosexual persons were particularly negative when the person being rated was a gay man or of unspecified sex. (Kite, Whitley Jr. 2009)

There's research into finding explanations as to why there is this distinction (e.g. Whitley Jr. 2001), but it does not seem to cover my specific question:
Q: Are heterosexual males more likely to view homosexuality as a mental illness (or  as some kind of a "sickness") than heterosexual females?
The homophobia scales I've looked at (Szymanski and Chung 2008, Wright Jr., Adams, Bernat 1999, Raja, Stokes 1998, and Bouton et al. 1987) don't ask questions about whether or not homosexuality is considered a mental illness, but do ask if it's considered a "sin" or "disgusting".

Craig Waldo (1999) is the only study I can find at the moment which sheds any light on the subject.

  Although negative social attitudes toward gay men and lesbians are often referred to as homophobia, several authors have argued that the term heterosexism is a more appropriate and inclusive concept (e.g., Herek, 1989; 1992; Lorde, 1984; Neisen, 1990). The distinction is an important one, as it focuses on the normalizing and privileging of heterosexuality (rather than merely a fear of homosexuality) and calls attention to the prejudice and social stigma, both institutional and interpersonal, faced by GLB people. In contrast to homophobia, heterosexism includes a wide range of experiences of discrimination not limited to those related to phobias or violent episodes, and it conceptually includes prejudice toward bisexual men and women as well.

As you said, men generally are less tolerant to those in the LGBTQIA community than women and Waldo suggests that it may be down to tolerance for hetrosexism.

  This study represents the first examination of a model of the process of heterosexism in the workplace, demonstrating that organizational factors such as tolerance for heterosexism contribute to its prevalence and that it is associated with undesirable job-related, health-related, and psychological sequelae. As such, this study provides insight into not only the costly effects that can be expected in workplaces that tolerate heterosexism, but also possible ways to counter it. By preventing heterosexism in the first place, both organizations and individuals alike will prosper.

References

Waldo, C. R., 1999. Working in a majority context: A structural model of heterosexism as minority stress in the workplace In: Journal of Counseling Psychology, Vol 46(2): pp 218-232.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.46.2.218


Gaining and maintaining viewer sympathy for an anti-social protagonist The show "Breaking Bad" is about:

  A struggling chemistry teacher turns to a life of crime with the aim
  of providing for his family's future.

The protagonist of this show is meant to be sympathized during the beginning of the show. During that later parts of the show, the main character commits atrocious acts. Yet viewers still sympathize with him.

Why is this?
Is it because it is a TV show and not real life?

In a world where the Wealthy [are perceived to] abuse the Poor and Middle class, it is easy to subconsciously maintain sympathy for a 'honest' (passion to teach kids) and 'intelligent' (chem. teacher) person when they perform crime that it characterized in the 'Robin Hood' style.

I've never seen the show and so I'm sure that there are metaphors that make things more hazy than this, but these are broad societal themes in U.S. culture.


Is there any evidence for the cell assembly? What is a cell assembly?

In Principles of Neural Science Eric Kandel, and colleagues wrote:

  After this strengthening has occurred, a group of three neurons that are strongly coupled by excitatory synapses form a cell assembly (Figure E–5C). Neuroscientists generally use this term rather imprecisely. One must look to mathematical models of networks for more precise definitions, which generally have some- thing to do with the presence of strong mutual excita- tory interactions within a group of neurons. The word “assembly” emphasizes that the group did not initially exist but was constructed through the strengthening of the synapses of the neurons in the group, which in turn was caused by the simultaneous activation of the neurons.

In [1] the cell assembly is defined as:

  A large group of cells that tend to be active at the same time because they have been activated simultaneously or in close succession in the past.

Sebastian Seung in [2] defines the cell assembly like this:

  ... the neurons are excitatory and are mutually connected by synapses into a structure known as a cell assembly.

Hence, my question;

What is the best evidence, if any, for the cell assembly?

Thanks!

[1]: Breedlove, Watson, Rosenberg, Biological Psychology 6th Edition

[2]: Seung, Connectome - How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

EVIDENCE FOR THE CELL ASSEMBLY

The idea of the cell assembly is grounded on the following 3 principles:

The neurophysiological basis of a concept is the cell assembly, ie population coding.
The neurons in a cell assembly continuously fire even after environmental stimulus ceases.
Learning gives rise to cell assemblies through the interaction between presynaptic and postsynaptic synapses.

NOTE I will briefly talk about the first two principles; however, there is evidence for all 3.

EVIDENCE FOR PRINCIPLE 1

In The Organization of Behavior Hebb observed that brain surgery did not affect intelligence. Given this he proposed that the cell assembly was the neurophysiology basis for a concept.

The studies that support this principle show this; different neurons get activated in response to the same feature, but, unless the neurons function collectively, an object is not identified.

(Averbeck 2006) reports that individual neurons count for little; as an example, he mentions the visual cortex. He says:

  visual discrimination in the primary visual cortex (V1) is much more accurate than would be predicted from the responses of single neurons.

EVIDENCE FOR PRINCIPLE 2

Principle 2 could explain why a stimulus triggers a memory. Consider this example from Seung, Connectome:

  It's a fine spring morning, and you are walking down the street on the way to work. You catch the scent of flowers; within a few steps the smell becomes overpowering. You're not yet conscious of the magnolia blooming at the side of the road, but all of the sudden you're transported far away. You remember standing next to a magnolia tree, outside the red brick house of your first sweetheart. He is holding you in his arms. You feel shy and embarrassed. A plane is flying overhead, and you hear his mother calling for you to come have a glass of lemonade.

He then goes on to explain why this might happen:

  How do these connections trigger the recollection of your first kiss? Since the neurons are assumed excitatory, the activation of the "magnolia neuron" excites the other neurons in the cell assembly to become active.

Since neurons in a cell assembly continuously fire even after the stimulus ceases you remain thinking about your first kiss.

Principle 2 is supported by the following studies:

(Funahashi 2001)
(Assad 2000)

This post is not great, but I hope it helps someone.

Thanks.


Is being a morning person vs a night person actually a real thing or just a preference? Are there real physical differences between a morning person vs a night person that can be measured and used to explain the difference?
Or is it just an adapted preference randomly varying from person to person?

(see also this Q&A over at Biology.SE: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/93965/why-do-morning-people-have-shorter-biological-clocks/93966)
It's a real thing, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's set in stone or that preferences can't be changed/learned.
At least some portion of these preferences seem to be genetic and related to regulation of circadian rhythms. In brief: animals, including humans, have a system of molecular "clocks" that keep track of roughly the length of a day. These clocks most often run naturally slightly longer than 24 hours: if you keep someone (or, preferably, a lab animal) in constant darkness, they will still keep a daily sleep/wake cycle, but it will drift over time, corresponding to a >24 hour day.
To actually follow the real cycle of day and night, light is used to resynchronize the clock every day.
If someone's "natural" clock (without light synchronization) runs a bit shorter (faster) than average, you'd expect that person would tend to feel like waking up a bit earlier as well as feeling tired a bit earlier in the evening - a morning person. If someone's natural clock runs a bit slower than an actual day, then morning will come a bit sooner than they prefer, and in the evening they won't quite feel tired yet.
That said, like most traits of this nature, the biological underpinnings of these tendencies only explain part of it, and you would not expect to find people sorted neatly into "morning" and "night" but rather to follow something like a Gaussian distribution, with most people in the middle.
Here's a recent genome-wide association study and a review of some others on "chronotype" (the morning/night preference you ask about):
Jones, S. E., Lane, J. M., Wood, A. R., van Hees, V. T., Tyrrell, J., Beaumont, R. N., ... & Weedon, M. N. (2019). Genome-wide association analyses of chronotype in 697,828 individuals provides insights into circadian rhythms. Nature communications, 10(1), 1-11.
Kalmbach, D. A., Schneider, L. D., Cheung, J., Bertrand, S. J., Kariharan, T., Pack, A. I., & Gehrman, P. R. (2017). Genetic basis of chronotype in humans: insights from three landmark GWAS. Sleep, 40(2).


Multiple-stratum intelligence models My question concerns the mathematics of multiple-stratum models, about which I've not found much that's quantitative, so excuse my inventing my own notation to explain my thoughts.

In models such as Cattell-Horn-Carroll, intelligence components are arranged in, say, 3 to 4 strata. I'm going to invert the usual numbering of these strata so I can summarise my current understanding of these models, regardless of the total number of strata. In other words:

I'm putting $g$ on its own in "Stratum 1". (I realise it's usually in stratum III in a 3-stratum model.)
Stratum 2 components are then functions of $g$ and noise terms; for example, they might be approximated in factor analysis as $x_i=l_i g +\varepsilon_i$.
Stratum 3 components are expressed in terms of stratum 2 components in a similar way, viz. $y_j=l_{ji}x_i+\eta_j=l_{ji}l_i g+l_{ji}\varepsilon_i+\eta_j$ with implicit summation over repeated indices. (I think you can see now why I've inverted the stratum order.) The noise term will still be Normal if the $\varepsilon_i$ and $\eta_j$ are Normal and independent. That's a big if, mind.
We can repeat this in a fourth stratum if the model calls for it (as for example occurs in g-VPR), viz. $z_k=m_{kj}y_j+\theta_k=m_{kj}l_{ji}l_i g+m_{kj}l_{ji}\varepsilon_i+m_{kj}\eta_j+\theta_k$.

My question is this: what distinguishes the contents of the various strata? In the above linear special case the $x_i,\,y_j,\,z_k$ all have essentially the same form, a multiple of $g$ plus a noise term (and a more complicated model would still have them each reduce to a noisy function of $g$). My suspicion is that stratum delineation comes down to nesting non-linear transformations and/or noise terms that don't have stable distributions.

You are making two mistakes, one in relation to the identification of the factors or what they represent (and factor analyzes have to be studied a lot by correlations with the tasks that each factor represents). And two, the relationships between the factors.

You do not take into account that each factor would represent very different abilities or processes (for example, the closing speed and the sequential reasoning is very different), the factors can be independent of this way, there does not have to be a linear relationship and in case if correlation exists, it will be correlation for a specific task, which leads me to indicate that it is proposing wrong relationships about completely different abilities or processes. This should clarify and is the model to start studying the factorial analysis:

x1 = a1.F1 + a2.F2 ... + b1.S1 + c1.E1

x2=...

x3=...

x1 (score on the task of a specific person) = a1 (factorial weight of common factor). F1 (common factor) + a2.F2 .... + b1 .S (specific factor) + c (factorial weight of the error factor) + E1 (error)

(In the majority of analyzes, an error for a specific factor is not studied)


Do modern personality traits exist with native people I am wondering if there is any evidence of personality traits like intro versus extroversion existing in native people without any contact with modern society, or if they are a result of modern life.

See the study below conducted on Tsimane (indigenous Bolivians). It uses Big-5 traits to assess whether if a general factor of personality can be identified with the natives (who mostly fit your criteria) similar to western population studies.

Which is 'evidence' that personality traits exists in indigenous tribes the same way they do in Western populations, since well, how else would they measure it?

van der Linden, Dimitri et al. “How Universal Is the General Factor of Personality? An Analysis of the Big Five in Forager Farmers of the Bolivian Amazon.” Journal of cross-cultural psychology vol. 49,7 (2018): 1081-1097. doi:10.1177/0022022118774925

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6047301/


EEG correlates of handedness Can any one suggest a good article about features of EEG of left-handed people?

I was surprised when find that there are only few old articles about it. I find only one new article by Propper, Ruth E., et al. (2012). Maybe I miss something.

  Propper, R. E., Pierce, J., Geisler, M. W., Christman, S. D., &
  Bellorado, N. (2012). Asymmetry in Resting Alpha Activity: Effects of
  Handedness. Open Journal of Medical Psychology, 1(4), 86-90.

Abstract

  Background

  According to decades of research on affective motivation in the human
  brain, approach motivational states are supported primarily by the
  left hemisphere and avoidance states by the right hemisphere. The
  underlying cause of this specialization, however, has remained
  unknown. Here we conducted a first test of the Sword and Shield
  Hypothesis (SSH), according to which the hemispheric laterality of
  affective motivation depends on the laterality of motor control for
  the dominant hand (i.e., the “sword hand," used preferentially to
  perform approach actions) and the nondominant hand (i.e., the “shield
  hand," used preferentially to perform avoidance actions).

  Methodology/Principal Findings

  To determine whether the laterality of approach motivation varies with
  handedness, we measured alpha-band power (an inverse index of neural
  activity) in right- and left-handers during resting-state
  electroencephalography and analyzed hemispheric alpha-power
  asymmetries as a function of the participants' trait approach
  motivational tendencies. Stronger approach motivation was associated
  with more left-hemisphere activity in right-handers, but with more
  right-hemisphere activity in left-handers.

  Conclusions

  The hemispheric correlates of approach motivation reversed between
  right- and left-handers, consistent with the way they typically use
  their dominant and nondominant hands to perform approach and avoidance
  actions. In both right- and left-handers, approach motivation was
  lateralized to the same hemisphere that controls the dominant hand.
  This covariation between neural systems for action and emotion
  provides initial support for the SSH.

Citation: Brookshire G, Casasanto D (2012) Motivation and Motor Control: Hemispheric Specialization for Approach Motivation Reverses with Handedness. PLoS ONE 7(4): e36036. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036036


How Sexual fluidity works? Can a heterosexual male that doesn't have any attraction towards male become gay without any attraction towards females.
Or will he become bisexual because he was heterosexual before.

Sexuality is thought to be mostly fixed (and certainly does not respond to active interventions to change it), but sometimes self-descriptions shift. It's unclear to what extent these shifts are changes in sexuality itself versus changes in how people identify. More broadly speaking, people aren't always good at describing their own wants/desires/feelings, and social and cultural factors can have a strong influence. Individuals may have experiences that make them rethink how they see themselves, or they may be more or less comfortable expressing a view that is outside perceived norms at different times.
Savin-Williams et al 2012 studied a group of young adults longitudinally and compared self-reported sexual orientation during two study waves, one when participants were 18-24 and later when they were 24-34.
Out of 5204 men who reported being "100% heterosexual" in the first wave, the vast majority, 5064, said the same in the second wave. 105 said "mostly heterosexual", 11 said "bisexual", 24 said "homosexual". Other categories were somewhat more fluid, as was sexuality among women, and you can see the whole study linked below.

Savin-Williams, R. C., Joyner, K., & Rieger, G. (2012). Prevalence and stability of self-reported sexual orientation identity during young adulthood. Archives of sexual behavior, 41(1), 103-110.


High Density Signal Meaning When I was reading an article, I found that it describes the EEG signal as a  high-density signal. So what is that mean?

  EMG is high temporal resolution  and moderate spatial resolution
  (comparable  to high-density EEG)

"High-density EEG" refers to the number of electrodes in the array.  Typically, any EEG rig with more than 64 electrodes is considered to be high-density electroencephalography.


Why does paraphrasing result in failure to obtain the spacing effect? Dempster, F. N. (1988). The spacing effect: A case study in the failure to apply the results of psychological research. American Psychologist, 43(8), 627 explains that:

  One implication of this account is that anything that increases the
  likelihood that a  repetition will receive full processing, such as
  events that make it difficult to retrieve the results of prior
  encodings, should improve learning. Thus, this account helps to
  explain failures to obtain the spacing effect with paraphrased
  repetitions, that is, repetitions having a  changed surface structure
  (Dellarosa & Bourne, 1985; Glover & Corkill, 1987), and under lengthy
  lag conditions (Ausubel, 1966; English et al.,  1934; Gay, 1973; Lyon,
  1914; Peterson et al.,  1935; Sones & Stroud, 1940).

I've read this paragraph several times, but cannot understand what it means. The first sentence is very understandable, but I think paraphrasing also increases the likelihood that a repetition will receive full processing and makes it difficult to retrieve the results of prior encodings. If that is the case, then paraphrasing should improve learning. However, the next sentence says:

  "this account helps to explain failures to obtain the spacing effect
  with paraphrased repetitions"(!)

Why?

Short answer
Paraphrasing indeed negates the spacing effect observed in learning, because it causes mass repetition to be as effective as spaced repetition. The confusion is that paraphrasing does not degrade spaced learning, instead it improves the effectiveness of learning through mass repetition up until the level of spaced repetition.

Background
Basically the question is why

  The spacing effect fails to occur with paraphrased repetitions

Krug et al. (1990) define the spacing effect as

  ...[T]he phenomenon in which material encountered on two different occasions with a lapse of time between the encounters is remembered better than material studied for an equal amount of time on one occasion.

Your cited text from Dempster, 1998) reads:

  Thus, this account helps to explain failures to obtain the spacing effect with paraphrased repetitions, that is, repetitions having a changed surface structure (Dellarosa & Bourne, 1985; Glover & Corkill, 1987).

Paraphrasing means

  [Restating] a text, passage, or work giving the meaning in another form

Now why does this fail to induce the spacing effect? The author cites two papers. The first from Dellarosa & Bourne (1985) states

  On the basis of previous research, it was assumed that memory for surface structure of sentences decays rapidly, and hence can contribute to initial identification of repetitions only at short spacings. Because this manipulation
  should hinder recognition of repetitions as repetitions, it was expected to induce full processing of massed repetitions, and thus facilitate recall of these items.

Why is this important? The authors believe that processing is key to the learning of verbal information. They claim that mass repetition, defined as

  [M]aterial studied for an equal amount of time [as spaced repetition] on one occasion

Spaced repetition is believed to be more effective, because the information upon repeated exposures is all fully processed, because it is not recognized by the brain anymore as a full repeat. In contrast, mass repetition leads to incomplete processing during repeated exposures, and hence is not processed fully anymore, because the brain recognizes it as an exact repeat of previously handles material Dellarosa & Bourne (1985). The surface structure of sentences is defined as

  [The] representation of a string of words or morphemes as they occur in a sentence, together with labels and brackets that represent syntactic structure.

Changing the surface structure disrupts the brain from recognizing it as an exact repeat. Dellarosa & Bourne (1985) hypothesized that changing the surface structure might prevent the brain from recognizing the same material as exact repeats of information in mass repetition, and thus that learning would become equally effective in mass repetitions. And indeed, their experiments showed that

  When sentences were repeated verbatim [] or by the same speaker [], the typical spacing effect was obtained. However, when the surface structure or speaker changed at time of repetition, massed repetitions were recalled nearly as well, or as well as their spaced counterparts.

Subsequently, Glover & Corkill (1987), the second paper Dempster cites, extended these findings to written text, showing the same effect, namely that changing surface structure of texts negated the spacing effect.

Your quote from Dempster, 1998)

  The spacing effect fails to occur with paraphrased repetitions

says the same thing, albeit in a condensed and indeed less clear form. It took me quite some detective work to solve this obscure sentence indeed!! Very nice question.

References
- Dempster, American Psychologist (1998); 43(8): 627-34
- Glover & Corkill, J Educational Psychol (1987); 79(2): 198-19
- Krug et al. J Educational Psychol (1990); 82(2): 366-71


Women in red-lipstick/darker shades? Can an observer of women in red lipstick or more darker shades interpret anything related to their psychology?

Rarely does one find oneself wearing lipstick unintentionally, I'd venture to guess. Therefore, one can at least conclude simply, "They want their lips to look redder or darker." There is added information in this conclusion, however sparse, about the motives of such women.
You might then wonder, "Why would women want their lips to appear redder or darker?" You might also note that most lipsticks have this effect, or add gloss to lips that are often paler and more matte naturally. Therefore you could probably consider the function of lipstick in general, not only red and dark shades, because this already includes most. Here's a recent article you might want to check out...
Hill, S. E., Rodeheffer, C. D., Griskevicius, V., Durante, K., & White, A. E. (2012). Boosting beauty in an economic decline: mating, spending, and the lipstick effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(2), 275–291. Available online, URLs: http://gatorlog.com/handout/handouts/Hill_Rodeheffer_Lipstic_Effect.pdf, http://personal.tcu.edu/sehill/LipstickEffectMS20March2012.pdf. Retrieved January 7, 2014.
It mostly discusses beauty products in general, and uses lipstick as a particular operationalization of bueaty products, which might even be cause for some concern about their conclusions. In any case, it should give a decent introduction to how some psychologists think about the implications of lipstick in general. I agree with @KasperBruhn that you're unlikely to hear about any good empirical research about why women choose the colors they do, but you might...This question is already the fourth hit for a "lipstick shade psychology" Google search! Also, the first hit is pretty informative about the psychology of men viewing women with lipstick:

Research has reasserted a strong link between males' perceptions of female attractiveness and red lipstick. Specifically, men are not only most drawn to a woman's lips, but, they spend the most time (7.3 seconds) fixated on a woman's lips when she is wearing red lipstick (as reported by the Daily Mail). Other research has similarly asserted perception of power is related to lipstick, again with red in particular.

You've got to suspect that women know that they're doing this to us...The author clearly does! As for the Daily Mail's original contribution to the discussion:

Scientists found that in the ten seconds after meeting a lady for the first time, the average chap will spend more than half his time gazing at her mouth. If she’s applied lipstick, he’ll find it difficult to look away, with a dash of pink holding his attention for 6.7 seconds and red keeping him fixated for 7.3 seconds. The study, carried out by scientists at Manchester University, involved tracking the eye movements of 50 men as they were presented with images of different women. When the women wore lipstick, the men gazed at their lips for an average of seven seconds – spending just 0.95 seconds looking at their eyes and 0.85 seconds studying their hair. But when they went without make-up, the men tired of looking at their lips after 2.2 seconds, instead devoting 2.97 seconds to admiring their eyes and 2.77 seconds to studying their noses. Full lips were deemed to be the most attractive feature, but the appeal of thin lips increased by more than 40 per cent once make-up had been applied.
Dr Geoff Beattie, who led the research, said: ‘This study proves that lips represent one of the most sensual aspects of a woman’s body and play a critical role in human sexual attraction. Full and red lips combined deliver the perfect pout to achieve male fixation, but women who simply wear lipstick – regardless of their lip type – secure significantly greater levels of attraction than those who do not. For centuries, women have painted their lips red to enhance their appeal, with this practice dating back as far as the Ancient Egyptians who commonly used red lipstick and rouge to enhance their attractiveness. The research suggests that red lips and perceived attractiveness are still inextricably linked, with red lipstick proving to be the most powerful attractor and significantly increasing visual fixation.’


Neural nets for cognition I recently got into Neural networks. As much as I have understood, the learning process is based on the change in weights according to stimulus and algorithm used in learning. Does this in any way represent the real learning process of our brain?

Yes and no.

Neural networks that use edge weights simulate synaptic plasticity - a key mechanism in the brain operation. But it isn't the only one.

In practice, cognition is the combination of various mechanisms, some we are still unsure of.

Perhaps the most obvious missing ingredient of weighted networks is the lack of frequency/time domains similar to that affecting the brain. Neurons involve time-dependent operation - for instance, both the action potential and the following refractory period are time-bound. The brain also involves synchrony, e.g. the phase-locked discharges of a neuron set.

There're also issues like different axon lengths that play a part. And many more.

In addition, and possibly above all, the actual topography matters a great deal - how everything is connected.

More advance brain simulations involve many of these extra components - mimicking more accurately a real biological brain.


Central and peripheral route dilemma Pretend a woman watching tv and she is moved by the speaker's credibility and his ability to speak at length on the new product. She also notes that he is attractive.

So in this case she is likely being influenced by 'Peripheral route', but does she also have been influenced by 'central route' ? (Minded because of the credibility of the speaker. Or is that also a characteristic of the peripheral way?)

The terms stem from Petty and Cacioppo's Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion (e.g., 1984, 1986). They posit that persuasion can go via two different routes, depending on whether people have the motivation and the ability to give the persuasive arguments much thought.

Petty and Cacioppo (1984, p. 70) on the central route:

  One, called the central route, says that attitude change results from a person's careful consideration of information that reflects what that person feels are the true merits of a particular attitudinal position. According to this view, if under scrutiny the message arguments are found to be cogent and compelling, favorable thoughts will be elicited that will result in attitude change in the direction of the advocacy. If the arguments are found to be weak and specious, they will be counterargued and the message will be resisted—or boomerang (change opposite to that intended) may even occur. To the extent that increasing the number of arguments in a message affects persuasion by enhancing issue-relevant cognitive activity, the central route to persuasion has been followed.

Petty and Cacioppo (1984, p. 70) on the peripheral route:

  Attitude changes that occur via the second or peripheral route do not occur because the person has diligently considered the pros and cons of the issue; they occur because the person associates the attitude issue or object with positive or negative cues or makes a simple inference about the merits of the advocated position based on various simple cues in the persuasion context. For example, rather than carefully evaluating the issue-relevant arguments, a person may accept an advocacy simply because it is presented during a pleasant lunch or because the message source is an expert. Similarly, a person may reject an advocacy simply because the position presented appears to be too extreme or because the source is unattractive. These cues (e.g., good food, expert and attractive sources, extreme positions) may shape attitudes or allow a person to decide what attitudinal position to adopt without the need for engaging in any extensive thought about the arguments presented. To the extent that a person agrees with a recommendation because of the simple perception that there are a lot of arguments to support it, the peripheral route to persuasion has been followed.

All attributes given in your example (credibility, attractiveness, eloquence) refer to cues that should be especially relevant if the peripheral route is followed, because they are not arguments about the product itself but refer to the context of the persuasion ("This guy looks legit, sure I'll buy the Slap Chop!").

References

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1984). The effects of involvement on responses to argument quantity and quality: Central and peripheral routes to persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 69–81. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.46.1.69

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 19, pp. 123–205). Academic Press.


Do Jewish people have better cognitive abilities than average population? Jewish people are overrepresented in politics and science especially in the United States. Do they have better cognitive abilities than average population? If yes, what is the reason for this?

Statistics:

0.2% of world population is Jewish
About 1.7% - 2.6% of Americans are Jewish
10% of US senators are Jewish
About 23% of Nobel prize winners are Jewish.

Your explanation limits your question to the present day United States. Richard Lynn (2004) indeed found that American Jews have a higher verbal intelligence than non-Jewish whites by an average of 7.5 IQ points. But since American Jews are largely descendants of European immigrants, their higher relative intelligence might be a result of so-called "eugenic practices" (Zeidner, 2012): many highly intelligent Jews (e.g. scientists and artists) received special help from foreign parties to flee the Nazi holocaust, and those that where wealthy (presumably because they were more intelligent) had better resources, e.g. to bribe German officials (which is documented) or simply to pay for their transportation. From the current situation in the US it is therefore unclear if Jews are hereditary more intelligent or other factors have influenced the selection of Jewish American immigrants, if compared to the descendants of non-Jewish immigrants, many of which where poor (and uneducated). As other studies show (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations), intelligence is influenced by food (= wealth) and education (= wealth) by about 10 IQ points. So the higher intelligence of American Jews lies within what those factors might explain.

Taking a wider view, there are other studies that find higher intelligence in Jews as far back as the middle ages or in other areas of the world also. The debate is summarized in a Wikipedia article as well as countless articles on the web.

Sources:

Lynn, R. (2004). The intelligence of American Jews. Personality and Individual Differences, 36(1), 201-206.
Zeidner, M. (2012). The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievement (Review). Times Higher Education. Available online at http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/the-chosen-people-a-study-of-jewish-intelligence-and-achievement/418945.article


Where in the Big5 does shyness belong? I just stumbled upon something contradicting:

Some sources claim that shyness is a trait of extroversion(introvert)
Some sources claim that shyness is a trait of neuroticism #4, self-consciousness.

What is correct? Can an extrovert be shy or not?

Based on my experience looking at factor analyses of personality facet structures like the NEO-PI and NEO-IPIP, I think that shyness is mostly captured by low levels of extraversion. Enjoying, getting energy from, and actively engaging in social interaction is a central component of extraversion.

That said, as with many general personality constructs, the Big 5 provides a general framework for understanding them. It is common for there to be a profile of meaningful correlations with the Big 5 where some are larger and some are smaller. Given the elements of anxiety and negative emotions that may be associated with shyness, especially extreme shyness, correlations with neuroticism are also likely.

From an empirical perspective, I've often found that the self-consciousness facet on the NEO-IPIP loads most strongly on a factor with other extraversion facets.

I also note that there are a range of ways of conceptualising introversion. Some  emphasise shyness and social anxiety. Others frame introversion more positively such as enjoying doing work and personal activities by yourself, or preferring one-on-one interactions as opposed to large group interactions.

Empirical example

As an empirical example, we did a study (Horwood et al, 2015) looking at factor and facet correlates of Type D personality. One of the subscales of Type D is called social inhibition, and it is related to shyness (e.g., items like "I often feel inhibited in social interactions", "I find it hard to start a conversation).

Table 1 shows how the largest correlation with the Big 5 (measured using the NEO-PI-R) for social inhibition was the negative correlation with extraversion (r = -.73), but that the correlation with neuroticism was still substantial (r = .59).

This next table shows the correlations (both zero-order and semi-partials controlling for the Big 5) with Social Inhibition. The largest correlations are for warmth and gregarisiousness (negative correlations), but the correlation with self-consciousness is almost as high.

References

Horwood, S., Anglim, J., & Tooley, G. (2015). Type D personality and the Five-Factor Model: A facet-level analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 83, 50-54. full-text


How does a human classify or cluster data? Here, what I mean by DATA are text documents.

I am going to do a research on text clustering algorithms by the help of artificial neural networks (ANNs). But first of all I need to know how our brain (neural system) cluster (or classify) text data while we are reading a document.

Imagine we are reading some uncategorized and scattered news articles around the internet (For example on a weblog). Here, when we read an article, we'll easily find out that what it is about or what group it goes under: Politics, Sports, Economic, etc. We'll know it by the help of words inside the article, I know.

How does our brain cluster these data inside itself. How do we make clusters/categories inside our brain, and then assign data to them?

Here is an article written on a study on the measured effects of blood flow in the brain from "two hours of movie trailers that contained over 1,700 categories of actions and objects". A video (attached in the article) describes the methods used and the results of the study. They found that the brain tended to categorize things that shared similar functions or is-a relationships. This can be seen in the resulting chart, where the nodes representing "mammals", "people" and "communication verbs" are closely related. The brain also seemed to separate things that moved or were considered to be alive and inanimate objects.

This study was done using only 5 participants so it's fair to say that more research needs to be done before we can uncover more of the truth concerning this topic.

To answer your second question, regarding how information is stored in the brain, we need to understand a process called "encoding". I don't fully understand how this process works on a biological level, but as a gross explanation the brain stores sensory information it deems important and then goes through a secondary process called "consolidation". This process aims to stabilize the trace of a memory after it is initially encoded. The final process, "retrieval" is the act of remembering the information. During this stage the brain reconstructs the memory or information and thereby strengthens the neural pathway that makes up that memory.

So in short, the brain stores information through complex neural connections. These neural connections are tied to the sensory information that was initially perceived, which is reconstructed when you remember it.

Hope I was able to clear up some of your questions :)


How do songs trigger memories associated with previous experiences of listening to the  song? Background:
If I like a particular song, I listen to it while doing other things until I get sick of that song. This creates an extremely strong bond between the two things: the song and the activity. The activities usually being programming languages or video games. Whenever I hear the song again, the emotions and/or visuals of whatever I was doing flood my brain, and I can remember them vividly.

Questions

How does hearing a song trigger memories associated with that song?
Is there anything special about songs and memory associations?
Has any particular research been conducted on the association between songs and memory?

I believe this phenomenon is well known in cognitive science. That is how our memory works.

The simpliest explanation would be the Hebbian learning rule: "Neurons that fire together, wire together." So, you can imagine some neurons firing when you hear the music and some when you see the game. Now, if these used to fire together, they are probably connected. Somehow you've learned that these stimuli come together and your brain is recalling them all even if this time only the audio stimulus is presented.

Try reading more about episodic memory:

  For example, memories of people’s faces, the taste of the wine, the music that was playing, etc, might all be part of the memory of a particular dinner with friends. By repeatedly reactivating or “playing back” this particular activity pattern in the various regions of the cortex, they become so strongly linked with one another that they no longer need the hippocampus to act as their link, and the memory of the music that was playing that night, for example, can act as an index entry, and may be enough to bring back the entire scene of the dinner party.
  Episodic and semantic memory

However, auditory triggers are possibly not the strongest available. According to an idea called "Proustian phenomenon" the strongest would be smell.
Example study to that matter:
Proust revisited: Odours as triggers of aversive memories

Reference:

Toffalo, M.B.J., Smeets, M.A.M., van den Hout, M.A. (2012).  Proust revisited: Odours as triggers of aversive memories.  Cognition & Emotion, 26(1):83-92.


Minimum duration for presenting a visual stimulus on screen My experiment involves presenting simple visual stimuli briefly on screen (200 ms to 1000 ms). The stimuli would be simple enough (e.g. a circle and a line) but I want to use a range of durations to test out some hypotheses. I would like to know if there's a minimal time for human eyes to perceive simple visual stimuli, so I could say "the durations I've chosen for my experiment are safely above the minimal value suggested by 'so and so' in the psychophysics experiment.

I am sure many factors would have an impact on such a value, such as the participant's condition and how far the target is (in my case it's the distance between someone, sitting at their desk, and the computer screen), etc., but perhaps there are data and rules already established? If anyone knows of applicable guidelines or literature, I would really appreciate it.

(I've tried searching under "tachistoscopic presentation minimum time" but haven't discovered anything useful yet. Any other search term combo would also be helpful.)

In psychophysics, this is known as an absolute threshold. The absolute threshold will depend on a variety of factors such as brightness, size, etc.

It is also important to keep in mind that the time needed to detect a stimulus may be too short to cause some desired effect on the participant (e.g. a manipulation). For example, the time needed to detect a stimulus is necessarily shorter than the time needed to identify a stimulus. Though research on subliminal stimuli suggests stimuli can sometimes be presented below threshold and still achieve some manipulation. However, some of this research is controversial.

Often, researchers will choose a range of display times specifically in order to unravel the time course of some cognitive process. For instance, when displaying a cluster of dots, how long is needed in order to subitize them?

There is insufficient information in your question to give you an exact number, but I suggest looking at similar studies and see what sort of display times they use.


Significance of 4 stimulus cards in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test? I've reviewed the papers by Grant, D. A., & Berg, E. (1948) and Fey, E. T. (1951).

These papers from what I was able to find, lay out the basis of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). There are three possible rules for sorting the cards; color, shape, or count. I am curious why the WCST places 4 stimulus cards in front of the patient when 3 carefully chosen cards would be sufficient. With 4 cards it seems that unless the examiner makes special preparations, there might be occasions when there is more than 1 correct stimulus card to choose, or during a transition from certain rule to the next the patient may make an incorrect guess and won't be able to tell which rule to eliminate.

Can anyone explain why there has to be 4 stimulus cards? Could I run an equally effective WCST with 3 stimulus cards?

Grant, D. A., & Berg, E. (1948). A behavioral analysis of degree of reinforcement and ease of shifting to new responses in a Weigl-type card-sorting problem. Journal of experimental psychology, 38(4), 404.
Fey, E. T. (1951). The performance of young schizophrenics and young normals on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Journal of consulting psychology, 15(4), 311.

I cannot tell you why they chose four cards, but I do know that it is perfectly fine to use three, (e.g. Niv and colleagues, 2015).

To give you more info on why the WCST is used in the study by Niv. The study wanted to see how you could best model learning (and relearning) multidimensional information, to be able to better understand how people make sense of the multidimensional information provided by the real world. Therefore, they had participants perform the WCST with three cards. Multiple reinforcement learning algorithms were then fitted to the behavioral data, and they found that a reinforcement learning model that includes decay (as to model memory decay) was best able to do so.

I believe it would have been perfectly fine to have used four cards in that study as well. It would make it more difficult to learn on which dimension to focus, which would probably also be modeled.

There are also variations of the WCST (e.g. Catherwood and colleagues, 2014). In that study they instead of took apart four dimensions and showed a 2x2 matrix with each unit depicting a different dimension.

In short

Depending on the goal of your experiment, you can decide how you would like to use the WCST specifically.


best book for cognitive science I am computer science student and I have a limited knowledge about cognitive science.

What books would give me a good introduction to the area?

For a neuroscience focused overview I enjoyed:

"Making up the Mind" by Chris Frith

For a psychology textbook ( I think this is used in undergraduate level):

"Psychology 2nd Edition" by  Daniel L. Schacter, Daniel T. Gilbert, Daniel M. Wegner


As for future mind control/reading technology, can humans fight it? As of recent times, rats have communicated through wireless brain implants, from across the globe. Also, recent fMRI technologies have allowed prediction of movements (or intention), and the visualization of brain waves (or 'seeing' your thoughts, images, etc.)

Rats have been used for testing, and some advances allowed scientists to predict intention, induce and/or subdue emotions and thoughts.

Reading or controlling the mind requires modifying/reading neural oscillations on neurons, and doing so on certain parts of the brain. Since the neural oscillations are the base of thought and cognition itself, how can we fight our own oscillations? This question stems from the possibility of mind control/reading in humans.

If the technology directly modifies our thoughts.. how can we fight that very structure? In science fiction, people "fight" against implants and control, but in reality, is that even possible? Can we fight our own oscillations?

For example, your mind is being read for a thought that you consciously know, like a password, and can you fight this attack?
Another example, your mind is being controlled, you are being coerced, and since neural oscillations are thought itself, you can't have objections.

Can we have objections?
Can we fight our neural oscillations if they are hijacked?

For the question of whether humans could fight neuro"mind-reading", I can only say that there is very little evidence that information we know but are not thinking about could be extracted using current methods.  This means that the old scifi mind-reading-fighting standby of thinking of something else might work--although then we have the "don't think of a pink elephant" problem of ironic processing.

For the question of whether we could fight externally induced neural activity, I'm going to assume that it would be similar to fighting intrusive thoughts in obsessive compulsive disorder.  Currently, our best bets there are exposure, cognitive behavioral therapy, and drugs.  Since exposure is primarily involved with reducing the strength of the association between the anxiety-creating obsession and the comforting compulsion, I'm not sure it applies here.  Similarly, since the drugs used for OCD are generally anxiolytic or antidepressant, I'm not sure they would help in this case.  It might be possible to create a variant of cognitive behavioral therapy that treats the imposed neural activity as a compulsion. . . but since the technology to impose neural activity on humans (or animals who are good analogs of human compulsion) doesn't exist, all this is speculative!


Does risk of developing depression continue to increase after age 60? Age is a risk factor for depression when we look at the entire lifespan. Does that hold true in a population of >60 years old?

In addition to the articles that @Seanny provided in the comments, I think this study addresses your question pretty well. A couple of idiosyncrasies about the sample: from rural Germany, primary care attenders, 75 and over (Weyerer et al., 2008).

Results are somewhat mixed: univariate analysis shows a positive relationship between age and depression (accounting for sex), while adjusting for all possible confounding variables make the effect not statistically significant (though still positive).

What does this mean? Yes, there is a positive relationship between age and depression. However, the relationship may not be distinct from other aspects of old age (mobility impairment, visual impairment, etc.) that increase in prevalence as age increases.

References

Weyerer, S., Eifflaender-Gorfer, S., Köhler, L., Jessen, F., Maier, W., Fuchs, A., … Bickel, H. (2008). Prevalence and risk factors for depression in non-demented primary care attenders aged 75 years and older. Journal of Affective Disorders, 111(2–3), 153–163. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2008.02.008


Can two neurons stimulate each other? Is it possible that two neurons stimulate each other in an everlasting two neuron circuit?

We refer to neurons that are connected to each other as having a "reciprocal" connection (however, the term is also used to refer to regional reciprocal connections in addition to neuron-neuron connections).
For typical neurons, much more than one input is necessary to reach action potential threshold, so you wouldn't expect reciprocally connected neurons to result in an "everlasting" response of the two cells. Pyramidal cells in neocortex, for example, are often connected to their neighbors, but that doesn't mean one always fires after its neighbor. Holmgren et al 2003 tested 542 pyramidal cell pairs from layer 2/3 of rat neocortex. 61 of those pairs were connected, and of the 61, 7 were connected reciprocally, and these were much more common among cells less than 50 microns apart.
There are, however, central pattern generators that can include reciprocal connections to create a repeating rhythm. These networks typically involve substantial inhibitory components, though, rather than just two interconnected cells.

Holmgren, C., Harkany, T., Svennenfors, B., & Zilberter, Y. (2003). Pyramidal cell communication within local networks in layer 2/3 of rat neocortex. The Journal of physiology, 551(1), 139-153.


Good news or bad news first Is it true that people handle bad news better if they got told good news first, or do they 'forget' the good news if the bad news is told after?

Is it better to save the good news for last so the person who gets the news will have a better average feeling about the conversation?

My suggestion is to look to prospect theory here. In general, people feel losses 2.5x more than gains (Kahneman + Tversky). There's also an inversion curve: more good has diminishing returns, more bad has diminishing returns too.
Basically we 'acclimate'

This is a very crude way to think about it.

Good news first:
In this situation, we could go up the curve, then 2.5X down for the bad news, or the other way around.

Bad news first:
In this situation, you go down the curve first, but coming back the curve you erase the curve of the bad news, which is 2.5x steeper, so you're actually net gaining in positive utility, because the same amount of good news brings you up the curve more.

This is called the silver lining effect in the literature.

So all in all, deliver the bad news first: you'll gain more 'upside' on reversing bad news than following up good news with bad (silver lining effect) + people will remember the good news at the end of the conversation (recency effect).


The relationship between semantic memory and concepts/procedures I try to analyse my memory and cognition while learning coding and generally interacting with a computer to develop more meta cognition. I found many times that I remember the words and some associations regarding some procedure, but I do not really remember how to execute it. I will give an example from statistics. I was doing an Anova and the rule states that if the Mauchly's test is significant you should use Greenhouse Geiser adjustment, however if epsilon is greater than 0.75 you use a different adjustment. I have executed this rule a bunch of times, however when I run into it again the only thing I remember is Greenhouse Geisser and 0.75, I always have to check the relationship between them and what to do next.

My semantic memory keeps the information about the association of the two words. What is the term used for the memory of procedures to execute? I know about procedural memory, though that is defined as implicit so it does not encompassing this concrete example.

This happens in many other situations as well with more difficult procedures or concepts, I remember the words and the associations to it, but for the actual procedure or concept I always have to look up again.

You are right, procedural memory is defined as implicit. Semantic memory on the other hand is part of explicit memory. It includes declarative knowlegde (knowledge of facts or ideas) that can be made conscious. As far as I know there is no particular relationship between the two but they will definitely interact during cognitive processes. For example, experts often possess declarative knowledge thas has been proceduralized, which means that the declarative knowlege is incorporated in automatic procedures without making strong demands on working memory.

It is believed that concepts ("a concept is a mental representation used to group similar events, ideas, objects, or people into a category", see Woolfolk, Educational Psychology) are part of semantic memory and thus explicit memory. The term for "memory of procedures to execute" comes closes to two things that are part actually procedural memory:

Scripts: actions sequences or plans of action stored in memory. For example, we have scripts for ordering food at a certain type of restaurant.
Productions (or condition-action rules): if A happens than B happens. If good behavior occurs than reinforce that behavior if you want it to occur again. Or if you want to ski faster than you automatically lean back.

In order for the procedure to become more easy to execute or even automatic for you as an individual, you need to proceduralize your declarative knowledge. So explicit knowledge has to become implicit. These skills are often referred to automated basic skills. For this to happen you will need to practice the skill a lot in a realistic context. However, not all skills can be come expert. Some skills such as driving can be automatic but you will still need to monitor the traffic consciously while driving, in other words you cannot do this automatically. Such a conscious procedure is called domain-specific strategy. After reading your example, I think the skill your are referring to can become automatic, however you need to practice each individual procedure (how and when to do a certain statistical test) for it to become automated.

I know this might not entirely answer your question but I think the information is usefull nevertheless.

Reference used: Educational Psychology by A. Woolfolk, Chapter 8.


Looking for happines in marriage survey according to living/not living together before marriage Do you know any research/survey results comparing how happy do people feel in marriage (after a few years) comparing marriages who lived together before marrying and living separately?

There are many studies into comparing divorce rate among spouses living or not living together before marrying, but I think it has a serious flaw - religious views can make couples still live together in marriage even though they feel unhappy. I think feeling happiness could be more interesting statistic.

Is premarital cohabitation associated with later marital satisfaction?

A study reported, in the 80's, that unmarried cohabitation prior to marriage was associated with "significantly" lower marital satisfaction, but did not report an effect size. They also reported that the duration of unmarried cohabitation was unrelated to marital satisfaction(DeMaris and Leslie, 1984). A later study by the same lead author from the 90's reported that unmarried cohabitation predicted later divorce after controlling for time in union (DeMaris and Rao, 1992), which I include because time in union could be a confounding factor and I could not find direct evidence.
Wydick (2007) gave a game theoretic account of why unmarried cohabitation may lead to relatively decreased marital satisfaction which I am not qualified to evaluate, but the paper cites a number of empirical studies that support DeMaris' older thesis, so this paper may also be of some interest.
Not to speculate, but this is subjectively surprising to me. When I began the literature search, I was confident the idea was nonsense, and yet here we are.
References

DeMaris, A., & Leslie, G. R. (1984). Cohabitation with the future spouse: Its influence upon marital satisfaction and communication. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 77-84.
DeMaris, A., & Rao, K. V. (1992). Premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital stability in the United States: A reassessment. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 178-190.
Wydick, B. (2007). Grandma was right: Why cohabitation undermines relational satisfaction, but is increasing anyway. Kyklos, 60(4), 617-645.


Dynamical systems theory as a metaphor in psychology: is it useful or not? Dynamical systems theory as it is used in the context of developmental psychology, and by some psychoanalysts as in this article or in this video by the first speaker can be described as an attempt to introduce mathematical concepts in the study of psychological phenomena. Unlike other applications of dynamical systems theory, the above seem to use terms like "attractor" in an abstract or metaphorical sense, that is, outside of a formal mathematical context.

Is this kind of application useful or just a bunch of preety words, stripped of their real meaning ?
Do we have a better understanding of psychological phenomena through such a framework?

Like all models and modeling frameworks, the utility of the approach is often tied to how much it increases our understanding of the phenomena of interest. As summarized nicely by Smith & Thelen (2003), there are developmental questions that are better conceptualized through the framework of DST than through alternative modeling frameworks due to the richly interactive and multi-causal structure of the phenomena.

You'll also find that applications of DST in Developmental Psychology are not just appealing to the metaphorical use of DST. There are rigorous mathematical uses of the tools of DST to explain developmental phenomena. One of the most cited examples is Thelen et al. (2001), who modeled the A-not-B error. There is a lot of similarly inspired modeling work being done throughout the field.


Did research in psychology lead to any useful technology? Research in physics allowed us to build bridges, computers, put people in space. Research in chemistry led to the discovery of all sorts of new materials which we use everyday. Research in biology led to many the discovery of many drugs that save millions of people every day. [Fill in more examples of game-changing technology based on hard sciences here.]

Did research in psychology lead to any useful technology? If yes, what are your favorite examples?

Artificial intelligence has received a strong influence from cognitive science, not only in its name.

Concepts like the P300 might have an application in lie detection. See this.

Cognitive psychology is in the basis of assessments for drivers, pilots. For that you'll need to work through concepts like attention, concentration, and the like.

That said, it's not in the scope of psychology to produce technology. So, you won't find much more than concepts/views/ideas flowing into/inspiring a technology.


Meaning of "projection" and "to project" in neuroscience What is the exact meaning of the term projection and the verb to project in neuroscience?

I haven't found any neuroscience reference book or dictionary that gives a definition, although those terms are often used in the definitions themselves. For example, the Glossary of Neuroscience (2nd ed.), available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10981/ gives this definition:

  upper motor neuron: A neuron that gives rise to a descending projection that controls the activity of lower motor neurons in the brainstem and spinal cord.

and several others, but "projection" itself is not an entry in the Glossary.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives this definition (#11):

  Physiol. The spatial distribution, in the brain, or other parts of the central nervous system, of the points to which nerves or nerve impulses go from any given area or organ; const. on, upon, to the receiving part; also concr., a tract of projection fibres.

but it's still a little vague.

I'd be happy if someone could give me a precise definition (and some references to corroborate it). In particular: can I say that a neuron projects to another neuron, to mean that the axon of the first connects to some dendrite of the second?

Cheers!

I think the definition you found from OED is fine. Dictionary definitions are often not really ideal for terms used in biology, you learn more from examples and usage, for example the quote you gave about upper motor neurons.

  can I say that a neuron projects to another neuron, to mean that the axon of the first connects to some dendrite of the second?

Typically yes, though as the OED definition implies, "from any given"/"to the receiving part", projection is typically used for longer-range connections, where the sending and receiving cells are in different nuclei or layers. You would be less likely to describe cells that synapse on each other within one nucleus as projecting, though I also wouldn't say that description is entirely wrong either, and the distance required to be "long-range" can sometimes be short.

You'll note if you go through the Purves' glossary that you linked, all the uses of "projection" refer to long-range connections.


Is there evidence of suppression of the frontal cortex during herding behavior? Phenomena such as large-scale stock market sell-offs and financial panic in general are often explained in terms of herding behaviors.

At how primitive of a level does one actually "follow the herd"?  In other words, does this behavior elicit a strong response at the brainstem level (particularly in the tectum, i.e., the colliculi) at some cost to frontal cortical processing?

Obviously, it's a difficult task to run an EEG or have a subject in for an MRI during a real panic, so results based on simulations are certainly acceptable.

This is probably not a complete answer to your question.

There have been a few studies on this relationship.

This article from the Journal of Neuroscience "Downregulation of the Posterior Medial Frontal Cortex Prevents Social Conformity" (Klucharev et al. 2011) approach the research (from their abstract):

  Here we demonstrate that the transient downregulation of the posterior medial frontal cortex by theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces conformity, as indicated by reduced conformal adjustments in line with group opinion.

This article may also be of interest


Is there any evidence of a relationship between learning music and increased ability in Mathematics? I've had more than one mathematics teacher say to me that they had heard of a link between music and maths ability. I thought I observed it informally myself, but it was difficult to tell if those kids just had very motivated and caring parents. (ie few control data points of music and not mathematics and vice versa).

My question is: Is there any evidence of a relationship between learning music and increased ability in Mathematics?

There is a clear association between musical ability and mathematical ability, perhaps best recognised in savantism in people with developmental disabilities. There are limited domains in which savantism appears to occur, including mathematical calculations, reproducing music instantly, recalling specific facts, and perfect-perspective drawing.

There are a number of psychological theories from this literature that tie maths and music as related abilities. One is the "male-brain" theory, which argues that male-brains are better at systemising (prediciting how systems work through rules) than empathising (predicting how people work through their emotions and thoughts), while female-brains work vice-versa (Baron-Cohen, 2002). Both music and maths are highly systemised, making them well-suited to "male-brained" individuals.

Another relevant theory is the "Central Coherence" theory, which again argues for different cognitive styles that may assist individuals to excel at both maths and music. Happe and Frith (2009) note that individuals with weak central coherence process information in fine detail, often at the expense of the greater context in which these details occur. This method of information processing may be beneficial to developing talents in both maths and music. The authors give the example of developing absolute pitch - a common ability in musical savants - as this requires attention to the exact notes rather than the relationship between notes.


Are there any types of meditation/mindfulness intervention not starting with breathing exercises? It occurs to me that all meditation/mindfulness practice starts with focusing attention on breathing by either counting breaths or simply feel the sensation of the airflow
(Baer, 2003). Eventually, this focusing attention on breathing is likely to induce deep, slow breathing, which can slow down the heart rate and calm down the nervous system. Is there any meditation practice starting with a different form other than focusing on breathing?

Baer, R. A. (2003). Mindfulness training as a clinical intervention: A conceptual and empirical review. Clinical psychology: Science and practice, 10(2), 125-143.

You can use key words (“body scan” combined with “meditation”) to get specific studies. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book (titled "Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness”) describes this body-scan meditation and also you should be able to get youtube videos on it. Although it is typically described for lying down position, it can be done sitting or even standing.
I found the following study by doing a quick web search – there could be newer studies:

Ditto, B., Eclache, M., & Goldman, N. (2006). Short-term autonomic and cardiovascular effects of mindfulness body scan meditation. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 32(3), 227-234.

Walking meditation is also very good if one tends to fall asleep when meditating. Here’s a study that has used walking meditation:

Prakhinkit, S., Suppapitiporn, S., Tanaka, H., & Suksom, D. (2014). Effects of Buddhism walking meditation on depression, functional fitness, and endothelium-dependent vasodilation in depressed elderly. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 20(5), 411-416.

Here’s ‘soles of the feet’ meditation – again, there could be newer references:

Singh, N. N., Wahler, R. G., Adkins, A. D., Myers, R. E., & Mindfulness Research Group. (2003). Soles of the feet: A mindfulness-based self-control intervention for aggression by an individual with mild mental retardation and mental illness. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 24(3), 158-169.

Another meditation technique is to be simply aware of sounds, etc., that come and go without getting entangled in thoughts – this is called choiceless awareness and this meditation is also described in the book of Kabat-Zinn I mentioned earlier.
Here’s a reference for that as well:

Brewer, J. A., Worhunsky, P. D., Gray, J. R., Tang, Y. Y., Weber, J., & Kober, H. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(50), 20254-20259.