Can machines really create anything new? AlphaGo is an artificial intelligence which has beaten top human GO-players. Even the creators and instructors do not know how AlphaGo came to it's conclusion to put a stone just at this position. Top-Players thought, AlphaGo did a mistake and in further progress it appeared to be a genius move. In fact AlphaGo played like no player in thousands of years - and won that match.

How could AlphaGo create that novel move? Is it really a new creation or is it just a product of a machine?

This is actual a pretty old and often debated question. It is called "Lady Lovelace's Objection" and first appeared in Alan Turing's seminal paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence".

Below is my response to Lovelace's Objection, as well as Alan Turing's response which I wrote for a philosophy course in 2015. Perhaps it will be of interest to you?

  Turing created the imitation game as a way to talk about cognition in
  machines without being bogged down by the philosophical history of the
  word “think” and “machine”. In his discussion of the imitation game,
  he addresses Ada Lovelace's objection and refutes one aspect of it,
  however he does not cover all aspects. Namely, his rebuttal to
  Lovelace's objection seems to assume the universe is deterministic and
  by rephrasing Lovelace's argument, he may be missing some of it's more
  subtle implications.

  Turing's imitation game has the objective of causing a human judge to
  be unable to correctly guess which amongst two players is a computer.
  The only tool at the judge's disposal is textual communication that
  can be directed to each of the players individually, similar to an
  Internet chat room or an e-mail exchange. If the machine can confuse
  the judge, given a certain time or question limit, the machine is said
  to have won the imitation game and to have passed the Turing test.

  Lovelace's argument against a machine passing the Turing test and thus
  being able to “think”, is that a machine (specifically referring to
  the Analytical Machine) “has no pretences to originate anything. It
  can do whatever we know how to order it to perform” (Turing 1950,
  450). Turing faces this argument by first rephrasing it into
  questioning whether a machine “can never do anything 'new'” (Turing
  1950, 450). He refutes this reformulated objection by questioning
  whether human beings have ever done anything new. In other words, he
  claims that there is no verifiable proof that any creation from a
  human being was not the product of their education; whether formally
  studied or learned from the environment.

  Turing's claim is a reasonable one, but he risks getting caught up in
  the debate of free will versus determinism, since he seems to be
  claiming that a human being is purely a function of this environment.
  He assumes that all that is necessary to imitate a human being is to
  determine the function that maps the external environment to human
  reasoning. The belief of the existence of this function is known as
  determinism within philosophy and is a matter of much debate.
  Alternatively, to avoid this philosophical quagmire, instead of
  appealing to determinism, we could instead look at what is required
  for a computer to create something “new”. Creating something “new”
  could be interpreted as synthesizing new information. The proof that a
  computer can accomplish this task can be proven by examining a
  rule-based system.

  A rule-based system is based on the idea that most of human knowledge
  can be represented by rules and human reasoning can be approximated by
  the manipulation of these rules in a logical manner. For example, to
  represent a navigation plan, you can know a series of logical steps or
  rules describing routes, such as “Lester street connects my house to
  highway 69” and “highway 69 leads to Sudbury”. It is possible to
  program a computer using to search through these steps and come to a
  conclusion, in this case the route from Sudbury to Lester street
  (Thagard 2005, 47). You can then synthesize new rules by combining
  them using a process known as “chunking” or “composition”, and saving
  them so that the search doesn't need to be executed every time this
  objective (getting from Sudbury to Lester) needs to be accomplished
  (Thagard 2005, 49). Additionally, rules can be used to generate
  explanations or hypotheses by abductive inference (Thagard 2005, 50).
  Both the plan, the explanation and the summary did not exist until the
  computer sought them out and discovered them. This can be seen as the
  equivalent of a machine producing something “new” and acquiring “new”
  knowledge. Using mathematical terminology, it can be said that the
  system is non-monotonic.

  There are many flaws to this simplistic rule-based system. It is
  computationally inefficient and does grasp all of the psychological
  complexity of a human being. Consequently, it could be argued that
  this model could never evolve to successfully imitate a human being.
  However these are superficial concerns. It would be a mistake to
  broaden this specific rule-based system's inability to evolve to all
  computational models. Instead, what should be retained from the
  example of the rule-based system is that it is possible to contain
  aspects of human reasoning and ingenuity within a computational model.
  Additionally, the flaws of computational inefficiency and
  psychological incompleteness can be and have been addressed by newer,
  more complete models. For example, ACT-R has been shown to be able to
  imitate certain attributes of a human being, such as natural language
  processing, in the form of language acquisition (Anderson 2002, 1).

References:

Alan Turing (1950), Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Paul Thaghard (2005), Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science, 2nd Edition. MIT Press.
Taatgen, N.A. & Anderson, J.R. (2002). Why do children learn to say "broke"? A model of learning the past tense without feedback. Cognition, 86(2), 123–155.


What is the effect of Binaural Beats on an Autistic brain? I understand a fare bit about autism, and Binaural Beats.

Autism is the result of synaptic pathways becoming malformed during the fetal stage of pregnancy.

A Binaural Beat is a collection of two frequencies layered on top of each other to produce a third frequency which mimics a brain wave frequency.

I know they have done experiments on people to find the effectiveness of a Binaural Beat, under controlled conditions, to perform a triple blind study.
 However as an Autistic person I find myself wondering if any of the participants in that study had any form of Autism.

It seems to me that if the synaptic pathways in the brain of a fetus can become so malformed that they result in things like, Learning Difficulties and Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified with traits of Aspergers Syndrome, then how would the brain of an autistic person interpret a Binaural Beat in comparison to a Neurotypical person ?

Binaural Beats are essentially two similar frequencies, you play a Binaural Beat through headphones and the brain of a Neuro-Typical person interprets the two frequencies from both ears to create the actual Binaural Beat which only the brain can here.

Is this so for people with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder ?

The evidence in support of binaural beats as a therapeutic tool is sketchy: Is there scientific evidence on the benefits of binaural beats? Given our lack of understanding of if binaural beats can cause entrainment in the brain, never mind how they cause entrainment, it is not possibly to make conclusions about how the binaural beat would affect the autistic brain.


How do people respond to auditory warning signals? I am working on a literature review of total reaction time to an auditory alert, in a transport context.  All of the literature I can find about perception-response times are in the context of visual obstacles while driving, but in this case I'm interested in perception-response times to auditory-only warning signals (and not specifically drivers).

These are the best sources on PRT I have found so far, all to visual stimuli:
Olson, P.L. & Sivak, M. (1986) Perception-response time to unexpected roadway hazards.   Human Factors, 28, 96-99.
Olson, P., "Driver Perception Response Time," SAE Technical Paper 890731, 1989, doi:10.4271/890731.
Summala, H. (2000). Brake Reaction Times and Driver Behavior Analysis. Transportation Human Factors, 2(3), 217-226.

What are the equivalents examining perception-response time to auditory stimuli?

Often, very similar phenomena have different names when studied in different modalities, because they are studied by different communities. That's why searching for perception response times + auditory doesn't yield great results (Although I did find [1] this way).

Something else to try, is to pick a highly cited paper that you did find, and then search within paper citing it for relevant terms. I started from Olson's 2000 paper which you mentioned, and searched for "auditory" within citing papers, and quickly found [2] and [3].

You can also look for other papers by the same authors - people tend to keep studying similar questions for a while, and often keep using the same methodologies.

[1] Cheng, B., Hashimoto, M., & Suetomi, T. (2002). Analysis of driver response to collision warning during car following. JSAE review, 23(2), 231-237.

[2] Fitch, G. M., Blanco, M., Morgan, J. F., & Wharton, A. E. (2010, September). Driver braking performance to surprise and expected events. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (Vol. 54, No. 24, pp. 2075-2080). SAGE Publications.

[3] Cao, Y., Mahr, A., Castronovo, S., Theune, M., Stahl, C., & Müller, C. A. (2010, February). Local danger warnings for drivers: The effect of modality and level of assistance on driver reaction. In Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces (pp. 239-248). ACM.


Why does neuroplasticity decrease in adults? Although adult brains are malleable and even undergo limited neuorgenesis, the extent of the neuroplasticiy is much lower than in children. This is most obvious in language acquisition, and recovery from brain trauma.
Are there formal models (computational or mathematical) that explain why our brains so drastically reduce in plasticity with age?
If a highly malleable brain is supposed to help us adapt and deal with a constantly changing environment, then naively one would expect it to be advantageous to maintain a malleable brain for your whole life.

Background from critical-period in language acquisition
This is an example of formal models that I am already familiar with that answer a related question (critical-period in language acquisition). I am interested in answers in this spirit, but that can address not just language-acquisition but the general decrease in neuroplasticity.
In the case of the critical period for language acquisition there are evolutionary models by Hurford (1991) and Komarova & Nowak (2001). However, neither model generalizes easily to the case of neuralplasticity.
Hurford's model uses neutral drift to explain the upper bound on the critical period of language acquisition because of the need for second language acquisition in life is largely unnecessary. However, the need to adapt to your environment is necessary throughout life, so plasticity should not be under neutral drift.
In the case of Komarova & Nowak, the upper bound is due to a trade-off between the cost of learning (driving critical period down) and the importance of learning a language accurately (driving critical period up). This balances out and allows for an ESS due to dimishing returns: once you've learned a language pretty-well it becomes more costly to invest in learning further than the returns from better learning. However, adapting to a constantly changing environment is not a single static task, and thus it is not clear why your returns would diminish. Further, it is not clear how keeping high plasticity is more costly than maintaining lower plasticity.
Notes

This is a question of why, not how. Although it is very interesting to know how the plasticity of adult brains decreases, in this question I am interested in why this is the case over the hypothetical "keep as malleable as a baby" alternative.

Both Hurford (1991) and Komarova & Nowak (2001) provide formal evolutionary models that I do not describe in detail. I am interested in formal models like this, although they need not be evolutionary. An answer on the level of rhetoric (especially if it is evolutionary rhetoric) is not nearly as interesting to me as a formal model.

Hurford (1991) and Komarova & Nowak (2001) are meant as examples of work that answer the potentially easier question of critical period of language-acquisition. I am interested in the more general question of decrease in neuroplasticity.

References
Hurford, J. R. (1991). The evolution of critical period for language acquisition. Cognition, 40, 159-201. FREE PDF
Komarova, N. L. & Nowak, M. A. (2001). Natural selection of the critical period for language acquisition. Proc. R. Soc. London. B, 268(1472), 1189-1196. FREE PDF

Another reason for reduced plasticity in adults is that learning something different in the presence of an existing knowledge structure is more difficult than learning from a "blank slate". In a sense, you get interference from the known language (for example). One person who has developed this argument computationally is Jay McClelland in the context of native Japanese speakers learning the English /r/-/l/ distinction (e.g., McCandliss et al., 2002), though I think the principle may apply more generally.

The idea is that "reduced plasticity" is just a consequence of interference from the established knowledge rather than a fundamental change in plasticity. Part of the argument is that you only see reduced plasticity when there is a conflict between the (for example) first language and second language; aspects of the second language that match the first language are learned very quickly.


Is there a way to make oneself more sleepy? Background motivation: Is there is a way to correct sleeping patterns to go to bed at least at midnight, not later than that? If I do not feel tired/sleepy enough, can I "prime" or "cheat" myself to fall asleep earlier?  Is there any kind of method that works for someone who is not tired enough to fall asleep? I tried waking up earlier, but then when I get tired too early during the day and decide to wait for a time to sleep, somehow I get energized again. I get a new kick of energy, and I'm not sleepy until 2 AM again.

General question:

Are there any effective methods for moving the time you fall asleep back by a few hours?
Are there any effective methods for falling asleep when you are otherwise not tired?

If you google "Sleep Hacks" you'll get a lot of good answers.

Start by tracking your sleep with My Sleep Bot for Android or iPhone, or Sleep101 for iPhone. This will help you know more precisely what does and doesn't work. Each app also provides a lot more helpful features for better sleep.

Turn off bright lights within an hour before going to bed. Your body is trained to wake up with the sun and go to sleep when it's dark. Also decrease as much light and sound as you can while you sleep.

Condition your body with the environment. Only use your bed for sleeping, nothing else. Once you train your body to associate your bed with sleeping, it'll have a better chance of going to sleep.

Condition your body with routine. Always have the same routine for going to bed. If you can train your body that the same routine happens followed by sleep, the body will follow the pattern and be primed for sleep. This is classical conditioning. Reading, stretching, breathing exercises, mindfulness, meditation, etc are all excellent ways to help relax before bed.
As a personal example, I made a CD with some really soothing music that I would listen to every night. Because it conditioned me, I went from taking 20-30 minutes to get to sleep to 10-12 minutes. If I heard any of those songs during the day, I was so conditioned that my entire body would get really relaxed and I'd want to go to sleep. It was amazing.

Psychology Richard Wiseman used the best research available to make the most relaxing music possible. You can check out the video about it along with the link to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqvD8H32wYA

Caffeine not only increases energy, it also increases tension. Although caffeine can be alright early in the day, avoiding caffeine altogether will decrease tension, stress, and help you relax more effectively.  Which in turn will help with sleep at night.

Eat healthy and exercise during the day. Getting your body what it needs and building in better rhythms during the day will help it sleep better at night.

Here's a list of 40 awesome sleep hacks from optimizing psychology, diet, using technology, and much more: http://www.scribd.com/doc/3932344/40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Geek-s-Guide-to-Optimizing-Sleep

And here's another resource which supports some of the tips above and provides some more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/17/better-sleep-tips-best_n_4958036.html

Best of luck!

Tips in a visual form:


Are the skills trained and learn from world memory championship transferable? I recently learn something about world memory championship and I am considering to embark on some training. But I would like to know if the skills trained and learn from world memory championship are transferable? Like improving IQ, improving imagination capability, improving "innate memory power" (meaning that your memory improves even when not applying techniques)?

Improvements will be limited to likewise tasks (memorizing stuff). Quoting https://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/blog/brain-training-only-makes-you-better-at-brain-training:

A just-released meta-analysis (Melby-Lervag, Redick, & Hulme, 2016) reviewed the literature on transfer effects in working memory training. Working memory is a key aspect of cognition, because a reasonable assumption is that an improved ability to temporarily store and manipulate information in the brain would lead to wide-ranging cognitive benefits. In other words, if anything could lead to far transfer, it would be effective working memory training.
The results, though, are disappointing for brain training fans.
Working memory training demonstrated no far transfer effects. Important real-world skills like verbal ability, word decoding, and arithmetic were completely unaffected by training programs. There was, however, some “intermediate transfer,” where tasks that shared stimuli or methods with the training tasks improved slightly with training.

[...]
There is also a sort of meta-story to this meta-analysis, which points out that publication bias, methodological problems, and some sketchy control groups can explain individual studies that do find strong effects. So, even the near- and intermediate-transfer effects may be due to a number of factors that have nothing to do with genuine brain improvement.

In the figure, k = number of studies. "Treated controls" means the control group also received some kind of sham training, in order to minimize the gains from placebo effect on the actual treatment/training group. The observation form the last paragraph is based on p-curve analysis of the studies. Alas the studies with treated controls (group B in the figure below) are also those with a more anomalous p-curve, indicating potential publication bias etc., whereas the "A" group (untreated controls) doesn't show this anomaly, but these studies are weaker methodologically in a different (control-group related) way.

I should also mention that the people behind dual n-back training (Jaeggi's group) conducted their own meta-analysis, and they stick by their claim that memory training boosts fluid intelligence.
And here's a summary of meta-analyses in this area... till 2016 from yet another one by Soveri et al. (2017):

They also do their own meta-[re]analysis (but only of n-back)...

Note that they use a different (and perhaps more standard) terminology of active/passive control group but it has the same meaning as treated/untreated.
They ultimately conclude:

In sum, in the present meta-analysis, the only notable transfer
effect is seen to untrained n-back tasks. Despite the fact
that the transfer effects to the other domains are also statistically
significant, they can be considered very small. This is
because an effect size of 0.2 means that only approximately
1% of the variance of the dependent variable (e.g., score on a
Gf task) can be explained by which group (training or control
group) the participant belongs to. The practical significance of
such effects can thus be questioned (see also Melby-Lervåg &
Hulme, 2016).


Are there bidirectional neurons? Neurons are mostly unidirectional, i.e. electrical impulses enter from one end and leave through the other. Are there bidirectional neurons as well, i.e., neurons that have a receiving end and a transmitting end that are not mutually exclusive?

The classical, chemical synapse offers only one-way traffic. Under physiological conditions, the presynaptic neuron releases vesicles at its axon terminal and the postsynaptic neuron expresses the corresponding receptor proteins in the dendritic region. Conversely, the presynaptic neuron lacks the receptor molecules and the postsynaptic neuron lacks the secretory machinery to release neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft (Purves et al., 2001).

Note, however, that the presynaptic neuron may express regulatory neurotransmitter receptors that bind its own released neurotransmitter, but these do not generate action potentials. And note that the postsynaptic neuron may release neuromodulators in the synaptic cleft. However, these compounds do not initiate action potentials, but have only a regulatory role.

There is, however, also the electrical synapse, mediated by gap junctions. These gap junctions are protein pores that electrically and chemically connect adjacent neurons directly. In this case, potential changes generated in one cell may freely spread like a wave to other neighboring cells. Note that this mode of electric coupling does not induce action potentials, but it represents the passive spread of voltage differences, called electrotonic coupling (Mylvaganam et al., 2014). Which cell initiates the wave is irrelevant, as the wave can spread to each cell as long as it is connection via gap junctions. Although these gap junctions are referred to as electrical synapses, the terminology presynaptic and postsynaptic applies in a much looser sense, as any neuron in the tissue can act as either one (Sheriar, 2004).

References
- Mylvaganam et al., Front Physiol (2014); 5: 172
- Purves et al. (eds.), Neuroscience. 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates (2001)
- Sherair BBA (2004); 1662(1–2): 113–37


What do psychologists call the ability to quickly revise and remember things that a person had previously learnt I am someone very far away from psychology, actually an engineering student, but I came up with this curiosity a few days ago.
To be specific, let's assume someone is learning physics. He previously took statistical mechanics course, and studied hard. About six months passed, and he still believes that his deep understanding of statistical mechanics is maintained.
But when he tries to remember the specific derivations of formulae, he encounters many obstacles. He doesn't remember the key ideas of individual derivations, but he definitely remembers how they roughly looked.
Then at a glance it looks like someone who studied statistical mechanics really hard and didn't revise for a long time doesn't have an advantage over someone who is in the middle of process of learning statistical mechanics yet isn't studying hard. They both share the fact that they don't know the details. The only difference, I would say, is that the former has enough confidence based on his experience of understanding the subject and performing well in the exams but the latter doesn't.
But it becomes a completely different story when the former starts to revise statistical mechanics. He can somehow pull out the "ancient" memories of the ways through which he made understanding possible, and without going through the entire textbooks, but by nearly skimming through them, can combine all the pieces into, and recover, one single piece of solid understanding. And it doesn't take long - the length of time needed varies, depending on the amount he has to revise, from a day to a few weeks. However it shouldn't definitely be more than a month.
Under what mechanism of psychology and neuroscience does this happen and what do psychologists call this?

Looks like when your friend was freshly learning the equations, he was using more of his episodic memory but as he went "used-to" with the equations, he tapped into more of semantic memory.
Lets use familiar example. When we recite something, we usually apply the episodic memory. It works much like how we searched a song "along" a tape of a cassette recorder. We had to forward/ rewind repeatedly to find the song.
We use semantic memory when we use language (or anything we learn at a depth and develop some experiene in it). Such as while reading, we instantly recognise the letter L (a shape) is linked with sound ELL or the word "CAT" indicates a mental image of a furry carnivorous animal. We do not scroll through the entire alphabet. If we compare episodic memory as a cassette system, then semantic memory is more like a modern digital file folder system, which is just "browse, click and play" type.


Deception and nose touching - does it work for things that are about to be said in prepared speeches? I'm not sure if nose touching is a scientifically-validated signature of deception or internal conflict. For the purposes of this question I would assume that it's fairly common knowledge in psychology that people touch nose or cover the mouth when saying something part of them does not believe to be true.

If nose touching is encountered in a regular,spontaneous conversation, then it may be deduced that the statement that the person just made is untrue (or the person does not really believe it). For example: "I can easily make money on the stock market". If such statement is followed by a nose touch, I can assume that the person is at least partially unsure about the content of the statement.

Now, when I'm watching prepared talks, like on Ted.com, the following question arises: If a person has prepared a speech in advance,rehearsed it and is now delivering a prepared speech, does nose touching have any "predictive component" for deception? In other words, if a person touches a nose during a prepared speech, is it a sign of deception/internal uncertainty that just happened or one that is about to happen?

I know that there are fMRI studies that found some actions can be predicted x milliseconds in advance, and I'm interested if nose touching is one of things that can predict something that is about to happen, not indicate something that just happened.

You wrote:

For the purposes of this question I would assume that it's fairly common knowledge in psychology that people touch nose or cover the mouth when saying something part of them does not believe to be true.

Avoid make assumptions like this. This is not common knowledge, and in fact it is not even true.
Vrij et al. (2010) discuss the literature on non-verbal lie detection and conclude:

The meta-analyses that have been published to date
have made clear that there are no nonverbal and verbal cues
uniquely related to deceit. In other words, reliable cues to
deception akin to Pinocchio’s growing nose do not exist
(DePaulo et al., 2003; Masip et al., 2005; Sporer & Schwandt,
2006, 2007; Vrij, 2005)

Vrij & Granhag (2007) mentions "touching the nose" as an example of a non-verbal cue to deception found in a police interrogation manual, Gordon & Fleisher (2002). They also review 5 other police interrogation manuals which don't mention it as a cue to deception. In my brief lit search, I couldn't find any psychology papers which discuss touching the nose as a reliable cue to deception.
After a brief look at Gordon & Fleisher (2002), it is clear to me that their methods are pseudoscientific, full of ad-hoc reasoning. Judge for yourself:

There appears to be a link between deception and the nose. Perhaps it is because the nerve network for emotions, to a large extent, evolved from our neural networks involved in smelling [26]. The sense of smell was primitive man's fundamental survival mechanism. Touching or pinching the nose is a reliable gesture of disbelief [4]. The nonverbal message appears to be "it stinks' (Figure 9.17). If you are talking and the listener pinches his nose, he is nonverbally communicating that he thinks what you are saying stinks. If he is talking and pinching his nose, he thinks what he is saying stinks.

Oh, but what's that reference they cite? Surely that must shed some light on this. Diligent readers will scan to the bibliography only to find that they are citing a previous version of the same manuscript! Yes, you heard right: a recursive citation. Not exactly the most reliable source.
Vrij & Granhag (2007) suggest:

Since cues akin to Pinocchio's nose do not exist, lie detectors will fail in their task if they just look for such cues. Rather, interview techniques need to be employed, for example, to control for individual differences between individuals.

References

Gordon, N. J., & Fleisher, W. L. (2010). Effective interviewing and interrogation techniques. Academic Press.
Vrij, A., & Granhag, P.A. (2007). Interviewing to detect deception. Offenders' memories of violent crimes, 32, 279.
Vrij, A., Granhag, P. A., & Porter, S. (2010). Pitfalls and opportunities in nonverbal and verbal lie detection. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 11(3), 89-121. PDF


Scientific term for people who value following the rules What is the psychological term for people who believe that:

they have strong rights
that others should be nice
that others should respect unwritten rules
that others should not lie

They believe in rules that everyone should respect. They may hate hypocrisy, but for sure they judge other's behaviour and thinks that others should behave according to the rules.

What is the scientific term for this personality trait?

The concept you are looking for is social conformity, which is opposed to personal autonomy.

Scales measuring this concept, such as the Feldman conformity scale (Feldman, 2003) and the conformity subscale of the "Portraits Value Questionnaire" (Schwartz et al., 2001), contain items similar to your examples, e.g.

Obeying the rules and fitting in are signs of a strong and healthy society.

Sources:

Feldman, S. (2007). Enforcing social conformity: A theory of authoritarianism. Political Psychology, 24, 41-74.
Schwartz, S. H., Melech, G., Lehmann, A., Burgess, S., Harris, M., Owens, V. (2001). Extending the cross-cultural validity of the theory of basic human values with a different method of measurement. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32, 519–542.


Does law of attraction have psychological basis? A common claim in business and self-help seminars is that optimists are luckier.

Is it true that optimism leads to greater success in life?
If so, what part of the brain support this so called "higher self"? Basal ganglia?

Ahh yes, The Secret. I'd recommend starting with Wikipedia for a critical view of the "law of attraction" and the book as a whole. The former page has some particularly good excerpts to offer (emphasis added; hyperlinks not preserved, though I'd appreciate help editing them back in):

Skeptical Inquirer magazine criticized the lack of falsifiability and testability of these claims.$^{[6]}$ Critics have asserted that the evidence provided is usually anecdotal and that, because of the self-selecting nature of the positive reports, as well as the subjective nature of any results, these reports are susceptible to confirmation bias and selection bias.$^{[18]}$ Physicist Ali Alousi, for instance, criticized it as unmeasurable and questioned the likelihood that thoughts can affect anything outside the head.$^{[1]}$
The Law of Attraction has been popularized in recent years by books and films such as The Secret...Writing for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Mary Carmichael and Ben Radford wrote that "neither the film nor the book has any basis in scientific reality", and that its premise contains "an ugly flipside: if you have an accident or disease, it's your fault." $^{[6]}$
Others have questioned the references to modern scientific theory, and have maintained, for example, that the law of attraction misrepresents the electrical activity of brainwaves. $^{[20]}$ Victor Stenger and Leon Lederman are critical of attempts to use quantum mysticism to bridge any unexplained or seemingly implausible effects, believing these to be traits of modern pseudoscience.

To sum that up, the "law of attraction" hardly has a physical basis, and it hardly could as it's been defined, given the joint lack of measurability, testability, and falsifiability. If it has a psychological basis that might explain why you've observed multiple independent authors advocating vaguely the same idea, that basis is confirmation bias or selection bias, and the "law" is an illusory result of these biases. That is, it is not at all a law in the usual, scientific sense of a time-tested theory that explains a copious range of empirically verifiable facts; it is almost the furthest thing from a law in this sense. Advocates of the idea often borrow language from popularly recognized but poorly understood (by non-physicists) physical concepts like quantum mechanics and electromagnetism, but repurpose them to communicate metaphysical claims without clarifying whether their use is intended (a) as analogy, or (b) as literal claims for the physical mechanisms by which the metaphysical claims are proposed to operate.
I believe Alousi's criticism in the above quote was a response to the latter interpretation: I think he's arguing that thoughts are unlikely to directly cause physical effects outside the brain, presumably excluding effects on the rest of one's own body, and excluding effects that are mediated by behavior. No known process exists to affect "luck" or the realization of desires through thought alone, so it's unlikely we've overlooked some secret mechanism through which such an effect could operate. Conversely, it seems plenty likely that, for instance, thinking I deserve a cookie would result in me getting a cookie, if I don't exclude all the ordinary processes that mediate this effect (e.g., getting up, opening the cookie jar, stuffing my face)...but this is no secret.
(Full disclosure: I haven't read The Secret...and given my familiarity with its detractors, I'm not likely to.)
[Edit]: For another, broader response to the related concept of "autosuggestion," check out this question on skeptics.SE. @Articuno's answer cites some interesting studies that seem to have identified counterproductive effects of focusing on outcome goals (instead of process goals; Pham & Taylor, 1999) and positive fantasies of success before it is actually attained (Oettingen, 1996)! Maybe this is the real, dirty secret about The Secret that's most worth knowing.
References
Oettingen, G. (1996). Positive fantasy and motivation. In P. M. Gollwitzer & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), The psychology of action: Linking cognition and motivation to behavior, pp. 236–259. New York: Guilford Press.
Pham, L. B., & Taylor, S. E. (1999). From thought to action: Effects of process-versus outcome-based mental simulations on performance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(2), 250–260.


Is it possible to be clinically obsessed with school? I was wondering if it is possible for someone to have a clinical obsession with higher education. For example, the person who has this disorder constantly talks to others about things such as college to the point where something seems very wrong. Does a disorder like this exist? Or can it be a form of another disorder? I'm asking because I'm writing a research paper on various obsessions and would like to gain some insight on the matter.

Short answer

With the limited amount of information given, it is hard to say.  However, if the obsession causes marked distress in the person who displays obsessive behaviour, or it substantially interferes with the person's normal routine, the obsession could, but not necessarily, be diagnosed as a disorder under the category of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders

Long answer

There are a fair few obsessive/compulsive habits which can be clinically diagnosed as being a disorder.  For any obsession or compulsion to be considered obsessive or compulsive in the realms of psychological disorders, the habits and their presenting symptoms need to follow a set criteria laid down in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — 5th Edition)

DSM-5 has a whole section on Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders and these include obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), hoarding disorder, trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder), and excoriation (skin-picking) disorder.

To be diagnosed with a Obsessive-Compulsive or related Disorder, the person:

  Must exhibit obsessions, compulsions, or both.
  The obsessions and/or compulsions cause marked distress, are time consuming (take more than 1 hour per day), or interfere substantially with the person's normal routine, occupational or academic functioning, or usual social activities or relationships.
  The obsessions and/or compulsions are not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance or other medical condition.
  The disorder is not better explained by the symptoms of another mental disorder, such as obsession with food in the context of an eating disorder.

  Obsessions are:

  Recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges, or images experienced, at some time during the disturbance, as intrusive and unwanted and in most individuals cause marked anxiety or distress.
  There is some effort by the affected person to ignore or suppress such thoughts, impulses, or images, or to neutralise them with some other thought or action (i.e., by performing a compulsion).

  Compulsions are:

  Repetitive activities (e.g., hand washing, ordering, checking) or mental acts (e.g., praying, counting, repeating words silently) that the person feels driven to perform in response to an obsession or according to rules that must be applied rigidly.
  These behaviours or mental acts are performed in order to prevent or reduce distress, or prevent some dreaded event or situation. However, they are either clearly excessive or not connected in a realistic way with what they are designed to neutralise or prevent. (BMJ, 2017; APA, 2013) [Emphasis mine]

When making a formal diagnosis, the person making the dignosis would have to specify certain aspects in the diagnostic report based on specifier criteria laid out in the DSM.

Published by the World Health Organization, the ICD-10 offers another internationally recognised definition of OCD. It classifies OCD in its own chapter, F42, distinguished from the other anxiety disorders.

  The essential feature is recurrent obsessional thoughts or compulsive acts. Obsessional thoughts are ideas, images, or impulses that enter the patient's mind again and again in a stereotyped form. They are almost invariably distressing and the patient often tries, unsuccessfully, to resist them. They are, however, recognized as his or her own thoughts, even though they are involuntary and often repugnant. Compulsive acts or rituals are stereotyped behaviours that are repeated again and again. They are not inherently enjoyable, nor do they result in the completion of inherently useful tasks. Their function is to prevent some objectively unlikely event, often involving harm to or caused by the patient, which he or she fears might otherwise occur. Usually, this behaviour is recognized by the patient as pointless or ineffectual and repeated attempts are made to resist. Anxiety is almost invariably present. If compulsive acts are resisted the anxiety gets worse.

  Incl.:   anankastic neurosis
             obsessive-compulsive neurosis

  Excl.:  obsessive-compulsive personality (disorder)

Although it is not a diagnostic tool, the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) (Goodman, et al., 1989; Rosario-Campos, et al., 2006) is the most widely used measure of OCD symptoms. It is a severity assessment tool which can be used as a self-report instrument or a semi-structured interview, and has been demonstrated to be valid in OCD. The Y-BOCS exists in both an adult and a child version.

References

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

BMJ, 2017. British Medical Journal: Best Practices - Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder [Online]Available at: http://bestpractice.bmj.com/best-practice/monograph/362/diagnosis/criteria.html

Goodman, et al., 1989. The Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale. I. Development, use, and reliability. Archives of General Psychiatry, 46(11): pp. 1006-11PMID: 2684084 DOI: 10.1001/archpsyc.1989.01810110048007

Rosario-Campos, et al., 2006. The Dimensional Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (DY-BOCS): an instrument for assessing obsessive-compulsive symptom dimensions. Molecular Psychiatry, 11(5): pp. 495-504.PMID: 16432526 DOI: 10.1038/sj.mp.4001798


Does the perception of odors change over time? Is it normal for the perception of odors to change over time? I mean the same odors, like the smell of a snack with the same formula as before.

An interesting question.

It depends how you interpret "perception". Using its most common definition, following cognitive information processing theories, then yes. The perception of odors changes of over time.

This reference is comprehensive about the issue. Specifically about external factors and internal factors (e.g. individual's earlier experiences) on perception (Shiffrin and Schneider, 1977).

A question to pursue could be if there are certain differences among odors that makes some of them more or less susceptible for change in perception over time.

You can further argue that, even if the odor has the same molecules (formula), a person's capabilities of detecting all the molecules will change over time (deterioration), hence changing the perception of the odor over time.

Shiffrin, R. M., & Schneider, W. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: II. Perceptual learning, automatic attending and a general theory. Psychological review, 84(2), 127.


What is the optimal way to run the Piaget Conservation of Number Task? I am hoping to run a standard Piaget conservation task to test the conservation of number.  The task is as follows:

  Coins such as pennies are placed on a table. A certain number of
  coins are placed in a row, and a matching series of coins is placed
  directly below the first one. So there are two equal rows of coins on
  the table. Now the experimenter spreads out one of the rows so the
  coins are farther apart. The child is asked whether the two rows of
  coins still have the same number of coins in them. A small child who
  does not yet know how to count will typically claim that the
  spread-out row has more coins in it.

Previous studies are quite varied in several ways.  First, in the number of coins that are presented (typically it looks like it is 5-8). Second, how many trials are performed. Third, how many trials must a child pass/fail to conclude that he or she does or does not conserve number.

Therefore, I am asking for advice on the ideal protocol for running this task (i.e. trial types, number of trials, pass/fail requirement).

Particular attention should be given to the theoretical framework (Piaget's Theory and constructivist perspective), hypotheses to contrast (levels), information gathering and common difficulties.

"Levels" in quantity conservation test:

Level of absence of term-to-term correspondence:
4-5 years.
Simple intuition.
Consider the global and static configuration of the rows (not quantity of chips or accounts).
They are limited by the configurations of the tabs.

Level of correspondence term to term without conservation:
5-6 years
They establish correspondence 1 to 1 in both rows, before the transformation of them, they break the equivalence.
They focus on aspects such as density or length.

Level of non-durable conservation:
Around 7 years.
They are conservative in some situations, depending on the context.

Level of conservation required:
7 years.
They are persevering and gives evidence of compensatory behaviors (length / density) or reversibility (join / separate).

The count for Piaget is a social skill with no logical mathematical content (concept of number). It would be necessary to differentiate between logical structures or schemas (classification, seriation and number) and infralogic structures (substance, weight, volume, space). Often smaller children count simply by saying the words: One, two, three, etc. as if it were a song but they do not follow any order or logic. Other times, although the child already has numerical structures developed, errors occur. The final step is when the reversibility of the transformations (deformations, displacements or fractions) is established. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK SHOULD BE VERY WELL ESTABLISHED.

ALWAYS MUST ASK FOR REAFFIRMATION AND ASK WHY THE ANSWER HAS BEEN GIVEN (but not so that the child thinks that perhaps he is giving an erroneous answer). YOU MUST PRACTICE SERIOUSLY BEFORE THE TEST.

Leaving aside the presentation of the test that you could present as a game (and try to make it really fun) try to follow the words or terms that the child expresses, once the child responds do not add other terms, sometimes there is distraction for some concepts said by the experimenter.

Keep in mind common difficulties in test with children: Lack of attention or motivation and distractions (many children can pay close attention to their mom or dad or they can go to the test with their favorite toy).


Why is the distribution of mean firing rates assumed to be Gaussian? I'm reading "Principles of Neural Information Theory" by James V Stone and in section 3.5 he says that the distribution of firing rates (of a single neuron) is generally assumed to be approximately Gaussian. He proceeds to give a mathematical argument for this.

If we measure the activity during a period of $T$ seconds over intervals $\Delta t$, there are $N=T/\Delta t$ possible positions for spikes to occur. The probability of $n$ spikes occurring  this period is
$$p(n)=\frac{N!}{n!(N-n)!}P^nQ^{N-n}$$
Where $P$ is the probability fo a spike occurring and $Q$ is the probability of a spike not occuring. If $N$ and $T$ increase while firing rate $r$ stays constant, $p(n)$ approaches the Poisson distribution. If $T$ is held constant then a simple change of variables can be used to obtain a distribution for firing rate. If $N$ is large and $P$ is small, apparently this distribution is approximated by a Gaussian distribution.

I don't really understand this derivation. It would be nice if someone could provide an in-depth version of the argument with all steps full fleshed-out. I'm particularly confused about how one goes from p(n) to a Poisson distribution.

The distribution is not Gaussian, it's Poisson, as noted in your question. However, outside of certain edge cases (e.g. when there are very few spikes, or very few trials), a Poisson Distribution with rate parameter $\lambda$ looks very like a Gaussian with both mean and variance equal to $\lambda$ (standard deviation $= \sqrt{\lambda}$). This is useful, because if you treat the distribution as a Gaussian, you can apply methods such as the t-test or linear regression, without being too far wrong.

Here's some R code that shows the correspondance between the Poisson and the Gaussian.

library(tidyverse)
x = seq(0, 30, 1) # Possible spike counts
poisson.density = dopois(x, 10)
gaussian.density = dnorm(x, 10, sqrt(10))
d = data.frame(x = x, Poisson=poisson.density, Gaussian=gaussian.density) %>%
  gather(Distribution, Density, -x)
ggplot(d, aes(x, Density, color=Distribution, linetype=Distribution)) +
  geom_path() +
  theme(legend.position=c(1,1), legend.justification=c(1,1)) +
  labs(x='Spike count')


Is there a method to count objects without a pattern? Is there a method in mnemonics to quickly find out the number of objects in, for example, a heap of tooth picks.

There is this scene in the movie Rain Man, where the autistic protagonist can tell the number of toothpicks at a glance. Is something similar possible for "normal" people with the right kind of training or technique?

The act of perceiving quantity without actually counting is known as subitizing, and it's something we can all do up to quantities of about 4 (i.e. you can tell how many fingers someone is holding up without counting them, right?).

This open access article seems to review the idea quite nicely (although I've only skimmed it), including reference to so called "savants". There's also this paper, claiming that transcranial magnetic stimulation can temporarily induce subitizing abilities for larger numbers in participants, though personally I'm dubious.

Finally, to the best of my knowledge, the original, and definitive account of this ability (on which the scene in Rain Man was apparently based; Kim Peek, the inspiration for most of the film, apparently didn't couldn't, or didn't subitize like this) was by Oliver Sachs, in this wonderful book, but basically summarized in this article. If you really are interested, I can't recommend the book strongly enough, it's the reason I did psychology in the first place. It should probably be noted that I've heard criticisms of Sachs' account of the Twins somewhere, but I can't currently find a reference for them, so I don't think it's universally accepted that anyone can actually do this in reality.


Is psychology an art or work? Some are born psychologists and they have passion towards it unlike some people who just work to earn money on it.

The people who just do the same as work, will they satisfy the people with the care which is the prime importance, and is the real burden of talking to the patients concealed?

This is an interesting question, which may or may not garner more than one useful answer. There will be a small element of opinion in the answer which must be very limited for an answer to be a good one for this site, and therefore I will try and formulate my answer with as little opinion as possible.
Your question on whether psychology is an art or work depends much on the differences within your definitions of each.  I will base the difference on the first statement you made:

Some are born psychologists and they have passion towards it unlike some people who just work to earn money on it.

In other words, it is an art if you only need to have a passion for psychology, rather than it being work because you just need to be able to analyse effectively.
This then leads on to the question of whether you can analyse human psychology effectively if you don't have a passion for it or a high interest in it.
@sfxedit cited an interesting study (Gollwitzer & Bargh, 2018), which points out that:

some lay individuals can reliably judge established social psychological phenomena without any experience in social psychology.

with social psychological phenomena meaning

predicting how human beings in general feel, think, and behave in social contexts and situations

You can predict how human beings in general feel, think, and behave in social contexts and situations without actually empathising with the people in question.  A problem with that if you work directly with clients is the fact that clients can detect whether the therapist is empathic or not (Xiao et al. 2015) so can those who are only providing therapy for the money going to be that effective?
That is open to opinion, so I will leave that for you to decide, however, the founder of Person Centered Therapy (Carl Rogers) believes that one of the core conditions for effective therapy is empathy. Plus, from my own personal experience as a client facing therapist, in order for a strong rapport to be built, you need to be able to empathise with your client's situation.

We believe that the most useful definition of empathy would emphasize the ability to detect accurately the emotional information being transmitted by another person. This entity has been termed empathic accuracy by others (see Ickes et al., 1990, for a brief review)   — Levenson & Ruef 1992

So my answer to your question depends on the kind of psychologist you are wanting to be.  If you are a Research Psychologist who is not client facing, then all you need is to be able to analyse the data effectively. Whether the effectiveness will depend on your passion for the subject or not is open to opinion, as is whether the work of a non-client-facing Research Psychologist is work or just an art.
If you are a Clinical Psychologist, or other Clinical Therapist who is client facing, you need to be able to empathise.  For this reason, and the fact that empathising in harrowing client situations can be emotionally draining, it is work in the definition and context put forward. There is however, an art involved in effectively dealing with the emotions internalised through empathy.
So in summary, Psychology and related fields can be seen as an art or hard work.  The decision on that definition is yours.
References
Gollwitzer, A., & Bargh, J. A. (2018). Social psychological skill and its correlates. Social Psychology, 49(2), 88. doi: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000332
Ickes, W., Stinson, L., Bissonnette, V., & Garcia, S. (1990). Naturalistic social cognition: Empathic accuracy in mixed-sex dyads. Journal of personality and social psychology, 59(4), 730. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.59.4.730
Levenson, R. W., & Ruef, A. M. (1992). Empathy: a physiological substrate. Journal of personality and social psychology, 63(2), 234. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.63.2.234
Xiao, B., Imel, Z. E., Georgiou, P. G., Atkins, D. C., & Narayanan, S. S. (2015). " Rate My Therapist": Automated Detection of Empathy in Drug and Alcohol Counseling via Speech and Language Processing. PloS one, 10(12), e0143055. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0143055


Do children really show brand preference at age 2? As I was reading a marketing textbook, I came across a paragraph that stated research has shown children as young as two can show brand preference (although I haven't yet searched for the source in the back of the book to check what research it's referring to.)

  Research shows that children evidence brand preferences at age two, and these preferences often last a lifetime. This knowledge prompted the licensing of the well-known Craftsman brand name to MGA Entertainment for its children's line of My First Craftsman toys and power tools and Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated Kids

Marketing 12th Edition - Kerin Hartley Rudelius

Is it really the case that children are showing brand preference, preferring one brand over others when presented options, because of a specific affinity for that brand?

I'd be more inclined to believe that such children aren't showing a brand preference, but are simply not familiar with the other products. For instance, if I ask my son if he wants a Pop Tart or a Toaster Pastry, he's going to say Pop Tart because that's the term he knows. In such a case, it has more to do with how we've taught him about brands/foods, and not always distinguishing between them, then him showing a preference.

Sources cited by textbook:

Deborah Roedder John, "Consumer Socialization of Children: A Retrospective Look at Twenty-Five Years of Research," Journal of Consumer Research, December 1999, pp. 183-213.

Gwen Bachmann Achenreinver and Deborah Roudder John, "The Meaning of Brand Names to Children: A Developmental Investigation," Journal of Consumer Psychology 13, no. 3 (2003), pp. 205-19.

Elizabeth S. Moore, William L. Wilkie, and Richard J. Lutz, "Passing the Torch: Intergenerational Influences as a  Source of Brand Equity," Journal of Marketing, April 2002, pp. 17-37.

Is it really the case that children are showing brand preference, preferring one brand over others when presented options, because of a specific affinity for that brand?

According to research, it does seem that way.

A longitudinal study of 20 years (Guest, 1964) found that brand preferences originally expressed during the ages of 7–18 correlated with brand usage reported 20 years later, with the average amount of agreement between 1941 preferences and 1961 use being 23%. Guest concluded that early childhood experiences exert considerable influence upon later brand purchasing behaviour.

Your belief that such children aren't showing a brand preference, but are simply not familiar with the other products.

Ji (2002) whilst talking about the effects of brands such as Barbie and McDonalds on children, pointed out that parents, mass media and peers do play a part in it all:

  Parents are probably the most instrumental in teaching children basic rational aspects of consumption, such as satisfying basic consumer needs in the marketplace (Riesman, Glazer, & Denny, 1956), understanding price–quality relationships (Moore & Stephens, 1975), handling money wisely (Marshall & Magruder, 1960), and shopping for different qualities among products (Ward, Wackman, & Wartella, 1977). Although parents are considered the primary socialization agents of children, no other agent of consumer socialization has received more attention (in the literature) than the mass media (Moschis, 1987; John, 1999). Through massmedia, including both advertising and editorial/program content (O’Guinn & Shrum, 1997), children may learn about new brands and products (Goldberg, Gorn, & Gibson, 1978), how to use products and who uses them (Atkin, 1978), realities and beliefs about them (Gorn & Florsheim, 1985), and preferences for them (Gorn & Goldberg, 1977). Peers also have input to children’s consumer socialization process. Studies show that young people learn the symbolic meaning of goods or expressive elements of consumption from their peers (Moschis & Moore, 1982). In addition, peers play an important role in the development of children’s preference for stores (McNeal, 1964), products (Hawkins & Coney, 1974), brands of selected products (Moschis, Moore, & Stanley, 1983), and things to collect (Baker & Gentry, 1996).

The thing is, a great deal of people do stick with what they know, and you could say this is in part due to people's comfort zones.  Whether this phenomenon is the cause of people favouring certain brands is open to opinion.  What is definite is that 100s of billions of dollars in business expenditure is spent looking at how they can use leverage such as television advertising, product design and even packaging, to encourage people to buy their product (Scheybani, 2015; Quelch & Cannon-Bonventre, 1983; Spanier, 2018).  As well as with children, this affects adult behaviour, which as pointed out by Ji (2002), is passed onto children who in turn influence their peers through peer pressures.

Your title question: Do children really show brand preference at age 2?

Ji (2002) wrote (emphasis mine):

  Why Study Children’s Relationships with Brands?
  Studying the child–brand relationship phenomenon has its practical
  implications. First, children consume a wide range of products from the
  time they are born. For example, parents use J&J baby powder on their
  babies, feed them with Gerber baby food, and cover them with Huggies
  diapers. At around age two, children begin to eat their first solid food,
  often cereal (Cole & Cole, 1996), and develop relationships with certain
  brands, such as Cheerios, that may last a lifetime. As children grow
  older, they not only consume more brands such as McDonalds’ food and
  Barbie dolls through the purchases of their parents, but also begin to
  make purchases using their own income (McNeal, 1999). In all, children
  consume a wide range of brands and these early experiences may serve
  as definite influences on their choices in adulthood (Guest, 1942).

References

Atkin, C. K. (1978). Effects of drug commercials on young viewers. Journal of Communication, 28, 71–79. DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.1978.tb01658.x

Baker, S. M., & Gentry, J. W. (1996). Kids as collectors: A phenomenological study of first and fifth grade. In K. P. Corfman & J. G. Lynch (Eds.), Advances in consumer research (Vol. 23, pp. 132–137). Minneapolis, MN: Association for Consumer Research.Available at: http://acrwebsite.org/volumes/7928/volumes/v23/NA-23

Cole, M., & Cole, S. R. (1996). The development of children (3rd ed.). New York: W. H. Freeman

Goldberg, M. E., Gorn, G. J., & Gibson, W. (1978). TV messages for snack and breakfast foods: do they influence children's preferences?. Journal of Consumer Research, 5(2), 73-81. DOI: 10.1086/208717

Gorn, G. J., & Florsheim, R. (1985). The effects of commercials for adult products on children. Journal of consumer research, 11(4), 962-967. DOI: 10.1086/209030 PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Renee_Florsheim/publication/24098404_The_Effects_of_Commercials_for_Adult_Products_on_Children/links/5925cee3aca27295a8f054a7/The-Effects-of-Commercials-for-Adult-Products-on-Children.pdf

Gorn, G. J., & Goldberg, M. E. (1977). The impact of television advertising on children from low income families. Journal of Consumer Research, 4(2), 86-88. DOI: 10.1086/208683

Guest, L. P. (1942). The genesis of brand awareness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 26(6), 800. DOI: 10.1037/h0055390

Guest, L. (1964). Brand loyalty revisited: A twenty-year report. Journal of Applied Psychology, 48(2), 93. DOI: 10.1037/h0046667

Hawkins, D., & Coney, K. (1974). Peer influences on children’s product pref-
erences. Journal of Academy of Marketing Science, 2, 322–330. 10.1007/BF02722335

Ji, M. F. (2002). Children's relationships with brands:“True love” or “one‐night” stand?. Psychology & Marketing, 19(4), 369-387. DOI: 10.1002/mar.10015

John, D. R. (1999). Consumer socialization of children: A retrospective look at twenty-five years of research. Journal of consumer research, 26(3), 183-213. DOI: 10.1086/209559 PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Deborah_John/publication/24099029_Consumer_Socialization_of_Children_A_Retrospective_Look_At_Twenty-Five_Years_of_Research/links/02e7e52bb53593d1a7000000/Consumer-Socialization-of-Children-A-Retrospective-Look-At-Twenty-Five-Years-of-Research.pdf?origin=publication_detail

Marshall, H. R., & Magruder, L. (1960). Relations between parent money education practices and children's knowledge and use of money. Child Development, 253-284. DOI: 10.2307/1125902

McNeal, J. U. (1964). Children as Consumers, Marketing Study Series No. 9. Austin, TX: Bureau of Business Research The University of Texas.

McNeal, J. U. (1999). Kids market: Myths and realities. Ithaca, NY: Paramount
Market.

Moore, R., & Stephens, L. (1975). Some communication and demographic determinants of adolescent consumer learning. Journal of Consumer Research,
2, 80–92. DOI: 10.1086/208619

Moschis, G. P., & Moore, R. L. (1982). A longitudinal study of television advertising effects. Journal of Consumer Research, 9(3), 279-286. DOI: 10.1086/208923

Moschis, G., & Moore, R. L., & Stanley, T. (1983). An exploratory study of brand loyalty development. In T. Kinner (Ed.), Advances in consumer research (Vol.11, pp. 412–417). Chicago: Association for Consumer Research.Available at: http://acrwebsite.org/volumes/6286/volumes/v11/NA-11

O'Guinn, T. C., & Shrum, L. J. (1997). The role of television in the construction of consumer reality. Journal of consumer research, 23(4), 278-294. DOI: 10.1086/209483 PDF: http://academic.csuohio.edu/kneuendorf/quillin/oguinn%20shrum%20role%20of%20television%20in%20construction%20reality%201997.pdf

Quelch, J., & Cannon-Bonventre, K. (1983). Better Marketing at the Point of Purchase. Harvard Business Review [Online]Available at: https://hbr.org/1983/11/better-marketing-at-the-point-of-purchase

Riesman, D., Glazer, N., & Denny, R. (1956). The lonely crowd: A study of the changing American character. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Scheybani, O. How advertising has become an agent of social change. Medium [Online]Available at: https://medium.com/@moonstorming/how-advertising-has-become-an-agent-of-social-change-148aa0ef303a

Spanier, G. (2018). ITV, Channel 4 and Sky unite to champion TV advertising in face of online threat. Campaign Live [Online]Available at: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/itv-channel-4-sky-unite-champion-tv-advertising-face-online-threat/1456482

Ward, S., Wackman, D., & Wartella, E. (1977). How children learn to buy: The development of consumer information processing skills. Beverly Hills, CA:
Sage Publications, Inc.


How do auditory and visual hallucinations differ within the brain? I asked this question.

It occurs to me that auditory hallucinations may well be generated in a different part of the brain to visual hallucinations. From my understanding, some hallucinations involve both auditory and visual components.

Which parts of the brain are responsible for generating various hallucinations and how does this correlate to auditory vs visual hallucinations and a combined hallucination?

Short answer
It is mainly aberrant activity in the higher sensory association areas that is linked to hallucinations.

Background
Brain imaging studies of hallucinations come in 2 flavors: “state” and “trait”. State studies are so-called symptom-capture studies, where subjects signal the start and end of a hallucination. During this window, the brain activity is recorded and compared with the resting state. Trait studies compare people with hallucinations to those that do not (Ford et al., 2015).

A state study suggested modality-dependent activation of association sensory cortices during auditory, visual, and multisensory hallucinations (Fig. 2). However, primary-sensory-cortex recruitment was not systematic and was shown to be only associated with increased vividness of the hallucinatory experiences (Jardri et al., 2013).

References
- Ford et al., Schizophrenia Bulletin (2015); 41(1): 223–32
- Jardri et al., Cerebral Cortex (2013); 23(5): 1108–17

Fig. 1. Brain areas involved n sensory processing. source: Impremedia

Fig. 2.  fMRI analysis of the hallucinatory experience in 20 adolescents with brief psychosis disorder. (a) The bilateral ASCs activated during hallucinations: the cuneus (Cun), lingual (LG), and fusiform (FG) gyri during visual hallucinations; the anterior insula (Ins), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), inferior parietal lobule (IPL), and superior temporal gyrus (STG) during auditory hallucinations. (b) An overlapping visualization of the auditory (purple), visual (green), and cross-modal (orange) components superimposed on a bilateral and flattened cortical mesh. OTJ and STS were activated during audiovisual hallucinations (AV, see Table 2). Activity in the STS was specific to multisensory hallucinations, whereas the OTJ presented a variable organization with overlaps between voxels responding to A, V, and AV inputs. Figure and legend source: Jardri et al. (2013)


Analyzing EEG time-frequency data in a factorial design I am trying to find the best strategy to analyze a set of EEG time-frequency data from 24 subjects, using 64 electrodes. This is an exploratory study as I have no a-priori hypothesis on where or when changes in two frequency bands might be observed. In this case I have found that using non-parametrical statistical testing might be the best soulution: in particular, cluster-based permutation testing is widely used in cognitive electrophysiology.

However this approach is not feasible as I have a 2X2X2 within subject design, and it is not possible to look at interaction with permutation testing. On the other hand, running an ANOVA on the whole data-set might well result in an high number of false positives.

A solution to my proble might be to define ROI(s), so to perform ANOVA(s) on a limited number of electrodes within a time window. However I have no clue on how to define such ROI(s).

What is the best strategy according to you?

It is possible to look at within-subject interactions using cluster permutation tests.
I.e. Eric Maris here: https://mailman.science.ru.nl/pipermail/fieldtrip/2011-January/003447.html

2x2x2 with factors A,B,C has 4 interactions AxB, AxC, BxC and AxBxC and 8 cells

+--------+-------------+-------------+
| C = 0  |    B = 0    |    B = 1    |
+--------+-------------+-------------+
| A = 0  | A0 B0 C0    | A0 B1 C0    |
| A = 1  | A1 B0 C0    | A1 B1 C0    |
+--------+-------------+-------------+

+--------+-------------+-------------+
| C = 1  |    B = 0    |    B = 1    |
+--------+-------------+-------------+
| A = 0  | A0 B0 C1    |  A0 B1 C1   |
| A = 1  | A1 B0 C1    |  A1 B1 C1   |
+--------+-------------+-------------+

2-way: You calculate the difference of differences at the average of missing factor:

$$
interaction_{AB} = \frac{interaction_{AB_{c=0}}  + interaction_{AB_{c=1}}}{2}  = \frac{(A_0B_0C_0-A_1B_0C_0)- (A_0B_1C_0-A_1B_1C_0) + (A_0B_0C_1-A_1B_0C_1)- (A_0B_1C_1-A_1B_1C_1)}{2}
$$

and for the three way interaction is the difference of interactions
$$
interaction_{AB_{c=1}} - interaction_{AB_{c=0}}
$$
(or any of the other pairs, same result)

I wrote a small script that confirms this:

library(tidyverse)
library("ANOVApower")

# simulate simple 2x2x2 design
design_result <- ANOVA_design(design = "2w*2w*2w",
                              n = 10,
                              mu = c(1:8),
                              sd = 1.0,
                              labelnames = c("A",0,1,"B",0,1,"C",0,1))

d = design_result$dataframe
contrasts(d$A) = c(-.5,.5)
contrasts(d$B) = c(-.5,.5)
contrasts(d$C) = c(-.5,.5)

# Cool, the ANOVApower script already gives us a unique column for each cell
# we can forget about subject because everything is balanced :)
d_cell = d%>%group_by(cond) %>%
  summarise(y = mean(y))

d_interactions = d_cell %>% summarise(
                     AB_C0 = (y[cond=='A_0_B_0_C_0']-y[cond=='A_0_B_1_C_0']) - (y[cond=='A_1_B_0_C_0']-y[cond=='A_1_B_1_C_0']),
                     AB_C1 = (y[cond=='A_0_B_0_C_1']-y[cond=='A_0_B_1_C_1']) - (y[cond=='A_1_B_0_C_1']-y[cond=='A_1_B_1_C_1']),
                     AC_B0 = (y[cond=='A_0_B_0_C_0']-y[cond=='A_0_B_0_C_1']) - (y[cond=='A_1_B_0_C_0']-y[cond=='A_1_B_0_C_1']),
                     AC_B1 = (y[cond=='A_0_B_1_C_0']-y[cond=='A_0_B_1_C_1']) - (y[cond=='A_1_B_1_C_0']-y[cond=='A_1_B_1_C_1']),
                     CB_A0 = (y[cond=='A_0_B_0_C_0']-y[cond=='A_0_B_1_C_0']) - (y[cond=='A_0_B_0_C_1']-y[cond=='A_0_B_1_C_1']),
                     CB_A1 = (y[cond=='A_1_B_0_C_0']-y[cond=='A_1_B_1_C_0']) - (y[cond=='A_1_B_0_C_1']-y[cond=='A_1_B_1_C_1'])
)

d_2way = d_interactions %>% summarise(AB = (AB_C0 + AB_C1)/2,
                             AC = (AC_B0 + AC_B1)/2,
                             BC = (CB_A0 + CB_A1)/2)

d_interactions$AB_C0 - d_interactions$AB_C1
d_interactions$AB_C1 - d_interactions$AB_C0

# confirm with linear model results
lm(y~A*B*C,d)

Which returns:

> d_2way
# A tibble: 1 x 3
      AB     AC    BC
   <dbl>  <dbl> <dbl>
1 -0.683 -0.827 0.129

> d_interactions$AB_C1 - d_interactions$AB_C0
[1] 1.307831
> d_interactions$AB_C1 - d_interactions$AB_C0
[1] 1.307831

> lm(y~A*B*C,d)

Call:
lm(formula = y ~ A * B * C, data = d)

Coefficients:
(Intercept)           A1           B1           C1        A1:B1        A1:C1        B1:C1     A1:B1:C1
     4.3853       3.8473       1.8056       1.1670      -0.6832      -0.8272       0.1288       1.3078

Identical results.

This is what I would do


Are dice and domino dot arrangement conventions related to readability? I noticed dice and dominos both use the same convention for dot placement. Is there a reason for this? Is there any research on how to layout dots so that they are most readable?

These dots are known as pips. Pip placement tends to follow a convention, but this placement may vary by region, as you can see by this comparison between Western and Asian dice (from wikipedia):

I suspect this arrangement has nothing to do with cognitive science or usability, but is simply a convention. However, you may note that on the Western-style dice, pips are arranged so as to maximize the distance between any two pips while maintaining symmetry-- this should aid in quick recognition regardless of how the dice are rotated when they land.


Rationale behind an “all-or-nothing” design for a test for the purposes of diagnosis and epidemology In the Autism-Spectrum Quotient test, the subject is confronted with fifty statements such as:

I don’t particularly enjoy reading fiction.
I prefer to do things the same way over and over again.

and is asked whether they

definitely agree,
slightly agree,
slightly disagree, or
definitely disagree

with them. There is no neutral option.
The test is scored as follows: If the subject agrees with an “autistic” statement, they score a point. The same applies, if they disagree with a “non-autistic” statement. There is no distinction between slightly and definitely agreeing (or disagreeing).
I would expect that this test design (no neutral option, no distinction between slight and strong tendencies) leads to an amplification of small effects, such as interpretation of the question, slight tendencies, priming, chance, and so on. While I acknowledge that this effect may be desired in customer surveys and similar, it seems problematic to me in a test for the purposes of diagnosis and epidemology (such as this test). For example, I would expect that people who are already diagnosed with autism (and know this) or people with clichéically autistic interests like mathematics are more likely to tend for the more autistic option – even if their actual stance on the question in neutral.
Now, I am a layman and I acknowledge that designing such a test is not easy, as one has to account for several effects. Hence I wonder: What are the justifications for such a test design, in particular in light of its applications (diagnosis and epidemology) and my above criticism? The paper introducing the test does not provide any citations or reasons for this, at least not in those sections where I would expect it.

Many construct scales are developed with relatively little attention to the content.  Researchers may start with a large set of candidate questions, versions, formats, and phrasings, and then through a validation process, narrow them down to a subset that correlates well with the construct that they are trying to measure.  The goal is a balance between keeping the test short while also retaining its predictive value.  In Baron-Cohen et al's (2001) introduction, they note:

  The AQ as shown in the Appendix is the outcome of piloting multiple
  versions, over several years.

In many cases, researchers care less about why the questions work, and more just that they work.

Having said that, the decision to go with a forced-choice format vs. say, a Likert-type rating scale with more granularity and a neutral option, can be political:

  Ipsative measures may be more useful for evaluating traits within an
  individual, whereas Likert-type scales are more useful for evaluating
  traits across individuals.

This can make forced-choice measures desirable for stigmatized labels to discourage comparing individuals to one another:

  Encouraging pupils to beat their previous scores can take peer
  pressure out of situations and eliminates the competitive element
  associated with norm-based referencing.

Note also that the original study confirms that mathematicians score significantly higher on this scale, as is to be expected:

  ... scientists score higher than nonscientists; and within the
  sciences, mathematics, physical scientists, computer scientists, and
  engineers score higher than the more human or life-centered sciences
  of medicine (including veterinary science) and biology. This latter
  finding replicates our earlier studies finding a link between autism
  spectrum conditions and occupations/skills in maths, physics, and
  engineering.

This suggests that the authors thought it perfectly valid for mathematicians to score higher on their autism scale (ie, this scale is not designed to differentiate the autistic tendencies of mathematicians from those of individuals diagnosed with autism).


Can reduced cognitive load lead to some kind of mental or physical "atrophy"? Muscles, if you don't use them, degenerate. Everyone who has had a broken leg in a cast for a few weeks and then seen the thin stick that reemerged once the cast was removed, can attest to that fact.

But does the same happen to the brain? Does mental ability or brain matter atrophy, if life is to easy for us because all the products we use are so highly usable that we don't have to think anymore?

Assuming you're getting at a related idea to your other recent question (Does a more ergonomic and user friendly interface/device make the human brain work less?), I wouldn't worry about user friendliness causing mental atrophy by precluding the need for thought. Thought continues well beyond matters of control to matters of application and optimization. (E.g., can I use my washing machine on AstroTurf? How much high-efficiency detergent do I really need? Can I still use the old stuff?) When systems work particularly well together, entirely new areas of thought may emerge (e.g., the Industrial Revolution and the Italian Renaissance depended largely on the stability and prosperity of their host societies).

However, the "use-it-or-lose-it" principle may apply to specific skills and even general abilities and physical senses to some extent. Secondary language proficiency is one such popularly recognized example. I'd also recommend checking out the Scientific American Frontiers miniseries, Changing Your Mind (some episodes are available on YouTube). One particular episode with which I'm familiar features a research participant wearing a blindfold for a long period of time, during or after which a neuroimaging method (probably fMRI, but I can't quite remember) shows activity in her visual cortex when she's processing tactile stimuli. These sort of repurposing processes probably occur naturally throughout neurological development, especially in youth when neuroplasticity is greatest. AFAIK, neurological models of learning and development in general describe a lot of processes involving pruning of unused connections and reinforcement of frequently used connections. Others here probably know a lot more about these topics than I do, but it seems clear enough even to me that to some extent, atrophy is a natural and even adaptive part of the learning process. Even without referring to neurological substrates, one can argue that learning often involves the process of elimination, so the atrophy of ideas representing eliminated possibilities (e.g., the world is flat?) is desirable in some ways.

Of course, not all atrophy is desirable, and not all results in adaptive repurposing of the relevant brain structures. My former doctoral advisor once told me a particularly disturbing story about the punishment of one of the assassins of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose death played a role in sparking the first World War. I've looked into it a bit since, and suspect the story is apocryphal, but it's interesting nonetheless. Supposedly the assassin was locked away in a completely dark cell for so long that he went blind. If, as I suspect, this is mere apocrypha, I don't know whether this can happen in general, but the loss of vision in subterranean species of fish, lizards, and insects is well-documented in evolutionary theory.


Reading list for character defects Could you recommend books/articles about character defects (e.g. envy, laziness, hate, etc.).

I am particularly interested in:

A comprehensive list of character defects
Description of possible causes of those defects
Examples

The character defects should not be necessarily caused by mental illness.

An example of a book that seems to fit my criteria would be (although it is related to mental illnesses): 50 Signs of Mental Illness - A Guide to Understanding Mental Health - by James Whitney Hicks

No limits about the date of publication (the older the better).

The lists of "character deficits" can be mixtures of judgements, beliefs, attitudes and emotions. The common denominator of the things on such lists is often just that they are not acceptable for some people, but they are not all necessary bad and some of them may not need to be changed or treated.

Examples:

Laziness can be a temporary mood, which, if excessive, can become a bad habit.

Anger is an emotion, which can help you refuse inappropriate attitudes of others or, when not controlled by proper thinking, can result in destruction.

Hate is an intense dislike for something or someone and it is not necessary bad; together with anger, it can help you refuse things that are not good for you. On the other hand, hate is often completely unreasonable.

Fear can be perceived as weakness, but it is also a warning emotion that can help you avoid a danger.


Is there any evidence for or against the existence of neurons that encode surface slant in vision? In the way orientation columns display selectivity for various edge orientations projected on the retina which is then repeated at various angles in a localised region of the cortex. I am wondering whether in an analogous fashion if any similar neuronal circuitry has been shown to represent variations in the surface slant at the region being projected onto the retina.

By slant I mean a measure of the surfaces orientation away from co-planar with the visual focal plane.

Perhaps this information is extracted from binocular receptive fields?

If it hasn't been found then I guess I'm also wondering if anyone has ever looked? and or how the depth information from binocular receptive fields is encoded/represented for further processing?

Yes there is evidence of the encoding of surface slant in the visual field

Disparity-Based Coding of Three-Dimensional Surface Orientation by Macaque Middle Temporal Neurons

We now show that MT
contains robust, disparity-based signals regarding the 3-D orientation (tilt and slant) of planar surfaces. This tilt selectivity does
not result from vergence eye movements or subtle monocular
dot-density cues, and approximately one-half of MT neurons
respond more strongly to a tilted stimulus (i.e., a nonzero slant)
than to any frontoparallel stimulus of the same size (data not
shown). In addition, we show that the tilt preference of MT neurons is primarily independent of the mean depth and slant of the
surface, properties that may simplify the extraction of 3-D orientation signals from a population of MT neurons.

Representation of 3-D surface orientation by velocity and disparity gradient cues in area MT

This study demonstrates that single MT neurons signal 3-D surface orientation (tilt and slant) via selectivity for velocity and disparity gradients, and to a lesser degree, for texture gradients. Selectivity is similar in multiunit activity recorded simultaneously, suggesting that 3-D surface orientation tuning is clustered in MT. Tilt selectivity is generally enhanced when multiple gradient cues are presented together, indicating that MT may integrate cues to represent surface structure with greater fidelity. This occurs despite the fact that tilt preferences for disparity and velocity gradients are poorly correlated overall. In addition, we found that responses to the combined stimulus, which contains all three gradient cues, are well approximated by a linear weighted sum of responses to the individual cues, with disparity and velocity gradients weighted most heavily. This study provides the first systematic examination of neural integration of multiple gradient cues to surface orientation and suggests that area MT contains an early multicue representation of 3-D surface structure.


Conducting brain stimulation at home Given articles like this, and their associated research {1}, I am developing an interest in transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and other forms of brain stimulation as they appear like they may have. I might be interested in trying it at home.

As a result I would like ask for evidence to help me answer one or more of the following questions:

What is the best headset for brain stimulation that a normal person can buy or build? I am aware of these, but would like the opinion of an expert.
What are the best online communities, or sources of information for conducting brain stimulation at home?
How should I engage in brain stimulation at home? A guide, or link to one would be appreciated
Is it safe to conduction brain stimulation at home? If there is evidence that one type of brain stimulation, and/or headset is safe then please provide evidence of this.

Reference

{1} Santarnecchi, E., et al. (2016). "Individual differences and specificity of prefrontal gamma frequency-tACS on fluid intelligence capabilities." Cortex 75: 33-43.

At the moment, there are no TMS/tDCS protocols that were approved for the home use in USA or EU. So, please, don´t. Fortunately, TMS devices are quite expensive and cannot be used by a single man. tDCS is easier, but decent companies on the market like NeuroConn or Neuroelectrics will not sell an equipment to a private person.
Foc.us device, by the way, was proved to impair the memory [1].

1.Steenbergen, Laura, et al. "“Unfocus” on foc. us: commercial tDCS headset impairs working memory." Experimental brain research (2015): 1-7.


Does self-rated performance predict objective performance over and above other-rated performance? Context:
I was at a talk today where data was  presented  where a group of sports people ranked their own performance and everyone else in the group. This enabled self-rated performance to be correlated with the average of other-rated performance. The general observation was that there was a strong relationship between the two variables, but that where self-rated performance deviated from other-rated performance, people tended to rate themselves higher.

This raises the question of what this self-other discrepancy represents.
One answer is that people have a self-serving bias.
Another answer is that people have unique information about themselves.

Question:
Thus, I'm interested in studies that have looked at what self-rated performance predicts over and above other-rated performance. In particular:

To what extent does self-rated performance predict objective performance over and above other-rated performance?

I imagine these findings would vary as a function of a range of factors including type of task, number of rated used form the other-rating, and so on. But at first instance, I'd be interested in any empirical examples.

I don't know of a study that tries to answer your specific question but you might want to have a look at illusory superiority, "a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others" (wikipedia).

I can especially recommend the paper by Dunning and Kruger (1999): Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments (also the winner of the ignoble price for psychology, 2000). In this paper the authors show that people who are competent in a certain domain are pretty accurate in predicting their performance in this domain (compared to objective standards). On the other hand, people who are incompetent typically overestimate their performance (i.e., predict to perform good, whereas they perfom poorly). This overestimation is mainly driven by their lack of knowledge about that domain. If they are taught that they are poor performers, their prediction goes in line wit their actual performance.

These results could explain your observation of self-other discrepancy, as others might have more knowledge about how to accurately predict performance than the poor perfomers who over-rate their performance.

Reference:

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121


What are the observable differences between "pure" antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy? How to decide whether one has antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, or both?
What are the traits which non-psychopaths with APD have but psychopaths don't have, or vice versa?

Antisocial personality disorder (APD) and psychopathy are not distinct entities, but highly overlapping constructs. APD is the diagnosis currently supported by the latest iterations of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), and psychopathy is rarely used in clinical contexts today, though the terms are often used interchangeably.
The criteria of APD are centered around antisocial behaviors such as norm violating behavior, impulsivity, aggressiveness, and a lack of remorse. Psychopathy lacks a specific set of criteria, but for instance the often used Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R)include aspects such as impulsivity, aggressivity, and a greater focus than APD on the lack of empathy and Machiavellianism, that is manipulativeness and callousness.


What has changed in your brain after electroconvulsive "therapy" (ECT)? From this Wikipedia article:

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), formerly known as electroshock therapy, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures in the brain (without muscular convulsions) are electrically induced in patients to provide relief from mental disorders.1 Typically, 70 to 120 volts are applied externally to the patient's head resulting in approximately 800 milliamperes of direct current passed through the brain, for 100 milliseconds to 6 seconds duration, either from temple to temple (bilateral ECT) or from front to the back of one side of the head (unilateral ECT).

This procedure is applied to people ("patients") who suffer from depression or bi-polarity (though I think the last is not a disorder, as is very exemplified in the movie "One flew over the cuckoo's nest"; it's a common feature of all human beings and we are taught at an already young age to keep our attention, concentration, actions, etc. between unnatural boundaries). Depression can emerge from such conditioning, from exterior impulses (seeing that Nature gets less and less, for example), maybe there is a genetic component. Exogenous and endogenous depression.
Most people relapse (as can be read in the article) before a year after the treatment and there are side effects (the most common adverse effects are confusion and transient memory loss).
In short: it's not an effective therapy in the long run.
In this advertisement of the Mayo Clinique (where ECT is still used) it is said:

ECT is much safer today. Although ECT may still cause some side effects, it now uses electric currents given in a controlled setting to achieve the most benefit with the fewest possible risks.

Of course, they put it that way out of commercial interest.
I think a combination of medicines with therapy does a better job in the case of depression.
All that I've written is just a preliminary for my question:
What happens on the neuron-level if ECT is applied to someone's brain?

There is actually quite some information on this. After a cursory Google Scholar search using the keywords "long-term neuronal effect of ECT" I found the following effects on the brain:

A week or two after the ECT, gray matter of depressed patients seemed to be increased in volume throughout the brain (Ousdal, 2020);
In rats, ECT resulted in behavioral improvements and neurogenesis in the hippocampus. Quite some of these new neurons survived up to 12 months (Vestergaard et al, 2017);
In mice, a single ECT triggered cortical snaptogenesis and a sustained neurogenesis, accompanied by behavioral improvement. Relapse occurred 40 days later. However, a 5-week continuation protocol following the initial ECS treatment led to a more persistent improvement of behavior and better survival rates of new neurons, but the authors did not investigate how long effects last after ECT was stopped fully (Jonckheere et al., 2018);

References
- Jonckheere et al., Brain Stim (2018); 11(6): 1336-47
- Ousdal et al., Biol Psych (2020); 87(5): 451-61
- Vestergaard et al., Hippocampus (2017); 27(1): 52-60


Inability to associate a face with a name I know there is a medical condition called "Prosopagnosia" that is described as:

  a cognitive disorder of face perception in which the ability to recognize familiar faces, including one's own face (self-recognition), is impaired.

Knowing this, I was wondering if there was also a word/medical condition that would describe:

  a cognitive disorder in which the ability to associate a name with a face is impaired.

In this scenario, when the person sees someone, they remember every fact about them (what do they for a living, if they have a significant other, if they have children, etc...) but are incapable of remembering the person name.

The person having this could be described as having "a bad memory for names".

So, does such a medical condition exist? Is there a word for it?

recognize familiar faces

The distinction between familiar and unfamiliar faces with the prosopagnosia seems to be more a wiki thing than in clinical or common usage. The defintion does not seem fixed. NINDs defines it as "characterized by the inability to recognize faces" rather than only just familiar faces. So sufferers "use other ways to identify people, such as relying on voice, clothing, or unique physical attributes".

The Merck manual provides a different naunce "inability to identify well-known faces, including those of close
   friends, or to otherwise distinguish individual objects among a class
   of objects, despite the ability to identify generic facial features
   and objects."

This phenomenon is distinct from anomic aphasia (also known as amnestic aphasia and nominal aphasia) where there is an impairment of word recall especially nouns and verbs.

Just remember humans and brains are not compartmentalized like computers or objects. Phenomenons that occur due to how the neurons or the lobe is organized. Brain damage are not random too, so common patterns form strokes and injuries result in well known and well described phenomenons. The distinction between naming familiar faces and naming strangers/unknown people would not be a useful clinical distinction. If you think about it, name association exercises of strangers seems too difficult to be used clinically.


Relation of confidence and problem solving ability My personal experiences have shown me multiple times that by only boosting my confidence in my ability to solve a problem,  without gaining any additional knowledge, I was able to solve it!

My question is, has this been studied that to what extent our confidence in our abilities can help us to find a solution for a problem?

If so, can you please provide a link?

Quick answer:

A brief Google search show cases where this occurred. For example, it seems that a study on medical students showed a significant relationship between confidence and ability after training, although not before training (Clanton et al., 2014). This being said, the Dunning-Kruger effect always comes to mind when such questions come up…

References

Clanton, J., Gardner, A., Cheung, M., Mellert, L., Evancho-Chapman, M., & George, R. L. (2014). The relationship between confidence and competence in the development of surgical skills. Journal of Surgical Education, 71(3), 405–412. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2013.08.009


Article for bypassing spinal cord after spinal cord injury This article describes a research that allows a man with spinal cord injury (SCI) at the cervical level to move his finger. A chip was used to circumvent the spinal cord and send signals to the finger muscles.

I am looking for the scientific paper of this study. Does someone know the article they used, or a study that describes a similar research?

The most recent paper that was published is Bouton et al. (2016) in Nature, but is not openly available (though can be accessed via http://sci-hub.cc/ ). The abstract of the paper is as follows:

  Millions of people worldwide suffer from diseases that lead to paralysis through disruption of signal pathways between the brain and the muscles. Neuroprosthetic devices are designed to restore lost function and could be used to form an electronic ‘neural bypass’ to circumvent disconnected pathways in the nervous system. It has previously been shown that intracortically recorded signals can be decoded to extract information related to motion, allowing non-human primates and paralysed humans to control computers and robotic arms through imagined movements1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. In non-human primates, these types of signal have also been used to drive activation of chemically paralysed arm muscles12, 13. Here we show that intracortically recorded signals can be linked in real-time to muscle activation to restore movement in a paralysed human. We used a chronically implanted intracortical microelectrode array to record multiunit activity from the motor cortex in a study participant with quadriplegia from cervical spinal cord injury. We applied machine-learning algorithms to decode the neuronal activity and control activation of the participant’s forearm muscles through a custom-built high-resolution neuromuscular electrical stimulation system. The system provided isolated finger movements and the participant achieved continuous cortical control of six different wrist and hand motions. Furthermore, he was able to use the system to complete functional tasks relevant to daily living. Clinical assessment showed that, when using the system, his motor impairment improved from the fifth to the sixth cervical (C5–C6) to the seventh cervical to first thoracic (C7–T1) level unilaterally, conferring on him the critical abilities to grasp, manipulate, and release objects. This is the first demonstration to our knowledge of successful control of muscle activation using intracortically recorded signals in a paralysed human. These results have significant implications in advancing neuroprosthetic technology for people worldwide living with the effects of paralysis.

Bouton, C. E., Shaikhouni, A., Annetta, N. V., Bockbrader, M. A., Friedenberg, D. A., Nielson, D. M., ... & Morgan, A. G. (2016). Restoring cortical control of functional movement in a human with quadriplegia. Nature, 533(7602), 247-250.

More publications from Chad Bouton can be found on his institution's page: http://www.feinsteininstitute.org/our-researchers/chad-bouton/