What benefit is there to playing highly repetitive games? I quite enjoy playing games which requires many repetitions of the level in order to get right. These games are often constant-speed scrolling obstacle-course type games where the player must navigate obstacles correctly to finish the level. Often many of repetitions of the level are necessary. For example, geometry dash (not affiliated with them at all, I promise!).

I often wonder if there are any benefits to playing these games. I know that the repetitive nature creates neural pathways in the brain, but I don't think this newly developed ability is going to be used outside of one game in particular.

A friend of mine mentioned that perhaps these games would improve neuroplasticity, and some research indicates that certain types of games do have cognitive health benefits, (for example, in older adults). However, I haven't been able to find any information about this type of game in particular.

Do these types of repetitive games have any neurological benefit outside of an improved ability to play a particular game?

Lumosity has a research section that explains how their repetitive games help in day-to-day activities. They claim it's peer reviewed, although all of the papers are published to their site.

However, Science based medicine had this to say about a study with games similar to Lumosity...

  This one study, of course, is not definitive. It is possible that more training is needed before significant benefits are seen. Perhaps
  video games are more effective because they are more engaging and
  players will spend more time playing.What this study shows, however,
  is that products sold as brain training games had no documented
  benefits after six weeks of use.

  Putting this study into the context of the overall research, it does
  make us more cautious about concluding that there are general
  cognitive benefits to brain training games or entertainment video
  games. Benefits are likely to be closely related to the specific tasks
  involved in training, and not transfer to unrelated tasks.

  But there is already enough published evidence showing visual
  tracking, multitasking, and executive function benefits from action
  and strategic video games respectively that this study will not be the
  final word. When there is conflicting research, more study is needed.

  This study is most applicable to brain training products, and shows
  that the marketing claims for these products are not justified. There
  is very unlikely to be any benefit, or any specific advantage, to
  “scientifically designed” brain training applications. For now, you
  are better off just playing a video game.

So, more or less, there isn't any information suggesting that these repetitive "brain games" actually help develop skills outside of learning to play the game better.


Experiencing neuronal activity inside the body/brain Can one feel/experience "any" neuronal activity in oneself?

Without neural activity you wouldn't experience or perceive anything. Perception in itself is a reflection of neuronal activity. If you are referring to the question whether you can feel a neuron fire - then no, that is not possible. To 'experience' neuronal activity you should record it. There are a wide variety of methods to do that: EEG, MEG, fMRI, PET etc.


Does self-compassion have negative consequences? Self-compassion is often compared with self-esteem and it seems that self-compassion is more effective and positive than self-esteem. A lot of studies have shown that excessive levels of self-esteem might lead to narcissism or to believe that we are above average. However, I haven't heard negative aspects about self-compassion? Self-compassion is related to happiness, satisfaction and motivation but does it have any negative consequence?
Thank you.

This is only my own experience, but for many years I had no self-esteem and did things that were harmful to myself.  It wasn't until I started thinking objectively about myself as a child that I could be compassionate towards her that I began to feel better. She still lives within me, but the memories no longer rule me. I went on from there to myself at different ages, forgiving myself as I went along.  Finally I started asking myself, "If you could, what would you want to do." After the answer to that I was able to realize some of the dreams that I'd thought were impossible for me.  I'm not saying that I'm the perfect picture of mental health now, but am I certainly finding it easier to live with myself, and I am generally happier.  I still need to take antidepressants to keep me on a level, but everything is better
than I ever imagined it could be, even with medication.  I never could afford the specialist, so I had to do my own. However, I don't think they could have done it better.  I'm still working on it and I'm 71, but happy.


Which function to use for fitting learning curves? Background
I am fitting learning curves for cochlear implant (CI) users. These folks get a CI, and then need to start learning to understand speech again. They keep on improving for years. Along the way, speech recognition is tested frequently. The outcome measure of speech tests is a simple word or phoneme correct score. The %correct score runs from a minimum of 0%, to a maximum of 100%. No rocket science thus far.
Typically, these learning curves start at a value around 25% and end at 80% (barred the rock stars, CI users never reach 100%). In the beginning they learn quick, and this levels off as to what seems a maximum (Fig. 1).
Question premise
Now I seek to fit a function to these data, because I want to know how fast they learn. I did this using regression analysis using the least-squares method in MATLAB. The function I used I found in another software package called GraphPad Prism. While the latter package was not used to analyze the data, I did use it as an inspiration to find a proper model. The function I fitted through the data (red line in Fig. 1) GraphPad calls a 'one-phase association function'
Y = Y0 + (Plateau-Y0).(1-exp(-Kx)), which translates to Y = Y0 + (Plateau-Y0).(1-e(-Kx)) if I am not mistaken (I don't understand the fancy formula make up, hope this'll do...) (Fig. 2). The link explains the backgrounds, but in a nut shell, it is based on a biochemical process, namely the interaction between an enzyme and a substrate. My purpose is a totally different one, namely a psychophysical one to model a learning process.
I chose the 'one-phase association' function, because the main parameters in the model follow my needs very well: it has a start value Y0 that reflects the baseline score when people get their CI, and there is a maximum (Plateau). In addition, it has the K value, which in (psycho-)physics would be called tau, which describes the slope. And this slope is what we need, as we want to know how fast these people learn.
Specific questions

Is the 'one-phase association' a proper way to fit a learning curve? It is a function I only know from Biochemistry;
A colleague over in the USA used a 'logit' function for this purpose. Afaik, a logit function does not have a slope parameter and hence, from my pov, it would be less fitting for my purposes (pun not intended). Is a logit function the best way to fit a learning curve?*

* EDIT: after a literature search I found that the logit function is a sigmoid function, and, hence, it does have a slope parameter

Fig. 1. Learning curve obtained in quiet at 65 dB speech level. Blue crosses: raw experimental data. Red line: fitted logarithmic function. Diamonds: derived fitting features irrelevant to the question proper. source: own work

Fig. 2. One-phase association Y=Y0 + (Plateau-Y0)(1-exp(-Kx)). source: GraphPad

Sigmoids are more general and probably better for modeling learning than a simple exponential. Your exponential fits decently, but it probably doesn't describe the actual underlying process very well.
Importantly, learning is often not fastest at the start, there is often some level of "aha!" moment later on. Sigmoids can capture this.
There are a variety of sigmoidal functions, but they are all differentiable and have a central peak in the first derivative. The time to peak and slope at peak are both parameters you can use to measure learning rate, though they measure somewhat different things. Which one is more applicable will depend on how learning in your paradigm varies across subjects and conditions. Looking at the data you posted, the peak slope (peak of the first derivative) is probably a decent choice, although I'm not sure you really have enough data points in the first month to get a good measure.
Exponential fits are likely to be more unstable, and in the data you've posted it looks like your fit is overfitting the beginning and end of the learning process, so you're missing the most important part for determining the actual "speed", which is between your first 3 data points; none of these are fit well. With an exponential fit, you are supposing that the most learning occurs at the point of the first trial. In most tasks without substantial prior instruction, you need at least a couple of trials to even figure out what is going on, and can't start to improve until then. If that first "trial" is a whole block then maybe this is not a terrible assumption, but that's mainly because you've already passed the peak slope of the sigmoidal function early on; if you used the entire data then a sigmoid would still fit better.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_curve and:
Culler, E., & Girden, E. (1951). The learning curve in relation to other psychometric functions. The American journal of psychology, 64(3), 327-349.
Gallistel, C. R., Fairhurst, S., & Balsam, P. (2004). The learning curve: implications of a quantitative analysis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(36), 13124-13131.
Daller, M., Turlik, J., & Weir, I. (2013). Vocabulary acquisition and the learning curve. Vocabulary Knowledge: Human ratings and automated measures, 47, 185.


Why can't we remember being babies? I once watched a YouTube video explaining that it was because it was an evolutionary disadvantage to remember it better because you might do something like electrocute yourself with an electrical socket and then get scared before you know what it is. I'm guessing the research thought it was because people might become too scared to try things if they remember the incident too well. I believe that video was a TED-Ed video that no longer appears in the first page of YouTube search results. That video doesn't give me the information I'k looking for. Also, YouTube isn't 100% reliable. Also, from reading this answer, I think it's sometimes fine to ask a question when I Google information and can't get the information I'm looking for from a reliable seeming source. I know it's actually a YouTube video that didn't give me the reliable information I needed. I also Google searched "why can't we remember being a baby" and found the article Why can’t we remember our early childhood? as the first search result and it didn't answer my question so probably none of the search results do. I'm not asking the evolutionary reason we can't remember being babies. I'm asking the reason based on how the brain works.

My question is

  What is it about the way the brain works that causes people not to remember being a baby?

I'm guessing the brain starts in a simpler state. Then the brain takes time to develop abilities such as memory reconstruction. I think just like absolute pitch is an ability that the brain can develop with time, memory reconstruction is also an ability that babies' brains have not yet had time to develop very well. I also realize that even after that ability develops, it's probably not 100% reliable for everyone. Once, I went to the roundhouse in Toronto on a day that there was something going on. On that day, I payed for lemonade using tickets and then they thought I hadn't payed then somebody else said I payed and they believed him. I'm guessing the person whom I payed had developed a method of memory reconstruction that was normally reliable but wasn't reliable in that situation. I'm guessing she was so busy doing so many things with so many customers coming that the memory of my payment faded faster than it normally does and then she used the method of memory reconstruction that assumed that the memory of me paying wouldn't fade so fast because her memories of doing things normally fade slower because she's not so busy doing so many things so fast.

From the BBC article, there's a prediction about that:

Perhaps, when we’re very young, the hippocampus simply isn’t developed enough to build a rich memory of an event. Baby rats, monkeys and humans all continue to add new neurons to the hippocampus for the first few years of life and we all are all unable to form lasting memories as infants – and it seems that the moment we stop creating new neurons, we‘re suddenly able to form long-term memories. “For young babies and infants the hippocampus is very undeveloped,” says Fagen.
But is the under-formed hippocampus losing our long-term memories, or are they never formed in the first place? Since childhood events can continue to affect our behaviour long after we’ve forgotten them, some psychologists think they must be lingering somewhere. “The memories are probably stored someplace that’s inaccessible now, but it’s very difficult to demonstrate that empirically,” says Fagen.
We should be very wary about what we do recall from that time, though – our childhood is probably full of false memories for events that never occurred.
Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, has devoted her career to the phenomenon. “People can pick up suggestions and begin to visualise them – they become like memories,” she says.


Whats analysis of both sides is called in psychology? What is the scientific term or psychological term for visualizing a phenomenon, news or event in history or in daily life from both perspective. For example some event that happened in your country or a war your country fought, the basic sentiment of most people will be in support of their country or military but if you want to put forward a case both in favor and against of that war without following the general emotional consensus in your country what that would be called?

As highlighted in the comments, not all observations necessarily need a term in psychology, but there is a term for this.

Therapy plans will often involve getting the client to try to look at their situation (past or present) in a different context. Some people would call this "wearing other peoples shoes", or in other words they might say "if I were in their shoes...", and some will call it looking at it from another person's viewpoint or perspective.

The more accepted term you are after is Emotional Intelligence (Bertram, et al.  2016), also known as Emotional quotient (EQ) and Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EIQ), yet I dislike the terms involving intelligence because it insinuates that those who find difficulty with looking at certain people's points of view are not as intelligent as others who can.  Yet this is not necessarily the case.

Emotional Intelligence involves the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behaviour, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one's goal(s) (Coleman, 2008),
 and Jeremy E. Sherman, PhD. calls it Empathic Intelligence (Sherman, 2009).

References

Bertram K., Randazzo J., Alabi N., Levenson J., Doucette J. T., & Barbosa, P. (2016). Strong correlations between empathy, emotional intelligence, and personality traits among podiatric medical students: A cross-sectional study. Education for Health, (29)3, 186. DOI: 10.4103/1357-6283.204224, PMID 28406102

Colman, Andrew (2008). A Dictionary of Psychology (3 ed.). Oxford University Press.DOI: 10.1093/acref/9780199534067.001.0001

Sherman, J. (2009). Empathic Intelligence: To put yourself in their shoes, unlace yours. PsychologyToday [Online]Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ambigamy/200905/empathic-intelligence-put-yourself-in-their-shoes-unlace-yours


What is the best way to reduce measurement biases when studying topics that can evoke insecurity? I'm interested in measurement biases relating to self reporting in surveys.

To add more context:

Under some circumstances, people have been known to add a positive spin when surveyed regarding goals which have significant social status attached to them. One example is how survey subjects over report the number of sexual partners they have or the amount of money they make.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would assume that if someone is struggling to reach the social standard (ie: having less than what they think is the average number of sexual partners) it will be even harder to get them to be honest, since they are trying to conceal their insecurities to the researchers.

Under what experimental conditions are these people most likely to be honest? Are there any good studies out there that shed light on this question?

This isn't the exact answer to your question, but one way in which you can assess a person's likelihood of answering a measure honestly is the Social Desirability Scale (SDS). The SDS measures a participant's tendency to self-report responses that are viewed positively by society. Multiple versions of the SDS exist- here's an example of one.


Does the "use it or loose it" principle apply to the brain? Does not using the brain decreases mental functioning? If so, is it recommended to keep using the brain, for example by learning new things or engaging in challenging activities (puzzels, quizzes etc.) up until old age?

Yes, brain power is eroded via a lack of practice. This occurs through the processes called synaptic pruning and brain plasticity.

I will leave you with a very basic answer as I am unsure of your level of understanding of cognitive processes. First, you must understand neurons. Then, you can begin to understand synaptic pruning and brain plasticity. Finally, here is a link to a bunch more information and brain plasticity exercises.


Why vision cannot count things instantly? If vision can instantly "see" 30x30 grid, why does the brain often need to count rows and columns for understand there is 30 rows and 30 columns? Why does the brain fail to instantly count?

You probably mean instant quantity recognition

Counting requires a rather complex high-level process. For an animal to count you'd need:

Memory
Consciousness (to access and manipulate that memory)
Basic algebra skills
Some basic semantic abstraction mechanism (ie, language) which will probably have to be recursive as well.
Some symbolic mechanism

Honestly, even capable adult struggle counting in binary although on paper it should be far easier than counting in the decimal system.

Anyhow, counting will always be effortful and slow as it is a conscious process (ie, system 2, for which you can perform very roughly 5 calculation per second).

I guess what your really mean is instant quantity recognition.

Useless for survival, useless in modern culture

One simple answer would be that such ability will add little to none to your survival chances. Furthermore, within modern cultural, such ability would give little advantage.

The brain is capable of many great things, for instance, the ability to comprehend this text is nothing short of a 'miracle' - despite decades of research, no computer is capable of such feat. But enter mirror reading (where the text is mirrored on the horizontal plane) and now the brain enters a slow, effortful manual mode. With enough practice, mirror reading should become an automatic process, but what benefit such skill give?

Most animals can't count at all

All animals seem to have survived having no or extremely limited counting ability. For us humans, counting is a fairly recent skill (I'm pretty sure it is dated back to the beginning of the trade era) - us humans have survived without it for most of our past. Visits to uncivilised tribes revealed that some can only count to around 3 (then it's "more than 3" or "many") - odd to us as it may sound to us, they are baffled by why would anyone need to count more than 3 things.

One of the fascinating findings about counting is that it seems to be a completely cultural thing - experiments done with both young children and uncivilised populations suggest an innate exponential, rather than linear, sense of quantity. The explanation for this is that for survival it is much more important to know the ratio than the precise count:

  This tree has twice as many apples than this one.

Is more important than

  This one has 204 apple, this one has 408.

To summarise, there's no reason for our primal brain to be able to recognise precise quantities instantly, nor there is modern cultural advantage in having such skill.


Practical ways to increase Mental alertness? Are there any scientifically proven exercises which can improve mental alertness and awareness naturally? please share!

I've heard many times all the benefits to Meditaion and Hypnosis, to which I can immediately propose those as methods in this scenario towards improving mental focus. You can check out this article https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/you-illuminated/201204/brain-scans-show-how-meditation-improves-mental-focus which talks about that very thing.


Are connections in the human brain directed? Do connections in our brain have a direction, or do they behave equally in both directions? I am especially interested in the structures responsible for memory.

There are two kinds of neuron-to-neuron connections in the brain.  The most well known is the chemical synapse, which is unidirectional.  Despite this, two neurons can each synapse on each other with a chemical synapse, and both types of connection are observable in brain networks (unidirectional and bidirectional)

The second kind of connection is a gap-junction: electrical coupling.  In this case, it can be bidirectional or unidirectional, but all in the same synapse (whereas a bidirectional chemical synapse requires two synapses).

Typically, the chemical synapses are associated with memory.  There have been synapses observed that behave as engrams.


What is the scientific basis for long-term negative physiological effects of overstudying? I am interested in long term negative physiological effects that some students experience following overstudying.

What is the scientific basis for overstudying?
Is over studying correlated with long term decreases of cognitive ability?

The research literature on stress in general and burnout in particular would be relevant. The stress literature is massive and there are studies that have a particular focus on students.

For example Jacobs and Dodd did a study on college student burnout:

  Measures of social support (Multidimen- sional Scale of Perceived
  Social Support), personality (General Temperament Survey), and
  workload were related to psychological burnout (Maslach Burnout
  Inventory) among 149 college students ( M = 20.8 yrs.). High levels of
  burnout were predicted by negative temperament and subjective
  workload, but actual workload (academic and vocational) had little to
  do with burnout. Low levels of burnout were predicted by positive
  tempera- ment, participation in extracurricular activities, and social
  support, especially from friends.

They also cite some of the literature on stress in college  students:

  there has been a substantial amount of research on
  stress among general college students. Stress has been shown to be
  correlated with college students’ health behaviors (Weidner, Kohl-
  mann, Dotzauer, & Burns, 1996), anxiety concerning exams (Abouserie,
  1994; Ever- son, Tobias, Hartman, & Gourgey, 1993; Sloboda, 1990),
  self-esteem (Abouserie; Newby-Fraser & Schlebusch, 1997), and coping
  strategies that students use (Dwyer & Cummings, 2001). To the extent
  that stress is an important component of burnout (Maslach & Jackson,
  1981), this research is relevant to the development of a model of
  burnout among college students. Between classes, exams, employment,
  and extra- curricular activities, students are likely to experience
  high levels of stress, but do they experience burnout? Much research
  is needed to determine the prevalence of burnout, to identify
  important intrapersonal and interpersonal factors that influence
  burnout, and to develop effective inter- ventions to prevent and
  reduce burnout in college students.

References

Jacobs, S.R. & Dodd, D. (2003). Student burnout as a function of personality, social support, and workload. Journal of College Student Development, 44, 291-303.


Gender differences in IQ among undergraduate psychology students While marking undergraduate coursework relating to gender differences,
it occurred to me that there could well be systematic effects of gender on IQ among the undergraduate populations relied on for so much of psychological research.

My impression is that male psychology students, who are in the minority, are likely to be on average more intelligent than female ones, because (warning, anecdotal evidence, and broad sweeping statements, ahead):

Women tend to study psychology at undergraduate level in the belief that it will involve understanding or helping people, while men tend to be more interested in psychology as a science.
Although women's motivation is probably the more admirable one, men's seems likely to indicate higher general intelligence.
Despite making up a small minority of undergraduate students, men make up about 50% of psychologists at later stages (PhD onwards), with the possible exception of clinical/educational psychologists.
Men's IQ's are more variable - there are more male geniuses, but also more men with extremely low IQ's. Since university students will have above average IQs in general, we would expect more men to have extremely high IQs in this sample (for the same reason as we would expect men who don't finish second-level education to have lower IQs on average than women who don't).

However, all this speculation aside, I haven't been able to find any research putting this apparently simple, and possibly very important, for the interpretation of a lot of research, idea to the test.

Are there any?

I think what happens is that researchers often don't report on - or at least don't highlight - uninteresting results, partly because of the difficulty getting uninteresting results published.  So given that gender differences in IQ in general are eliminated for validity, a lack of gender differences in IQ amongst a seemingly arbitrary sub-population such as undergraduate psychology students doesn't seem to merit attention.  I similarly wouldn't expect to find a study published about the lack of gender differences in IQ amongst say, red-haired truck drivers with carpal tunnel syndrome.  In fact, researchers often highlight the usefulness of psychology students as research subjects for being representative of the general population in many respects, in addition to being convenient to recruit.

On the other hand, as undergraduate psychology students are so often used as subjects in many areas of research, it shouldn't be too difficult to find data that records both IQ and gender, and confirm that it is indeed uninteresting.

Starting in the 1990's, there was a flurry of research based on some interesting results - that there are gender differences in estimates of IQ (presumably due to some stereotypes).  Although these studies don't specifically focus on gender differences in IQ amongst undergraduate psychology students, some of them do measure and report gender and IQ, and in some cases, the subjects are in fact undergraduate psychology students.  Here are some examples:

Furham & Rawles (1995) "Sex differences in the estimation of intelligence":

  ... despite the fact that psychology attaches no significant gender
  differences to general intelligence, psychology students appeared to
  believe in the superiority of males.

Paulhus & Williams (2002) "The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism,
Machiavellianism, and psychopathy":

  Two hundred and forty-five undergraduate psychology students (65%
  female) participated in the present study for extra course credit. ...
  The only association with cognitive ability was the small positive
  correlation between IQ and narcissism.

Chamorro-Premuzic et al (2005) "The relationship between personality traits, subjectively-assessed and fluid intelligence":

  A total of 182 undergraduate students from British and American
  universities participated in this study. ... 49 males and 132 females
  were included in the statistical analysis ... Students participated in
  this study as part of two lectures on personality and intelligence
  assessment ... Correlations between Raven's test scores (Gf), SAI, ...
  gender and age are presented in Table 1.

(Sex is listed in Table 1 as having a correlation with Gf of -.00.)  There are many other similar examples from all over the world.

In some ways, the premise of the question seems odd: In as much as IQ is correlated with academic achievement (and it is, again for validity), it should correlate as much with acceptance to the program as it does with graduation results.  Thus, other reasons, such as discrimination or life choices might seem like better explanations.  Another possibility to consider is that psychology students are not always enrolled in the psychology program, and might include a disproportionate number of female students early on, who are actually from other programs that list psychology as a requirement, and have a female dominated enrolment throughout (eg, nursing).

However, the question is not entirely baseless.  More recent research has started to use alternative measures of intelligence that are not gender-corrected as standard IQ tests are.  This research does show gender bias in different sub-types of intelligence, and to some degree, overall intelligence.  From a 2011 thesis:

  No uniform agreement exists about male advantage in general
  intelligence (‘g’) (e.g. Colom & Garcia-Lopez, 2002; Deary et al.,
  2003; Halpern et al., 2007; Jackson & Rushton, 2006; Lynn, 1999;
  Spelke, 2005), with historically no sex differences presumed, as
  evidenced by the development of standardised intelligence tests (e.g.
  Ackerman, 2006; Wechsler, 1944). Recent investigations have supplied
  contradicting data, with male advantage reported on various measures
  of Gf and Gc, such as General Knowledge Test (GKT), Raven’s Standard
  and Progressive Matrices (SPM) and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
  (WAIS) (cf. Lynn, Allik, & Irwing, 2004; Lynn, Irwing, & Cammock,
  2001; Lynn, Wilberg, & Margraf-Stiksrud, 2004).

The paper goes on to describe such a study, conducted on 85 undergraduate psychology students, that confirms the gender bias in "g" in that population as well.


Is it conceivable to transmit all sound information in the tactile modality? You may have heard of Evelyn Glennie, an acclaimed solo virtuoso percussionist. She has been profoundly deaf from the age of 12, but learned to differentiate pitch tactilely. She had absolute pitch, which obviously helped. She plays bare feet in order "to hear".

She can also help accoustical engineers, as she can sense the air pressure.

In her TED talk, she describes that she hears music like everybody. There seem to be no doubts that she has the same perception of music than any other great musician when the sound information, in the form of vibration, can be treated by her musical brain.

This seems to show that musical information can be accurately transmitted through tactile vibration.
My question : is it conceivable to transmit all sound information in the tactile modality ?  Are tactile detectors sufficiently sensitive to let through all/most of the sound information ?

I guess language is very particular and it would be impossible to differentiate words directly from sound vibrations, but maybe the sound signal could be modified in a way to make speech sounds more distinguishable.

If possible, I guess it could have great applications, helping deaf people, and maybe enabling communication in noisy environment.

First of all, interesting question, and thanks for sharing the video!

Secondly, you write:

  There seem to be no doubts that she has the same perception of music than any other great musician...

I have to disagree. She may be able to sense vibrations, but it can never match normal hearing. This, because the human ear is better equipped to analyze acoustic sounds than the tactile system. Acoustic frequencies can be heard between 20 Hz and 20 kHz and maximum sensitivity is at 4 kHz. The tactile sense has a lower minimum, but its optimum lies at 250 Hz, and the maximum at approximately 500 Hz. Hence, the  human ear exceeds the tactile system by 5 octaves. More importantly, however, is the exquisite sensitivity of the human ear that outperforms the tactile system in orders of magnitude.

In effect, the musician can acoustically feel only tones of low frequency of high loudness. What she can pick up is the tactile sensation from playing the instrument, however.

Note that Beethoven was deaf, and composed master pieces. Importantly, both Beethoven and Glennie were not congenitally deaf, but lost their hearing later in life. Hence, their sense of acoustics was already shaped, and my guess is both relied heavily on their memory of hearing.

To translate the acoustic dynamic range into a vibrotactile one, one would have to compress the acoustic dynamic range onto the vibrotactile dynamic range. Frequency compression is exactly what has been done in vibrotactile devices that substituted hearing  for touch. One example of such an approach is the TickleTalker. This device was designed as a vibrotactile hearing aid to increase speech recognition in the profoundly deaf. Although the idea worked, it never became a success (Cowan et al., 1990). In general, sensory substitution approaches suffer important drawbacks (see why-is-sensory-substitution-not-that-successful).

An important factor with the TickleTalker is that the frequency range as well as the frequency resolution of the ear is much better in the ear than in touch. In turn, the quality of vibrotactile hearing is inferior to acoustic hearing.

However, the biggest factor in the case of vibrotactile hearing substitution not being successful is the fact that cochlear implants are very effective in restoring sensorineural hearing loss. Cochlear implants directly stimulate the auditory nerve, thereby bypassing the defective hair cells, the most common cause of deafness. Note, however, that brain stem implants and cortical implants are used as well, that together cover nearly all causes of deafness. Hence, these devices actually restore hearing in deaf patients. The resolution is not too great (7 effective frequency channels, give or take), but speech understanding scores in cochlear implants users is overall remarkably good. Some are even able to talk over the phone.

Reference
- Cowan et al.,  Australian Journal of Audiology (1990)

Further Reading
- why-is-sensory-substitution-not-that-successful


What time range between 2 measures for test-retest reliability? How much time between 2 measurements is needed (at least / at most) to be called test-retest reliability?

Concrete casus:
I am planning a meta-analysis on reliability of various loneliness scales. We want to determine beforehand what time frame between measures we will consider.

For instance, if the time between 2 measures is 2 years (such as in some longitudinal papers), we would consider this to be an indication of rank-order stability rather than test-retest reliability. This is a clear case, but what about 3 months? Or 1 month? Where should be the limit?

We are looking for good resources to base our decision on, and would be glad with any advise.

Although I don't know the answer, I think it would be important to explain what you exactly wish to do with the re-test? If you solely wish to know how reliable the score is, you could do the test on day 1 and the re-test on day 2? The longer the time, the higher the chance that a person's life is subject to change (e.g., the loss of relatives, or medical intervention), and that it's not a re-test per se, but a different time point in a person's life. Regardless, I think it would be good to have a look at some of the best-cited papers in your arena of research and see what they do, and perhaps contact the authors of why they choose 2 years.

If it is for a review meta analysis paper, as you say in your comments, then the answer to your question is all about your research question. If indeed you wish to minimize that intervening time (t), the best thing might be to map all the papers, organize them in ascending order of t and then decide what the minimum #papers is you wish to include in your review. A kind of reversed approach, but if the #papers is the bottle neck, it may in fact be a proper, and maybe even the only way to go.

P.S. -- for what it's worth -- I don't like to write unreferenced answers, but in this case it seems warranted and in fact I was urged by a long-time user to convert my comments into an answer


What research is there on how people go from examining/gathering evidence to executing on a decision? I'm curious what research there is about when/how people decide to stop evaluating or gathering evidence, and actually begin executing on an action, and how the order of information presented could therefore effect conclusions. Most of the articles I've found on this so far are related to premature closure in the area of medical diagnoses specifically -- i.e. when people make a diagnosis prematurely. However, it seems like this must be researched in psychology as well- I think I'm just missing the key terms to look at to find it. Any suggestions/idea of the research would be very helpful!

It's possible that there is no sharp threshold between information gathering and acting. A recent paper by Piantadosi exploring that possibility, and citing a ton of (admittedly more conventional/mainstream) work on decision boundaries is:

Alonso-Diaz S, Cantlon JF, Piantadosi ST (2018) A threshold-free model of numerosity comparisons. PLoS ONE 13(4): e0195188. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0195188


Mental stress inducing task Mental arithmetic stress test is used widely to induce mental stress in laboratories. Can this test induce stress to those who are really good at mental calculation or enjoy mental math?

Stress is a very broad term. For instance, I'm doing tests on listening effort using pupillometry. Pupillometry measures pupil diameter which is correlated to stress. More stress means larger pupils. Effortful listening is also a form of stress and hence indeed also evoke a pupil response.

I'm focusing on cochlear implant (CI) users, and these folks even have a lot of trouble understanding speech, especially in noise. But even in total silence (no background noise, normal 65 dB speech) they need to mentally focus on the task at hand. Hence they have large pupil responses even under optimal listening conditions.

However, normal hearing (NH) folks show, on average, also a substantial response in silence, although smaller than CI wearers.

To extrapolate these findings to your case by drawing the parallel between NH listeners (math proficient) and CI users (math deficient), I can assure you that even mathophiles  do show a stress response, even for relatively simple math assignments.


Does a mental disorder exist where people think someone else is sick? Is there a known disorder where the subject thinks someone else or other people around them are sick or dying, say exo-hypochondria?

In this case I am thinking of a wife pathologically convinced that her husband is dying or seriously ill of some unspecified condition and that he knows this and is deliberately concealing it from her.

There is a condition called hypochondriases by proxy (e.g., Moreira & Moreira, 1999). It is also referred to as vulnerable child syndrome (Pacurar et al., 2015). The parent, particularly if (s)he is inexperienced or unsupported, might see symptoms and illness in a child where in fact there are none. For instance, the parent might be convinced that a common cold is a respiratory infection, or that a simple headache is a brain tumor. In such a scenario, the parent might exaggerate the child's symptoms in order to get the physician to take her fears seriously. This would then be akin to a "cry for help" rather than an intentional desire to malinger (Mart, 1999).

Hypochondriases by proxy is reported to be related to Munchausen syndrome and Munchausen by proxy syndrome, which belong belong to a group of diseases called factitious disorders. In these disorders, a healthy person feigns to suffer from disease, illness, or psychological issues to draw attention or sympathy, or they can project a disease or illness upon to another person, asking or requiring medical intervention for them, respectively
(Pacurar et al., 2015).

References
- Mart, Am J Forensic Psychol (1999); 17(1): 69
- Moreira & Moreira, J Pediatr (Rio J) (1999); 75(5): 373-6
- Pacurar, Romanian J Pediatrics (2015); LXIV(3): 252-8


Cognitive turn and social turn approaches in cognitive psychology What is cognitive and social turn in (cognitive) psychology?
Googling has not returned anything on this. I came across this in my lecture slides listed under possible Cognitive Psychology approaches, along with Introspection and Behaviourism.

There isn't a single, simple answer to this question. Instead, I would expect as many answers as there are theoretical foundations/schools within psychology. From a point of view grounded in Theory of Action I maintain:

Behaviorism posits that behavior is learned in response to both combinations of stimuli (Pavlov) and reinforcing stimuli (Skinner). The processes inside the individual are reduced to the concept of reaction.

The cognitive turn opened the so-called "black box" of the subject, reasoning, feeling and so on. Scholars left the "reliable terrain" of directly observable attributes of behavior and gave birth to theories which aim to both describe and explain the invisible internal psychic processes. One subjectively important milestone is the work by Miller, Galanter and Pribram: The individual is an actor. As such he/she doesn't just behave in reaction to external stimuli. He/she tests (plans) various alternative ways to act in a given situation within a cognitive representation of the environment.

One example for a social turn in psychology is Social Cognitive Theory by A. Bandura. The actor does not just rationally plan the best way to reach a goal – he/she also reproduces the ways of acting experienced in the social system. Rationality is bounded by the norms of the social system. In other words, an actor acts in a particular way, even if it is dysfunctional, because it mirrors what significant others have done before.

References: Literature about the cited works is readily available in both university libraries and the Internet. (Also: One of the textbooks by P.
G. Zimbardo et al.)


Does the way you perceive something for the first time have a big influence on future perceptions of similar stimuli? You find yourself in a certain situation A. You perceive the situation: perceive objects, actions of people involved...You develop an opinion on the situation, and it was the first time you perceived an example of a generalization of such situations.

Then, you find yourself in situation B, which is another example of some generalisation of A. Let's say that A was you having a crush on someone, and so was B (only the two crushes were different people).

To what extent does your perception and opinion of A influence your perception and opinion of B? Will you always compare (for example) the crush B to crush A? Or is it possible that the influence of A on B is limited, and your view of B won't necessarily be biased in such a way?
Can your generalisation of beauty differ a lot from the first 'beautiful' thing you perceived? Are the first times you receive stimuli decisive for future perceptions of similar stimuli?

In social contexts, one area to look is within the field of cognition. John Bargh’s famous experiment (ref below) showed that whether we hold a cold or warm drink in our hand prior to meeting a person for the first time influences our subsequent impression of them - this is called priming.

Stimuli that influence our attitudes to others do not only come from the environment. They also are processed internally. There is a vast field of experiments in social cognition (especially implicit cognition, happening in the first 200 milliseconds or less in ways we are not ‘aware’). These experiments show that unconscious evaluations and categorisations of others happen lightning quick, and influence later (conscious) attitudes we have towards them. These evaluations are made from everything from facial symmetry, height, weight, voice depth, accent, smell, age, gender and status.

We also generalise experiences. Let’s say you once had a negative experience with a man with a beard. Now, you may tend to react in the same way to other men with beards as that original person - no matter that they’re different.

Most of our relationships are built on these entirely arbitrary considerations, which are in all likelihood adaptations from previous evolutionary environmental challenges.

:: Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth

Lawrence E. Williams and John A. Bargh 2008

:: Implicit social cognition

Adam Hahn, Bertram Gawronski 2018


Is there a specific term for false justifications? I'm not sure "false justifications" is the right term, but it's the closest I can think of. I'm referring to a situation in which a person has already made up his mind for reasons he won't publicly disclose, then tries to justify using specious excuses that don't hold up under scrutiny.

For example, let's suppose a new manager wants to fire an employee for reasons that would be illegal. Instead, he comes up with a laundry list of legal reasons (tardiness, improper dress, poor attitude, lack of productivity). Taken as a whole and unexamined, the list seems overwhelming and thus the dismissal justifiable. But if given the opportunity, the employee could refute each reason individually (has never actually been late, dresses the same as others in the office, is meeting all quotas and agreements, etc).

Similarly, in political conversations a person's argument may be based on a conclusion driven by passions and beliefs, but not data. Then data is cherrypicked to prove the argument rather than forming an argument based on the data.

I'm looking for ways to describe this sort of pre-determination. Is there a language for this?

I think the examples refer to a variety of possible terms.

In cognitive science, there is much interest in cases where justification is triggered unconsciously.  The general tendency to justify one's decisions - especially the bad ones - is called self-justification:

  Self-justification describes how, when a person encounters cognitive
  dissonance, or a situation in which a person's behavior is
  inconsistent with their beliefs, that person tends to justify the
  behavior and deny any negative feedback associated with the behavior.

When someone makes a decision they know is bad, and uses rational-sounding excuses to obfuscate this, it is called rationalization:

  In psychology and logic, rationalization or rationalisation (also
  known as making excuses) is a defense mechanism in which
  controversial behaviors or feelings are justified and explained in a
  seemingly rational or logical manner to avoid the true explanation,
  and are made consciously tolerable – or even admirable and superior –
  by plausible means.

If scientific-sounding data is added to make a decision seem more objective than it is, then it is called intellectualization:

  Intellectualization is a defense mechanism where reasoning is used to
  block confrontation with an unconscious conflict and its associated
  emotional stress where thinking is used to avoid feeling.

Cherry-picking data to support an argument is an example of confirmation bias:

  Confirmation bias, also called myside bias, is the tendency to search
  for, interpret, prefer, and recall information in a way that confirms
  one's beliefs or hypotheses while giving disproportionately less
  attention to information that contradicts it.

A common view in psychology is that most explanations of decisions made are actually "post-hoc rationalization", or "post-rationalization" (see for example self-perception theory).

Sometimes justification is done consciously / intentionally.  The term you used, cherry picking, is perfectly valid in this case.  Another example is spin.


What is the meaningful difference between someone with a 145 IQ compared to a 100 IQ? I am a lay person and new to this, and while I do understand that 145 IQ means 3 SDs up from the mean, I want to have a rough idea of what it means in real-life examples, from people who have experience in this domain. What is it that a person with a 145 IQ can typically do that a persona with a 100 IQ can typically not do? Examples of feats or the like is appreciated.

As a general note, precision in measurement of intelligence declines as you move to more extreme levels. There is greater uncertainty in measurement in the 145 range than there is at the 100 range. Norm samples get smaller, and most measures of intelligence are designed for the normal range.

Categories: You might find the article on IQ classification useful.
The article discusses a wide range of ways to give verbal labels to IQ scores.
For example, the following categories would put a 145 IQ person above "very superior" intelligence.

Statistical interpretations:
You correctly note that 145 represents 3 standard deviations above the mean.
If you assume a normal distribution and no measurement error, IQ 100 means you are more intelligent than 50% of the population, and an IQ of 145 means you are more intelligent than 99.9% of the population. Or to put another way, 1 in 2 people have an IQ greater than 100, and roughly 1 in 750 people have an IQ of greater than 145.

Intuition: If you went to a large representative high school (say with 500 to 1000 students), you might think of the typical student as your 100 IQ student, and the smartest kid in school as possibly being in the 145 ball park.

Another way to get some intuition is to think about the typical range IQs for various professions. As you see below, even for professions with the most intelligent people are still typically well below 145.

http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/occupations.aspx


Studies on visually recognizable personality traits? Are there any studies on the possibility of visually recognizing someone's personality?
When I say "visually recognizing" I mean things like clothes, accessories, body attitude, visible behavior, vehicles driven etc.
When I say personality I mean things like Big 5 traits, personal motivations (money, love, attention, etc) and life goals (die rich, have a happy family, have high career, etc).

For instance, I realized that big seller personalities (loves money, loves attention, will lie for any sale, loves to manipulate) would wear (or want) a gold watch. So when you see someone wearing a gold watch there is a high chance the person is a big seller-personality.

In general, I would claim that everyone spends the most money, the most time and the most attention on what is most important to them. But what is the most important owned properties for different personalities?

I am currently reading a book called "Snoop", written by researcher Sam Gosling (I recommend this very interesting book!). He's doing just the kind of research I am looking for, and thus I've found tons of research documents on these things:

  Our research focuses on the following issues:

  Everyday manifestations of personality – Which cues are reliably
  linked to what individuals are like?

  Everyday person perception – Which cues do individuals use to form
  their impressions of others?

  Consensus – Do observers agree with one another in their impressions
  of others?

  Accuracy – Are observers impressions of others accurate?

  Stereotype use – how do stereotypes hinder or promote consensus and
  accuracy?
  - http://gosling.psy.utexas.edu/current-research/everyday-manifestations-of-personality/

http://gosling.psy.utexas.edu/publications/

The expression and perception of personality in everyday life

Back, M. D., Stopfer, J. M., Vazire, S., Gaddis, S., Schmukle, S. C., Egloff, B., & Gosling, S. D. (2010). Facebook profiles reflect actual personality not self-idealization. Psychological Science, 21, 372-374.

Carney, D. R., Jost, J. T., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). The secret lives of liberals and conservatives: Personality profiles, interaction styles, and the things they leave behind. Political Psychology, 29, 807-840.

Gebauer, J. E., Bleidorn, W., Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., Lamb, M. E., & Potter, J. (in press). Cross-Cultural Variations in Big Five Relations with Religiosity: A Socio-Cultural Motives Perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Gosling, S. D., Augustine, A. A., Vazire, S., Holtzman, N., & Gaddis, S. (2011). Manifestations of personality in Online Social Networks: Self-reported Facebook-related behaviors and observable profile information. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14, 483-488. [DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2010.0087]

Gosling, S. D., Gaddis, S., & Vazire, S. (2008). First impressions based on the environments we create and inhabit. In N. Ambady, & J. J. Skowronski (Eds.), First Impressions (pp. 334-356). New York: Guilford.

Gosling, S. D., Gifford, R., & McCunn, L. (2013). The selection, creation, and perception of interior spaces: An environmental psychology approach. In G. Brooker & L. Weinthal (Eds.), The Handbook of Interior Design (pp. 278-290). Oxford, UK: Berg.

Gosling, S. D., Ko, S. J., Mannarelli, T., & Morris, M. E. (2002). A Room with a cue: Judgments of personality based on offices and bedrooms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 379-398. [Available in pdf]

Gosling, S. D., Sandy, C. J., & Potter, J. (2010). Personalities of self-identified “dog people” and “cat people.” Anthrozoös, 23, 213-222.

Graham, L. T., & Gosling, S. D. (2012). Impressions of World of Warcraft players’ personalities based on their usernames: Interobserver consensus but no accuracy. Journal of Research in Personality, 46, 599-603.

Graham, L. T., & Gosling, S. D. (2013). Personality profiles associated with different motivations for playing World of Warcraft. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 16, 189-193.

Graham, L. T., & Sandy, C. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2011). Manifestations of individual differences in physical and virtual environments. In T. Chamorro-Premuzic, S. von Stumm, & A. Furnham (Eds.), Handbook of Individual Differences (pp. 773-800). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Mehl, M. R., Gosling, S. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). Personality in its natural habitat: Manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 862-877.

Naumann, L. P., Vazire, S., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2009). Personality judgments based on physical appearance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 1661-1671

Obschonka, M., Schmitt-Rodermund, E., Silbereisen, R. K., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2013). The regional distribution and correlates of an entrepreneurship-prone personality profile in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom: A socioecological perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105, 104-122. [DOI: 10.1037/a0032275]

Rentfrow, P. J., Goldberg, L. R., Stillwell, D. J., Kosinski, M., Gosling, S. D., & Levitin, D. J. (2012). The song remains the same: A replication and extension of the MUSIC model. Music Perception, 30,161-185. [DOI: 10.1525/MP.2012.30.2.161]

Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2003). The do re mi’s of everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of music preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1236-1256. [Available in pdf]

Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2006). Message in a Ballad: The role of music preferences in interpersonal perception. Psychological Science, 17, 236-242. [Available in pdf]

Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2007). The content and validity of music-genre stereotypes among college students. Psychology of Music, 35, 306-326.

Rentfrow, P. J., Gosling, S. D., Jokela, M., Stillwell, D. J., Kosinski, M., & Potter, J. (2013). Divided We Stand: Three Psychological Regions of the United States and their Political, Economic, Social, and Health Correlates. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105, 996-1012. [DOI: 10.1037/a0034434]

Rentfrow, P. J., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). A theory of the emergence, persistence, and expression of geographic variation in psychological characteristics. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 339-369.

Sandy, C. J., Gosling, S. D., & Durant, J. (2013). Predicting Consumer Behavior and Media Preferences: The Comparative Validity of Personality Traits and Demographic Variables. Psychology and Marketing, 30, 937-949. [DOI: 10.1002/mar.20657]

Swann, W. B., Jr., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2003). The precarious couple effect: Verbally inhibited men + critical, disinhibited women = bad chemistry. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1095-1106. [Available in pdf]

Vazire, S., Naumann, L. P., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2009). Smiling reflects different emotions in men and women. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32, 403-405.

Vazire, S., Naumann, L. P., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2008). Portrait of a narcissist: Manifestations of narcissism in physical appearance. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1439-1447.

Vazire, S. & Gosling, S. D. (2004). e-perceptions: Personality impressions based on personal websites. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 123-132. [Available in pdf]

Wilson, R. E., Gosling, S. D., & Graham, L. T. (2012). A review of Facebook research in the social sciences. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 203-220. [DOI 10.1177/1745691612442904]

Anderson, C. P., Ames, D. R., & Gosling, S. D. (2008) Punishing hubris: The perils of status self-enhancement in teams and organizations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 90-101.

Erdle, S., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2009). Does self-esteem account for the higher-order factors of the Big Five? Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 921-922.

Gosling, S. D., Sandy, C. J., & Potter, J. (2010). Personalities of self-identified “dog people” and “cat people.” Anthrozoös, 23, 213-222.

Gosling, S. D., & Srivastava, S. (2011). Changes in perceptions of George W. Bush’s personality in the wake of the September 11 2001 World Trade Center attacks. Acta de Investigación Psicológica, 3, 486-490.

Jost, J. T., Hawkins, C. B., Nosek, B. A., Hennes, E. P., Stern, C., Gosling, S. D., & Graham, J. (2014). Belief in a Just God (and a Just Society): A System Justification Perspective on Religious Ideology. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 34, 56-81. [Translated to: Jost, J. T., Hawkins, C. B., Nosek, B. A., Hennes, E. P., Stern, C., Gosling, S. D., & Graham, J. (in press). Creencia en un dios justo: La Religión como una forma de Justificación del Sistema. Psicologia Politica, 47, 55-89.]

Mathieu, M. T., & Gosling, S. D. (2012). The accuracy or inaccuracy of affective forecasts depends on how the question is framed: A meta-analysis of past studies. Psychological Science, 23, 161-162. [DOI: 10.1177/0956797611427044]

Pennebaker, J. W., Gosling, S. D., & Ferrell, J. (2013). Daily online testing in large classes: Boosting college performance while reducing achievement gaps. PLOS ONE, 9, e79774. [doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0079774]

Ramírez-Esparza, N., Gosling, S. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2008). Paradox lost: Unraveling the puzzle of Simpatia. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 39, 685-702.

Robins, R. W., Tracy, J. L., Trzesniewski, K. H., Potter, J., & Gosling, S. D. (2001). Personality correlates of self-esteem. Journal of Research in Personality, 35, 463-482. [Available in pdf]

Vazire, S., Naumann, L. P., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2009). Smiling reflects different emotions in men and women. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32, 403-405.

Wood, D., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2007). Normality evaluations and their relation to personality traits and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 861-879.


Is it possible to erase problematic memories? This question is inspired by a question I answered on Health.

  Can we erase problematic memories to aid recovery from depression?

A depressed person asked how to erase specific unpleasant memories in order to manage his depression. My answer was basically "that's impossible, here is how you deal with these memories instead". And then somebody asked in the comments why it is impossible.

I thought of tackling this question and realized I can't do it well. My best attempt was something like, "First, you have to find out which millions of neurons (out of the billions the person has) light up together to represent 'a memory', and we don't have a method for brain imaging with that resolution. Second, you have to stop them from activating in exactly that combination, while preserving their ability to activate in any other combination, and we have no idea how to achieve that". But this level of explanation does not satisfy me. It is very vague, and I'm not even certain it's correct.

To our best knowledge, what would we have to do if we wanted to erase a specific memory of an event happening to a person? And how far is our technology from achieving each of the steps needed?

The notion of "selective memory loss" as erasing problematic memories presumes the existence of engrams, which is a theoretical localized, biological basis for memory. Despite exhaustive searching, we have not found any evidence of engrams in any animal with a nervous system, however. To the best of our knowledge, it's therefore impossible to erase memories, because there is nothing to erase―we have more or less concluded that engrams do not exist. Bruce (2001) aptly summarized Karl Lashley's seminal findings on the matter:

  In his well-known article “In Search of the Engram” published in 1950, Karl Spencer Lashley summarized his 33 years of research and theory on memory and the brain. He concluded that (1) memories are not localized but are instead distributed within functional areas of the cortex and (2) memory traces are not isolated cortical connections between inputs and outputs. Though not the first time he had expressed such convictions, their reiteration in this article was backed by Lashley's estimable reputation and expressive power and they have taken firm root in the collective knowledge of today's memory and neuropsychological research community.

We cannot have "selective memory loss", at least not in the sense of erasing individual memories, because there is no such thing as "a memory" in any tangible sense. In modern cognitive science, such as Baddeley's multi-modal model, memory is not so much considered a neural warehouse of remembrances as it is a distributed and generative process. It's not a question of technology.

References

Bruce, D. (2001). Fifty years since Lashley's In search of the Engram: refutations and conjectures. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 10(3), 308-318.


Why do people have different opinions about an object when they are given different information about that object? I'm studying about perception in psychology. My teacher has an example.

In an experiment, the researcher gives two groups a photo of one person. To Group 1, researcher says "This is a scientist", group 1 usually reacts "He has a bright and intelligent face, great mind are shown on his eyes". To group 2, researcher says "This is a murder", group 2 usually reacts "He had a dangerous face, he seems angry all the time".

How do you explain that using perception in psychology? does that experiment truly exist? Is there any real similar experiment?

Someone tells me it's because of "Confirmation Bias". It's the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. I doubt it.

There is a tendency to want a named response. Such as 'confirmation bias' - a bit as if confirmation bias were a thing, like a computer processor. But it is not.
It also may be useful to notice that nothing in the world can be perceived directly. The image of your teacher is put together in your brain based on your perception and past experiences; if you develop prosopagnosia you will not perceive the teacher's face any more. Even the surface of the table you touch is not perceived directly, appreciation of the rough wooden surface is the result of synthesis of perceptions and memories.

Therefore the photo of the person in your experiment is appreciated through  your priors/givens and you will find what you are (unconsciously) looking for. You can call it a particular bias, however many of them have been described and they overlap. For example you could view this one as perceptual priming or you could consider this an anchoring effect.

Snyder, J. S., Schwiedrzik, C. M., Vitela, A. D., & Melloni, L. (2015). How previous experience shapes perception in different sensory modalities. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00594
Damasio, A. (2004). Looking for Spinoza (New Ed edition). London: Vintage.
Lyons, J. (2017). Epistemological Problems of Perception. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/perception-episprob/
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Priming (psychology). (2018, March 17). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Priming_(psychology)&oldid=830901864


Personality Models: The Big Five, the Seven Deadly Sins, and? In Christian tradition, there are said to be "seven deadly sins": Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride.

In Catholicism specifically, there are sometimes said to be seven virtues, each sin having an opposite: Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, and Humility.

In a sense, this is a personality model. (Each sin/virtue duality can be thought of as a spectrum, with the sin lying at one end, and the virtue at the other. In the middle would be the "average" soul.)

In psychology, the "Big Five" traits come to mind, with the acronym "OCEAN": Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

What other major personality models are out there that use 3-9 axes (plural of axis) to describe an individual's personality?

Related questions that floated about:

The 7 Deadlies and Hormones/Receptors
Why are the Big 5 not orthogonal?
Connections between theories of personality

Other clues (quotes and links:)

Big Five Wiki on the context of the Big Five:

  The Big five personality traits was the model to comprehend the relationship between personality and academic behaviors.
  [...]

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 15:

  Hesitant, like crossing a wintry river
  Cautious, like fearing four neighbors
  Solemn, like a guest
  Loose, like ice about to melt
  Genuine, like plain wood
  Open, like a valley
  Opaque, like muddy water

Wikipedia Article: "Facet" (Psychology), a concept within the Big Five personality model

Wikipedia Article: Six Values in Positive Psychology:

Wisdom and Knowledge
Courage
Humanity
Justice
Temperance
Transcendence

Neurotransmitter/Receptor types/systems:

Dopamine
Serotonin
Cannabinoid
GABA
Adrenergic (Epinephrine/Norepinephrine)
Nicotinic
???

Depending on your definition of 'personality model' there are plenty to choose from.

I don't have any good overview of similarities and differences, which are tests more than models, or which are really two names on the same model.

Big 5/5 factor model. 5x6 axes. Tests include NEO-PI, MMPI-2, IPIP ++.
Global 5. 5 axes
BELBIN
Emneagram/RHETI
Hexaco
Holland COdes/RIASEC
Jung/MBTI/Kiersey/DISC, 16 PF, MENTI. 4 axes
MOTIV
R-Drive
Temperaments. 4 axes
Hartman. 4 axes
Kolb/Mumford
Learning styles, GrashaRiechmann styles, Dunn and Dunn styles, Canfield styles

Which ones you should focus on depends on what you are looking for.

Big 5\NEO-PI-R is the most scientifically supported model, so I mostly keep to that one. The hard part about Big 5 is the number of traits total (30), which takes a while to really learn, understand and remember.
MBTI is useful in learning theory about personality types, differences and traits, but it lacks scientific support.
The others I haven't studied much yet.

In general I think it's a good idea to use Big 5 as the base, and search for correlations with traits from Big 5.

Sources:

http://similarminds.com/personality_types.html
http://tcc.kcc.hawaii.edu/previous/TCC%202005/santo.pdf
http://www.personalityresearch.org/bigfive.html
http://hexaco.org/scaledescriptions


Easy-to-use simulations of human behavior I'm interested in simulations of human behavior.

Nicky Case has done some really good ones:

https://ncase.me/trust/ - A simulation of repeated prisoner's dilemma under different scenarios, showing how trust can be built and destroyed between people.

https://ncase.me/crowds/ - A simulation of memes spreading in a society, and how the relations between people affect whether a meme will spread or not.

I like the fact that they are easy for people to interact with, and you can learn how things that we accept just happen in society are shown to be emergent phenomena that are the result of simple behavior.

My question: Do you know of more sources of simulations like these that you can share? I'm especially interested in simulations of people's emotional connections with each other, and group dynamics.

Nicky Case is a tough act to follow, but there are a lot of simulations available for a variety of different theories in social psychology and behavioural economics.  As such, I won't try to list them all, but provide a "list of lists" that should help you to find more.

Wikipedia maintains a list of games in game theory.  This does not link to any simulations, but it's easy enough to search Google for them.  For example, here are a couple of interactive online simulations of the hawk-dove game: Single population, 2 population, and an interactive version of the Blotto game can be found here.  Wikipedia also has a "list of lists".  There are also several interactive simulations that are capable of modelling multiple game theory games, including the prisoner's dilemma: GTE, Oyun, Axelrod.
NetLogo, from Northwestern University, lists a number of psychology and social science simulations in its models library (sorry no jump-to link, you'll have to scroll down to see the categories), including Rebellion "... an adaptation of Joshua Epstein's model of civil violence (2002)", the Piaget-Vygotsky Game "... to shed light on the ongoing debate between two theories of learning, constructivism and social constructivism", and Ethnocentrism based on a model by "Robert Axelrod and Ross A. Hammond".
AnyLogic Cloud offers a variety of simulations for its platform, including agent-based models such as reinforcement learning, epidemic model, and schelling segregation, and market models such as restaurant business.  Several other simulation platforms for social science and human behaviour are listed in Wikipedia's comparison of agent-based modelling software.
A list of interactive online  economics simulation games.
An old simulation on the evolution of social norms.

The above lists are all free; the catalogue would be much larger if you add paid services such as classroom education software.


Aesthetic preference for even or odd numbers In my experience most people prefer the appearance of even numbers or numbers divisible by 5.

Is there any research which proves or disproves my theory?
Is it all about symmetry?

I expect that people prefer the number 5 because it is half of 10 and we live in a world that primarily uses a base-10 system. e.g. I like my gamerscore on xbox-live or reputation here to be even or divisible by 5.

Some ancient historical precedent exists for preferring $10$, but also for $6$, so that's mixed support from Wikipedia on perfect numbers. As for honest-to-goodness modern research, here's one quick result on prevalence of round prices in marketing (Klumpp, Brorsen, & Anderson, 2005): it's higher than for non-round prices. Some other results are reviewed within, including those of Kandel, Sarig, & Wohl (2001), who claim "direct evidence that investors prefer round numbers," Harris (1991), who claims, "Stock prices cluster on round fractions," and Osler (2003), regarding whose results Klumpp and colleagues wrote, "[market] trends tend to increase after certain prices levels (specifically round prices) are crossed." Osler's own wording (with numeric list reformatting and emphasis added):

  trends tend to reverse course at predictable support and resistance levels, and
  trends tend to be unusually rapid after rates cross such levels.

  The data are the first available on individual currency stop-loss and take-profit orders. Take-profit orders cluster particularly strongly at round numbers, which could explain the first prediction. Stop-loss orders cluster strongly just beyond round numbers, which could explain the second prediction.

Klumpp and colleagues' research claims to be a relatively new attempt to apply these ideas outside of financial market analysis...but to some extent, wheat is just another form of currency, so this is debatable.

As for substantive theoretical explanations, a good review and test of theory is freely available (Kahn, Pennacchi, & Sopranzetti, 1999). This paper mentions many circumstantial and traditional peculiarities about financial markets as motivating factors, but the ideas most interesting for our audience pertain to memory. Here's an excerpt (emphasis added):

  Experimental tests performed by Schindler and Wiman (1989) find that individuals tend to recall odd-ending prices less accurately than even-ending prices, and that expressing a price as odd-ending increases the likelihood that it will be underestimated when recalled. A biological explanation for this downward bias in recalling odd-ending prices is offered by Brenner and Brenner (1982). They propose a theory of fixed storage capacity which assumes that the extra decision of rounding the initially observed number is costly, so that the cheapest transfer mechanism involves simply storing the first digit. Hence, if a prices right-most digits are not stored in memory, odd-ending prices will tend to be underestimated. If firms recognize consumers downward bias in recalling odd-ending prices, they may significantly increase the demand for their products by making odd-ending price quotes rather than slightly higher even-ending ones. Even-ending quotes will then represent pricing points where product demand experiences a discrete decline. Blinder (1991) reports some empirical support for this notion. Based on interviews with firm managers, he finds that a majority were reluctant to cross the psychological barrier of raising prices from an odd-ending quote to an even-ending one.

In summary, it seems people prefer to ignore the last available digit for conservation of memory and attentional resources. People use round numbers as arbitrary thresholds for decision making, probably because they can be simplified by dropping the lowest digit, and hence require less unnecessary cognitive elaboration to select when the decision really is arbitrary anyway. Busy people with lots of other things to worry about would probably experience cognitive dissonance when finding themselves thinking about such arbitrary decisions any harder than they have to. Since people pay more attention to that second-to-last digit, they notice when that number "rolls over", and evidently find it a suitable stimulus to trigger premeditated actions like buying and selling.

I haven't seen any particular references to five or symmetry in general, but if you look into these references further yourself, you might find more than what I've reviewed here. [Edit]: On second thought, here's one (emphasis added again):

  Consumers disproportionately selected round, whole-dollar, and half-dollar amounts. About 73 percent of customers tipped a round, whole-dollar amount, and an additional 8 percent rounded their tips to a half dollar. They also clustered their tips around multiples of $5. And on the occasions when the bill didn’t end in .00, nearly a quarter of diners left an unrounded tip that when added to the bill, came to a round total. This requires some mental math skills, the authors note, implying that consumers’ preferences for round prices is so strong that they’ll calculate an exact tip amount to arrive at a round total.

This demonstrates that ordinary people have these preferences too, not just financial marketeers. Read the rest here (Palmquist, 2013), or at his source, a study of tipping behavior in the Journal of Economic Psychology (Lynn, Flynn, & Helion, 2013).

References

- Blinder, A. S. (1991). Why are prices sticky? Preliminary results from an interview study. American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 81, 89–96.
- Brenner, G. A., & Brenner, R. (1982). Memory and markets, or why are you paying \$2.99 for a widget? Journal of Business, 55, 147–158.
- Harris, L. (1991). Stock price clustering and discreteness. Review of Financial Studies, 4(3), 389–415. Retrieved from http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~keechung/TEM/Journal%20Articles/Clustering%20-%20Harris.pdf.
- Kahn, C., Pennacchi, G., & Sopranzetti, B. (1999). Bank deposit rate clustering: Theory and empirical evidence. The Journal of Finance, 54(6), 2185-2214. Retrieved from https://www.clevelandfed.org/Research/workpaper/1996/wp9604.pdf.
- Kandel, S., Sarig, O., & Wohl, A. (2001). Do investors prefer round stock prices? Evidence from Israeli IPO auctions. Journal of Banking & Finance, 25(8), 1543–1551.
- Klumpp, J. M., Brorsen, W., & Anderson, K. B. (2005). The preference for round number prices. Selected paper prepared for presentation at the Southern Agricultural Economics Association annual meetings, Little Rock, Arkansas, February 5–9, 2005. Retrieved from http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/35537/1/sp05kl01.pdf.
- Lynn, M., Flynn, S. M., & Helion, C. (2013). Do consumers prefer round prices? Evidence from pay-what-you-want decisions and self-pumped gasoline purchases. Journal of Economic Psychology, 36, 96–102. Retrieved from http://tippingresearch.com/uploads/Round_Prices_JEP.pdf.
- Osler, C. L. (2003). Currency orders and exchange rate dynamics: an explanation for the predictive success of technical analysis. The Journal of Finance, 58(5), 1791–1820. Retrieved from Ben-Gurion University's Department of Economics.
- Palmquist, M. (2013, November 21). The psychology of pricing: Customers prefer round numbers. Strategy + Business. Retrieved from http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/The-Psychology-of-Pricing-Customers-Prefer-Round-Numbers?gko=f4877.
- Schindler, R. M., & Wiman, A. R. (1989). Effects of odd pricing on price recall. Journal of Business Research, 19(3), 165–177.


Finding consciousness through EEG I've read an article about the consciousness in vegetative patients. Adrian Owen is one of the neuroscientist making research on this field. The article published on "Le scienze" was about the usage of fMRI before and EEG later, to check the presence of a consciousness.

Do you know of similar group of research in Italy?
Is their work consolidated enough to be applied in the clinical practice by another neurologist?

I don't know any such group in Italy but there is a group in Liege, Belgium which is called Coma Science Group. It consists of scientists of various disciplines and their main interest is understanding disorders of consciousness. Also their work has a clinical orientation as well. From your description, I think it will be interesting to you. Their website is http://www.coma.ulg.ac.be


Psychological research on memorability of passwords? There are lots of ad-hoc rules that people are happy to propose about passwords, such as:

Pick a phrase you can remember easily, and then use the initial letters.
A random short sequence of letters, numbers and symbols.
A sequence of random common words (like XKCD's "battery correct horse staple").

There is also a pile of computer security research on what passwords are hard to crack.

It seems like a pretty simple empirical question to say what is the best password scheme for any given desired strength.

Can anyone point me to any research about the ease of memorizing passwords generated according to various rules?

It looks like there is some empirical evidence that passphrases are easier to remember than either random passwords (not surprising) or user-selected short passwords after standard advice to use mix of upper and lower and avoid words.

http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/jeff.yan/#exp

Thanks Jeff for the pointer in a comment (same Jeff?).

  J. Yan, A. Blackwell, R. Anderson and A. Grant. The memorability and
  security of passwords -- some empirical results. University of
  Cambridge, Computer Laboratory Technical Report No. 500, 2000. (see
  also Hungarian translation). PDF

  J. Yan, A. Blackwell, R. Anderson and A. Grant. Password Memorability
  and Security: Empirical Results. IEEE Security & Privacy, Vol. 2 No.
  5, 2004. PDF

the above is reprinted as:

  J. Yan, A. Blackwell, R. Anderson and A. Grant. The Memorability and
  Security of Passwords. Refereed book chapter in Security and
  Usability: Designing Secure Systems that People Can Use (ed. by Lorrie
  Cranor and Simson Garfinkel), OReilly & Associates, USA, 2005.


Why are autistic people more likely to be savants than nonautistic people? I read that 10% of autistic people and 1% of nonautistic people are savants. It seems like lacking an ability is what defines somebody to be autistic.

Disclaimer, this is less of an answer and more of a critique of the demographics behind Savant Syndrome.

Currently there are very few issues with finding a decent answer to this question: This 10% of autistics being savants seems tenuous, there is no clear cut unambiguous research from current and respected journals analysing the prevalence of savant syndrome. The last paper to back these claims was in 1988, and that is the only one reporting these numbers. This 1988 paper seems to be to source of the statistics reported in the question and on websites such as the autism institute. However there have been no repetitions of this reported prevalence. Savant syndrome is a popular idea that people with learning disability can be brilliant too, and they can, there are real cases of Savant Syndrome. A few journal articles describe the workings of Savant Syndrome, such as the brain function and abilities. However these are not common, much like Savant Syndrome, if Savant Syndrome was as common as reported by the 1988 paper we would see savants amongst autistics as we do left handers across Europeans. From personal experience I would say we do not, I spent many years working with people who have ASD, I meet any savants, even though I would have liked too. Of course it is entirely possible that I could I just happened to be statistically unlucky. The lack of further prevalence data is suggests that these results haven't been replicated, and may therefore be misleading.

So whats causing this statistic? In my opinion its likely to be two factors. First the over diagnosis of autism, many children are diagnosed with Asperger’s who are not later in life. Secondly intelligent children are often diagnosed as autistic or with mood disorders, intelligent people may think differently to the general population and some of their tendencies may seem 'autistic', like there fascination with particular subjects/objects, such behaviours might contribute to a ASD diagnosis in children.

There is no prevalence data for savants in 'normal' populations, but you could say anyone who is talented and passionate about a particular skill or subject is a savant, from footballers to scientists, many 'normal' people are exceptional. Personally, I work in an academic departments, and I meet people that would fit the definition for the abilities of a savant on a daily basis, but they don't have a disorder. You probably do as well, yet because they don't have a disability you wouldn't use the same term savant, and technically you shouldn't.

Conclusion: More data needed! Their clearly isn't enough support to make the claim that 10% of autistics are savants, and additionally there seems to be no real comparison with 'normal' functioning individuals. And the definition of savant is also dubious, can normal people be savants?


Name for problems with a short-term pay off but small long term cost? Is there a name for the types of human behavioural problems where making a particular choice isn't a problem, but making the same choice over and over again leads to a bad outcome? Where there is an immediate short-term pay-off for making the choice one way, but a small long-term cost to doing it?

Some examples of these types of problems are:

weight gain
personal debt
litter

I think it's a really interesting type of problem because you have to override the short term motivation many, many times to get the long term pay off.

I agree with @Fizz that there is probably no specific name for the type of problem in question, but the behaviour involved is referred to as self-control, or more loosely, willpower.  Thus, the type of problem can be referred to as a self-control dilemma:

  Self-control dilemmas occur when long-term goals and values clash with
  short-term temptations. ... One of the most common self-control
  dilemmas involves the desire for unhealthy or unneeded food
  consumption versus the desire to maintain long-term health. ... Weak
  temptations present more of a challenge to overcome than strong
  temptations, because they appear less likely to compromise long-term
  values.

and accordingly temptation:

  Temptation is a desire to engage in short-term urges for enjoyment,
  that threatens long-term goals.

Chronic failure to meet long-term goals / succumbing to temptations is called akrasia, or "weakness of will".  The opposite is delayed gratification - also see the Marshmallow experiment.


How can machine possibly possess consciousness if computation is a human idea? Suppose a computer simulates a human brain so that it passes the Turing test. Suppose that this brain is given sensory stimuli that correspond to an experience of being in an Earth-like world.  From my understanding, proponents of computationalism suppose that this simulated brain would have qualia.

The neural network, its state, and the program code are stored on a computer, and can only be observed if someone knows how to use this computer. How a neural network is represented in memory and on disk, depends on data structures, computer architecture, endianness, et cetera.

Suppose then that the last human on Earth dies, but the simulation keeps running on the computer. If there is no one in the Universe who understands how this particular computer works, then no one would be able to observe this simulated brain.  In other words, this brain would be impossible to “decode”, and yet it would supposedly still experience qualia.

It follows that if this is the case, then nothing prevents other “invisible” brains from existing.

We know that a computer is a computational device, and it is running a complex neural network that corresponds to a human-like mind, but the Universe doesn't “know” it.  It is our interpretation of what is happening. I can't stray from the conclusion that if the premise is true, then there may be different processes that isomorphically correspond to computations, some of which may isomorphically correspond to minds, but we won't know it because we don't see this isomorphism.

Why couldn't processes inside the Sun correspond to some computation (albeit in a non-straightforward way) which corresponds to a mind? By that logic, there could be infinitely many minds, all experiencing some sorts of qualia, “encoded” in different ways in all processes in the world.

Conversely, what if we replace a computer with a man (with a large lifespan) meticulously following the algorithm on paper. Would his computations somehow give rise to consciousness within a brain simulated on paper?

This just doesn't make sense to me.
Do computationalists believe this, or do they have a counter-argument?

Introduction
Your thoughts seem to straddle panpsychism and computationalism.  It is also possible you are just raising a question about physicalism: "if mental thoughts are a result of physical interactions, then why would consciousness be limited to things with brains?".  Well, the short answer is that it's fundamentally not, but neither is a fusion reaction and you don't see them popping up all over the place.  They only appear (or "emerge", as it were) in specific places where the conditions are just right.  So, the physicalist presumes, does the mind.  I will also note that physicalism (a form of monism) is basically the mainstream scientific stance.
Computationalism
Note that your suggestion:

Would his computations somehow give rise to consciousness within a brain simulated on paper?

would be an extreme interpretation of computationalism.  At it's core, computationalism just says that mental states are grounded in mental representations (semantics) operating on context (syntax): they are part of the cognitive process.  Individual computationalists can interpret, to varying degree, how stringent the requirements are on the underlying hardware.
Chomskian linguistics and David Marr's theory of vision were two empirical studies that really influenced the perception of cognitive scientists in favor of computationalism in the 70's.  More recent neuroscience literature has favored the connectionist view (note the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive).
A more recent literature review of consciousness, Towards a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness: basic evidence and a workspace framework, summarizes its empirical findings:
Three fundamental empirical findings on consciousness:

Cognitive processing is possible without consciousness
Attention is a prerequisite of consciousness
Consciousness is required for specific mental operations

3. would seem to be consistent with computationalism (the union of computation and consciousness).  More support for the computationalist stance:
The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?

Agents can suppress free energy by changing the two things it depends on: they can change sensory input by acting on the world or they can change their recognition density by changing their internal states. This distinction maps nicely onto action and perception

Connectionism:
Yet another empirical perspective comes from another physicalist view called connectionism.  Connectionism has gained popularity among neuroscientists as we develop technology to better probe brains and model neural mechanisms computationally.
Consciousness as Integrated Information: a Provisional Manifesto

(i) the quantity of consciousness corresponds to the amount of integrated information generated by a complex of elements; (ii) the quality of experience is specified by the set of informational relationships generated within that complex.

Some literature that supports Tononi's idea:
Breakdown of cortical effective connectivity during sleep.
A Theoretically Based Index of Consciousness Independent of Sensory Processing and Behavior
More support for connectionism:
The brainweb: Phase synchronization and large-scale integration

The emergence of a unified cognitive moment relies on the coordination of scattered mosaics of functionally specialized brain regions.


Any research on brain's processes involved in evil actions? I'm reading Zimbardo's The lucifer effect: understanding how good people turn to evil in which he describes the famous Stanford prison experiment
that investigated the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison guards. The experiment's results favor situational attribution of behavior over dispositional attribution. It seemed that the situation, rather than their individual personalities, caused the participants' evil behavior.

Zimbardo concluded that a set of psychological processes - among them deindividuation and obedience to authority - can induce good people to do evil.

Specifiying Zimbardo's definition of evil:  - "Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy innocent others - or using one's authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behalf" -  my question is:

Does a cerebral circuit of evil induced by situational circumstances exist ?

I too have been studying Zimbardo's work and this area of research is still in its infancy at the moment, so, although those here who are more knowledgeable on neuroscience may be able to correct me if I am wrong, I believe from the lack of information I have seen that it is too early for any conclusive neurological basis to the formation of evil.

Whilst Dr. Philip Zimbardo's work, on the subject is in his book you mentioned — The Lucifer Effect — (Zimbardo, 2007) [See also: lucifereffect.com] there is also has an accompanying video at TED Talks (Zimbardo, 2008).  In this video he highlights the basis of his book.  There are also other similar works by other people.

The whole area of research on evil and heroism started, although not originally to study origins of evil, around 1950 with Solomon Asch and his Conformity experiment known as the Asch Experiment, which led to a further experiment by Stanley Milgram known as the Milgram Experiment.

Asch’s experiment was essentially benign in nature but Stanley Milgram’s experiment had a macabre nature to it.  This made Milgram’s experiment particularly famous after he published his results as it made newspaper headlines and caused many people to sit up and really examine human nature, and the social requirement to conform to peers and authority figures.

  [Stanley Milgram] asked the question, "Could the Holocaust happen here, now?" People say, "No, that's Nazi Germany, Hitler, you know, that's 1939." He said, "Yeah, but suppose Hitler asked you, 'Would you electrocute a stranger?' 'No way, I'm a good person.'" He said, "Why don't we put you in a situation and give you a chance to see what you would do?" (Zimbardo, 2008)

The movie The Wave (2008) was based on teacher Ron Jones's "Third Wave" experiment, which took place at a Californian school in 1967 to explain how the German population could accept the actions of the Nazi regime during the Second World War. Because his students did not understand how something like national socialism could even happen, he founded a totalitarian, strictly-organized "movement" with harsh punishments that was led by him autocratically. The intricate sense of community led to a wave of enthusiasm not only from his own students, but also from students from other classes who joined the program later. Jones later admitted to having enjoyed having his students as followers. To eliminate the upcoming momentum, Jones aborted the project on the fifth day and showed the students the parallels towards the Nazi youth movements.

What is interesting with the Milgram Experiment is that it doesn't seem that the root of evil is always related to the parts of the brain related to empathy.  You cannot just put those who "failed" the test into the category of those who lack empathy because when you watch the 1962 documentary about the experiment on YouTube (PSU, 1962) which showed the experiment in action, an example is at 22 minutes into the documentary, where the "teacher" was showing signs of distress and wanted to check that the "learner" was okay before continuing.  When the "teacher" was told he must continue he reluctantly did so, but he grew more agitated.

Stanley Milgram’s experiment seemed to inspire Dr. Philip Zimbardo with his studies into evil and heroism.  Philip Zimbardo conducted the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 and was an expert witness at Abu Grahib

  I became an expert witness for one of the guards, Sergeant Chip Frederick, and in that position, I had access to the dozen investigative reports. I had access to him. I could study him, have him come to my home, get to know him, do psychological analysis to see, was he a good apple or bad apple.

  ...

  Milgram's study is all about individual authority to control people. Most of the time, we are in institutions, so the Stanford Prison Study is a study of the power of institutions to influence individual behavior. Interestingly, Stanley Milgram and I were in the same high school class in James Monroe in the Bronx, 1954. (Zimbardo, 2008)

With his work, Dr. Philip Zimbardo came to the following psychological definition of evil:

  Evil is the exercise of power. And that's the key: it's about power. To intentionally harm people psychologically, to hurt people physically, to destroy people mortally, or ideas, and to commit crimes against humanity.

  ...

  The power is in the system. The system creates the situation that corrupts the individuals, and the system is the legal, political, economic, cultural background. And this is where the power is of the bad [apple] barrel makers. (Zimbardo, 2008)

References

PSU, 1962. Obedience - Films in the Behavioral Sciences [Video] University Park, PA:Pennsylvania State Universityhttp://www.worldcat.org/title/obedience/oclc/498479796
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek4pWJ0_XNo
Online Stream at: https://cas.byu.edu/cas

Zimbardo, P. G., 2007. The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil New York:The Random House Publishing Group

Zimbardo, P. G., 2008. The Psychology of Evil. [Online]
Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil