Is there a precise definition of "attitude"? After going through some literature on values, beliefs and attitudes, I am confused. Values and beliefs are somewhat more clear, but what exactly is an attitude? What does it contain?

Is "I like X" already an attitude towards X? Is anything beyond "like" also an attitude, such as "I find X boring"? If yes, then where is the border to related concepts (and which concepts are related - is an emotion towards an object an attitude)? If an attitude is only restricted to being a positive or negative disposition towards an object, how does it differ from a preference?

Update Nick Stauner's answer includes a citation claiming that an attitude is not affect. But the same citation insists that an attitude is about favorability, and if we reduce attitudes to "I like X", how is "like" not considered affect?

Have you considered Wikipedia's Definitions of attitude page? Here are some excerpts with which I agree...

An attitude can be defined as a positive or negative evaluation of people, objects, event, activities, ideas, or just about anything in your environment, but there is debate about precise definitions. Eagly and Chaiken [(1998)], for example, define an attitude "a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor." Though it is sometimes common to define an attitude as affect toward an object, affect (i.e., discrete emotions or overall arousal) is generally understood to be distinct from attitude as a measure of favorability [(Ajzen, 2001)]. [Emphasis added.]

To me, this distinction means that affect exists apart from attitudes at the level of the person (e.g., "I feel [insert affect word $X$ here]"), but is influenced by affect at the level of the object (e.g., "I feel [insert affect word $Y$ here] toward [insert object $Z$ here]"). Thus affect at the object level would more or less constitute an attitude, yet remain distinct from affect per se, which can occur at many levels, and not necessarily be directed toward any specific object. Examples of $X,\ Y,\ \&\ Z\ $ could include:
$$X=Y=\text{"resentful"};\ Z=\text{"Obama"}$$
Thus, "I feel resentful," states an affect, whereas, "I feel resentful toward Obama" states an attitude. However, you might prefer to consult Ajzen's (2001) own reasoning on the matter (TBH, I haven't).
Further considerations from Wikipedia:

This definition of attitude allows for one's evaluation of an attitude object to vary from extremely negative to extremely positive, but also admits that people can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object meaning that they might at different times express both positive and negative attitude toward the same object. This has led to some discussion of whether individual can hold multiple attitudes toward the same object [(Wood, 2000)].
Whether attitudes are explicit (i.e., deliberately formed) versus implicit (i.e., subconscious) has been a topic of considerable research. Research on implicit attitudes, which are generally unacknowledged or outside of awareness, uses sophisticated methods involving people's response times to stimuli to show that implicit attitudes exist (perhaps in tandem with explicit attitudes of the same object). Implicit and explicit attitudes seem to affect people's behavior, though in different ways. They tend not to be strongly associated with each other, although in some cases they are. The relationship between them is poorly understood.

References
Ajzen, I. k. (2001). Nature and operation of attitudes. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 27–58.
Eagly, A. H., & Chaiken, S. (1998). Attitude structure and function. In D.T. Gilbert, Susan T. Fisk, and G. Lindsey (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology, pp. 269–322. New York: McGowan-Hill.
Wood, W. (2000). Attitude change: Persuasion and social influence. Annual Review of Psychology, 51: 539–570.


What does 'Mean Diffusivity' tell me about the connectivity of cortical areas? I am reading an article about changes in thalamic volume and connections in relation to age and I understand that thalamic volume decreases with age. The authors find that mean diffusivity (MD) in thalamo-cortical projections increased with age.

I'm not familiar at all with diffusion tensor imaging so I have trouble understanding what the ramifications are for the function/anatomy of the white matter tracts.

Short answer
The mean diffusivity (MD) in diffusion tensor imaging is a sensitive, yet a rather non-specific measure. Changes in MD tell you that water movement is altered, yet why and how will have to be answered through additional studies.

Background
Diffusion MRI relies on the fact that water diffuses better parallel to axons than across them in the brain. Hence, in white matter that consists mainly of bundles of parallel oriented axons, water primarily moves in one direction, i.e., parallel to the fibers therein. In contrast, in the brain’s gray matter and the extracellular space, water moves freely in many directions. By taking advantage of the differences in diffusion rates, the white matter can be imaged in the brain. This technique is used diffusion tensor imaging, or DTI. DTI has been used to study disruptions in brain structure caused by trauma and white matter diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (Chi, 2014).

Now, there are several outcome measures in DTI and one of them is the mean diffusivity (MD). MD describes the magnitude of water diffusion within brain tissue and can be used to examine differences in brain structural integrity. Differences in MD may reflect variations within the intra- and extracellular space, a reduction in neuropil (basically, gray matter), and/or global increases in CSF (Clark et al., 2011). For example, increased tissue water in edema will increase the MD, whereas cell proliferation (tumor) may decrease the MD. In complex diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS), brain regions may experience an unpredictable combination of demyelination, axon loss, gliosis, and inflammation, which could result in competing influences on the diffusion tensor (Alexander et al. (2007).

MD is a sensitive but rather non-specific measure that can be affected by any disease process that affects the barriers that restrict the motion of water, such as cell membranes. (Clark et al., 2011).

In your linked article (Hughes et al., 2012), the only thing they really say about the MD is

  MD increased in both thalamo-frontal and thalamo-parietal regions with increasing age [...]. These observed changes [in] white matter tracts occur in parallel with an age related decrease in frontal cortical volume and the volume of related thalamic regions.

Indeed, I think in itself the change in MD tells you only that something has changed and that the MD may be a predictor for aging in the thalamocortical system.

References
- Alexander et al., Neurotherapeutics (2007); 4(3): 316–29
- Chi, The Scientist (2014)
- Clark et al., J Psychiatr Res (2011); 45(7): 980–8
- Hughes et al., NeuroImage (2012); 63 (3): 1134-42


What constructs help explain limited cognitive processing and the cognitive effects of rules that limit decision making choices? Supposed that I'm a married man, and my wife asks me to pick out a paint color for our new house. It's not terribly mentally taxing. However, my wife starts to add rules. The color can't be too bright, no green, neutral, etc. The additional rules that my wife give me add an additional burden to the process of selecting a color. So in my mind, there is the base cognitive effort required to select a color, and a secondary cognitive burden that requires me to process the rules that my wife gave me.

What mental effort constructs would apply in this scenario?

From instruction design, cognitive load theory defines intrinsic load, extraneous load, and germane load. In my example, I think intrinsic load would map somewhat to the base effort required to choose a color, and extraneous load would map to the additional rules imposed by my wife. However, I'm not sure that the process of learning as explained by cognitive load theory translates well into this scenario where a choice/decision is trying to be made. Are there other constructs that would be more applicable?

There is an unclear relationship between classical conceptions of a unitary view of mental workload to the modern constructs of cognitive psychology and neuroscience that are relevant to your question.  This is partly because mental workload is tough to define, and also because it is far too coarse a construct given the extremely large variety of dynamic cognitive factors that play a role in determining human performance. Hopefully this will become clear in the following description.

There is clearly difficulty incurred when one must pick just one option among many, without further guidance, as in your example.  Recent work (Snyder et al., PNAS 2010) indicates this kind of difficulty arises from at least two isolable sources: the relative prepotency of the various colors (e.g., the problem is easier if you have a single favorite color, and harder if you like all colors equally) and the total option space (e.g., easier if you only have 3 colors of paint to choose from, harder if you have 500).  These seem to have distinct and roughly additive effects on reaction time, at least in speeded lexical tasks, suggesting they both contribute to what you might call "mental workload."

This "underdetermined selection" problem can be made somewhat easier when additional criteria are specified, but not all criteria are equal.  "Not green" and "Not bright" are simple cues but are obviously less effective than "blue" or "0 0 255," both because they fail to reduce the problem space as effectively, and because they directly specify distracting information (the colors you're NOT supposed to pick), which will slow visual search processes (e.g., Kiyonaga, Egner & Soto, 2012).  Other cues - e.g., "something that goes well with the carpet" - may be more effective at reducing the problem space but probably incur additional mental workload, due to requiring what's known as relational reasoning.  There is also clearly a further "working memory load" incurred by the need to simultaneously consider many criteria in selecting the correct paint color.

To the extent that the number of rules given to you exceeds your working memory capacity, you may chose to store those rules in what's sometimes known as secondary memory (e.g., Unsworth & Engle, Psych Review 2007).  According to some conceptions of working memory (e.g., Oberauer et al Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2012), these items will then fall outside of the so-called "region of direct access," meaning that there are reaction time costs to retrieving these rules.  Moreover, maintaining the intention to retrieve those rules at a later point - say, after processing those that do currently occupy your working memory - may itself add a cost to reaction time (e.g., Einstein, et al JEP:G 2005).  There are also further "focus switching" costs (Oberauer, 2003) incurred when moving the single focus of attention to each of the rules that fall within the region of direct access.

If these rules are being provided during the "paint search task," they would also probably exert additional costs on reaction time.  This again is probably due to multiple sources of interference.  One of these likely reflects what's known as dual task costs - you're simultaneously listening to your wife while also trying to find the relevant paint color, and either resource sharing or rapid switching among tasks must occur.  On the other hand, even if these rules are provided soon after some other external event in this paint search task, you may also be substantially more delayed in acting upon them (this is known as the "psychological refractory period" effect).

As if that weren't enough, as recently demonstrated by Scalf, Dux & Marois (JoCN, 2011), encoding of information into working memory yields delays in top-down attention in visual cortex.

And finally, under conditions of high working memory load, perceptual selection processes operate less efficiently (e.g., Lavie et al JEP:G 2004), further exacerbating any of the above deleterious effects on your ability to rapidly choose an appropriate paint color from those in front of you.

References

Einstein, G.O., McDaniel, M.A., Thomas, R., Mayfield, S., Shank, H., Morrisette, N. & Breneiser, J. (2005). Multiple processes in prospective memory retrieval: factors determining monitoring versus spontaneous retrieval.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134, 327. PDF
Lavie, N., Hirst, A., de Fockert, J.W. & Viding, E. (2004). Load theory of selective attention and cognitive control.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General; Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 339.
Kiyonaga, A., Egner, T. & Soto, D. (2012). Cognitive control over working memory biases of selection. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, , 1-8.
Oberauer, K. (2003) Selective attention to elements in working memory. Experimental Psychology, 257-269.
Oberauer, K., Lewandowsky, S., Farrell, S., Jarrold, C. & Greaves, M. (2012). Modeling working memory: An interference model of complex span. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, , 1-41.
Scalf, P.E., Dux, P.E. & Marois, R. (2011). Working Memory Encoding Delays Top--Down Attention to Visual Cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 2593-2604.
Snyder, H. R., Hutchinson, N., Nyhus, E., Curran, T., Banich, M. T., O'Reilly, R. C. & Munakata, Y. (2010). Neural inhibition enables selection during language processing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 155-167.
Unsworth, N. & Engle, R.W. (2007). The nature of individual differences in working memory capacity: active maintenance in primary memory and controlled search from secondary memory.. Psychological review, 114, 104.  PDF


What is the difference between hindsight bias and confirmation bias? I'm trying to understand better the influence of psychological biases on the financial market decision-making process.

Wikipedia describes hindsight as follow:

  Refers to the common tendency for people to perceive events that have already occurred as having been more predictable than they actually were before the events took place. As a result, people often believe, after an event has occurred, that they would have predicted, or perhaps even would have known with a high degree of certainty, what the outcome of the event would have been before the event occurred.

While the definition of confirmation bias according to the same source is relatively similar:

  Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.

I think that those biases differ from the results' reflection perspective. However, I'm a bit confused about the proper interpretation.

Thanks in advance.

Hindsight Bias (Also known as the "knew-it-all-along phenomenon"), is the tendency when an individual assumes that he/she knew and predicted an outcome after the outcome has been determined (Hoffrage & Pohl, 2003). Due to that, it makes the individual believe that he/she could have predicted that outcome with statements such as: "I knew it all along" or "I knew it would happen" (Hoffrage & Pohl, 2003).
Hindsight bias functions in a way that after learning the outcome, it gives the individual a sense of predictability, a higher degree of certainty of the outcome without any prior knowledge. Having hindsight bias could potentially lead to people being overconfident on their ability.
As an example, consider a student who is answering a test question and is uncertain whether he should answer A or B. The student eventually answer B. When the teacher mentioned the actual answer is B. The student's first thing that came into his mind after the answer is mentioned: "I knew the answer is B all along". Making him feel confident about it despite the fact that he was uncertain about the answer during the initial stage on doing the test.
Confirmation Bias is the tendency for the individual to find and gather information that is more inclined and supports his/her beliefs (Nickerson, 1998). At the same time, ignoring the other possible alternatives of the information; making it biased.
Example, if a person strongly believes that playing games is harmful for children, he/she would find information/studies that supports the connotation that playing games is harmful. Without acknowledge or accept the fact there are also information/studies shown that it is beneficial for children to play games.
References:
Hoffrage, U., & Pohl, R. (2003). Research on hindsight bias: A rich past, a productive present, and a challenging future. Memory, 11(4-5), 329–335. doi:10.1080/09658210344000080
Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175–220. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.2.2.175


Subconscious response to symbols How scientifically valid is the idea that the subconscious recognises, interprets and processes symbols? By "symbols" I mean representations of one thing using another.

The context is the article "The Inner Language of the Subconscious" by Brenner in Psychology Today. I'm reading of attempts to coax certain behaviours/thought processes or eliminate bad habits by means of communicating directly with the subconscious, and I wanted to know if this is legitimate thinking or pseudoscientific claptrap.

You can start by checking out research on subliminal messaging. To summarize, subliminal messaging works to some degree, but it is much less effective than superliminal communication.

For example, will showing a dark gray coke bottle silhouette, so dark that you don't even know you're seeing it, in the momentary blank screen between movie previews cause people to decide to go buy a soda? It will probably influence a couple people, but not as many as would be influenced by just replacing the blank screen with a big, bright, picture of a coke, with the Coca-cola logo and condensation dripping down the glass. I say this because the benefits of conventional advertisements are well-established, but the effects of subliminal marketing are in doubt (Karremans et al., 2006).

That said, there is evidence that you can "prime" someone with subliminal information. Priming, though, is more about getting people to recognize something more quickly later than it is about getting them to change their behavior.

To your question, Greenwald has studied the effectiveness of subliminal messaging for self-help, and found it to be ineffective.

Refs:

Greenwald, A. G. (1992). New Look 3: Unconscious cognition reclaimed. American Psychologist, 47(6), 766.

Karremans, J. C., Stroebe, W., & Claus, J. (2006). Beyond Vicary’s fantasies: The impact of subliminal priming and brand choice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42(6), 792-798.


What causes introverts to lose "energy" in social settings and require recovery afterwards? Over the years I've seen numerous articles about introverts that mention that they dislike large social interactions (meetings, parties, etc) because they drain their energy. These articles mention that it can take days or weeks to recharge this energy.

This is anecdotal evidence, but I've personally felt it twice in the last week, which peaked my interest. A good way to describe this phenomena is - after a couple hours of large corporate meeting, the energy is gone, and I feel demotivated and just want to go home. "Feeling drained" is another good way to put it.

Are there scientific theories about what is causing introverts to lose energy in social settings? Is it related to mirror neurons? Is it related to a particular neurotransmitter system in the brain? Maybe it is related to a specific neurotransmitter receptor mutations?

Edit:

I found this relevant question that asks for the name of the "introverts losing energy" phenomenon. It mentions the following terms:

Social overload
Social exhaustion
Decision fatigue
Over stimulated

My sister and I are both introverts, and have been talking about this before.
We have agreed about the following:

When being social, we feel like we are obliged\expected to do\say certain things and avoid doing\saying others. We are supposed to ...

go where the others go.
be nice and agree rather than say what we think
do the same activity as everyone else
do it at the same time as everyone else
listen to the same music
eat the same or at the same place
etc etc etc...

Our will to do\say what we like\want is challenged whenever we are social. We feel restrained, and We feel that we are unable to relax because we are restrained from doing what we feel like doing. Sometimes being social feels like being at work with colleagues all day - it feels like it's more obligations than our will.
We happen to love some activities that happens to not be a good party activity. Like reading, programming, painting, etc. We need to choose either these activities or being social, and we prefer to have some of both, but we are forced to choose.
When I was a kid I had this dilemma that I wanted to play computer games, but my friends didn't want to. So at my computer I missed my friends, and with my friends I missed my computer. See the problem?
Introverts are just not that interested in talking just for the sake of talking. In my case, I go into different modes: In social mode I will chitchat and spend all my attention to people. In private mode(most of the time) I really don't care to talk unless there's something specific I need to talk about, and then I just space out of every discussion around me. I've never used to be interested in talk that has no clear purpose. It's like why talk if you don't have a point?
When we don't feel like being social this is often partly because our thoughts are focused on completely different things - not on the people around us. My experience (from me, my sister and friends) is that introverts are more interested in inanimate stuff and topics than extroverts are. This might be false, and it might not.
While being social I am mostly unable to really think through anything. When I don't filter out what people are saying, all my thoughts are interrupted and I have a hard time thinking anything logic. I'm not comfortable with this, it makes me feel unsure of my decisions, and I hardly trust my own decisions in this situation.
When I later get back to my private sphere I will spend time thinking through everything again. Make up my mind again for anything I've been talking about, figure out my decisions again for anything I had to decide, and so on.


What is the proper term: optical Illusions or visual illusions? I answered the question "Why aren't optical illusions called visual illusions?" and would like to get more information to improve my answer.

In doing a search on Ngram for occurrences of the expressions "optical illusion" and "visual illusion" I saw that "visual illusion" appeared in 1900.  It might have existed earlier.

My questions:

When did "optical illusions" start being seen as "visual illusions?"  By visual illusions, I mean phenomena of the brain and visual system.
In your field (cognitive/neuro sciences) is the expression "visual illusion" now preferred over "optical illusion?"
Also, sources say that interest in optical illusions goes back to Aristotle and the ancients.  What were these optical illusions they were interested in?

ad 1. Difficult to answer, but I found an article from as early as 1825 that links the rotating spokes illusion to the retina (Roget, 1825).
ad 2. Interesting question, but more a question of semantics I think. Personally, I think optical illusion is fine, as used by a master of illusions Michael Bach. Admittedly, he is German, so if this is linguistically the best term may be better off at English.SE. Visual illusion may be better targeted for (pathological) phenomena associated with the use of hallucinogens and psychotic states such as those seen in episodes of positive symptomatology. Although here, visual delusions and hallucinations are more appropriate terminology, in my opinion. One way or the other, for the use of referring to benign brain trickery, I would stick to optical illusion, but visual illusions is fine too.
ad 3. Reportedly, one of the most well-known contributions in optical illusions are his writings on the motion-after effect. He believed, erroneously, that the motion aftereffect was a form of visual inertia, a tendency to continue seeing things move in the same direction because of the inertia of some physical movement stimulated in the brain (Ramachandran & Ramachandran, 2012).

References
- Ramachandran & Ramachandran, Sci Am (March 2012)
- Roget, Phil Trans Royal Soc B (1825); 115: 131-40


How is attention involved with the performance drop associated with multi-tasking? Multi-tasking lowers productivity.

What influences on attention cause the productivity of a multi-tasking person to be low?

An example of multi-tasking is that a person is working on his assignment while trying to memorize unfamilar Spanish words.

One important factor to consider is whether the separate tasks involve the same kind of mental process. For instance, among these multi-tasking scenarios:

listen to someone and read something at the same time
listen to someone and walk
walk and read something at the same time

$\#1$ is generally harder than $\#2$, partly because both of its tasks involve linguistic processing, whereas walking does not.

$\#2$ might be a somewhat unfair example at first glance, because walking is also more self-contained and automatic on flat ground. On uneven ground, however, $\#3$ would be much harder than $\#2$, because both walking and reading require visual processing in such circumstances. This point implicates automaticity and difficulty as (probably related) influential factors as well. I'm sure there are others, and I hope others will help fill in other ideas.


What evidence is there to suggest that delayed gratification is taught and learned and not genetic? Every evening I spend considerable time and energy trying to get my kids to eat their dinner, holding off treats such as chips or dessert. My experience was that my parents did the same.

I have found over the course of my higher-education studies, that my ability to delay gratification was a big factor in my ability to complete degrees in Law and Computer Science.

My question is: What evidence is there to suggest that delayed gratification is taught and learned and not genetic?

ie Did I learn delayed gratification or did I just have it? (I didn't seem to have it as a child at the dinner table). Now as a parent with my children at the dinner table, do I have a hope of teaching them delayed gratification?

whilst the nature-nurture issue in mammalian (and particularly human) behaviour is a perennially-fascinating topic, we have learned to be cautious about attempting to construct any strict dichotomies between learned and innate behaviour. suppose you had asked: "did I learn English or just have it?".

successful delayed gratification most likely involves cognitively-mediated inhibition channeled via the frontal lobes. the behaviour must be learned, but it relies on a genetically encoded neural substrate. since it has been claimed (on the basis of longitudinal studies) that the degree of success in delayed gratification tasks persists over time, it may be interesting to ask a related question: if a person has a below-average ability to successfully delay gratification, to what extent is this due to poor teaching and to what extent is it based on neurological factors?


How is an emotion different from a thought or a sensation? I don't know any good definition of emotion. I don't know what they really are, subjectively.
I don't understand what makes an experience an emotion, as opposed to a thought or a sensation.

What is a good definition of emotion?
How is an emotion different from a thought or a sensation?

Right. No need to reinvent the wheel, so let me Google that for you...

Emotion

  a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.
  "she was attempting to control her emotions"
  synonyms: feeling, sentiment; reaction, response
  $\quad\quad\quad\quad$"she was good at hiding her emotions"
  $\quad\quad\quad\ $ · passion, strength of feeling, warmth of feeling
  $\quad\quad\quad\quad$"overcome by emotion, she turned away"

  · instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge.
  $\ \ $"responses have to be based on historical insight, not simply on emotion"
  $\ \ $synonyms:   instinct, intuition, gut feeling; sentiment, the heart
  $\quad\quad\quad\quad$"responses based purely on emotion"


How to computationally model the Wisconsin Card Sorting task? The Wisconsin Card Sorting task is rather famous but appears to be quite difficult to model computationally.

I work in RL and I am interested in how people learn the optimal strategy. I'm interested in the task because it would allow a number of experimental manipulations. I want to capture the role of memory in the optimal strategy. People can keep track of some, but not very much, history of trials when doing the task. (I.e the mathematically optimal strategy seems too computationally heavy.)

How could I approach modelling the Wisconsin Card Sorting task?
What other research has modelled the task?

Dehaene & Changeux (1991) made a neural-network model:

  The coding units are clusters of neurons organized in layers, or assemblies. A sensonmotor loop enables the network to sort the input cards according to several criteria (color, form, etc.). A higher-level assembly of rule-coding clusters codes for the currently tested rule, which shifts when negative reward is received. Internal testing of the possible rules, analogous to a reasoning process, also occurs, by means of an endogenous autoevaluation loop. When lesioned, the model reproduces the behavior of frontal lobe patients.

Parks et al. (1992) extended the previous neural models of WCST to take into account verbal-fluency.

Amos (2000) built a neural-network model that helps distinguish between the sort of errors made by patients with schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's disease. He relates the model to neuroanatomy and says:

  The model also made specific, empirically falsifiable predictions that can be used to explore the utility of these putative mechanisms of information processing in the frontal cortex and basal ganglia.

Monchi et al. (2000) followed a similar approach as Amos. Their model suggested different impairments in Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenic patients, and made specific predictions of what would be observed in fMRI scans. They tested this prediction in their paper.

By 2005, the WCST had become a benchmark for more general models. Rougier et al. (2005) made a general model of the prefrontal cortex based on general neurobiological principles as opposed to symbolic approaches. They model learnt from experience and generalized to novel tasks. They tested it on WCST and the Stroop task data for typical and frontally damaged subjects.

Kaplan et al. (2006) use a neural-network approach with two parts: a Hopfield net serves as the working memory and a Hamming block as a hypothesis generator.

Bishara et al. (2010) use a more ACT-R-like (although not actual ACT-R) model with probabilistic loading on symbolic rules. The resulting sequential learning model is used to identify specific process that subjects might be struggling with. It is suppose to help diagnosis in a clinical setting, and they test it on substance dependent individuals.

Rigotti et al. (2010) created a network of randomly connected neurons that could solve the task.  The key point was that the random connections induced mixed selectivity, which would solve the task with high probability.


Modern replacement for Panksepp's "Affective Neuroscience" book? Jaak Panksepp's book (Amazon link here) is a phenomenal and highly readable systems-based introduction to not only affective neuroscience, but the neuroscience of motivation in general.  The problem is that the book is fourteen years old (don't be fooled by the copyright from the Amazon link, which is for the softcover edition) which makes it from the ice age in neuroscience terms.

Is there a comparable but more modern reference?  I am not a neuroscientist; even if I were, trying to assemble a corpus of journal papers would be a lengthy and redundant process; and even if I accomplished it, my hodgepodge primer would lack the larger synthesis that makes Panksepp's book so good.

Is there anything good that covers similar ground written in the last five years?

EDIT: It suddenly occurred to me that, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I could ask Jaak Panksepp directly.  It turns out that his followup book, "Archeology of Mind", is indeed intended to be a kind of update and spiritual successor to "Affective Neuroscience."  So the best followup to Panksepp will be the next book by Panksepp.  Now if it would hurry up and get released...

I was about to recommend The Oxford Handbook of Social Neuroscience, by Decety and Cacioppo (Oxford University Press, 2011) which has an entire part (10 chapters) dedicated to the neural basis of emotion regulation, motivation, and social interactions. However, I just noticed Panksepp's forthcoming book, The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions, which is probably worth to look at.


Is there a term to define the influence and sharing of common expressions among people? I'm wondering how to call the phenomenon that happens when people spend a lot of time together and end up sharing similar vocabulary or reusing the other's expressions? Is there a term for this?

You might be referring to mimicry or linguistic mimicry. Mimicry is more broad than just vocabulary and expressions, but the general principle of imitating what others in a social group are doing applies.


Any studies on lack of imagination and creativity? Is there a formal scientific term for this type of personality?:

Main priorities are: family, phsyical and financial protection of the family and self. (Little to no creativity. Strong desire to reproduce.)
Learning a process or a system with no desire to improve process/system in any substantial way.
Avoidance of major change. Strong attraction for familiarity and incremental improvement only.
Understanding through physical experiences but with medium to low abstract thinking skills. (Low imagination.)
Attraction to physical movement (as participant or spectator): dance,  slapstick comedy, sports. Avoidance of certain mental activities. (Jock stereotype.)

Apologies for my lack of scientific bg. I have no formal edu.

The reason I ask is because I am building a UI and this "personality" appears to be dominant among the mass market. However, I have no idea where to begin when it comes to science journals and psychology terms.

Personality and individual differences research has a range of constructs that relate to what you are talking about:

conservatism or fear of uncertainty seems relevant
Low levels of openness to experience

You seem to describing a "type" of individual. However, a multidimensional continuous approach is probably a better model of individual differences. For example, you describe a person with low intelligence (i.e., concrete thinking, low abstract reasoning). However, from memory intelligence and traits like openness only correlate weakly if at all.
Thus, the characteristics you describe don't necessarily go together.
What you seem to be describing is a stereotype, which probably has a poor match to reality where people tend to vary on a range of factors. Sure you can probably point to some point who fit the type, but there will be plenty more than only reflect some of those characteristics.

With regards to a person's main desires being protection of self and family both physically and financially, this sounds like a description of a lot of people. There are plenty of motivational theories and evolutionary models of human psychology which would reinforce such motives as very important to people.


How to fix a nii or rec file with partial volume The problem I have is that the MRI scan is stopped manually, before the exam card is completed.
Thus data anaylsis programs read the header and expect a certain number of volumes but it has less, and on top of that the final volume is partial so I can't simply modify the header so that it looks for less.
Programs such as fslroi that allow trimming volumes do not handle partial volumes.
How can I remove the partial data so that the file is correctly read?

I found the solution using the python package nibabel.
The code is rather simple. If filename is your nii, or rec file use:

import nibabel as nib
img = nib.load(filename,permit_truncated=True)
print("Saving image with shape:",img.shape)
nib.save(img,"truncated_{0}".format(filename))


What is relationship between being a good person and functioning in society? The phrases "No more Mr Nice guy" and "Nice guys finish last" imply that being a good person can sometimes be detrimental to your well-being.
In corrupt societies being fair and good might be detrimental. I'm interested in what research says:

What is the relationship between being a good and fair person and adaptive outcomes in society?
Is being good and fair sometimes detrimental to one's well-being? If so, what contextual or other factors are related to this?

Since you asked a vague question, I will provide a relatively vague answer.

A standard way to test fairness experimentally, is by having people play the ultimatum game. This is an interaction between two participants, one is randomly assigned to be Alice and the other is Bob. Alice is given a couple of days wage in money (either the local currency or other common units of exchange like tobacco) and can decide what proportion of it to offer to Bob. She can choose to offer as little or as much as she wants. Bob is then told what proportion Alice offered and can decide to accept or reject. If Bob accepts then the game ends and each party receives their fraction of the goods. If Bob declines then both Alice and Bob receive nothing and the game terminates. The interaction is completely anonymous and happens only once. In this setting, homoeconomicus would give the lowest possible offer if playing as Alice and accept any non-zero offer as Bob (any money is better than no money).

Henrich et al. (2001) studied the behavior of people from 15 small-scale societies in the ultimatum game and showed a great variability in how fairness is conceived across the societies they studied. None of the small scale societies behaved in the same way as economists would predict (i.e., take everything), and none behaved the way western university student do (western university students tend to offer around 50% and reject offers below 20% about 40% to 60% of the time).

Read more: Games, culture, and the Turing test (Part II)

Related questions: What are popular rationalist responses to Tversky & Shafir? and Human behaviour in one-shot perfect information games

To restate in other words, in such settings it is in our objective self-interest (homoeconomicus) to be unfair, but our subjective conceptions (shaped by evolutionary and cultural forces) entice us to act prosocially. A lot of times this seeming irrationality can be explained as evolutionarily adaptive if we consider concepts like inclusive fitness or group selection.

Read more: Evolving useful delusions to promote cooperation.

Overall, it is an ongoing research question to understand why and to what extent humans and various other organisms cooperate in such games and how this relates to evolution. It is usually studied under the banner of evolution of cooperation. For an introduction that highlights some of the common themes see Nowak (2006), West et al. (2007), or for a video/blog form: Introduction to evolving cooperation.

For a focus on ethnocentrism (one of the highlighted mechanisms) see this question: Do people like those who are similar to them and why?

References

Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., & McElreath, R. (2001). In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies. American Economic Review, 91(2), 73-78

Nowak MA (2006). Five rules for the evolution of cooperation. Science, 314 (5805), 1560-3.

West, S. A., Griffin, A. S., & Gardner, A. (2007). Evolutionary explanations for cooperation. Current Biology, 17(16), R661-R672.


How to create a course that will give you synesthesia? I'm thinking of creating a Memrise course that will include numbers and letters with corresponding colors, personality and sounds with aim of trying to develop some synesthesia in myself and anyone who's interested.

Is it possible to induce synesthesia by doing such a course?

If so, how can it best be done:

Should I use sound, light spectrum, some other gradients, pick by random or look up some statistics in order to color the numbers? Should composite numbers include colors of their factors or digits?
Should letters be colored as they appear in the alphabet or by it's frequency in the language?
Are there some other ways?

You can induce weak/artificial synesthesia on yourself, you cannot induce strong synesthesia on yourself.

The type of synesthesia you describe is the same type that Ramachandran mentions when hypothesizing that synesthesia is not a legitimate sensory experience:

"Could we be absolutely sure that this wasn't happening because early in kindergarten she had repeatedly seen a red seven on her refrigerator door?"

This is simply an association, like remembering the qualities of bacon when it is smelled. True, strong synesthesia is not something that can be induced by association. It is not an association within how they think of something, but a secondary modal experience that is triggered automatically when they experience the first modal experience.

The modern test for synesthesia, the stroop test, perhaps demonstrates this best. In a normal stroop test, participants are asked to recognize a color word that is in a different color (the word "blue" on a red font). The meaning of the word and the color of the word cause a temporary automatic conflict in your brain, and your results are slower than if they matched or were all black. If you ask a grapheme-visual synesthese to recognize numbers that disagree with the colors they see it as, their responses will slow. If you were to undergo this memorization training, your responses would not slow, the association you have is memory based and would occur after recognition processing.

To expand on the differences between weak synesthesia and strong synesthesia

Weak synesthesia is association or metaphor. You do not experience the secondary meaning, you simply think of it. It can sometimes seem very close to experiencing it, but it is still separate. If you are thinking of red after seeing a 7, someone could distract you or you could willingly think of another color equally.

Strong synesthesia is an automatic inappropriate modal response. A modal response is the response of one distinct sense to an input. For most people, this is the normal things, sound and hearing, scent and smell... For a synesthese the color they see on a number or while listening to music is exactly as real as the number or music itself. Someone attempting to emulate this may imagine the number they see in their mind and then think of a color. To the synesthese, not only is the synesthetic color on the number, but so is the actual color of the number. It does not overwrite the actual input, it is simply additional input. It is 'inappropriate' because it is a response that is not supposed to happen for that input. It is automatic in the sense that it cannot be ignored, blocked out, distracted from, changed in any way, or otherwise consciously altered. Trying to do so would be equivalent to trying to convince yourself you do not see a cup. It won't work, your automatic senses will still tell you there is a cup.

For more information, I would recommend any of the following:

The Man Who Tasted Shapes by Dr. Cytowic is the original modern research on synesthesia, though the hypothesis Cytowic puts forth is not held very highly anymore.
The Tell-Tale Brain by V.S. Ramachandran has a section on Synesthesia incorporating both real-world examples and the most up-to-date research on the matter in a very readable way.
Varieties of Anomalous Experience is not as up-to-date as Ramachandran but cites specific studies and research in more detail.


What is it called to attack a person then say something uplifting? Say a manager emailing the people under her in a way that to them feels degrading, and putting down. But at the end of the email its encouraging/uplifting type saying I know you are intelligent and capable people.

So is there a name of this type of behavior to attack/degrade then at the end say something nice?

It sounds like a variant on the sandwich technique, which is advocated by some as the preferred way to deliver critical feedback to a person, like a student or employee. The sandwich technique can be defined as:

  ...offer[ing] a piece of negative feedback “sandwiched" between two positive
  ones, thus easing the blow of the critique.

Note that this technique is criticized, because people might not remember the crucial middle critical part of the message, because of the recency effect: our brains are hardwired to remember the first and last bits of a conversation whilst glossing over the middle part (source: WeQ).


What is a neurobiological explanation of borderline personality disorder? In other words, how do the brains of those with BPD differ from those who don't have BPD?

The Wikipedia article doesn't even contain any possible explanations whatsoever.

The Neurobiology and Genetics of Borderline Personality Disorder indicates that a good deal of research has been done but a specific mechanism causing it has not been pinned down. It appears to be largely genetic which would strongly suggest a neurobiological/nature basis as opposed to a "nurture" related cause.
(emphasis mine)

  In summary, the neurobiological research that has been the most useful in
  shedding light on the physiology underlying borderline personality disorder has examined
  this multifaceted disorder by examining simpler dimensions of behavior separately,
  including impulsive aggression and affective instability. Evidence suggests that impulsive
  aggression involves a deficit in serotonergic activity. However, the specific mechanism
  underlying this remains unknown. It is clear that this component of behavior is
  substantially genetically encoded, and so new research has focused on elucidating the
  specific receptors underlying impulsive aggression through the examination of genes
  coding for specific receptors.


How is gender variance classified in the cognitive sciences? I'm trying to do a quick, informal literature survey of current language pertaining to gender variant/trans* people.  Do any important texts still use Gender Identity Disorder, or other language that indicates some kind of impairment or "red flag"?

I'm not currently familiar enough with the literature to know what other places I should be looking--I've seen references to Kaplan and Sadock here and there, and an American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Psychiatry, but haven't seen the texts.  I also have absolutely no idea if there's corresponding Psychology literature.

So far, I've found that the American Psychiatric Association's DSM 5 has made it abundantly clear they no longer consider gender variance itself a disorder, to the point of a 2012 position statement on access to care, a 2012 "Position Statement on Discrimination Against Transgender and Gender Variant Individuals", and updated language in the DSM.

It also looks like ICD-11's beta now uses "Gender Incongruence", versus the various "gender identity disorders" under the F64 code in ICD-10.  Link when I have the reputation to post it.


Is it fair to categorize the neurons in the output layer of artificial neural networks as grandmother cells? I'm interested in how memory is distributed in the brain. That inevitably leads one to think about grandmother cells.

Under my interpretation, a neuron (or a small ensemble) would classify as a grandmother cell, if it activates, without fail, whenever a specific stimulus is presented to a subject, over an extended period of time.

To my knowledge, there is no evidence for the existence of such neurons, except some experiments that show the activation of specific neurons for a short period of time between trial sessions. The last part is important, because to my understanding grandmother cells are explicitly about long term memory.

If I look at most artificial neural networks however, the cells in the output layer usually exactly fit this definition. You can easily train a network to recognize pictures of your grandmother and consistently find the exact same cells active during evaluation whenever such a picture is presented. That's important for a computer of course, because it needs to have a consistent way of telling something is learned.

This would be an important difference to the brain though, because one could argue that any system, involving grandmother cells and that has only a limited number of cells, eventually suffers from overfitting or at least very limited generality.

Is this assessment fair? Is my definition wrong, somehow? Did I miss some evidence?

I would say it depends on what your goals are and what parts of the grandmother cell "story" you want to highlight.

Sure, the output layer is grandmother-like because it can represent single concepts

If you are writing a classifier to identify objects, then in some ways, yes, the outputs of an ANN reflect "grandmother" cells in that they represent a single output concept/object. The way that a hypothetical grandmother cell in a real nervous system would be activated (as sort of a final step after perceiving all the sensory information seeing/hearing another person presents) would be analogous to how the output of an ANN is chosen.

However, the outputs of a real nervous system are probably better identified as the motor plans: the goal in object recognition is to decide whether to fight or flee or do nothing at all. Similarly, if your ANN is trying to classify radiological images as "cancer" or "no cancer" these outputs don't really fit with the idea of a grandmother cell.

But no, the grandmother cell is about more than that and the output layer of an ANN doesn't really fit

A key element in the grandmother cell concept is that this cell is somehow connected to all the other subconcepts that make up the grandmother concept: the sound of her voice, the color of her hair, where she lives, etc. In real nervous systems these elements probably involve large ensembles of neurons organized into attractor networks, but even so, because the output layer of an ANN is just that, an output layer, it's really missing the major feature that makes a grandmother cell so key in the first place.

The studies you refer to that showed some evidence of grandmother-like cells are really just demonstrating a certain level of sparseness such that within a limited subset of experimental stimuli, those units were only activated by one or two of the inputs. In an ANN, these types of nodes would be better represented as units in some hidden layer. If I were to look for "grandmother cell-like behavior" to make comparisons between a real brain and an ANN, I would look for sparseness in the hidden layers rather than pointing to the output.

Summary

In summary, I would say that you could refer to grandmother cells in discussing ANN behavior, but I would be careful about taking the analogy too far or to assume that something true for a grandmother cell must therefore be true for a certain element of an ANN. However, I don't see a lot of value in doing so, and if I were teaching a course on the topic, I think I would avoid the comparison to avoid misinterpretation or confusion among the students.

Connor, C. E. (2005). Neuroscience: Friends and grandmothers. Nature, 435(7045), 1036.

Gross, C. G. (2002). Genealogy of the “grandmother cell”. The Neuroscientist, 8(5), 512-518.

Kreiman, G., Koch, C., & Fried, I. (2000). Category-specific visual responses of single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe. Nature neuroscience, 3(9), 946.

Quiroga, R. Q., Reddy, L., Kreiman, G., Koch, C., & Fried, I. (2005). Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain. Nature, 435(7045), 1102.

Quian Quiroga, R., & Kreiman, G. (2010). Postscript: About grandmother cells and Jennifer Aniston neurons.


Experiment where groups of dogs were treated differently to find difference in affection I cannot remember where I read this, possibly Eliezer Yudkowsky's HPMOR.  I'm looking to read the actual experiment and its results.

The experiment supposedly got 3 groups of dogs.  One they consistently treated with only love.  The second one was treated consistently negatively.  The third group was treated positively and negatively at random.

Supposedly the 3rd group showed the highest degree of affection towards their handlers.

Can anyone point me to the experiment, or any source or detailed description about it?

VSauce mentions this experiment in "Why Do We Kiss?" at 9m 24s in.

Topál, J., Miklósi, Á., Csányi, V., & Dóka, A. (1998). Attachment behavior in dogs (Canis familiaris): a new application of Ainsworth's (1969) Strange Situation Test. Journal of comparative psychology, 112(3), 219.


Is it recommendable to put participants in different conditions across trials? In a pilot study we want to give participants 3 different problems. Those come in two versions, one (supposedly) easier than the other. Participants will randomly be assigned one version of the problems. The goal is to compare the performance on each version of each of the problems. What might be problematic however, is that if it is true that one version is easier, giving some participants three times the easy version and others three times the hard version might affect their motivation. The participants with the difficult problems might get more exhausted and demotivated and will possibly not try as hard on each problem that follows.

One solution would be to randomize the assignment for each problem independently, so that participants might receive two times the easy version and one time the harder one, or any other combination.

From a methodological standpoint, would that be recommendable? Could the observations still be considered independent when comparing the two conditions? Or is there any other way to circumvent that problem?

It depends on what you care to investigate.

Do you care what happens when one person gets two hard questions as compared to someone who gets two easy ones? If so, record it for analysis. If not, control for it by ensuring that each participant receives the same number of easy and difficult problems.

Do you care if there are ordering effects? If so, record that data for analysis. If not, then control for it by ensuring that each participant gets a set of questions classified in the same order. E.g., standardize on EASY-HARD-EASY, and randomly assign problems of each classification.


Memory - Remembering a Source So I study information systems technology, networking, programming, system security as my main focuses on school with a lot of reading material and a ton of independent research. My major problem is not remembering where I read something. The thing is I can remember something from it such as:

You have to remember to remember.

But without looking it up I would have no idea of the source. This leads me to want to find the source thus wasting large amount of time trying to remember where I read it. This happens with all of my areas of study. I worry I consume to much knowledge in a day and need to better document my findings and notate the sources but because I love my courses I'm always reading or researching so it's hard to constantly be writing stuff down and documenting all of it. I would end up with way to many pages reviewing them would be a task in itself.

Can someone explain why I can't remember the source of information I have learned or how to better remember the source. I always go back and re learn things that I can't remember. I suffer from major anxiety and depression so I know that can hurt my memory but it's weird because I can typically remember a lot of the content just not the source.

I know it's a weird question but this problem uses so much of my time and evergy. It also makes me ignore my lectures because it's right there I just can't remember. I find it happens because my teacher or myself brings up a topic which I have studied previously. There is a lot of repetition in my course because the underlying concepts need to be burned in.

Thank you.

Your question is around retaining information when you are immersed in four major fields of study. Yes you want a solid foundations from which to build- but perhaps you simply are taking on too much information.

There seems to be a focus in many educational systems on producing knowledge which is to be memorized in a formal, didactic, manner of "direct-instruction". However, much is to be said as well for the accrual of knowledge via conversation which seeks to solve a problem alongside another person or within a group- that which stays with you because you have an emotional connection to the process of procuring that knowledge- you feel rewarded once you've "won" the answer- and you remember these answers because you were both teaching and evaluating the answers alongside another person- developing and testing hypotheses and validities. Here you are not only processing content to reach an end result but also perhaps taking more time than you would on your own to assess content itself in relation to, say, the importance of the answer (or lack thereof). In this way the learning experience may feel more satisfying - you may feel a decrease in the drive to accrue lots of information on your own (phew- pressure, eh?) While it makes sense for one to want to document evidence of further validation of knowledge in a way that is, it could be that your process is dragging the knowledge down given the amount of purpose you find personally in documenting vs. that which is required to further good workmanship within the program.

In looking at context/environment of your learning: within academia, where is there overlap between your expectations vs. those of your program of study (i.e. do you have the capacity to develop a niche given your current psychosocial/socioemotional inputs?)

I would be curious to see a copy of a meta-mind-map if you were to draw one- you'd probably fill pages in minutes with the content of the information...and I wonder how the flow of this content would compare to the flow of a meta-mind-map of the processing of that content.

I hope that this makes sense and isn't too high on the advice-giving end especially since I'm sure that all of this writing could be so easily summed up in a visual involving just those systems which you study like a melted cpu or .... something...which of course goes against my own claim of the value of finding good mental heuristics..... .....


Is there a name for reading things how you meant to write them? I'm sure many of us have this experience:
When I'm proofreading my own writing I will pass over it multiple times, but miss mistakes since I read what I intended to write (what's "in my head") and not what is actually on the page.

Is there a name for this? I tried searching google, but had no luck.

Unofficially, it has been called "illusion of expectation" by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, the guys famous for the Invisible Gorilla experiment.

Technically it falls under inattentional blindness (or perceptual blindness):

  ... the event in which an individual fails to recognize an unexpected
  stimulus that is in plain sight.


Universal Mind? Nature or Nurture? I have been reading a book entitled "The Geography of Thought" by Richard Nisbett. He talks about how easterners and westerners think differently. I am not all the way through it, but I agree with a lot of his points, because he stresses no true biological differences between the two groups but instead suggests that the difference in cognitive processes takes place over time as a result of cultural factors or "nurture" rather than "nature." I am reading this book as a part of a class I am taking entitled "perspectives on knowledge".

To accompany this book, we are watching a video series entitled "Brain Sex" which talks about the effects of hormones on the developing brain and supports the hypotheses that Males and Females have different cognitive processes. (More specifically male and female BRAINS, as you can have a male brain in a female body or have a brain that is actually more like a hybrid between the two due to hormonal abnormalities) This would be a difference of nature that is accentuated through out life through nurture.

The problem is that this video series is a VHS and is over 20 years old.

I am wondering what science's view is on the universality of mind is today. My question can actually be summed up by a question my professor asked us to think about in class:

"Do different people think differently, or is the mind universal. If people think differently, is this difference due primarily to nature or nurture?"

EDIT:
I have been developing my argument and I am going to defend my long term belief that people think differently, but after much thought I am torn as to where the primary cause for this difference could lie.

Here is the first half of my argument which sets up the first major premise, which is that people think differently:

The physiology of our brain can be mapped directly to our
psychological “mind” regardless of the absence of a proven causal
relationship.
Our brains undergo a large amount of physiological change throughout
life due to  their plastic nature
People think differently as a result.

Premise 4 is where I am torn.
Both cultural factors and physical ones have a huge effect on our brains. non-physical cultural factors and physical ones, like hormones, both effect the way our brains are wired.

The amount of cultural priming throughout our life heavily outweighs our physical priming, but our physical priming takes place earlier in life, even pre-birth. presumably to me, this would make it a primary factor, because of a compound effect, making these developments more significant.

but I have no evidence to support either view point, so i'm looking for actual references that I can look at that address the significance of these factors as well as critiques of my argument in case I am operating off of some fallacy I am unaware of because of my limited perspective here.

I understand this question is subjective. I am honestly just looking for references related to my argument because it can be hard me to find good scientific references.... but the opinions of others would be awesome as well!
Thank you in advance!

UPDATE

I just stumbled across this again, and I actually wrote a paper on the matter which specifically answers the question. You can read it here.

My conclusion is that the mind is not universal and nature is the primary cause. My explanation is somewhat nuanced, but very strictly logical in nature and I trace out the premises in the first page.

I've been reading a book called The Way of The Shaman by Michael Harner. In it, I found three quotes on page 24 which describe how people perceive the world in different ways based on what could be cognitive biases. In the one quote Harner writes,

  “In engaging in shamanic practice, one moves between what I term an
  Ordinary State of Consciousness (OSC) and a Shamanic State of
  Consciousness (SSC). These states of consciousness are the keys to
  understanding, for example, how Carlos Castaneda can speak of an
  ‘ordinary reality’ and a ‘nonordinary reality.’”

In another quote he writes,

  "To understand the deep-seated, emotional hostility that greeted the
  works of Castaneda in some quarters, one needs to keep in mind that
  this kind of prejudice is often involved. It is the counterpart of
  ethnocentrism between cultures. But in this case it is not the
  narrowness of someone’s cultural experience that is the fundamental
  issue, but the narrowness of someone’s conscious experience. The
  persons most prejudiced against a concept of nonordinary reality are
  those who have never experienced it. This might be termed
  cognicentrism, the analogue in consciousness of ethnocentrism."

In the third quote Harner writes,

  "Anthropologists teach others to try to avoid the pitfalls of
  ethnocentrism by learning to understand a culture in terms of its own
  assumptions about reality. Western shamans can do a similar service
  with regard to cognicentrism. The anthropologists’ lesson is called
  cultural relativism. What Western shamans can try to create, to some
  degree, is cognitive relativism. Later, when an empirical knowledge of
  the experiences of the SSC is achieved, there may be a respect for its
  own assumptions. Then the time will perhaps be ripe for unprejudiced
  analysis of SSC experiences scientifically in OSC terms.”

I'm not sure if these quotes answer your question well enough since they attempt to explain the mind more than the brain but I thought they were somewhat related to what you've asked.


littering more often in dirty places? I'm now doing some city management related research and wondering about the idea of high crime areas. Well, the above phrase is a bit extreme. Say, littering, will this kind of behavior occur more often in areas that is already dirty and has tons of rubbish which should not be there? I believe so, however I searched things like littering, wrong parking and etc. on the internet but mostly news or policy. I'm looking for a scientific theory behind the phenomena and thinking of environmental criminology which I konw nothing about.
Any help will be appreciated. New to this site, if anything inapproporiate or unclear, please let me know.

Tragedy of the commons is an economic theory (specifically game theory) that considers both littering and crime.
See:

Pires, S.F., Moreto, W.D. Preventing Wildlife Crimes: Solutions That Can Overcome the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’. Eur J Crim Policy Res 17, 101–123 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-011-9141-3

Cataldi, J. (2019), The Commons: Separating Tragedy and Triumph at a City Park. City & Community, 18: 88-108. https://doi.org/10.1111/cico.12360


Why is it easier to learn something when you have a teacher explain it? I find that things you learn in school are much easier to learn than before you take the course. For example, there is a mathematical theorem that seems unnerving when I self studied calculus, but the same theorem appeared to be so much easier when I actually learned it in school.

Why is it easier to learn something when you have a teacher explain it?

A bad teacher would explain things in a manner that's harder to digest, when compared to a good teacher. However, in general, for any teacher, even a tutor, it is easier to concentrate because the prefrontal cortex is reminded continuously of the goal (of learning). This is called goal-directed behavior. Learning alone, however, makes it harder to concentrate at the same level. I may have misunderstood what you you were looking for in the answer.


Are there international differences on how people react when they are guilty of something? I talked about this with a friend: he told me that there are differences on how people react when they are accused of something. He mentioned that in some countries, people try to avoid it at any cost. In the case, he mentioned that my country (Brazil) has this feature. He also mentioned that he watched the Olympics with narration in both English (from England) and Portuguese (from Brazil) and the narration was quite different when someone made a mistake:

Brazil: He hadn't luck.
England: He didn't train enough.

He also argued that Brazilians prefer to escape to some metaphysical realm and that people from England follow a more pragmatic approach for when they do something wrong. He promised to deliver me some anthropological studies about that, but I guess he forgot it.

It sounds like you're describing cultural differences in the fundamental attribution error, which, according to Wikipedia, is:

  People's tendency to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics to explain someone else's behavior in a given situation, rather than considering external factors. It does not explain interpretations of one's own behavior, where situational factors are more easily recognized and can thus be taken into consideration.

Here's an excerpt from the cultural differences section (emphasis added):

  There are many cultural differences which arise when attempting to explain this error [(Lagdridge & Butt, 2004)]. Previous research has shown that cultural differences exist in the susceptibility of making fundamental attribution error: people from individualistic cultures are more prone to the error while people from collectivistic cultures are less prone [(Miller, 1984)].

  It has been found that there is a differential attention to social factors between independent peoples and interdependent peoples in both social and nonsocial contexts. Takahiko Masuda and his colleagues (2004) in their cartoon figure presentation experiment showed that Japanese people's judgments on the target character's facial expression are more influenced by surrounding faces than those of the Americans, whereas Masuda and Nisbett (2001) concluded from their underwater scenes animated cartoon experiment that Americans are also more likely than Japanese participants to mark references to focal objects (i.e. fish) instead of contexts (i.e. rocks and plants). These discrepancies in the salience of different factors to people from different cultures suggest that Asians tend to attribute behavior to situation while Westerners attribute the same behavior to the actor. Consistently, Morris & Peng (1994) found from their fish behavior attribution experiment that more American than Chinese participants perceive the behavior (e.g. an individual fish swimming in front of a group of fish) as internally rather than externally caused.

  One explanation for this difference in attribution lies in the way in which people of different cultural orientation perceive themselves in the environment. Particularly, Markus and Kitayama (1991) mentioned how (individualistic) Westerners tend to see themselves as independent agents and therefore focus more on individual objects rather than contextual details.

To apply this information to your specific comparison between England and Brazil, consider the following:

Brazilian culture is fairly moderate in terms of individualism vs. collectivism.

Tu, Lin, & Chang (2011) found India more individualistic, China more collectivistic, and Russia roughly equivalent to Brazilian culture in terms of individualism/collectivism.

English culture is highly individualistic (Way & Lieberman, 2010).

See the second figure depicting cultural differences in individualism/collectivism in this answer
Way and Lieberman found English culture more individualistic than Russian and Indian culture.
However, Way and Lieberman found Indian culture less individualistic than Russian culture.

Therefore the contrast between American and Chinese culture – which is a contrast between extremes of individualism and collectivism, respectively – applies to a lesser extent when contrasting England and Brazil. This contrast points in the direction your friend observed: individualistic cultures (including English) attribute successes and failures to personal factors (including effort) more often than collectivistic cultures, which tend to attribute such outcomes to situational factors (including "luck"). Brazilian culture isn't especially collectivistic, but it is probably less strongly individualistic than English culture.

It's very cool that your friend could pick up on these cultural differences in attributional tendencies among Olympics commentators! Hopefully that wasn't due to confirmation bias!

References

- Lagdridge, D., & Butt, T. (2004). The fundamental attribution error: A phenomenological critique. British Journal of Social Psychology, 43(3), 357–369.
- Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–253. Retrieved from the International Association for Chinese Management Research.
- Masuda, T., Ellsworth, P. C., Mesquita, B., Leu, J., & van de Veerdonk, E. (2004). A face in the crowd or a crowd in the face: Japanese and American perceptions of others’ emotions. (Unpublished manuscript). Hokkaido University.
- Masuda, T., & Nisbett, R. E. (2001). Attending holistically versus analytically: Comparing the context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(5), 922–934.
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Detect an imagination EEG signal Is there an EEG brain signal that has specific features resulting from imagination? For example, if a subject sees a car and imagines that the car is moving left. Could we capture this signal and decrypt what was the person imagining?

Yes of course. Most work with eeg and imagination focuses on the inner voice and what people are telling themselves and thinking to themselves. Imagine (pun intended) if we could reach into the mind of a terrorist and as they think about plots. Its not really all that hard but its not at all covert at the moment (all the schizoiod type personalities can relax). With a bunch of electrodes connected to the brain we are able to transfer what one person's imagined actions into another persons head for execution. Its really crude at the moment but at some point it will revolutionize the way we think about communication, art, education and intimacy. Connecting to imagined visualizations would be simular only instead of involving the motor cortex it would work with the visual centers.


How do I choose what I think? Where do my thoughts come from? What allows me to choose them at all? Regardless of whether free will is an illusion or not, what makes a thought happen? (This is a mix of a philosophical question and a biological one)

First, I think you'll find that most cognitive scientists do not believe in free will. It definitely is relevant to your question, because if you believe in free will, then you basically don't believe that our thoughts have causes.

Second, you'll be interested, I think, in the idea of spreading activation. Models based on spreading activation capture the intuition that our train of thought has an associative character (I think of castles, which remind me of kings, which remind me of giant drumsticks, which remind me of chickens, etc etc.). But don't get too hung up on this model -- associationism like this can only be part of the story (often our train of thought has a much more hierarchical structure).


If a person constantly invalidates your feelings is he/she a narcissist? If someone constantly invalidates your experiences and feelings does that mean they are a narcissist?

For example, if I am really hurt by someone and I go to a friend for support and my friend always invalidates everything I tell them does that mean they lack empathy? The interaction is always confusing and the fact of the matter is always deflected. They say things like 'I'm sure he didn't mean it. That wasn't his intention. etc.' Always!

Is that a sign of narcissism? They can't feel the pain themselves or they can't see it so they dismiss it?

But they say they care then impose what they think you should feel onto you.
Self-absorbed?

It really depends. first of all, the problem might be in the person who asks, maybe they really are super sensitive and what they are upset about is not rational.

Also you can never know from someones words that they lack empathy or not.
Some people are just tough, maybe he was in some back breaking situations in life that yours seem minor.

And also lack of empathy is just a small part of narcissism and is not a "only and only" determinant.

If you wanna see if others have empathy or not, you better watch their acts rather than analyzing their words. do they have criminal tendencies or ever were accused of criminal act? are they non-empathetic in their job? are they careless about others life situations? are they reckless? do they put others in trouble to get something they want? and so on.


How does the brain compute sound localisation without the equations? What sort of computations are used for localising sound with the ears, and how does the brain compute the time difference between sounds reaching each ear? I am interested in the specific mechanisms rather than a general account.

Some neuroscience papers on sound localization:

Joris Philip X, Smith Philip H, and Yin Tom C.T Coincidence Detection in the Auditory System // Neuron (1998)
Agmon-Snir Hagai, Carr Catherine E. and Rinzel John The role of dendrites in auditory coincidence detection // Nature (1998)
Trussell Laurence O. Synaptic mechanisms for coding timing in auditory neurons // Annual Review of Physiology (1999)
Grothe B., Pecka M., & McAlpine D. Mechanisms of Sound Localization in Mammals // Physiological Reviews (2010)
Chen X, Leischner U, Rochefort NL, Nelken I, Konnerth A. Functional mapping of single spines in cortical neurons in vivo // Nature (2011)

Books

Blauert, J.: Spatial hearing: the psychophysics of human sound localization; MIT Press (1983)
Schnupp, Nelken and King: Auditory Neuroscience: Making Sense of Sound, MIT Press, 2011


What kind of data structuring is conducive to healthy debate? I was just thinking, if we as humans want to sort out our differences of opinion on, say, politics or religion, what would be a good means to debate such a concept while at the same time make everyone feel they're on board?

Most sites on such things are either:

Biased or unbiased (but usually persuasive) writings or studies that are written by a single individual or group (one way communication)
Organised Q&A, forums, expert's opinion, etc. (two way communication, but often between those who have a good understanding and those who do not)
Unorganised and random chatting between fellow users (one to one communication, or group chatting within a small group/anonymous users)

Has there been any research or thought given to the idea of a collective idea generating mechanism, where everybody provides their inputs, and is more likely to accept the results of such a debate (if results do come up)?

Maybe a huge online wiki organised as a nodal network, where claims are supported or questioned. Evidence is put up on both sides, and further threads can be opened to debate the validity of given evidence. Bigger claims are made based on the validity of smaller claims, etc. etc. (But that's just my thoughts)

I've been fascinated by this question for years, but unfortunately don't have a conclusive answer. So instead, I'll make an ad-hoc list of the things I've found/explored about this topic and hopefully this will give you a starting point until someone else can create a better answer with better references.

My current approach to this is MindMaps, which is similar to nodal network you propose. I've used Mindmaps in various scenarios, including trying to determine an appropriate scope for this site. However, I know of no formal study of this format of discussion and if it's better than linear forms of discussion as supported by forums.

Other models include Federated Wikis, which seems closer to your idea of an interconnected Wiki for discussion. However, these seems more targeted to spontaneous cross-fertilization of ideas, rather than debate. This is a new platform, so it's not surprising that there has been no formal study of the ideas that culminate from this form of digital interaction.

In terms of the content of documents, Bret Viktor has been investigating this and is trying to create a paradigm of Explorable Explorations. Explorable Explanations rely on manipulable data-driven proofs rather than rhetoric based argumentation to prove their point. See the link for further examples. There is a collection of Explorable Explanations available online, which address a variety of topics, including CBT. However, I know of no evidence that these forms of explanations are more effective than traditional narrative-driven explanations.

Finally, to unify all of these approaches philosophically, Joe Edelman is putting forth a philosophy which dictates that shared values are the root of empathy and understanding. I know of no system that implements this philosophy of finding common values between participants, but it does seem like a useful framework to guide design.

That's all I've found so far. I know lots of people doing research in Human Computer Interaction, but I've seen very little work in the domain of consensus building. I really hope further posters can provide superior references.


Are autonomy, mastery, and purpose the most important motivators? I've watched the amazing TED talk where Daniel Pink lays out the contrarian notion that greater extrinsic motivators are unimportant (and sometimes detrimental) in comparison to three intrinsic motivators: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.

But is he wrong? I've only found some criticisms of the study he based the former on (that greater material rewards do not work for "cognitive" tasks) on a similar discussion board. That's not what I'm really concerned about, though.

My main question is: Are the three motivators of autonomy, mastery, and purpose the most important aspects to motivation?

That was an interesting TED Talk, I enjoyed it. Motivation is a very complex, but fascinating thing to think of. You're asking if those three things he listed are the most important aspects to motivation, but I'm not sure the answer can be straightforward. So let's talk about what motivation is first, before talking about how those three things relate to motivation.

We can think of motivation as simply the urge for an organism to do something. But what determines what things the organism wants to do? Activities are done in the pursuit of value. Value itself is an internal thing; determined by the individual and the context the individual finds himself in. Actually defining "value" is a can of worms we don't need to open here. The point is, when a person finds an activity or object valuable, they will pursue it. I think of it from the perspective of neurobiology, and if you're curious you can look into Samejima et al. (2005), and Kawagoe et al. (1998).

So, let's think of the two types of motivators he listed, extrinsic or intrinsic. In the context of value, an extrinsic motivator is when value is placed on an external object. The motivation is to acquire the reward, and the actual activity is made into an obstacle to obtaining it. With intrinsic motivators, value is placed on the activity itself, so the behavior is to perform that activity. An excellent demonstration of this is in what's called the over-justification effect. Lepper et al. (1973) tested children under different reward situations, and found a significant drop in a coloring activity when a big prize was promised beforehand.

So, to get back to this guys three criteria. Autonomy makes sense right away; when a person can choose their own activity they will choose one they find valuable. Additionally, because they chose it, they will likely value it further. This was shown in a kind of funny/sad study by Brehm (1956), where housewives were allowed to choose an item they would supposedly get for free. Their ratings of the value of each item swung significantly towards the item they chose, when compared to their initial ratings. They were never actually given the item, causing one woman to cry.

Mastery is a little more complex. The amount of effort a person is willing to spend on a task is proportional to the magnitude of the reward. By mastery, Pink is actually talking about progress. Consider those little window file transfer boxes, and how they estimate the total time something will take. They look at the current rate of progress, and use that to estimate the total. People do the same thing. If they are making no progress on a topic, they calculate the amount of effort required to complete it to be monumental. If they are making rapid progress, the amount of effort seems far less. Expectancy-value theory has some interesting things to say on this topic, read Wigfield and Eccles (2000).

Purpose is probably the most esoteric, but it is still perfectly possible to understand. Purpose is a feeling that the activity has value in a larger context. Again, value is an internal thing. It is something we construct. Part of the value we assign to an activity is based on the results that activity will have. Feeling that our actions have absolutely no value in a larger context could destroy the value we place in that activity itself.

I like his three criteria, but there are many ways to understand thing like motivation. Like I said in another thread, these psychological constructs are not absolute. They are just ways of thinking of how we work. There are no laws, and no right way to deconstruct them. These three criteria is just one way to deconstruct motivation.

References

Brehm, J.W. (1956) Postdecision changes in the desirability of alternatives.
The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 52(3),384-389. [DOI]

Kawagoe, R., Takikawa, Y. & Hikosaka, O. (1998).  Expectation of reward modulates
cognitive signals in the basal ganglia.  Nat Neurosci. 1(5), 411-6. [PDF] [DOI]

Lepper, M.R., Greene, D. Nisbett, R.E. (1973) Undermining children's intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the "overjustification" hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28(1),129-137. [DOI]

Samejima,K., Ueda, Y., Doya, K., Kimura,M. (2005). Representation of action-specific reward values in the Striatum.  Science 310(5752), 1337-1340. [DOI]

Wigfield, A.,Eccles, J.S. (2000).  Expectancy–Value Theory of Achievement Motivation.  Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1),68–81. [DOI]


Is there a mental disorder in which one is unable to determine personal preferences, and as a result, is a cause of great distress? I know that our preferences and tastes help shape our behaviors and what activities we willingly engage in, but I also know that being faced with indecision is a common feature of the human experience. However, I wanted to know if there is a mental disorder classified in the DSM or elsewhere, where an individual's indecisiveness is so great that it prevents one from settling into an identity and determining what hobbies, interests, aesthetic preferences, etc. to pursue, and as such, causes a large amount of distress and significantly impacts said individual's life?

There is no specific symptom criteria in DSM that matches your description. It’s a very general problem that can be conceptualized in a variety of ways.

The closest thing I can think of that resembles your description would be generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Dugas and Ladoceur claims in their research that the main underlying factor causing GAD is intolerance for uncertainty (IU), which - among several things - increases anxiety in decision making. IU paired with another factor for GAD - cognitive avoidance - causes tendencies to avoid difficult decisions completely, or dealing with decisions with excessive worry.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/11142548/

Please bear in mind that proper assessment and diagnostic requires a face to face consultation with a licensed specialist.


What are some known roles or correlations of glucocorticoid receptor function to behaviour? The NR3C1 gene encodes for a neuron-specific glucocorticoid receptor (GR), of which methylation levels have been shown to relate to altered maternal care and stress response in rodents (Weaver et al., 2004) and to suicide in humans (McGowan et al., 2009).

I am wondering what other behaviours and phenotypes could or has GR function been associated with?

First off, the question is superbly broad and it would have faced closure if it would be asked at the time of this writing. Nonetheless, given the high number of upvotes I think it deserves an answer. Note that my answer is just a small bunch of behaviors associated with the NR3C1 gene, as based on a cursory Google Scholar search, using the terms 'NR3C1 + behavior'.

NR3C1 gene polymorphisms have been associated with alcohol and drug abuse (Zen et al, 2010), aggression (Li et al., 2017) and suicide (Park et al., 2016)
NR3C1 hypermethylation has been associated with being bullied or lacking friends (Efstathopoulos et al., 2018 and with PTSD (Vukojevic et al., 2016)
Cry acoustics in infants is associated with methylation pre-term (Sheinkopf et al., 2016)

References
- Efstathopoulos et al., Translat Psychiatry (2018); 8(121)
- Sheinkopf et al., Front Behav Neurosci (2016)
- Li et al., Genet Test Mol Biomarkers (2017); 21(8): 497-505
- Park et al., Behav Brain Functions (2016); 12:22
- Vukojevic et al., J Neurosci (2014); 34(31): 10274-84
- Zhen et al., Prev Sci (2016)