Enhance recollection abilites I hope this is a good way of asking this question.

I am not generally the guy with the best memory out there, so I looked a bit into it and I am concluding my recollection phase is the weakest. It's seems like I can store a lot but recalling it, I would come under average.

It's not like it has stopped me from doing fine in life, but I am curious about how one can enhance that part, any good reads should you recommend from the scientific literature ?

Thanks.

Augmented :

Well I do recall a lot because I can gather a lot from my memory, but then I stumble often in just getting the first starting point from which I would be able to gather all those memories, i.e : I can remember profusely given someone or something helps me with recalling just a part or the beginning of it. So my recalling issue is really in having a sort of catalogue or dictionary like system : once you get the word you get its definition, my trouble is in getting the word (I hope the analogy is clear). Working memory is short-term memory? Can be, what are symptoms for that ?

Practice or forget, that is the rule. If you want to recall more words for your vocabulary then read more and write more texts with less common words. If you want to recall memories look at old photographs of your life and try to recall everything associated with those events.
Memory improves when health improves, so work on that too.


Is it good practice to try to recall things when we are tired? Background. It happens often that, at the end of the day when I return to home, I try to recall past events that took place that day or the day before (memory rehearsal), but surprisingly I find that I have lost almost all details about some of them: while some  details are kept "in good state", other are altered (false memory: wrong order of events, memory gaps, inconsistent and incoherent memories), and the rest are forgotten! Boundaries between details are blurred! Such things happen when I'm tired.

On the one hand, if I don't try to recall events, e.g. when I postpone such practice to a later moment (after resting), I will forget some details as I have wasted time.

On the other hand, when I try to rehearse some memories that happened the same day, it seems that the biological state of tiredness affects the ability to recall in such a manner that details become altered and false memories are produced (again a loss of information)! Both cases are bad, but which one is the worse?

The point of this question is to know whether the biological state of tiredness can definitely alter some critical events when we try to recall.

Should we avoid trying to recall events when we are tired?

You might not be looking for an answer about sleep deprivation per se—you might just be interested in normal daily fatigue immediately before normal sleep—but of course sleep deprivation results in tiredness, so the answer seems likely to be equivalent (though I'm not a sleep researcher by specialty). Here's an answer for sleep deprivation and memory (Alhola & Polo-Kantola, 2007):

  Total [sleep deprivation] impairs attention and working memory, but it also affects other functions, such as long-term memory and decision-making.

And another equivalent answer (Chee, Chuah, Venkatraman, Chan, Philip, & Dinges, 2006):

  Performance accuracy declined significantly during the performance of...working memory tasks following [sleep deprivation].

Reference

Alhola, P., & Polo-Kantola, P. (2007). Sleep deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 3(5), 553–567. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc2656292/.

Chee, M. W., Chuah, L. Y., Venkatraman, V., Chan, W. Y., Philip, P., & Dinges, D. F. (2006). Functional imaging of working memory following normal sleep and after 24 and 35 h of sleep deprivation: Correlations of fronto-parietal activation with performance. Neuroimage, 31(1), 419–428. Retrieved from http://www.med.upenn.edu/uep/user_documents/Cheeetal--Functionalimagingofworkingmemory--NeuroImage2006.pdf.


"Cognify". Does it describe awareness or confusion? I understand that the term "Cognify" in cognitive psychology means that you are made aware of something but not yet have sufficient insight to act.

Does the term describe the insufficiency of insight or does it describe the fact of being made aware of something (which presumably will eventually become cognitive comprehension)?

I'm asking because the term is being used marketing wise at our company, and I want to make sure that it actually describes something positive.

Edit:

Which would you say is the more appropriate synonym for cognify?

Being made aware of.
Inadequately understood to make a decision.

I did a quick google search for you and cognify only returned new, hip, modern, trendy websites and apps. So that was no use. Cognify just appears to sound cool in the industry.

When I looked at google scholar citation I again did not find many results, let alone studies that explicitly study cognify or cognification. As a matter of fact, only 14(!!) results were produced with just the word cognify. Within these results, I was able to find some papers that had used the word.

Bentrop (2014) appears to use cognify like your first translation: to become aware or to make explicit.

  “Teachers need to “cognify” their curriculum—examine their subject
  matter to identify and explicitly teach the thinking skills which are
  embedded within their subject

Vakalo (1978) uses cognify as "building a fitting (mental) picture" or, similarly to the former study, "becoming aware".

  When one visits an area for the first time he expects evidence of the presence
  of some phenomena and absence of others. The mechanism he uses to perceive and cognify spatial phenomena is comparison.

It seems thus that cognify means "becoming aware", more likely by yourself (through the act of deliberate thought) instead of "being made aware of". The fact that Vakalo used the word in 1978 already, but is not that well known still, shows that the word hasn't gained much traction in psychological sciences. It is thus likely that cognify is not an official term.

If you would like to read more on becoming aware, you should have a look at situation awareness (being aware) or situation assessment (becoming aware; e.g. Endsley, 1995; Wickens, 2008).

References

Bentrop, S. M. (2014). Creating an educational app rubric for teachers of students who are deaf and hard of hearing.

Endsley, M. R. (1995). Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 37(1), 32-64.

Vakalo, E. G. G., & Plessas, D. J. (1978). A conceptual framework for the estimation of opportunity loss at the regional-sectoral level with an application to Greece. Επιθεώρηση Κοινωνικών Ερευνών, 32(32), 117-126.

Wickens, C. D. (2008). Situation awareness: Review of Mica Endsley's 1995 articles on situation awareness theory and measurement. Human factors, 50(3), 397-403.


Are Satoshi Kanazawa's findings about racial differences in attractiveness valid? This post discusses a study published in a blog post by an evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa. The study suggested that black women were rated less attractive than women of other races. There is a copy of the original blog post here.

Are the conclusions in the Kanazawa article valid?
What criticism can be made about the article?

The first thing to note is that the study was not published as a peer-reviewed journal article. It was published as a blog post. Thus, it has not gone through a peer review process. While the reader can function as the reviewer, the article does not follow the structure of a journal article. As such, there is an inadequate description of the method in the blog post to facilitate a proper evaluation of the study, although if you follow a trail of references, there may be more information, such as in this related post comparing male and female attractiveness ratings.

Here is a critique of Kanazawa's blog post "Why black women are less physically attractive than other women":

Subjectivity of ratings: Kanazawa states that "the interviewer rates the physical attractiveness of the respondent objectively". This is incorrect. Any rating by an individual of someone's attractiveness involves a degree of subjectivity. By averaging ratings over many raters we can obtain what we might call inter-subjective agreement about attractiveness. The more raters you have then the more reliable will be the individual-level measurement. That said, even such inter-subjective ratings will be influenced by the pool of raters used. For example, what is the gender, racial, composition of the raters. To what extent do these factors influence the ratings provided? Raters also come from a particular historical period where there are particular views about attractiveness. Thus, it's important to consider these factors when discussing any measure of attractiveness.
Error in ratings: Kanazawa gets attractiveness ratings by averaging three ratings from three raters." From these three scores, I can compute the latent physical attractiveness score". This is not true.  Three raters is better than one. But there would still be substantial unreliability in measuring "latent physical attractiveness". This is over and above the general issue of there being different definitions of latent physical attractiveness based on the pool of raters used and definitions applied. Kanazawa then goes on to make other points about factor analysis which are incorrect (e.g., claiming that factor analysis "eliminates all random measurement errors"). That said, some unreliability in measuring individual attractiveness is not fatal to the study. If anything, it would reduce observed group differences.
Inadequate sample and rater description: There is no explicit reporting of sample sizes or sampling procedure. Thus, it is difficult to evaluate how robust the results are and whether the groups are comparable on other relevant factors such as age, dress, and so on. Furthermore, the lack of information about where the sample comes from and where the raters come from make it difficult to see to what extent any findings would generalise to other times, places, and locations.
No standard deviations provided: There is no standard deviation provided which makes it difficult to assess the size of the group differences. If we assume that attractiveness ratings are z-scores (which is likely if derived from a factor analysis). Then the differences in attractiveness ratings between black and white women were about 0.25 standard deviations. Thus, whatever the ratings captured, if you assume SD=1, then the differences between black and white women is fairly small.
Inadequate discussion of covariates: Kanazawa inadequately discusses covariates that might explain any observed differences. He briefly mentions BMI and intelligence as covariates. However, there are presumably many relevant covariates including age, socio-economic status, physical health and more. An adequate analysis would explore a wide range of covariates and how they relate to attractiveness ratings, and the degree to which group differences are altered by such measures. In particular, taking the perspective of evolutionary psychology requires that you first rule out short term cultural explanations such as poverty and health related explanations.
Inadequate discussion of explanations: Kanazawa writes that "the only thing I can think of that might potentially explain [the differences] is testosterone". This seems quite naive when I can think of a wide range of reasons why any observed differences could emerge, such as socio-economic status, money spent on appearance, lifestyle factors related to health and exercise, and most importantly culture-specific values about attractiveness that the raters may be applying.


How effective are high audio frequencies in commercials in getting audience attention? Does anyone know of a peer reviewed article that describes how commercials will often contain high audio frequencies in order to attract the viewer's attention?

Referrals to commercials using any audio based method to command attention would also be welcome.

I believe this will come under the field of psychoacoustics.

I am not aware of any use in using "high audio frequencies" in commercials, but there is a history of making commercials louder (presumably to attract attention). There are laws prohibiting increasing the loudness of commercials  (e.g., CALM Act). Increasing the loudness, without remotely adjusting the volume on the TV is not a trivial thing and potentially involves careful mixing of the audio signals as well as allowing acceptable levels of distortion.


Is The magical number 7 still valid? George A. Miller published "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information" in 1956 and is one of the most highly cited papers in psychology.  It supposedly argues that the number of objects an average human can hold in working memory is 7 ± 2. This is frequently referred to as Miller's Law.[1]

I've learned this in school as well, and I often use the magic number seven when it comes to grouping of elements in more logical units. However recent research question Miller's Law stating that the correct number a human being can hold in working memory is three or four[2]. In my daily life, I can see that this is more likely. When I go shopping, I need to write a shopping list if there are more than four things I need to buy and by this not forget what it was I'm supposed to buy. One could argue that my working memory is worse than average, but I would never agree to such a statement.

But the question remains and is puzzling my mind...
Is The magical number 7 still valid?

[1] Wikipedia article on Miller's Law

[2] Jeanne Farrington EdD, "Seven plus or minus two"

As far as I recall, the "magic" of the number seven is that George Miller had to give a 1h-presentation while not having enough research on one particular topic to talk about this long. So he tried to connect unrelated lines of research, with the only connection between them being that they show cognitive limitations of similar magnitude ("7+/-2 items"). However, the comparison was not very serious and mostly rhetorical.
So I guess the short answer is: No it is not valid, and it has never really been.
Here is an short article that answers your question in more detail:

Cowan, N., Morey, C.C., & Chen, Z. (2007). The legend of the magical number seven. In S. Della Sala (Ed.), Tall tales about the mind & brain: Separating fact from fiction (pp. 45-59). Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.

And here is Millers original article, it's actually fun to read:

Miller, G. A. (1956). "The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information". Psychological Review 63 (2): 81–97.


Is self-actualization really a need? Abraham Maslow's original hierarchy of needs placed self-actualization at the very top of the list. As I understand it, self-actualization can be roughly defined as realizing one's full potential.

Yet the percentage of people who achieve self-actualization is theoretically less than 5% (probably closer to 1%). Maslow himself listed about a dozen people who, in his opinion, could be considered examples of self-actualization, including Abraham Lincoln.

At the same time, I haven't met many people who really pushed themselves to their full potential. Apathy and Xbox seems to be the norm nowadays.

So we can think of self-actualization as an awesome goal, but is it really a "need"?

To put it another way, have any studies been done on the psychological damage inflicted on people who failed to self-actualize? People obviously get depressed when they fail to get a great job or blossom into a professional athlete. Could such "failure-based depression" qualify self-actualization as a need?

EDIT

I'm not familiar with the psychological community's definition of "need," so let's just say I'm referring to a need as opposed to a "want." We might think of a need as something that's necessary for a person's mental health.

Or, to put it another way, does self-actualization really merit being included with the other needs in Maslow's hierarchy, such as safety and social connections? Feelings of vulnerability and loneliness can drive people to suicide, but how many people who haven't self-actualized drown their sorrows in a bottle of beer?

TLDR: Self-actualisation is the goal of Maslow's Theory, not a need

Needs

As far as the needs are concerned, @jsakaluk's excellent, well supported answer to Is Maslow's hierarchy of needs really accurate at labeling sex as a physiological "need"? gave a good rundown of the definition.

  Definitions of "Needs", "Motives", etc., are dime-a-dozen. Though I don't necessarily agree with all the ingredients, I like how well explicated the criteria by Baumeister and Leary (1995) are, according to whom a fundamental need should:

  produce effects readily under all but adverse conditions
  have affective consequences
  direct cognitive processing
  lead to ill effects (such as on health or adjustment) when thwarted
  elicit goal-oriented behavior designed to satisfy it (subject to motivational patterns such as object substitutability and satiation)
  be universal in the sense of applying to all people
  not be derivative of other motives
  affect a broad variety of behaviors
  have implications that go beyond immediate psychological functioning

Self-Actualisation

We need to determine what self-actualisation actually is.  Maslow described it as follows: (Maslow, 1943)

  This term, first coined by Kurt Goldstein (1939), is being used in this paper in a much more specific and limited fashion. It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.

  The specific form that these needs will take will of course vary greatly from person to person. In one individual it may take the form of the desire to be an ideal mother, in another it may be expressed athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or in inventions. It is not necessarily a creative urge although in people who have any capacities for creation it will take this form.

  The clear emergence of these needs rests upon prior satisfaction of the physiological, safety, love and esteem needs. We shall call people who are satisfied in these needs, basically satisfied people, and it is from these that we may expect the fullest (and healthiest) creativeness (Kardiner, 1941). Since, in our society, basically satisfied people are the exception, we do not know much about self-actualization, either experimentally or clinically. It remains a challenging problem for research.

Maslow's hierarchy is visually put together as follows:

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons Under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0)

and to attain the sixth level or stage: self-actualisation, is the goal of Maslow's Theory, not a need.  Take away any of the levels below self-actualisation, and you will not reach the top goal. And as stated by Maslow (1943) — see above — and in the TLDR summary of @NickStauner's answer to Does evidence support Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?,

  One sequence can't fit all (it didn't claim to), but it makes sense in general, and so do the exceptions, and so do other motive models.

Maslow himself said:

  Though, in principle, self-actualization is easy, in practice it rarely happens (by my criteria, certainly in less than 1% of the adult population.  For this, there are many, many reasons at various levels of discourse, including all of the determinants of psychopathology that we not know. (Maslow, 2013)

also, the fact that "most of us function most of the time on a level lower than that of self-actualization" he called it the psychopathology of normality. (Loevinger, 1976)

References

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497-529.DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497 PMID: 7777651

Goldstein, K. (1939). The organism: A holistic approach to biology derived from pathological data in man. Salt Lake City, UT: American Book Publishing.DOI: 10.1037/10021-000

Kardiner, A. B. R. A. M. (1941). The Traumatic Neuroses of War, New York: Paul B. Hoeber.

Loevinger, J. (1976) Ego Development: Conceptions and Theories (Jossey-Bass Behavioral Science Series). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Inc

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50 (4), 370–96.DOI: 10.1037/h0054346FREE via http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm.

Maslow, A. H. (2013). Toward a psychology of being. Simon and Schuster [eBook].


Why does a person's mind keep imagining situations with problems that do not exist and continue solving those problems in the imagination? Why does a person's mind keep imagining situations with problems that do not exist and continue solving those problems in the imagination?
This keeps the person generally in absent-mindedness and oblivious of the real problems at hand and fails to solve real problems in life.
Is is any syndrome or disorder?
What is the solution?
IS there something like CBT/DBT/IPSRT that can make a change?

It sounds like you're talking about what psychologists and neuroscientists commonly call episodic future thinking or mental simulation. In this cognitive state, we simulate possible future scenarios, often pertaining to social interactions we might have, or survival situations. This allows us to pseudo-test hypotheses regarding the possible outcomes for an imagined scenario based on inference and the memories of our past experiences in similar situations. This may be adaptive if it allows us to prepare contingency plans for those scenarios, should one arise. We do this habitually, perhaps because there are so many possible scenarios to simulate, and the more we explore options and form tentative contingency plans, the better prepared we are for the world. It might also just be a rewarding activity in and of itself.
Absent-mindedness, mind wandering, or distractibility by one's own thoughts may be problematic if we are chronically distracted away from the present moment and the tasks that need to be accomplished at the moment. Mindfulness therapies may be helpful in training the ability not to let the mind wander and instead focus on desired tasks. Activities that require concentration may also train this ability, such as music performance. In severe cases, stimulant medication may be helpful, such as amphetamines or methylphenidate.
Regarding neural mechanisms for these states, there has been quite a lot of research and speculation in recent years on the interplay between two major brain networks, typically called the default mode network and the salience network. In functional connectivity MRI studies, the default mode network seems to be active during the state you described, whereas the salience network is active during focused attention on the external world and while completing a task. It may be that differences in how these networks have developed in an individual dictate the strength of their tendency to internally simulate rather than focus on the external world.
Here's a study regarding these networks and PTSD: Neural Dysregulation in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Evidence for Disrupted Equilibrium between Salience and Default Mode Brain Networks


Can an axon connect to dendrites of multiple other neurons? In a typical multi-polar neuron, an axon has multiple axon terminals that can connect to another neuron's dendrites.

Are there cases where an axon connects to dendrites of multiple neurons?

Sure, look at the connectome of C. elegans for example: URB (circled in red) has synaptic connections to IL1, RIC and also to CEP (which also synapses back to URB, showing that cycles in the connectome are possible). Likewise RIS (circled in blue) has synaptic connections to at least 4 different neurons (in this map) and a couple more off-map.

(click to enlarge)


What is the reward mechanism for eating spicy foods? I can eat pure sugar and pure fats and find it pleasurable thanks to the taste receptors; and salt to a lesser extent. But pure raw chilli products trigger irritation to the tongue, cheeks and nasal passages.

So it seems chillies do not "win over" taste receptors the way sugar, fat and salt do, but we do crave it.

What is the reward mechanism that makes spicy foods desirable?

Rozin (1996) provides an introduction to the psychology of food.
Rozin and Schiller (1980) present a study on the acquisition of preferences for chili peppers.

In the abstract, they write:

  Interviews, observations, and measurements were carried out in both
  Mexico and the United States. Exposure to gradually increasing levels
  of chili in food seems to be a sufficient condition for preference
  development. Chili likers are not insensitive to the irritation that it
  produces. They come to like the same burning sensation that deters
  animals and humans that dislike chili; there is a clear hedonic shift.
  This could be produced by association with positive events, including
  enhancement of the taste of bland foods, postingestional effects, or
  social rewards. It is also possible that the initial negative response
  to chili pepper is essential for the eventual liking. Chili stimulates
  an innate sensory "'warning" system but is not harmful. The enjoyment
  of the irritation may result from the user's appreciation that the
  sensation and the body's defensive reaction to it are harmless. Eating
  of chili, riding on roller coasters, taking very hot baths, and many
  other human activities can be considered instances of thrill seeking
  or enjoyment of "'constrained risks.

The paper also present research for and against desensitisation processes, although they note that this still requires some general rewarding quality to chilis.

  Chili preference might be related to receptor desensitization.
  However, there would have to be positive features of chili that
  support a preference once the desensitization took place; otherwise,
  desensitization would lead to neutral responses. There is some reason
  to believe that desensitization to capsaicin could be a factor in
  human chili ingestion. High concentrations of capsaicin placed on the
  skin of humans or rats produce drops in sensitivity to subsequent
  applications of capsaicin that last for hours up to days after the
  initial treatment (Jancs6, 1960). Systemic injections of high levels
  of capsaicin into rats and guinea pigs produce months-long complete
  desensitization to the effects of capsaicin and other chemical
  irritants. Desensitized rats do not respond (as with paw wiping) to
  irritating solutions of capsaicin or ammonia placed in their eyes
  (Jancs6- Gfibor & Szolcs~myi, 1969)

References

Rozin, P. (1996). Towards a psychology of food and eating: From motivation to module to model to marker, morality, meaning, and metaphor. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 5(1), 18-24.
Rozin, P., & Schiller, D. (1980). The nature and acquisition of a preference for chili pepper by humans. Motivation and Emotion, 4(1), 77-101.


Why do some people bond with their captors and vice versa? Why do some people in hostage and/or kidnapping situations end up identifying with their captors, and vice versa?

Are there certain triggers or aspects of the situation that make it more or less likely to occur?

What you are describing is a condition popularly known as the Stockholm Syndrome. It should be noted that very little research has been conducted into this condition, and it has not been classified as a disorder. However, very briefly, Stockholm Syndrome leads to a hostage developing an emotional bond with their captor, where they sympathize with them and form positive feelings towards them.
It is believed that this syndrome is a coping mechanism (Cantor C, Price J), a result of spending intimate time with their captor where they are subjected to abuse. The captives are in an incredible amount of stress and typically lose the ability to think rationally and reasonably. Their primary motive is to survive, and this instinct leads them to develop defense mechanisms. Hatred, in this situation, would not be productive, and obedience is the only way to survive.
It is believed that 3 aspects make it more likely for the syndrome to develop:

Long duration of time spent together
Spending a longer duration of time with their captors leads the
hostages to believe that their captors truly will not kill them. They
believe that the captors are their friends and they will get out of
this messy situation together.

Intimate and continual contact between the captor and the hostage
In order to ensure that they do not anger their captor in order to escape violence at their hands, the focus of the captives is on obedience and pleasing their captors, for which they try to get to know their captors during the period of their captivity. This 'humanizes' their captors. Moreover, the captives want to make sure that their feelings do not appear fake, and eventually begin believing that they are genuine.

Small acts of kindness
During the course of the captivity, if the captor shows an unexpected
act of kindness, or simply chooses to not behave violently, it may
lead the captive to become affectionate towards their captor. In a
situation where a person is made to fear for their life, this small
act can be seen as merciful on the captor's part.

Women are said to be more likely to develop Stockholm Syndrome. (Graham, Dee L. R.) Societal conditions lead the women to be afraid of male violence. This fear encourages them to engage in actions that would please the male, and bond with them to survive. Similarly, the captives bond with their captors and attempt to please them to survive.
A lesser known condition is the Lima Syndrome, where the abductors develop sympathy towards their captives.
As mentioned in the beginning, these conditions are still widely contested and much more research is required.


Why would someone seek treatment for Apraxia of speech? People with Apraxia of speech have two basic problems: monotone pronunciation and slow speech.

(1) Might someone with Apraxia of speech who does not seek treatment have psychological problems? They just don't care about not talking with people who don't want to wait and listen to their thoughts. Is that arrogance? low self-esteem? severely anti-social?

(2) Is Apraxia of speech degenerative? Without treatment, speaking will become more, and more, difficult?

(3) Is it socially unacceptable to speak slowly with a monotone pronunciation?

There appear to be more than your two basic problems: see Wikipedia's list of characteristics. Subjective difficulty in producing speech appears to be one particularly plausible reason to self-initiate treatment.

I don't see any indication of a lack of concern for how speech is received by others.
Some forms seem to be progressive, but not all are:

  Recent research has established the existence of primary progressive apraxia of speech caused by neuroanatomic motor atrophy.[19][20]

By comparison, stroke can introduce acute apraxia of speech that can (rarely) improve over time.
I wouldn't say "unacceptable", but undesirable seems true enough in general. Plenty of variation in rate of speech is normal and acceptable, but extremely slow speech can be grating. Tonal variation is expected in most languages with which I'm at all familiar, but again, most people probably understand that some people will be more or less monotone. Again, extreme monotonicity will tend to violate expectations and raise complaints, because variations in pitch and emphasis carry useful semantic information in normal speech. Personally, I've been criticized for speaking in monotone at many times in my life, but never for having too wildly fluctuating intonation, even though I've tried to exaggerate this quality somewhat compensatorily. Yet as with all anecdotes, your mileage may vary.

References
19. Josephs, K. A., & Duffy, J. R. (2008). Apraxia of speech and nonfluent aphasia: A new clinical marker for corticobasal degeneration and progressive supranuclear palsy. Current Opinion in Neurology, 21(6), 688–692.
20. Josephs, K. A., Duffy, J. R., Strand, E. A., Machulda, M. M., Senjem, M. L., Master, A. V., Lowe, V. J., Jack, C. R. Jr., & Whitwell, J. L. (2012). Characterizing a neurodegenerative syndrome: Primary progressive apraxia of speech. Brain, 135(5), 1522–1536. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3338923/.


Why does autism sometimes impede the ability to produce speech? My seventeen year old brother is severely autistic and unable to communicate. He can produce sounds, and imitate words, but he doesn't respond to words in a way that suggests he understands them. His imitations are always imperfect, and this is what interests me most. For example, he can sort of say the first twenty numbers ('ah', 'tih', 'ee', 'hoh', that sort of thing.) He sort of gets rhythm, but not intonation or pitch.

Of course, every child is different, but are there reasons why an autistic teen who can clearly hear words has never in 17 years learned to accurately reproduce them? Dad once speculated that it was auditory, that he can't hear the sounds properly, but I suspect that it's physiological. I'd like to hear thoughts from people who know what they're talking about.

Difficulties with language is not actually a symptom of autism. Autism Spectrum Disorder involves difficulties in social communication and interaction, as well as restricted and repetitive interests or behaviours (DSM-V, 2013). The term "social communication" is referring to difficulties in the social aspects of language and other communication, such as matching verbal and non-verbal behaviour, rather than difficulties in language.

The language difficulties as described in the question sound like they could be related to the age-equivalence of the individual, although of course physiological hearing difficulties can't be ruled out until it is assessed. All children progress through a sequence of language development (Tager-Flusberg et al., 2010):

Pre-Verbal

Babbling, gestures
Typically developing children aged 6-12 months

First Words

Non-imitated, spontaneous single words
Some of the speech is intelligible, and uses consonant sounds typical in babble
Typically developing children aged 12-18 months

Word Combinations

2 and 3 word combinations, including nouns, adjectives and verbs
Typically developing children aged 18-30 months

Sentences

Children create sentences, now using plurals and prepositions
Typically developing children aged 30-28 months

Complex Language

Language for a range of topics, using complex grammar, in different discourse contexts
Pre-school aged typially developing children

Tager-Flusberg et al. (2010) have a great table (Table 1) in their article outlining their proposed benchmarks for each of these phases. As the child progresses, their phonology (speech sounds) improves as well as their vocabulary, grammar, etc. Thus, your brother may be imitating the sounds he hears as best he can within his level of language development.


Can electromagnetic fields be used to stimulate areas of the brain? Recently I've come across an article from a questionable source called 10 Things An Electromagnetic Field Can Do To Your Brain.

There are a lot of hints in this article that the writer doesn't have a strong understanding of what they are talking about, i.e. referring to electromagnetic waves as being 'high' and 'medium'. They could be high energy, high frequency, but not 'high'.

Regardless of the accuracy or technical mistakes of the writer, I would like to know if there is a lot of truth to this article. The article suggests that areas of the brain were targeted and stimulated with electromagnetic waves.

I know about TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) devices which stimulate the brain via magnetic fields and tDCS which stimulate the brain via electric current, but I have never heard of any tEMS (transcranial Electro-Magnetic Stimulation) devices. Do they exist?

I've done some searches, but have only come up with results to the more common TMS device.

Maybe this is not what you expected, but since you mentioned electro-magnetic stimulation, I'd like to mention optogentics, where light (electro-magnetic waves) are used to

  control cells in living tissue, typically neurons, that have been genetically modified to express light-sensitive ion channels.


Applications of computational learning theory in the cognitive sciences Computational learning theory (CoLT) is a branch of theoretical computer science associated with the mathematical analysis of machine learning. A lot of the early ideas of the field take inspiration from human learning. The field has developed into a very rigorous, mathematical, and precise science, but I have not seen it used much in the cognitive sciences directly. There is some indirect use through CoLT's interaction with statistics and machine learning algorithms (say, analyzing neural networks through VC-dimension).
Are there examples of rigorous uses/applications of CoLT to build theories in psychology, neuroscience, and/or cognitive science?

Notes:
The only two examples I am familiar with are:

Gold's theorem on the unlearnability in the limit of certain sets of languages, among them context-free ones.

Ronald de Wolf's master's thesis on the impossibility to PAC-learn context-free languages.

The first made quiet a stir in the poverty-of-the-stimulus debate, and the second has been unnoticed by cognitive science.
I am interested in approaches of this flavor. I am relatively comfortable with CoLT as it is studied in mathematics, and am only interested (for this question) in approaches that have direct bearing on theories of human/animal cognition/learning, and not classic machine learning results. I am looking for general mathematical and asymptotic approaches, not the running of specific types of algorithms (be it neural-nets, bayesian, or otherwise) to simulate human performance as is typical in computational modeling in cogsci (which I am relatively familiar with).
I am not interested in arguments that try to trivially undercut the whole approach, even if they have empirical validity. For instance, the whole approach can be derailed by asserting that human brains are finite and thus asymptotic arguments are useless. This is the same as arguing that all of computational complexity theory is pointless because computers (and the whole universe, for that matter) are finite. It is a valid empirical argument, but boring from the point of view of theory building.
Related questions:

General mathematical frameworks of language acquisition since Gold on ling.SE
What is the complexity class most closely associated with what the human mind can accomplish quickly? on cstheory.SE

Related to this is several works on the integration or non-integration of computational models in general to cognitive science.  For instance, the Tractable Cognition Thesis basically says that we can improve cognitive modeling if we limit cognitive models to those tractably implementable on a Turing machine.

Van Rooij, I.  2008.  The Tractable Cognition Thesis.  Cognitive Science 32:939-984.  http://staff.science.uva.nl/~szymanik/papers/TractableCognition.pdf

Personally, I disagree with the Tractable Cognition Thesis, and think, similar to Copeland, that a better model would be of an Oracle machine:

Copeland, J.  1998.  Turing's O-Machines, Searle, Penrose, and the Brain.  Analysis 58(2):128-138.

My own work goes ahead in this regard, and proposes how O-machines can be specifically integrated into cognitive psychology.  I give a presentation on it here and the proceedings will be published next year, but message me and I can provide a draft copy if you would like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chQvZrkznbg&feature=plcp


How does the brain read rotated text? Suppose a human ran across a letter written at a 45 degree angle. How does the brain read this text?

Most people don't often see text written at an angle, so it seems safe to assume that the brain has to do some extra work to recognize the text.

My guess is the following:

Brain tries to read it normally.
Brain figures something is wrong because the letter is not a good match to known letters.
Brain tries to "fix" the image by mentally rotating it, flipping it, etc., and feeds to "fixed" image back into V2 area of the cortex.
Once the brain finds something that appears to be a letter, the brain stops.

Note that the letter above is pretty ambiguous. It could be a partial 5 written normally, it could be an S rotated counter-clockwise, or it could be an n rotated clock-wise.

Well for one, the first neurons to decode this symbol are orientation neurons, in V1 of the primary visual cortex. So some neurons have enhanced firing for say a 45 degree angle, and neighboring neurons for a 46 degree angle, and so on. Higher up the processing stream groups of neurons respond to shapes, that are a conglomerate of the orientation lines. Then higher order visual cortices will process the seen image, as well as feeding back to the original orientation neurons, fine tuning their processing.

Here's an example though of something our brains can encode, albeit taking a bit longer because it is out of the ordinary to see it this way. When we see faces, there is an area in the temporal lobe called the fusiform face area (a higher order visual processing area) that becomes particularly active. In EEG recordings, there is a negative component of the event related potential (ERP), the N1. When viewing faces compared to other objects, this N1 component (at 100ms) becomes enhanced in amplitude (more negative) as well as latency. So it has been termed the N170, for occurring later in time at 170ms. When viewing INVERTED faces, this effect becomes even stronger. It has been hypothesized that this is due to the fact that we process faces in a holistic manner, so that when it is inverted, there is a 'lag' in processing speed to figure out this is a face. This has been attributed to a delay in the fusiform face area.

I realize this is not reading, but I think it touches on the concept you're asking about. Our brains are incredibly good at pattern recognition, at filling in the blanks, and decoding reality presented to us from our senses. So I would say yes, there would be a bit of 'extra' work in deciphering the text at an angle. And mind you, we see slanted text all the time, we don't always have our heads and eyes straight ahead! But also, it is strongly context dependent. If other digits or numbers were in combination with this image, we would either see a 5 or S, respectively. It would be a terrible evolutionary adaptation if we couldn't read or process images that were not ideal. A certain amount of interpretation or assumption goes in to perception. That's what is referred to as top-down processing.


How can I recognize if a person is good subject for hypnosis? Which behavior/personality traits should I look for?

Despite quite of lot of research looking for personality correlates of hypnotisability no very clear links have been found. There is evidence of weak associations between hypnotisability and absorption (the capacity to direct a great deal of attention to a narrow range of stimuli, such as getting caught up in film or book) and also of associations between hypnotisability and fantasy-proneness (the tendency to engage in imaginative activity) - but neither of these characteristics has much practical predictive value.

Instead, in scientific hypnosis, rather than using indirect personality measure to identify hypnotisable participants, researchers use measures specifically designed to measure hypnotisability. The most common measures are the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotisability and the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale. Both of these are behavioural measures that consist of an induction followed series of simple hypnotic suggestions (e.g., your arm will heavy). Following the suggestions participants are scored as passing or failing each suggestion based on whether they meet a specific criteria (i.e., did they drop their arm more than 6 inches). The more items they pass, the higher their hypnotisability.

So in summary: personality cannot reliably predict hypnotisability. To tell if someone is susceptible, the best way is to see how they respond to hypnotic items.


Toulouse-Lautrec Syndrome According to HealthLine, Toulouse-Lautrec Syndrome, known clinically as Pycnodysostosis (PYCD) can cause

difficulty with mental processes, though intelligence is not usually affected

GARD also list that it causes cognitive impairment within the heading symptoms.

How does the disease, known to cause bone deformities, also cause cognitive impairment, and what kind of cognitive impairment does it cause?
I have Googled Toulouse-Lautrec Syndrome cognitive impairments and Pycnodysostosis cognitive impairments with no results I have seen other than a case report (Girbal, et al. 2013) which states that in most cases cognitive development is normal.
References
Girbal, I., Nunes, T., Medeira, A., & Bandeira, T. (2013). Pycnodysostosis with novel gene mutation and severe obstructive sleep apnoea: management of a complex case. BMJ case reports, 2013, bcr2013200590. doi: 10.1136/bcr-2013-200590 pmcid: PMC3794180

Since pycnodysostosis is caused by mutations that cause deficiency in Cathepsin K, it makes sense to look at animal models for the latter; there's a fairly recent study Dauth, 2011...

Cathepsin K deficiency in mice induces structural and metabolic changes in the central nervous system that are associated with learning and memory deficits. [...]
Cathepsin K is a mammalian cysteine peptidase that is sorted to endo-lysosomes and secreted into the extracellular space by certain cell types [1]. It is abundant in osteoclasts and has a prominent role in bone remodeling due to its collagenolytic activity [2]. Indeed, cathepsin K deficiency has been linked to bone disorders such as pycnodysostosis and osteopetrosis [3,4], while the excessive activity of this enzyme may lead to osteoporosis [5], making it a likely target for rational drug design [6-8].
[...]
Interestingly, pycnodysostosis patients suffering from lifelong absence of cathepsin K activity have been occasionally reported to exhibit, in addition to the abnormalities in bone development, alterations in the CNS such as hyperplasia of the pituitary, demyelination of the cerebrum, and imbalances between brain growth, vascular supply, and cerebrospinal fluid pressure, with complications including sensorineural deafness and frontal porencephalic cysts. [66]

Unfortunately the trail gets pretty difficult from there because the paper cited for the last para, while mentioning "mental retardation" as known symptom, block-cites some 5 papers for that; I checked out one of them (in JAMA) but that one doesn't mention anything mental, so... who knows which of the other case reports might have some cognitive details, if any.
I guess the incidence of cognitive issues might depend on the specific mutation, since GARD says that only 5-29% of PSYD actually have these cognitive abnormalities.
Research on animal models of some genetic diseases usually starts with a substantial mutation, i.e. something that's nearly sure to cause the desired disease effect. Later on milder variants are studies. (For example see how the animal models of Huntington's advanced) With pycnodysostosis, at least as far neuronal/behavioral effects go, it seems we're at the fist stage (i.e. they published the publishable "sure thing").
The highly cited paper of Gelb, 1996, which catalogued the (few) known mutations for pycnodysostosis alas does not correlate them with symptoms beyond the mere diagnosis of pycnodysostosis. In fact, this paper doesn't even mention any mental/cognitive effects in the patients studied... which were alas only two or three families.


What causes laughter? I was looking at this video from VSauce: "Why did the chicken cross the road?", where several facts about this old joke are exposed and explained.

At some point, (6:59) Michael explains that there is a theory, based on the paper Computer Model of a "Sense of Humour" by I. M. Suslov, that says that laughter is the result of the released energy on the pre-judgement one makes about the result of the joke.

Still, this theory does not account for factors like being under the influence of drugs (on which it is generally easier to laugh at things), situations like tickling or other forced laughters like laughter gas itself.

So, which is the currently, widely accepted theory that explains what causes laughter?

The majority of researchers believe it has to do with relief to the flight or fight system and related to human bonding.

For example, we hear the phrase "laughter is contagious". That's because we want to let others know we have good feelings towards them and would like to connect at some level but in a quick and non-direct way.

However, for situations where the joke may be "dangerous", Suslov's theory is better understood. I have also personally witnessed it many times. This kind of laughter follows the familiar model: "Oh no, I hope he doesn't say something that pokes fun or embarrasses me in this social setting". Next, you hear the joke and realizing it doesn't embarrass you (too much) the relief and release of energy transmutes into a laugh.

Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter#Causes

Reference:
How Laughter Works:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/inside-the-mind/emotions/laughter.htm


Are brain sub-divisions based off embryonic development used when describing mature brains? Are the terms for brain divisions based off of embryonic development (e.g. prosencephalon, diencephalon) used for mature brain divisions? (e.g. forebrain, interbrain). For example, would it be wrong to say that the cortex of an adult human a part of their "prosencephalon"/"telencephalon"? I've seen texts refer to the "telencephalon" of an adult brain, though it has mostly been in a developmental context--and from my experience I haven't seen it explicitly stated when to use either term so I'm not fully sure if they're synonymous.

From my point of view, the terminology regarding the early three vesicles prosencephalon,  (forebrain), mesencephalon (midbrain), and rhombencephalon (hindbrain) as well as the later developmental structures arising from these structures, namely telencephalon, diencephalon, mesencephalon, metencephalon, and the myelencephalon are mainly of use when discussing embryonic development. Alternatively it can be sensible to group various brain structures according to embryonic origin when discussing, e.g., infants with developmental brain disorders, with the origin very early in development. In this case the congregate of brain structures arising from an early embryonic vesicle may be affected.

I have seen authors swinging around these anatomical terms outside the context of development and quite frankly, it often doesn't make sense and only complicates matters as one has to trace back the structures arising from it later in life. Not being an anatomist, my humble opinion would be, wherever possible, to avoid these terms.


Does practicing Ravens Progressive Matrices tests inflate your IQ score? I'm 16 years old and a year ago I got obsessed about IQ. I took a Raven IQ test and scored 115. Then during the autumn and winter of last year I took some more IQ tests using RPM and scored 126 on almost all of them. I took the Raven IQ test again in January of this year. I scored 126 on it. I wasn't convinced. So I researched the most accurate online IQ test and found the Norwegian Mensa Practice test took it and scored 128. A couple months after that I took the Mensa Denmark practice test formerly known as iqtest.dk. I scored IQ 121 on it.

Is it because I took so many Raven IQ tests my score is so high? Does that mean that my IQ isn't in the 120's? Where would you put my Non-Verbal/Spatial IQ? Also I'm planning to take the WAIS next year and don't know what to do. I want my scores to be 100% true and not at all inflated. Would this affect it? And if so how can I change that?

Edit: Just wanted to add that I didn't get feedback on the correct answers.

Yes, practice even as simple retest improves scores in matrices-like tests:

  Raven’s APM scores increase significantly on repeated testing without any targeted training (e.g., Bors & Vigneau, 2003; Bors & Forrin, 1995; Denney & Heidrich, 1990).

  Bors DA, Vigneau F. The effect of practice on Raven’s advanced progressive matrices. Learning and Individual Differences. 2003;13(4):291–312.
  Bors DA, Forrin B. Age, speed of information processing, recall, and fluid intelligence. Intelligence. 1995;20(3):229–248.
  Denney NW, Heidrich SM, Training effects on Raven's progressive matrices in young, middle-aged, and elderly adults. Psychol Aging. 1990 Mar; 5(1):144-5.

I'm not surprised by this finding because the number of conceptually different problems in such matrices tests is limited. They questions are all basically variations on a few base patterns. The latter part is claim from memory, but I've read it somewhere besides my own observation; let me find where. (Also, I should try to quantify the improvement retest gives.)

I couldn't find the original place where I've read about the structure of Raven's, but I found newer research that found improvement in restest in particular problem types:

The (small) sample here was of 13-year olds... so this should be pretty relevant to your age. On the other hand, I'm not sure how much the finding extends (quantitatively) to adults.

Some researchers went as far as explaining the Flynn effect by this kind of better rule-based inference underlying retest improvement in Raven's:

  We present a new model of the Flynn effect. It is proposed that Flynn effect gains are partly a function of the
  degree to which a test is dependent on rules or heuristics. This means that testees can become better at solving
  ‘rule-dependent’ problems over time in response to changing environments, which lead to the improvement
  of lower-order cognitive processes (such as implicit learning and aspects of working memory). These in
  turn lead to apparent IQ gains that are partially independent of general intelligence. We argue that the Flynn effect
  is directly analogous to IQ gains via retesting, noting that Raven's Progressive Matrices is particularly sensitive
  to both the effects of retesting and the Flynn effect.

And a bit more from the paper itself:

  The biggest Flynn effect gains have been recorded on tests of fluid intelligence,
  in particular the Raven's Progressive Matrices (five-seven
  points per decade; Flynn, 1987, 2007, 2009). The smallest gains typically
  occur on measures of crystallized knowledge (Jensen, 1998a). It must
  be noted that not all measures of IQ show long-term gains. For example,
  purely psychophysical elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs), such as inspection
  and reaction times, show no Flynn effect (Nettlebeck &
  Wilson, 2004; Silverman, 2010). [...]

  Studies by Verguts et al. (1999) and Verguts and De Boeck (2002)
  [...] have found
  that in experiments, participants do repeatedly reapply a small number
  of rules when attempting to solve RPM-type items. The rule induction
  process seems to be characterized by the sequential sampling of rules,
  each of which have a certain probably of being resampled (Verguts
  et al., 1999). Furthermore, the speed with which individuals are able
  to sample and induce rules is strongly related to prior task exposure
  (Verguts & De Boeck, 2002).
  These studies indicate that narrower abilities matter in solving
  RPM items, and that furthermore, reliance upon these narrow abilities
  increases with increasing test experience. This is consistent
  with the phenomenology of both retesting and Flynn effects [...]

  Verguts, T., De Boeck, P, & Maris, E. (1999). Generation speed in Raven's Progressive Matrices
  Test. Intelligence, 27, 329–345.
  Verguts, T., & De Boeck, P. (2002). The induction of solution rules in Raven's Progressive
  Matrices Test. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 14, 521–547.

I'm guessing I've read one the Verguts' papers, or at least something else citing their results (in the past).


Validity of regression therapy and degree of acceptance of the subject within the psychology community I had a debate with my friend on regression therapy as he feels it is an accepted method to discover a person's past life & his memories. I find it completely unacceptable to my sense.

What studies have been done regarding the effectiveness of regression therapy and to what degree is this practice accepted by mainstream clinicians?

I can agree regression therapy on to get to forgotten, ignored or repressed experiences that are bothering people and helping them to overcome their problems which similar to memory therapy. But I cannot understand the logic of extracting past life experiences and past life memory. It is totally indigestible that psychologists (specially in India) believe in these practices.  Or is that a few of psychologists are misusing the profession for monetary gains.

There is an article on Wikipedia discussing past life regression.

A general scientific explanation of beliefs about past lives is that:

  the memories are the result of
  cryptomnesia, narratives created by the subconscious mind using
  imagination, forgotten information and suggestions from the
  therapist.[1][2][3][15][16][17][18] Memories created under hypnosis
  are indistinguishable from actual memories and can be more vivid than
  factual memories.[2][19] The greatest predictor of individuals
  reporting memories of past lives appears to be their beliefs about the
  existence in reincarnation - individuals who believe in reincarnation
  are more likely to report such memories, while sceptics or
  disbelievers are less so.[1][5]

The study discussed in Spanos (1996) sounds particularly relevant to understanding the nature of such past life beliefs. To continue quoting the Wikpedia article:

  Spanos' research leads him to the conclusion that past lives are not
  memories, but actually social constructions based on patients acting
  "as if" they were someone else, but with significant flaws that would
  not be expected of actual memories. To create these memories, Spanos'
  subjects drew upon the expectations established by authority figures
  and information outside of the experiment such as television, novels,
  life experiences and their own desires.

Thus, past life regression therapy is invalid in the sense that patients are not actually recalling past lives.  Nonetheless, there still remains a question of whether it offers therapeutic benefits. Meaning,  purpose, and self-esteem are all important human needs. For therapists and patients who believe in past lives,  fleshing out past lives could potentially help to fulfil such needs. That said, I don't know of any scientific studies that have evaluated such therapy. Such therapy also raises a number of ethical issues in terms of fostering illusions in the client.

References

Spanos NP (1996). Multiple Identities & False Memories: A Sociocognitive Perspective. American Psychological Association (APA). pp. 135–40. ISBN 1-55798-340-2.


Advancement to Likert Scale Likert Scale has been widely in use for more than 80 years (it was published in 1932). However, the limitations of it are well-known:

The space between each choice is possibly not equidistant.
People keep endorsing the mid-point of the scale and avoid choosing the “extremes" options on the scale, even if an extreme choice would be the most accurate.
Attitudes of the population for one particular item in reality exist on a vast, multi-dimensional continuum. However, the Likert Scale is uni-dimensional and only gives 5-7 options of choice
Peoples’ answers will be influenced by previous questions

What is the latest development in Psychometrics? Is there any budding and promising replacement or advancement for Likert Scale?

The visual analogue scale (VAS) has been used in some research. For a direct comparison in one study, see Vickers who compared VAS vs. 7-point Likert.

It's interesting that Vicker found a similar effect to that found in a highly cited paper by Dawes on 5/7-point Likert vs 10-point Likert, namely that more points on the scale result in a lower average score... despite the fact that the stuff measured in these two studies was completely different: muscle soreness and respectively customer satisfaction. Well, the probability of this coincidence is 50%, but I couldn't find any meta-analysis of this type of study.

One additional issue with Likert (and other ordinal) scales is that some researchers use the wrong statistics on it, like those assuming normal distribution, c.f. Bishop and Herron, who also discuss some finer points.

Refs (spelled out):

AJ Vickers, Comparison of an ordinal and a continuous outcome measure of muscle soreness,  Int J Technology Assess Health Care. 1999;15(04):709–716
J Dawes, "Do data characteristics change according to the number of scale points used? An experiment using 5-point, 7-point and 10-point scales", Int J Market Res. 2008;51(1)
PA Bishop and RL Herron, Use and Misuse of the Likert Item Responses and Other Ordinal Measures, Int J Exerc Sci. 2015; 8(3): 297–302.


What are your thoughts on Accelerated Resolution Therapy? Recently I came into contact with my aunt, and it seems she has been doing very well. She has been developing a therapy technique that, she claims, helps resolves psychological problems from trauma, child abuse, domestic abuse, et cetera. She calls it Accelerated Resolution Therapy.

The essential thesis of her technique is that the problems caused trauma are being dealt with incorrectly. Therapists often try to help a patient deal with the facts of the situation. They help them understand what happened, why it happened, and why what happened should not impair their life. Unfortunately, therapy can often be slow in progress and some people never fully recover from a traumatic event. My aunt's therapy technique essentially discards the old method of dealing with facts and, instead, deals with memories and pictures. Coming to terms with facts, from a rational and conscious perspective, is usually achievable. But, for my aunt, the problem aren't the facts but the images revolving around those facts. Even when a person comes to understand their trauma, they still will suffer from depression, anxiety, and other psychological problems.

What she essentially does is encourage the patient to change the images to more positive, or, at the very least, into neutral memories. She does encourage them to change their knowledge on the matter; but, rather, she simply changes the physical memory into something less traumatic. The patient will still understand that they were wronged and hurt, but the image of the pain will be removed.

Usually I'm very skeptical with new therapy techniques and any practice that claims to solve problems within 2 or 3 sessions, but it honestly makes a lot of sense. It reminds me of ghost limbs and mirror therapy, and how placing a mirror next to a limb, in tact, will help a patient be relieved of his pain. He understands, clear as day, that he is missing a limb, but the physical image of having two limbs and seeing the limbs move removes many of the psychological problems associated with ghost limbs.

She has had peer reviewed studies and is encouraging training. So, what do you all think? Does it sound like it has potential, or is it just snakeskin oil?

Here is one study showing that patients experience relief from their symptoms within 1-5 sessions.

And another study.
Another study.
And another.

My concern is that there are many therapies being broadly promoted without sufficient evidence of effectiveness and this one is calling itself 'evidence-based". I worry that time and resources are being invested and that clients are being promised amazing, if not unbelievable, benefits. Clients may not be sophisticated consumers and I would hate for them to be misled by such inflated claims. I believe that we have a duty to be skeptical before jumping on board the 'next best thing' bandwagon. After all, much harm has been done in the past by advocates of sham therapies (think 'the schizophrenogenic' mother and Bateson's 'double bind' theory of schizophrenia and therapies endorsed by Jay Haley et al).

Taken directly from the ART website:

"Accelerated Resolution Therapy  is a form of psychotherapy with roots in existing evidence-based therapies but shown to achieve benefits much more rapidly (usually within 1-5 sessions). Clients with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse, sexual abuse and many other mental and physical conditions can experience remarkable benefits starting in the first session."

It is surprising to me that this treatment - 'Accelerated Resolution Therapy' (ART) would even be recognized by SAMHSA [https://nrepp.samhsa.gov/ProgramProfile.aspx?id=7#hide4] as an evidence-based treatment. The data on ART is limited to 1 small sample RCT in which ART was compared to an attentional placebo, not a credible alternative treatment. Standards promulgated by APA Divison 12 based on Chambless and Hollon (1998, p.8) require at least two well controlled studies be conducted- (one ideally independent of the original investigators)

"As is the case in research in general, replication is critical,
particularly replication by an independent investigatory team.
The requirement of replication helps to protect the field from
drawing erroneous conclusions based on one aberrant finding.
Replication by an independent team of investigators also provides
some protection against investigator bias or reliance on
findings that prove unique to a particular setting or group of
therapists. Thus, only when a treatment has been found efficacious
in at least two studies by independent research teams do
we consider its efficacy to have been established and label it
an efficacious treatment [highlighting added]. If there is only one study supporting
a treatment's efficacy, or if all of the research has been conducted
by one team, we consider the findings promising but
would label such treatments as possibly efficacious, pending
replication." (p.8)

As noted in the single RCT manuscript (Kip et al., 2013) itself:

"A limitation is that the ART intervention was not compared to an active psychotherapy regimen, such as PE. Thus, no direct comparison of treatment efficacy of ART versus current firstline treatments (PE, CPT, and EMDR) can be made. Second, by design, the AC group was not parallel in contact hours to the ART intervention. " (p.1307)

This is pretty limited evidence on which to promote a new treatment. It was also surprising to me that:

the 'intervention' itself  can be delivered delivered in as little as 2-5 60-75 minute sessions [as little as 120 minutes of an active intervention!]; and
the training and supervision of clinicians was limited as follows: "Clinicians were trained in ART over 2 days using the ART manual and supervised practice."

It is even more baffling that this intervention could be so highly effective with complex clients who have PTSD and multiple comorbid disorders. Here's what the ART website says:

Clients with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse, sexual abuse and many other mental and physical conditions can experience remarkable benefits starting in the first session. (highlighting added)

"In ART, the eye movements are thought to be conducive to sorting out problems quickly through increasing the integration of activities in the left and right sides of the brain. These movements also seem to help the client process information by producing a deep feeling of relaxation. Yet ART is not hypnosis. and

Importantly, clients do not even have talk about their traumas or difficult life experiences with the therapist to achieve recovery.

[downloaded from http://acceleratedresolutiontherapy.com/.]

Does this seem like a reasonable explanation of a therapeutic mechanism to you?

Given the fact that this was a small sample RCT compared against a non-credible attentional placebo, how do we know that these findings are not simply the result of positive investigator/clinician expectancies and essentially a placebo effect unrelated to any of the hypothesized mechanisms of treatment?

It is so attractive to belief that there are fast, easy and extremely effective treatments that require virtually no training or supervision vs. well-established treatments that are so difficult to master and deliver with fidelity and require intensive training and supervision [in the VA, clinicians might achieve competency in CBT if they complete a 3 day workshop combined with at least six months of weekly 90 minute supervision sessions on cases  with bi-weekly submissions of tapes rated on the CTS.].

I did find the material on the ART website rather disturbing in terms of inflated claims of efficacy with testimonials from individuals to the effect that 1 hour of ART fully resolved their longstanding complex psychological problems when no previous therapies had been effective. If I made these types of claims on my website I would be in violation of the APA ethics code.

I do have a personal 'iron in the fire' in the sense that I devote a lot of my time to training and supervising clinicians in CBT and it is a difficult , resource intensive and time consuming process to achieve competency as a CBT clinician, let alone to be able to treat highly complex patients with co-occurring illness. In my own daily therapy practice I try to adhere closely to good CBT practices and I strive to improve my efforts with results that periodically fall short of my high expectations.

I look forward to seeing additional data on ART and it would be absolutely wonderful if additional studies-- controlled trials where ART is compared to a credible alternative therapy (CPT or PE) confirm these initial findings-- because this would be wonderful for patients.

In the meantime, I worry that we are investing our time chasing mirages instead of investing in and delivering established effective evidence-based treatments to our patients.


Scientific way to prove you are ambidextrous, right handed or left handed? I grew up in a country where my grandmother's generation used to believe that left handed were related with the Devil, so I know many friends that have been "corrected" when kids and now they are right handed.

Is there a scientific way to find out if you are in truth right handed or if you were corrected?

Assuming you were originally left handed but you were grown as right handed, does that makes you a non-natural ambidextrous?

I don't know whether the following has been used to distinguish natural from "corrected" right handers, but following up on the suggestion from @user3169, the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory contains a range of handedness tasks, many of which would probably not be as explicitly trained as writing or eating, and which thus potentially could be used in distinguishing natural from corrected right handers.

There is an online version of the inventory here.


Why does anger "cloud the mind"? There are a lot of anecdotes on frustration and anger inhibiting judgement and problem solving. Examples include "anger clouding the mind" in pop culture, or in programming, where a rule of thumb is to walk away from your computer when you're stuck on a problem for more than 20 minutes.

I'd like to know the physiological reason why the more frustrated or angry a person gets while trying to solve a problem, the less likely the problem gets solved?

It is a biological/chemical response. Once in a stressful situation, you're not supposed to act smart or able to solve a rubik cube, but punch whatever is getting you angry and/or getting the hell out of the place.
The adrenaline, and other stuff, discharge are responsible for
increased blood pressure, heart rate and what-not (Nordqvist, 2013):

Anger is not just a mental state of mind. It triggers an increase in heart rate, blood pressure and levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline. Anger has survival benefits, and forms part of our fight or flight brain response to a perceived threat or harm.
When a human or animal decides to take action to stop or confront a threat, anger usually becomes the predominant feeling and takes over our behavior, cognition and physiology.

Actually, we do get more acute cognitive abilities... though at the expense of others :

The brain shunts blood away from the gut and towards the muscles, in preparation for physical exertion. Heart rate, blood pressure and respiration increase, the body temperature rises and the skin perspires. The mind is sharpened and focused.

Blood is shifted AWAY from the frontal cortex, responsible for nice thoughts (Hanscom, 2014):

When the real or perceived threat persists we feel or are trapped. This, of course, leads to frustration and anger, which causes adrenaline levels to really skyrocket. The result is that your blood supply is shifted largely to the skeletal muscles, which enables you to flee danger. Other effects include:
Decreased blood flow to your brain – especially to the frontal cortex where most thinking occurs.

Spektor, Treister, et al (2011) states in their study that observing anger in others increases analytical problem solving whilst hindering creative problem solving (not really related):

Studies 1 and 2 supported two of our predictions: Observing
another person’s anger influenced observers’ thinking processes,
and the way anger is expressed shaped this effect. Observing anger
hindered the solving of creative problems and enhanced the solv-
ing of analytic problems.


How do you refer to something in APA-style that is not submitted to be published? I'm writing a paper in APA-style. At the end of it, I have my references. There is this one paper (actually an internship report) that I refer to, but it hasn't been submitted for publication. How should I write this down?

Usually citations of gray literature should be avoided. If, however, it is necessary, the APA suggests to provide as much information as possible (see, for instance, the APA style blog). For specific style suggestions, see, for instance, a library handout summarizing the APA guides on gray literature.


Proportion of cortex dedicated for vision and hearing I have read in some websites that the percentage of the cortex devoted to processing visual information is from 30-66% with some claiming even 90%. And compared to that, only about 3% is dedicated to hearing.

Is this true?

The only source I've found stating something similar is from Sells & Fixott (1957) where 50% of the
neural tissue is devoted to vision and almost two-thirds of the
electrical activity of the brain is devoted to vision when the eyes are open.

I haven't found anything related to hearing though. Does anyone know of a paper where this is discussed?

References

Sells, S.B. & Fixott, R. S. (1957). Evaluation of Research on Effects of Visual Training on Visual Functions. American Journal of Ophthalmology 44(2), 230—236DOI: 10.1016/0002-9394(57)90012-0

20-30% vision. See Sheth & Young (2016) which cites Van Essen (2003).
27% vision, 8% auditory (Van Essen, 2003)
I have seen some earlier references that say 50%. I think this derives from two factors. First, it is 50% in Macaque (see above ref 1).  Second, my feeling (I haven't dug into this in enough detail to conclusively state it, so please don't quote me on this!) is that earlier studies on humans were more speculative and tended to follow that 50% as a best guess in absence of direct measurements.
As some of the above answers point out, one needs to be careful in defining what part of the brain and what vision means.  If one were to include the subcortical structures (i.e., amygdala, superior colliculus, pulvina, LGN) the estimate of total brain (not just the cerebrum cortex) would be different.

Sheth, B. R., & Young, R. (2016). Two visual pathways in primates based on sampling of space: exploitation and exploration of visual information. Frontiers in integrative neuroscience, 10, 37.
Van Essen, D. C. (2003). Organization of visual areas in macaque and human cerebral cortex. The visual neurosciences, 1, 507-521.


What are some credible conferences and journals in computational neuroscience? I have a background in computer science, and I wish to introduce cognitive sciences to myself, particularly from a computational/mathematical perspective. My motivation for doing this artificial general intelligence research at a later stage.

So far I only know of a few conferences that accept papers in the area of computational neuroscience & machine learning, namely Cosyne, NIPS, ICML, and ICLR that accept papers in computational neuro. I guess that latter two (ICLR and ICML) accept papers which find some significance in ML. As for journals, I do not even know where to begin.

Adding to what was already mentioned, there are several "Frontiers" journals:

Frontiers in Neuroscience
Frontiers in Neural Circuits
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience

Then there are also several rather experimental journals that also sometimes publish computational papers, such as:

Elife
The Journal of Neuroscience
Neuron
European Journal of Neuroscience
PNAS (proceedings of the National Acadamy of Sciences)
Cerebral Cortex
Hippocampus

Another review journal would Annual Review of Neuroscience. I think Nature Neuroscience was also not mentioned yet but is very reputable. Some older (but classical) papers might even be in Physical Review Letters. Finally, there are many preprints to find on http://www.biorxiv.org/collection/neuroscience and https://arxiv.org/list/q-bio.NC/new.

I think it's worth mentioning that, as far as I know, conference papers are far less important in the field of Neuroscience than compared to Machine Learning.


What are the characteristics that make complex problem solving complex? In real-world problem-solving tasks that many people call "complex" (like flying a jet, programming, fixing a car, fighting a fire - the type investigated by the naturalistic decision making community) what are the key characteristics that separate problem solving in these types of tasks and problem solving in "toy" or "experiment" tasks where one or two stimuli are presented to participants?

What are the characteristics that make complex problem solving complex?

Are there levels of complexity that can capture the differences?

The complexity of the environment certainly is an issue. According to AI - A modern approach, the environment may be

observable / partly observable
deterministic / stochastic / strategic
episodic / sequential
static / dynamic
discrete / continuous
single agent / multiple agent

See also WikiDoc for a short overview.
In my oppinion, these criteria apply also to human problem
solving.

Another issue is the type of problem to be solved.
A measure for complexity may be the number of steps
that must be anticipated to solve the problem, e.g.
solving a chess endgame is more complex than solving
tic tac toe.


How is it possible for psychometricians to develop IQ tests for people smarter than them? After all, while psychometricians definitely have above-average IQs, they probably don't have IQs over, say, 160.

If psychometricians already know what the right answers are (and how to obtain the right answer), then wouldn't they score very high on the tests, even if they're not THAT smart? (making it possible for other people to score high on the tests if they studied psychometrics as well?) The format of the test isn't going to vary that much from administration to administration. Of course, the tests are timed, but it's entirely possible that the practice the psychometricians get from writing the tests could easily make them better at each of the subsets of an IQ test.

Short answer:
construct a usable chair out of toothpicks. Now, I certainly can't do this, but I can verify your answer easily enough

Long answer:
Verification of answers is often a lot easier than producing answers. And thats not just anecdotal, there are computational and psychological reasons behind this fact.

Computationally - complexity is different for solving a problem than for verifying it. For example the clad of NP problem cant (probably) be solved in poly time, but they can be verified in poly time.

Psychologically - think recall versus recognition. Recognition just involves your brain lighting up when it sees the right answer, whilst recall or production requires an extensive search at the very least

So the answer is that the test makers don't have produce the answers themselves, and certainly not under test conditions. They simply have to be able to see that the right answer is right (either produced via a group, a computer, or a genius).

Also, remember that no one question separates high IQs from low. Perhaps a 140IQ could answer one of the hardest questions, but not all of them.

Lastly, remember than IQ isn't a single dimension, perhaps the test was written by one expert in each dimension, which could then identify a genius in all dimensions


Does Computer science has any role to play in Cognitive science? Does Computer science(or computationalism) has any role to play in Cognitive science or Creativity studies?

Yes. Computer science is one of central disciplines of cognitive science. In fact, the dominant, central dogma of modern (i.e., the last 50 years) cognitive science is that cognition is computation. This SEP article elaborates on this thesis:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/

Even if you don't think that cognition is computation, you would still likely think that computer science is relevant to cognitive science insofar as CompSci is necessary for computational modeling of any phenomena. For example, some dynamical systems theorists would use computational, dynamical models of cognitive processes, even if they aren't claiming that the mind is computing differential or difference equations. (Just like we might use differential equations to model hurricanes, even if we maybe don't think the hurricane itself is computing the equations.)

I'm less sure of what is considered "creativity studies", exactly, but I can imagine that computer science would be relevant. For example, CS -- and linguistics -- is definitely interested in questions like "How are an infinite number of expressions created from finite means?" Different kinds of grammars -- like regular grammars vs context-free grammars -- have different 'creative' powers. Creativity here is more defined in purely formal terms, as opposed to perhaps the semantic/artistic terms that you may have in mind. But, I and many others would argue, formal creativity and semantic/artistic creativity are intimately related.


What is a good example of a psychological theory that became formalized into neural and computational terms? As far as I see it the goal of cognitive sciences is to find a description of mental processes in terms of neural computations that can be eventually formalized by a mathematical theory to generate accurate predictions. However, I was wondering whether we got to such a point in any area.

The first positive examples that came to my mind were vision and the Gestalt rules of perception or decision-making. But what about other processes?

Check out all of the videos in this playlist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrppe54fixc&list=PL1hKzFfV5qJlVTjD8XWzyiaHxBZZ7iWs9&index=3

The particular video I linked gives the example of the "Papez circuit".  Other interviewees mention other examples as well.


Is pacemaker action potential considered a calcium dependent or sodium/calcium dependent? Is a sinoatrial node action potential (AP) considered a Ca2+ dependent (No Na+) action potential?
I was under the understanding that Ca2+ dependent APs were present only in Purkinje and endocrine cells, while cardiac and skeletal myocytes elicited Na+/Ca2+ dependent APs. But I am not sure which category sinoatrial node APs fall under.

The initiation of SA node action potential is through slow Na+ channels (slow, inward depolarising current, note there are no fast Na channels. These pacemaker setting Na channels only act when it is VERY hyperpolarised, won't initiate otherwise). As the membrane potential rises, you get the additional opening of T-type calcium channels and then the opening of L-type calcium channels. These all add to the depolarisation until you reach the threshold potential where an AP can then fire. I think some K+ channels also close during this early depolarisation.

During the action potential rising phase (after threshold), it is primarily L-type Ca channels that are bringing Ca into the cell (the other channels close off a bit). As you reach the peak of the action potential, the L-type channels close and the K+ dawgs open, causing the repolarisation phase. Also note that the speed in which Ca2+ can move in through L-type channels is somewhat compromised compared to other channels, so it's slower and causes that slower up/rising phase (which is what you want in a pacemaker cell - check out the link for the shape of the SA node AP).

http://cvphysiology.com/Arrhythmias/A004.htm


Do bodily manifestations (e.g. jerking) and intense euphoric sensations (e.g. "heat", "electricity") always co-occur in spiritual experiences? After analyzing multiple reports of spiritual experiences, I've identified two general categories:

Bodily manifestations: shaking, jerking, trembling, contorting, etc. (see this related question for examples).
Intense euphoric emotions and sensations: "waves of electricity", "heat", "fire", as well as emotions such as love, peace, joy, etc. (see this related question for examples).

I know several testimonies in which both experiences (bodily manifestations and intense emotions) are reported to have happened concurrently, but I also know testimonies in which only intense emotions and sensations are reported (with no mention of bodily manifestations), and there are also many live recordings of individuals undergoing intense bodily manifestations externally, but we have no way to tell what kinds of emotions and sensations the individuals felt internally (if they felt anything at all).
In the context of spiritual experiences: are bodily manifestations and euphoric emotions and sensations independent phenomena (which may or may not co-occur), or are they inherently tied (and hence they always co-occur)?

An inherent problem with the line of investigation is that the exhibited behaviours are inconsistent with the claimed emotions.  In no other situation do the emotions of love, peace, ecstasy and euphoria result in the performance of behaviours such as glossolalia, collapsing, fainting, trembling, jerking, convulsing, contorting and shaking.  More likely causes of involuntary jerking, convulsing, contorting and shaking may include anxiety, seizure, and myoclonus. Given the incongruity and incompatibility of the emotions and behaviours, it may seem that they are entirely unrelated; however, it is possible that there is an antecedent cause of both. To assist with this analysis, the following mathematical notation is introduced:

Let R be the reporting of particular emotions (love, peace, ecstasy and euphoria).  Note, that the reported emotions may not be the actual emotions.
Let B be the performance of the behaviours (glossolalia, collapsing, fainting, trembling, jerking, convulsing, contorting and shaking).
Let C be the cause of R under certain conditions.
Let C be the cause of B under certain conditions.
Let A be the actual emotions (not necessarily the reported emotions R).

Analysis

If C always causes R and always causes B, then R and B will always co-occur.
If C causes B under certain conditions and C causes R under different conditions, then B and R will not necessarily co-occur.

Note: In this analysis, it is important to note that the reporting of emotions (R) is not the same as actually experiencing the emotions (A). For the reasons given above, it is asserted that the reported emotions (R) can not cause the behaviours (B), and by implication, the reported emotions (R) are never the same as the actual emotions being experienced (A). See dramaturgy and self-monitoring as a possible explanations of this.
In the answer to one of your earlier questions, eight strawman hypotheses were offered to explain the claimed emotions (R) and observed behaviours (B):

Unidentified invisible force.
Hysterical state induced by the leader
Hysterical state induced by the individual:
Conformance to the social norms
Functional Neurological Disorder (FND)
Paid actors
Hypnosis
Attention seeking

Of the eight hypotheses, six were excluded as being implausible, leaving only 4) Conformance to the social norms and 8) Attention seeking as being plausible explanations, which I will consider individually.
Conformance to the social norms:  In this case, the cause (C) is the desire to conform.  Whether C results in R and B would be governed by the social norms of the particular religious group.  It may be possible for one particular religious group to emphasise the reporting of emotions (R) and place less emphasis of the behaviours (B) (or vice versa), in which case, the answer to your question is “No”, that is, the observed behaviours and reported emotions do not necessarily co-occur.  However, in religious groups that emphasize both the reporting of emotions and the performance of the behaviours, then it is more than likely that both will co-occur.
Attention seeking:  In this case, the cause (C) is the desire to gain the attention of others.  Whether C results in R and B would be governed by whether the attention seeking individual assessed that either or both R and B are necessary to gain the desired attention. The attention seeking individual may be seeking the attention of only one person, a sub-group, or the entire religious group.  If the attention seeking individual is seeking the attention of the entire group, then the analysis is virtually identical to Conformance to the social norms analysed above.  If the attention seeking individual is seeking the attention of only one individual, then the attention seeking individual would assess whether B and/or R are necessary to gain the desired attention.  In this situation, it is not possible to say that R and B would always co-occur, however, if the interaction occurred in the confines of one of the relevant religious groups, then it seems more likely that the R and B would co-occur.
In conclusion, it is not necessary that the reported emotions (R) and observed behaviours (B) co-occur, however, it is likely in practice that they often do due to the social norms of the particular religious cults.


How does body temperature and oxygenation affect thinking ability? I'm interested if the brain works better when the temperature is higher than usual and the amount of oxygen in the air is a bit lower than in fresh mountain air.  This has been my personal experience.

Warmer temperature are shown to raise aggression level (Anderson, et al, 1995).  Citing this study, DeWall, 2009 found a similar correlation between words associated with high temperatures and hostile behavior.  This could be perceived as a threat to clear thinking.

Moss, 1996 shows oxygen administration increases memory. However, intermittent hypoxia on developing children led to adverse effects (both mental and physical), according to Bass, 2004.  Though, I must say, you can't really determine the oxygen content indoor vs. outdoors without sensors, even if you raise in elevation and who's to say what competing particulates there are between the two environments?

It's known that kinetic motion itself increases neurogenesis, mostly in studies with exercise, like this one.  There's been a lot of papers and laymen articles on the subject of exercise and neurogenesis lately.  The act of walking or climbing the mountain might contribute a lot to the subjective experience of thinking.