Modern treatments of Alan Turing's B-type neural networks In the cognitive sciences Alan Turing is best known for launching AI with his Computing machinery and intelligence (1950). However, this was not his first contribution to the cognitive sciences, in his unpublished 1948 technical report Intelligence Machinery he foresaw connectionism with his B-type neural networks.
The model is a recurrent neural network that is wired at random, and synchronized by a global clock. The neurons are two input $\mathrm{NAND}$-gates. The connections have one of two states: they either forward their signal perfectly ($0 \mapsto 0$ and $1 \mapsto 1$), or replace it by $1$ ($0 \mapsto 1$ and $1 \mapsto 1$). The learning algorithm adjusts the states of the connections.
Unfortunately, the director of the National Physical Laboratory rejected Turing's work and it was not published until significantly after Turing's death. The original manuscript, though predates Hebbian learning (1949) and Rosenblatt's perceptrons (1957; and they weren't as sophisticated, only doing feedforward as opposed to recurrent).
Was Turing's B-type neural networks are the earliest neural-like models of computations capable of learning?
Although by modern standard Turing's approach is dated, and has been supplanted by more realistic and general treatements (for instance ones that incorporate dynamic Hebbian updating on weighted connections without a need for central clock synchronization). When did the state of connectionism first surpasss Turing's B-type neural networks?  Is there modern treatments of B-type neural networks and their learning abilities?

Notes
I am interested in this mostly from the historic perspective, and not in how accurate Turing's model was under current interpertations. Although current knowledge would help answer when other models surpassed Turing's.

To my knowledge, with respect to the context of the question, the first neural-like model of computations capable of learning – or, for that matter, computational model of neural processing and learning – has been put forward in McCulloch/Pitts (1943), as is also acknowledged in some of the texts about Turing's unorganized machines (›A-/B-type neural networks‹). Turing does not refer to this paper in his 1948 report, however, constituting a central reference for Rosenblatt's perceptrons, the McCulloch/Pitts paper is also regularly ignored in historic accounts of connectionism.

Turing's original unorganized machines are generally recognized as having some limitations with regard to certain logical operations such as XOR (cf. e.g. Teuscher/Sanchez 2001). In this respect (which for brevity may just be called one of historical narrative) they are similar to the perceptron. Thus, it seems safe to assume that at least connectionism surpassed B-type unorganized machines when it was shown how to implement such functions (e.g. in the infamous Minsky/Papert 1969 – mind that this does not necessarily imply a general logical shortcoming of the original models).

The relatively few papers that have addressed the topic over the last 20 years have indeed expressed the observation that Turings unorganized machines have been largely neglected and thus constitute an interesting topic for more detailed analysis – but see Teuscher (2002) for a monograph on the subject.

• Boccato, L., Soares, E. S., Fernandes, M. M. L. P., Soriano, D. C., & Attux, R. (2011). Unorganized Machines: From Turing’s Ideas to Modern Connectionist Approaches. International Journal of Natural Computing Research, 2(4).

• Copeland, B. J., & Proudfoot, D. (1996). On Alan Turing's anticipation of connectionism. Synthese, 108(3), 361–377. doi: 10.1007/BF00413694

• Copeland, B. J., & Proudfoot, D. (1999). Alan Turing's Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science. Scientific American(280), 99–103.

• McCulloch, W. S., & Pitts, W. (1943). A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity. Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 5, 115–133.

• Minsky, M., & Papert, S. (1969). Perceptrons. An Introduction to Computational Geometry. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

• Teuscher, C. (2002). Turing’s Connectionism. An Investigation of Neural Network Architectures. London: Springer-Verlag.

• Teuscher, C., & Sanchez, E. (2001). A Revival of Turing’s Forgotten Connectionist Ideas: Exploring Unorganized Machines. In R. M. French & J. P. Sougné (Eds.), Connectionist Models of Learning, Development and Evolution (pp. 153–162): Springer London.

• Webster, C. S. (2012). Alan Turing’s unorganized machines and artificial neural networks: his remarkable early work and future possibilities. Evolutionary Intelligence, 5(1), 35-43. doi: 10.1007/s12065-011-0060-5


Word for person showing psychological projection Is there any single word for a person who shows more psychological projection (the defence mechanism of attribution of your own undesireable qualities to someone else) than a normal person? And is there a specific term for such condition?Wikipedia link
everydayhealth.com

Let me explain my question. A person showing extreme self importance is called a narcissist. So what do we call a person who shows extreme projections?

Projection is both normal (we all do it always) and (in excess) a symptom of many different psychological disorders.

There is no name for such a person, as that symptom never occurs in isolation.

It is not correct that extreme self-importance makes someone a narcissist. Again, extreme self-importance can be found in many different disorders, and narcissism has many additional symptoms.


What are the most used statistical methods in WM research besides (generalized) linear modeling? I mean, by cognitive psychologists. I skimmed over a few articles from Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience and Trends in Cognitive Science and concluded that ANOVAs and t-tests are mostly used (without effect sizes). I'm sure that there are more scientific journals of cognitive psychology than these two, and I guess, that there are also more advanced statistical tools than comparing groups. For example, in social psychology, structural equations modelling and mediation analysis are in fashion.

When asking this question, I had working memory in mind.
Common methods to measure working memory empirically are, among others: dual task paradigms, n-back tasks and composites of simple memory measures. The main statistical tools that are applied to these measures seem to be mainly ANOVAs, t-tests, and other variations on traditional linear modeling, but what are the alternatives?

What are the most used statistical methods in WM research besides (generalized) linear modeling?

It is difficult to overstate the extent to which analysis of variance-based linear modeling based for different groups dominates the cognitive sciences. A recent methodological review of the psychology literature suggesting that these analyses are used to test hypotheses in as much as 95% of studies (citation pending me recovering it). There are alternatives in working memory, but they often have more limited empirical support due to the dominance of the aforementioned analyses.

Hierarchical models

One alternative that doesn't veer too far from established practices is to use a hierarchical modeling approach, as you suggest. For example, Lee and Webb (2005) proposed a Bayesian hierarchical modeling of working memory which accounted for both individual differences and aggregated group data. The main benefit here is to take advantage of both individual- and group-level variability, but we ultimately end up with a linear model.

  Many evaluations of cognitive models rely on data that have been averaged or aggregated across all experimental subjects, and so fail to consider the possibility of important individual differences between subjects. Other evaluations are done at the single-subject level, and so fail to benefit from the reduction of noise that data averaging or aggregation potentially provides. To overcome these weaknesses, we have developed a general approach to modeling individual differences using families of cognitive models in which different groups of subjects are identified as having different psychological behavior. Separate models with separate parameterizations are applied to each group of subjects, and Bayesian model selection is used to determine the appropriate number of groups.

Topology

An emerging, but currently more niche approach is to use topology. Topology is making some exciting inroads in the psychological methodology literature (e.g., Butner et al., 2014), but so far has not managed to see substantial use in the empirical WM literature. However, there are a few early birds who've made some attempts to capture WM within a topological context, namely Glassman's work on a "theory of relativity" for working memory (Glassman, 1999; Glassman, 2003).

In the succeeding excerpt, he explains why human verbal memory capacity is 3-4 items from a topological perspective:

  Thus,
  a moment’s WM is hypothesized here to reside in myriad activated cortical planar “patches,” each subdivided into up to four amoeboid “subpatches.” Two different lines of topological reasoning suggest orderly associations of such representations. (1) The four-color principle of map topology, and the related K4 is planar theorem of graph theory, imply that if a small cortical area is dynamically subdivided into no more than four, discretely bounded planar subareas, then each such segment has ample free access to each of the others. (2) A hypothetical alternative to such associative adjacency of simultaneously active cortical representations of chunk-attributes is associative overlap, whereby, in dense cortical neuropil, activated subpatches behave like Venn diagrams of intersecting sets. As the number of Venn-like coactive subpatches
  within a patch increases, maintaining ad hoc associativity among all combinations requires exponentially proliferating intersections. Beyond four, serpentine subpatch shapes are required, which could easily lead to pathologies of omission or commission.

Others

I am tangentially aware of related attempts to develop a theory of (working) memory as a form of foraging behavior, but not sufficiently to give a summary of it. Hopefully, the link is instructive.

References

Butner, J. E., Gagnon, K. T., Geuss, M. N., Lessard, D. A., & Story, T. N. (2014). Utilizing Topology to Generate and Test Theories of Change. Psychological methods.
Lee, M. D., & Webb, M. R. (2005). Modeling individual differences in cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(4), 605–621. doi:10.3758/BF03196751
Glassman, R. B. (1999). A working memory “theory of relativity”: elasticity in temporal, spatial, and modality dimensions conserves item capacity in radial maze, verbal tasks, and other cognition. Brain Research Bulletin, 48(5), 475–489. doi:10.1016/S0361-9230(99)00026-X
Glassman, R. B. (2003). Topology and graph theory applied to cortical anatomy may help explain working memory capacity for three or four simultaneous items. Brain Research Bulletin, 60(1-2), 25–42. doi:10.1016/S0361-9230(03)00030-3


Is there a central collection of information about the often called right brain phenomena? There are mental states that some have termed right brain e.g. "Drawing on the right side of the brain" but which may be incorrectly described.

Is there a site that specializes in information on mental states called "right side"?

The chapter on Hemispheric Specialization from Cognitive Neuroscience (Gazzaniga) is a good place to start, and I am reviewing some of it here:

In general, right side / left side  thinking has been abandoned for a systems view of cognition where both sides contribute to a given task but maintain certain specializations due to how the brain interacts with the environment as it develops, ( we still don't have all the facts though).

For instance, 96% of humans have a left-hemisphere specialization for language and speech ( processing spoken input into words and linking to meaning), yet the right hemisphere is linked to prosody as well and both report to frontal areas (where  higher associational meaning and/or task specific operations are performed so here again it could be left or right), so when hearing a conversation you are most likely using both an projecting to one or both sides of other parts of the brain depending on context,task, motivation etc, and shifting operations dynamically.

The inverse can also happen, the right hemisphere is traditionally attached to artistic thinking, yet this claim falls flat on it's face when you consider visual processing is equally divided in between hemispheres at it's early stages, the confusion stems from higher visual processing, where some visuospatial processes end up in the right side (location), but still some other processes like visual discrimination end up on the left side.

The problem with making a map of left and right areas of specialization, is that due to plasticity and the unique upbringing of each person,plus perhaps genetic variations, these areas don't overlap from person to person, so a capabilities map of general areas makes more sense for now.


In Integrate-and-fire models, why can we assume spike arrivals to be random? I'm reading through some notes on integrate and fire models and it says that we assume that spike arrivals are random.

Why exactly can we make this assumption?

Is it because experiments haven't shown otherwise thus far?

Assuming random spike arrivals is just a convention that is chosen, not an assumption of some natural system. It's not a property of integrate-and-fire models. Probably whoever chose this convention did so for some demonstration (teaching) purposes. It may also be chosen to model "neural noise" which is a shortcut for "all the other stuff going on in the brain besides that which we are studying". In that context, it's common to model the effect of a consistent incoming signal on a random background.

An equivalent might be to see how an electronic filter would respond to either an impulse or to white noise: you could learn something about the filter (such as its ability to attenuate certain frequencies, or a certain response pattern to an impulse) by looking at either of those responses.

Similarly, by feeding noisy/random input to a integrate-and-fire neuron, you can find how changing parameters of your model neuron changes its output properties.


What percentage of systematic data starts to be considered random There is a set of 100 different objects in a box. I pull out 99 of them randomly and place them on a table and ask a person to take a look, then I put all objects back into the box. After a short (5 minutes) interval I pull out another 99 random objects from the same box. The person is asked to say whenever an object is the same as it was before. If the missing object did not stand out from all others on the first go, then the person will answer that the objects are all the same.

How many objects should there be in the box and how many should be placed on a table, assuming there is an equal chance for every object to be pulled out, in order to trick the average person into thinking that all or almost all of the objects are different? What if the process is repeated 6 times, every 5 minutes, would it have any noticeable effect on the results?

Tests of randomness like (my favorite) Kolmogorov complexity will tell you how random those objects seem scientifically. (I'm not certain but I think your describing chaotic behavior rather than random behavior because the random objects can only be rearranged rather than replaced.)

Aside from mathematics this is an active area of psychological research. Those with disillusion illnesses like schizo typical often have the trouble identifying when a pattern is random. The sick brain seeking to bring the universe into order or create a new reality to match its broken perceptions deludes itself into believing that random events happen as per a control. This is called Pareidolia (when there is something which might vaguely resemble a pattern) and Apophenia (when the data is obviously random).

Your test would be measuring Pareidolia, Apophenia as well as Pattern recognition.


Can bipolar disorder be considered a malfunction of the "love circuit" in the human brain? I've not so long ago read a book on depression by a Russian psychiatrist Vladimir Levi. The book's title can be roughly translated as "Not only depression, but a pursuit of mood". I have not been able to find an english translation, so I cannot quote it directly.

In that book, the author lists several examples of love-related depression, where a person who drops out of a love relationship experiences symptoms of moderate to severe depression.

This got me thinking - love is often portrayed as the "ultimate goal" in religion, popular culture, movies, etc. The psychiatrist above provides examples that losing love can result in depression. Another condition that is characterized by dramatic uplift in mood and outlook on life is the hypomania stage of Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar disorder is characterized by multiple episodes of hypomania/mania and depression over the course of a lifetime.

Putting both phenomena together, it appears to me that there are similarities, and I'd like to ask these questions:

-Does bipolar disorder use the same mechanisms/pathways in the brain that "love" does?

-If so, can bipolar disorder be considered a malfunction of the "love circuit" in the human brain?

UPDATE: I found this article on neurochemistry of loVe on Wikipedia

  Chemically, the serotonin effects of being infatuated have a similar
  chemical appearance to obsessive-compulsive disorder; which could
  explain why people experiencing infatuation cannot think of anyone
  else.[12] For this reason some, such as anthropologist Helen Fisher,
  assert that taking SSRIs and other antidepressants impede one's
  ability to fall in love.

From the article on love:

  Studies in neuroscience have involved chemicals that are present in
  the brain and might be involved when people experience love. These
  chemicals include: nerve growth factor,[8] testosterone, estrogen,
  dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin.[9

From the Wikipedia article on bipolar disorder causes

  A review seeking to identify the more consistent findings suggested
  several genes related to serotonin (SLC6A4 and TPH2), dopamine
  (DRD4 and SLC6A3), glutamate (DAOA and DTNBP1), and cell growth
  and/or maintenance pathways (NRG1, DISC1 and BDNF), although noting
  a high risk of false positives in the published literature.

A Love Circuit?

The idea that there is a "love circuit" has little evidence (for or against it). But in general studies that look at "love" (however defined) reveal broad activation across multiple intrinsic neural networks that are involved in many different cognitive processes (in favor of a constructivist view of emotions).

Consider the image from a meta-analysis (Cacioppo et al., 2012) of functional imaging studies on sexual desire and love:

Both sexual desire and love are associated with greater activation of the insula, hypothalamus, ventral striatum, VTA, amygdala, thalamus, hippocampus, anterior cingulate, and other limbic/cortical areas.  These regions are involved in interoception, memory, conceptualization, core affect, somatosensory integration, motivation, salience detection, and more.

Note, however, that these areas are not specific to love; instead, they are involved in emotional experience more broadly (fear, disgust, anger, happiness, etc.; Touroutoglou, Lindquist, Dickerson, & Barrett, 2015). It's still possible that the above pattern of activation is unique to love; however, this has not been tested (to my knowledge)--nor does it seem plausible in light of other evidence (i.e., Touroutoglou et al., 2015).

Because these brain areas are involved in many cognitive processes, we might imagine that dysfunction in at least some of them is associated with bipolar disorder.

Bipolar Disorder

Consider the image below from a meta-analysis (Chen, Suckling, Lennox, Ooi, & Bullmore, 2011) of functional imaging in bipolar patients:

Compared to healthy controls, bipolar disorder seems to be associated with decreased inferior frontal gyrus activation in response to cognitive or emotional tasks and increased limbic activity (amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, basal ganglia) in response to emotional tasks.

Conclusion

As you can see, there is some overlap with the areas activated for love/sexual desire and bipolar disorder (e.g., limbic structures).

However, this is not compelling evidence that BD somehow involves dysfunction in a "love circuit," as the limbic system is involved in all emotions, not just love. If anything, this suggests that BD is associated with dysfunction in emotion regulation/processing/reactivity (and executive function more broadly; Robinson et al., 2006).


Sensitivity of human eye to luminance I heard once that the human eye has a logarithmic scale for luminance, e.g. to "feel" that a surface is three times as luminous compared to another, the former emits a light 8 times more powerful than the latter. Definitions are indeed vague as my memory doesn't serve me well.

Is this based on anything scientific?

From Stevens & Galanter (1957)

  Although an extensive investigation of the subjective scale of
  brightness is still in progress in this laboratory, enough has been
  learned to show that, for patches of white light viewed in a dark
  room, subjective brightness is a power function of luminance.
  Moreover, the exponent is of the order of one-third which is in
  reasonable agreement with results obtained by Hanes.

Stevens, S. S., & Galanter, E. H. (1957). Ratio scales and category scales for a dozen perceptual continua. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54(6), 377.

and the related study that is mentioned:

Hanes, R. M. (1949). The construction of subjective brightness scales from fractionation data: a validation. Journal of experimental psychology, 39(5), 719.


"runs" or "sessions" in Structural MRI - Purpose and Implications for Quality Control I am working on a graduate research project using the ABIDE I and II autism datasets.
MRIQC has been run on these data - and I now must remove participants marked as outliers on 3 specific quality metrics. However, I have run into an issue - there appear to be multiple "runs" per participant.
If, on one run, the participant fails QC stipulations, but not on another run, does this mean that the participant should be excluded from analyses? Or is the purpose of having multiple "runs" in structural MRI in order to have sufficient data that, if one run is "bad", another run can be used?
I have tried reading the MRIQC documentation; Googling; downloading and reading textbooks - for some reason, I find numerous resources on fMRI, but nothing for structural.
I would really appreciate any help anyone can offer - I am a bit desperate at this stage as my supervisors are on holiday.
Thank you for reading.

It is common to remove especially motion-corrupted MRI runs without excluding the subject.
Without more knowledge about the project it's hard to know why exactly they have multiple runs present and whether there are differences between runs or just repeated scans. It may be that the operators made sure to collect more data when they suspected subjects had too much motion during the scan, they may have done so randomly or by convenience (such as according to patient comfort), or they may have had other reasons.
I would consult other papers published using the same data set (even the functional ones) for their inclusion criteria.


Is it possible to imitate two way communication between a brain and a limb? Human muscles are controlled by action potentials that travel along the nerves. Below is an image of a train of action potentials that are decoded by the brain into a sensation or interpreted by a muscle group as a command.

I'm interested if it is possible to record such action potential sequence and then "play it back" for that person. For example, a person is moving a leg, a recording of action potentials is made. Can such recording be transferred back to the nerves to create an illusion of movement or repeat the muscle movement?

Short answer
Mimicking action potentials is possible, but not the most practical approach.

Background
In general, stimulation of neural tissues occurs through placing electrodes in the vicinity of the target tissue and applying short current pulses, e.g. think cardiac pace makers, cochlear implants, retinal implants (Rao & Chiao, 2015), as well as muscle stimulators.

Long-term electrical stimulation of tissues in humans are accomplished by means of biphasic pulses, such that one phase reverses the current injected by the other. Such alternative current stimuli are called charge-balanced pulses, and are used because direct current (DC) stimulation may damage neural tissues (Bahmer & Baumann, 2013). In animals and short-term applications other asymmetric and unbalanced pulse shapes may be applied.

Secondly, external electrical stimuli induce electric fields such that neurons are depolarized and start firing their own action potentials. Mimicking action potentials doesn't make much sense therefore. It is a more straightforward approach to activate the system externally and let things develop physiologically thereafter to maintain normal neuronal processing.

But of course, in the end you could stick a needle electrode inside neurons and attempt to mimic the voltage changes over time like that in an action potential train, for example through the application of voltage clamp techniques. Nonetheless, I would rather stick to state-of-the-art applications and apply external biphasic pulse trains and leave the details to the neuronal tissue.

References
- Bahmer & Baumann, Hear Res (2013); 306:123-30
- Rao & Chiao, IEEE Microwave Magazine (2015); 16(2): 54-64


Objective test for self-awareness? Are there any means by which an observed entity (e.g.: an AI) can be tested for self-awareness using/applying/affecting mainly its visual-oral-auditory-senses and observed responses of same? Failing that, are there any such tests for organic life-forms?

To test self-awareness in animals there is the Mirror test. It involves painting something on the animal's head/face without their knowledge and observing what they do when they notice the paint in their own reflection in a mirror.

Additionally, robots have been tested for simple self-awareness by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.


What is the name of the phobia of dams? I have a friend who has a terrible fear of dams, water reservoirs, jetties or bridges with big blocks on water; in general, a fear of large buildings on water.

He often tells me that he imagines a dam near the gates and has "anxiety attacks" and becomes very afraid. However, he is not afraid of swimming, or common places with water, like the ocean, pools and so on. On the contrary, he loves to swim.

While he is not afraid of pools, he is very afraid of the wells of the pools where the water enters or where is filtered.

His psychologist doesn't know the name of such a phobia and, after a while, his diagnosis was hydrophobia. The problem is that he is not afraid of water, only these large structures over the water, whose purpose is to control water flow.

How can I get information about this phobia; is there a specific name?
And how can be treated?

As far as I know, there is no specific definition for this phobia. No search reveals anything similar. It is important to recognise that simply defining phobias is not medically useful and does not provide further insight into human cognition. It would not be efficient to provide a label for all the phobias which exist. Generally labels are created when the population of people with the disorder reaches some threshold that specific treatments are developed. Your friend simply has a "specific phobia" of the situational type (also see Wikipedia entry).

I imagine treatment would be the same as for most specific phobias. Generally this involves a form of CBT known as exposure therapy or graded exposure.

If you desperately require a definition, I like hydrostructuraphobia - taken from latin word for structure.


Is there a range in time on which the mind detects correlation between events? I've been searching for info on this but I'm usually finding unrelated information.

My question is whether there is a time range in which our mind suspects that two events are correlated.

For example: pressing a pedal in the car and hearing a noise (even if it's somewhere else) in the next second makes you suspicious that your action caused that event.
If we stretch the time variable (time between those two events), it is less obvious.

Applying this to any other concept, it seems that time is really a factor in terms of correlation detection, but I couldn't find any studies on it.

So, if time is a factor in correlation detection between events, then which is the effective time range that makes us think two events are correlated?

I think you are asking about quite a high-level definition of "correlated", and this is obviously going to depend on the particular context or stimulus. That is, knowledge about thunder and lightning allows us to infer that they have a common cause, even though perceptually they can be decoupled (that is, we don't perceive them as occurring together).

However, I can point you to a few things that speak to the perception of correlation in time. This literature concerns the perception of synchrony between two stimuli, such as a flash (vision) and a beep (audition). For visual-auditory pairings, the window of "temporal synchrony" can be quite imprecise: events can be separated by up to 200 ms and still be judged as having occurred at the same time (see Dixon and Spitz, 1980, and Vatakis and Spence, 2006).

However, with multiple events in the environment and depending on the type of stimulus, sensitivity can improve. The above literature as well as my general reply is sourced from this article by Roseboom et al (2011), which may be a good starting point for further reading if this is where you were going with the question.

References

Dixon NF, Spitz L (1980) The detection of auditory visual desynchrony. Perception 9: 719–721.
Roseboom, W., Nishida, S., Fujisaki, W. & Arnold, D.H. (2011). Audio-visual speech timing sensitivity is enhanced in cluttered conditions. PLoS One, 6, e18309.
Vatakis A, Spence C (2006) Audiovisual synchrony perception for music, speech, and object actions. Brain Research 1111: 134–142.


What is the maximum time difference to still associate an acoustic and visual event? I am developing a game where the music needs to be synchronized to the actual game logic. That means that some objects in the game react to events in the music. Of course, the music will never be completely synced to the output on the screen, so I need an indication of the time difference so I can sync the music manually to the game logic.

What is the average/maximum time for a human to still associate a visual event on the screen with an auditory musical event?

Short answer
In the case of simple stimuli, visual and auditory stimuli can be offset between 25 and 50 ms and still be perceived as coming from one and the same same event.

Background
The question can be re-phrased as what is the window of integration of intersensory asynchrony in case of visual and auditory stimuli?

A well-known example where these two stimulus modalities are perceived as separate, while they are in fact coming from the same event, is a thunder heard after lightning. This is caused by the fact that sound travels at a speed much slower than light, and hence a thunder can lag lightning by seconds.

source: NASA

In many instances, however, a multimodal perception is actually perceived as being synchronous, while they are in fact offset in time due to differences in physical characteristics of the stimuli. Take the storm as an example - when it is far away, the thunder is perceptually dissociated from the lightning, because the sound lags the light by seconds. But when the thunderstorm is close enough, the auditory crack and visual lightning are perceived as synchronous, while in fact they are still offset because of the sound travelling so much slower than light.

So the question becomes, as you rightfully ask, what are the margins in which stimuli across modalities can be asynchronous while perceived as one event? In other words, what is the window of integration?

Vroomen and Keetels (2010) conclude in their review on this topic that a stimulus asynchrony in the case of auditory beeps and visual flashes can be between 25 and 50 ms and still be perceived as coming from the same event.

The window of integration between more complex stimuli can be much greater. For example, the window for speech and visual information can be as large as 203 ms. Such large windows of integration point toward higher processes playing a role in the brain. Only temporal lags below 20 msec are expected to go unnoticed because of hard-wired limitations on the resolution power of the individual senses.

Hence, Vroomen and Keetels (2010) argue there must be higher processes at work in the brain that actively synchronize percepts that are offset in time, but seem to belong to one and the same event. One such mechanism is referred to as temporal ventriloquism, which means that a perceptual modality is actively shifted in time to match it with another modality. This effect is most pronounced in visual stimuli, in that a visual percept is actively adjusted in time to match a sound or tactile stimulus. Likely visual percepts are shifted preferably by the brain, because the visual system is the slowest of all the senses.

Reference
Vroomen & Keetels, Att Percept Psychophys 2010; 72(4): 871-84


Negative emotions in individuals spreading to others I am aware of the effect of positive emotions on others, but I am wondering about negative emotions.  I am not talking about insults leading to negative emotions.  I am talking about emotions like anger, frustration etc. in some leading to anger, frustration etc. in others.

Are there any studies which suggest that there is the ability for emotions such as anger and frustration to transfer and spread amongst others or lead to other emotions in others?

For example, can a group of people seeing one or more people getting frustrated about something lead to some or all in the observing group suffer from frustration or annoyance or other negative emotions?

**Update**

I have found the answer to this question which was interesting, talking about negative priors (Beck, 1979; Huys, Daw, & Dayan, 2015) shaping your predictions about the world leading to more negative emotions.

What I am interested in is the possibility of negative emotions spreading amongst otherwise psychologically healthy people, just as positive emotions do.  Although there is an interesting quote...

“Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone.” ― Stanley Gordon West, Growing an Inch

I have found that there is a term which encompasses the phenomenon of both positive and negative emotions spreading from person to person and that is Emotional Contagion.

Hatfield et al. (1993) points out that emotions can be "caught" in several different ways and outlines 3 propositions.

Mimicry

  In conversation, people automatically and continually mimic and synchronise their movements with the facial expressions, voices, postures, movements and instrumental behaviours of other people.

Feedback

  Subjective emotional experience is affected, moment to moment, by the activation of and feedback from facial, vocal, postrural and movement mimicry.

Contagion

  Consequently, people tend, from moment, to "catch" other people's emotions.

Apparently, Gerald Schoenewolf said in Emotional contagion: Behavioral induction in individuals and groups. Modern Psychoanalysis; 15, 49-61, that Emotional Contagion is

  a process in which a person or group influences the emotions or behaviour of another person or group through the conscious or unconscious induction of emotion states and behavioral attitudes.

I don't have access to this article so I cannot confirm this.

Emotional contagion and empathy have an interesting relationship, in that they share similar characteristics, with the exception of the ability to differentiate between personal and pre-personal experiences, a process known as individuation. In The Art of Loving, social psychologist Erich Fromm explores these differences, suggesting that autonomy (self-regulation) is necessary for empathy, which is not found in emotional contagion.

  “The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is that of humility. To be objective, to use one's reason, is possible only if one has achieved an attitude of humility, if one has emerged from the dreams of omniscience and omnipotence which one has as a child. Love, being dependent on the relative absence of narcissism, requires the developement of humility, objectivity and reason.

  I must try to see the difference between my picture of a person and his behavior, as it is narcissistically distorted, and the person's reality as it exists regardless of my interests, needs and fears.”  ― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving


Avoiding Cognitive dissonance,is it a necessity? I want to know how strong is the pain of going through cognitive dissonance. Is it really so that changes in humans can be brought about by severity of cognitive dissonance struggle/pain ? Can I have a neurological perspective about it that might throw some light on the parts of the brain that are involved and the neurochemicals that might be playing a role in it ?

I think you're confusing science with politics.  The APA and other such professional organizations have not, to my knowledge, concluded that cognitive dissonance should be avoided or even minimized.  I'm unaware of any evidence that suggests that cognitive dissonance directly causes distress or suffering.

The position of psychology, as a science, is that cognitive dissonance is a phenomenon that exists and has certain properties.  There is no normative stance from the field as a whole.

What happens in these cases is that political groups engage in activism and argue that such things should be minimized; the same is true of stereotyping, for instance.  You may agree with the dominant political opinion, but it's not a scientific question, per se.


What exactly is the neurobiological mechanism behind the functioning of the human muscle? From what I have read, its been given that muscle functioning and coordination involves two processes: frequency summation and muscle recruitment. What I want to know is that, do these two processes work simultaneously or are these two stages separate? As in, both frequency summation and muscle recruitment contributes to modulating the amount of force which makes me wonder why two processes are required to satisfy the same purpose?

The conclusion I could come to was that, frequency summation applies to only a single muscle fiber and when the fiber saturates and no more force can be recruited more muscles are recruited to increase the amount of force applied. An example scenario of this occurring would be a person is lifting a very heavy object. I want to know whether my inference is right or wrong? If wrong I would like someone to explain to me the exact mechanism.

Both recruitment and firing rate contribute to the overall "strength" of muscle action, but there are early and late stage depending on the load under which the muscles are operating.  This allows more precision for lighter objects (where muscle recruitment is the dominant mechanism).  For heavier objects, most of the muscles get recruited and all the body can do at that point is increase the firing rate more.  Note that throughout the whole process, both mechanisms are occuring: it's just a matter of which mechanism dominates at which stage/degree of muscle exertion.

And this makes sense: for smaller objects that you will be manipulating, you want more precision, so having muscle recruitment control gives you that spatial precision that allows you to manipulate objects (like tools) in novel ways.  Whereas when you're just trying to lift  a giant rock, to block a small stream, there isn't much precision required, you're just trying to get it to go a general direction (up and over), so you recruit all muslces and drive the spiking frequency as high as it will go.  Whether you fail or not at these extreme loads depends on your personal pain tolerance and your muscle's tensile strength (people with a higher pain tolerance are more likely to snap a tendon or muscle, or even bone).


relationship between mood and working memory What is the relationship between working memory and positive or negative mood as higher order affective states which can change vary slowly compared to moment-to-moment affective responses (both valence and arousal)? Are there any literature related to this?

Welcome to the community Dalek!
Emotional states can guide the actions and decisions we make in our everyday life through their influence on cognitive processes such as working memory.
I would like to share with you couple of sources (Figueira et al., 2017 and Baddeley, 2012) which can be quite helpful for you.
People over here tried to figure out emperically how our moods are affecting cognition processes.
References
Baddeley, A. (2012). Working memory: theories, models, and controversies. Annual review of psychology, 63, 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100422
Figueira, J. S., Oliveira, L., Pereira, M. G., Pacheco, L. B., Lobo, I., Motta-Ribeiro, G. C., & David, I. A. (2017). An unpleasant emotional state reduces working memory capacity: electrophysiological evidence. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(6), 984-992. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx030


Correct term for realistic user behaviour and decision making Describing the limitations of my study surrounding the modeling of domestic hot water storage tanks, I want to find a precise term to describe realistic user behavior, which was disregarded in my simulation.

Such behavior would include, e.g.,

interrupting/postponing the draw-off during bathing once the temperature falls below a certain limit
increasing the temperature setting preceding unusually high hot water consumption

Could I refer to this behavior as "game-theoretical effects", or is there another, more fitting, scientific term?

Science in general refers to ecological validity as the degree to which materials and settings in a study approximate the real world that is being examined.

Therefore, such limitations could be referred to as limitations to ecological validity. Often, such limitations are inherent to running an experimental study, as opposed to studying the real world. Whether or not this is a risk to the overall validity of your study depends on what conclusions you intend to draw from the results.


What does it mean for someone to "join narratives to explain their experiences"? Describing the Blue Whale Challenge, an online phenomenon where participants perform tasks with the final task being suicide, we have the following:

Dr Achal Bhagat, a psychiatrist in Delhi, told the BBC he had not encountered a single Blue Whale case, although he speaks to young people every day.
"People join narratives to explain their experiences," said Dr Bhagat, adding that is possibly why some children have said they participated in the rumoured challenge despite there being no proof of its existence.
Aparna Alluri, Why is 'Blue Whale' hysteria gripping India?, BBC News, Delhi, 2017

I don't understand what "people join narratives to explain their experiences" means, and how its relevant to the context.  It seems to imply that people are making up they've participated in a Blue Whale Challenge (i.e., they join the narrative) because of some (unstated) events in their lives.  The quote also indicates it holds more generally, i.e., it's not only true for the Blue Whale Challenge.
Question: What does it mean for someone to "join narratives to explain their experiences"?

I think there is nothing formal psychiatry or psychology related about the psychiatrist's use of language when saying 'people join narratives to explain their experiences'. What he is saying is that people tend to link causally various narratives/stories they have heard of to generate an explanation without much evidence of there being an actual causal link. The joined up narratives then make an appealing sense of things having been explained.

The reason why explanations are appealing is clear upon reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_(game) - there is a very disturbing event - suicide by young people, then there is something of an explanation which seems to make some sense.

See also:

Causal relatedness and importance of story events; Tom Trabasso, Linda L Sperry
Journal of Memory and Language: Volume 24, Issue 5, October 1985, Pages 595-611
https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-596X(85)90048-8


What factors determine a healthy individual's required amount of sleep? I suppose that it is well-known that different people need different amounts of sleep. I read somewhere that most people need something between 7 and 8 hours each day, though some people need only 6 hours, and (for instance) I have two friends who only need 5 hours.

Q: Besides genetic factors, what determines a healthy individual's required amount of sleep?

For example:

Is there a correlation between an individual's g factor and their required amount of sleep?
Is there a correlation between an individual's weight and their required amount of sleep?

Note: I am not interested in findings related to infants or teenagers.

It is a multifactorial question dependent or correlated with a large list of variables or factors that could be grouped into:

Functions (mainly effects on neurotransmitters, also have been much studied the functions related to memory and learning).
Biological factors or bases: Indistinguishable from the previous section.
Sleep dysfunctions (terrors, somnambulism, somniloquies, nocturnal jactatio capitis, bruxism, epilepsy, mental retardation)
Disorders (initiation and maintenance disorders, apnea, myoclonus, restless legs syndrome, narcolepsy, hypersomnia, Kleine-Levin, Pickwick)
Patterns There are many sleep patterns.

It is not so easy to distinguish between health and disease since some individuals are very well adapted to patterns, dysfunctions and even some disorders.
The general intelligence factor may influence further adaptation.
The weight of the weight factor will influence to a greater extent when it is an extreme weight (mainly if there is difficulty in the breathing).

There are many manuals that address both general topics related to sleep (International Classification of Sleep Disorders, ICSD, good general books can be found in any library of psychology faculties) and very specific research (search in psycinfo).

Recommended source: Buela-Casal, G. (Comps.) (1990). Avances en la investigación del sueño y sus trastornos. Siglo Veintiuno de España Editores.


Auditory Processing Speed Why do I find myself lost when; for example, Sheldon (from the Big Bang Theory) talks fast about complex physics. I try to comprehend what he's saying but I guess my brain isn't fast enough.

Also is there any way I cant increase the passage speed between my ears and my brain.

A concept has the property of depth, which is basically how much background understanding must be recruited to interpret it. The deeper the concept, the more understanding is required. Sheldon talking complex physics is relating many deep concepts.

Your mind tries to make sense of new information by associating it with your background understanding of reality. If you lack the background, it will have to work harder to make sense of it, and if it can't make sense of it, you will find yourself lost.

When new information is taken in and used in various ways (eg. muilling it over; using it in everyday life), redundant portions of it become incorporated into the unconscious mind to be used as a framework to further understanding (i.e. it becomes "second nature"). Unconscious information processing is much faster than conscious processing, so while you lose conscious access to the concept, you gain fast processing speed effortlessly.

When Sheldon speaks, he is accessing a deep unconscious network of understanding.
The way to increase speed of processing is to use related information repeatedly until your mind builds up the background understanding. Much of the more redundant processing will be relegated to the unconscious, freeing up your conscious mind to take in more information.

In other words, you lack the requisite foundation to understand Sheldon's complex physics in realtime, so are trying to consciously process everything said. Practice, practice, practice thinking about complex physics to build a foundational understanding that'll take the load off to speed up processing.

–Yuri


What is the consequences to be a person who works in theory of science? this question rises into my head this day. First I read the comment by @mikeazo he says

  Do you learn best by reading or doing? That will make a difference.

Also, today I had a class in cryptanalysis so we were doing a lot of computation in class during two hours (solving equations in order to find key of a cipher given ciphertext and plaintext). In the class I noticed that there are two types of students: faster and slower. I noticed that slower-people related to theory-people and faster-people to "non-theory people".

to define difference between theory and non-theory. Usually in science we have two types of people: theoretical people and experimental people. For example: in physics you can work in theory without doing experimental things or you can work in experimental without doing theory. Usually theory related to mathematics; since the language of science is mathematics. Now, in mathematics we have people who do "computation faster" like they solve puzzles quickly or they are very smart at games or multiply tens of digits without calculator, etc. While the other part, the theory-people, they analyze physical things to have a mathematical model and expect future results based on these models so if models doesn't work (such as no solution for the model under some conditions) then we say this result cannot happen in future under some conditions, etc.

From this point-of-view, I'm really interested to see whether is there any survey or research paper about "what is the consequences to be a theory-people or non-theory-people?" For example: I remember Michael Sipser says in his book of "Introduction to Theory of Computation", "theory is good because it expands your minds". Now, if someone is doing theory, then he expands his imagination and the way of thinking to things, but how about consequences? it seems to me for the example I had today in class that "theory people are slower to do normal jobs, even though they understand it". Is there any research papers about this issue! I would be happy to hear from this site anything related to this topic.

Quoting from "Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making"

  Many researchers have emphasized the distinction between two types of cognitive
  processes: those executed quickly with little conscious deliberation and those
  that are slower and more reflective (Epstein, 1994; Sloman, 1996; Chaiken and
  Trope, 1999; Kahneman and Frederick, 2002). Stanovich and West (2000) called
  these "System 1" and "System 2" processes, respectively. System 1 processes occur
  spontaneously and do not require or consume much attention Recognizing that
  the face of the person entering the classroom belongs to your math teacher involves
  System 1 processes-it occurs instantly and effortlessly and is unaffected by intellect,
  alertness, motivation or the difficulty of the math problem being attempted at
  the time. Conversely, finding $\sqrt{19163}$ to two decimal places without a calculator
  involves System 2 processes-mental operations requiring effort, motivation, concentration,
  and the execution of learned rules.

This distinction is apparently also called dual process theory.

I for one like to call these "intuitionists" and "calculationists", but I also think the distinction is probably not too sharp. In my experience, the "intuitionists" exploit some patterns, partly "subconsciously", and tend to be better in games like Go or Backgammon (where the trees are very broad and humans cannot think too many moves ahead) and often have surprising idea that they themselves can't always explain how they came up with, whereas the "calculationists" tend to be better at Chess, long proofs and so forth.

Not coincidentally (in my intuition) these coincide with the best performing algorithms for such games: neural nets for Backgammon, but mostly deep tree exploration for chess. These are not entirely exclusive though, good Backgammon algorithm "think" 2-3 moves ahead but their performance comes mainly from a very well tuned neural net. I'm less familiar with Go, but from what I know of AlphaGo the story is similar. One should not discount the role of board evaluation in chess, but I think the tree exploration is main factor for success there. Anyhow, intuition is believed by some researched to work like a probabilistic decision, perhaps using pattern matching as discussed above.

As more anecdotal evidence: When I was in grad school, I had an adviser and co-adviser who had authored a large number of papers together. They described their roles in their collaboration as one being the idea generator and other one the tester.

More recently, unconscious thought theory
 posits that for complext decisions intution is essentially better, but after a highly-cited debut in Science, insofar it has failed replication particularly in large studies. I suspect a lot depends on the nature of the test.

On the other hand, dual-system theory seems to have fared better with a (simple test of distinction), introduced in the first paper I quote in this answer; Here's a quote from a more recent paper:

  The present study replicated and extended earlier results from Campitelli and Gerrans (2014). In particular, Cognitive Reflection and Calculation behaved like distinct abilities, and Calculation was positively correlated with numeracy. However, Cognitive Reflection was positively correlated with numeracy as well; this correlation had not been tested in earlier studies.


What is the computational role of the cortical column? The cortex is supposedly composed of semi uniform cortical columns that are interlinked. Many of the resources on cortical columns I found using a Google search do not discuss what a column computes (i.e., a high dimensional prediction) but rather only provide its basic structure (L4 connects to L2/3, etc.).

I would be very grateful if someone could direct me to resources discussing the computational roles of a column.

Cortical columns are groups of neurons in the brain that are oriented perpendicularly to the cortical surface. Cells within a column respond to the same stimulus property (Fig. 1). For example, primary visual cortex columns extract small bars with a specific orientation.

A single cortical column consists of six distinct layers of neurons. The upper three layers (I-III) are functionally distinct from the lower two layers (V-VI). The upper layers project out to other cortical columns, both sending and receiving signals, with layer III cells projecting to adjacent columns and layer II cells projecting to more distant parts of the cortex. Layers V-VI receive input from the upper layers of adjacent columns and send their signals to extracortical structures, such as the thalamus, and motor and sensory centers.

Layer IV, which divides the column into an upper and lower part, receives its inputs from the thalamus and transmits signals to the rest of the column. The thalamus receives information from all parts of the cortex and subcortical areas. It works together with the cerebral cortex to create a feedback circuit by passing information from the infragranular cells of the cortex to the thalamus and then back to the layer IV cells of the cortex, with integration occuring both on in the thalamic and cortical centers.

Information flow in the cortex is mediated by the action of the supragranular cells, while additional information from the external and internal environment is integrated by the thalamus and arrives in layer IV of the cortical columns.It contains thousands or even tens of thousands of neurons corresponding to a few tens of micrometers and up to 1-2 millimetres for larger aggregated columnar structures (sources: Rice University and Phys.org news).

The presence of cortical columns is quite firmly established. However, the histological definition, as well as the function of various types of columns are dramatically different. Columns can be defined by cellular histological feautures, pattern of connectivity, myelin content, staining property, magnitude of gene expression, or functional properties. For example, in the primary visual cortex alone, there are ocular dominance columns, orientation columns, hypercolumns, and color columns.

Further, there are columns as well as various minicolumns. The only connections between these diverse structures and concepts is that they refer to the vertical or radial columnar organization of its elements as opposed to the horizontal or laminar organization that is more explicit in histological preparations of the mature neocortex. Thus, the term cortical “column” is used in so many ways that it needs specific clarification of the specific context in which it is applied (Rakic, 2008).

Even stronger assertions have been made, up until

  ...the disappointing realization that the column may have no function...

(Horton & Adams, 2005).

Having said that, and to home in to the computational processes within a column - some sources claim that columns are capable of memorizing relations and performing more complex operations than individual neurons. If a neuron is analogous to a logic gate, a cortical column may be viewed as a small subroutine. Columnar information processing may involve the column to be fully or partially activated. A fully activated column corresponds to an action, e.g. in a column in the motor area, layers V and VI may project to a sequence of neurons that contracts muscle fibers. A partially activated column corresponds to anticipation or searching, and waits for the lower levels to become active.

In this view, a column can be looked at as an adaptive automaton. An automaton being a function that chooses an action based on its current state and its inputs. Cortical columns may thus represent a goal and the initial and intermediate states. When a goal is defined, activations spread from the goal column along the upper layers (I-III). The spreading activation from columnar goals and the subgoal process of problem solving is called a Call Tree, because of the way the subgoals are solved by a recursive search (source: Rice University).

Fig. 1. Barrel columns in rat vibrissal cortex. source: Kurzweil

References
- Horton & Adams, Phil Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci (2005); 360(1456): 837–62
- Rakic, PNAS (2008); 105(34): 12099–100


Is there a term to describe the tendency to attribute the cause of a bad outcome to a recent event? I've noticed that when something goes wrong, people have a tendency or a bias to associate its cause with a recent event.  The following may not be a great example but here goes.

Imagine a game of Jenga where players remove blocks from a tower.  Early in the game I remove two blocks from near the bottom of the stack, destabilizing the foundation of the tower.  We have some skilled players so we manage to make it four or five more moves before the tower falls.  Although I destabilized the tower from the beginning, there will be those who perceive that the move prior to the last one was the main contributing factor.

I ask because this is a pattern that I see in my job and I'm trying to communicate it to someone.  We see projects fail because the foundation work done months prior was not of good quality.  Nevertheless, the blame seems to go to the last person who touched it.  I can't help but think there is an established term that describes this psychology and would love to be able to reference it.

I don't know of a single term for it, but what you're describing is, in essence, causal inference driven by "statistics", "co-variation", "co-occurrence", or "contiguity" (the terms are largely interchangeable).

If you're interested, there's a quite in-depth discussion review of theories of different theories of causal inference, including statistical models, here.

I think your example can be tied in quite nicely with "dual process" theories too, which propose two kinds of thinking: automatic, intuitive processes, which are sensitive to things like co-variation, and more effortful reflective processes, needed for more abstract relational reasoning. In your case, intuitive thinking easily makes a causal inference based on co-occurance:

  "Mark touched the tower, and then the tower fell, so the tower must have
  fallen because Mark touched it"

while more effortful reflection is needed to construct a causal model involving foundational work done months ago. I don't know of any specific application of this intuitive/reflective distinction to causal reasoning, but I'm sure it's been done somewhere.

EDIT: I've just remembered this paper, which discusses a similar idea, but in "multiple
cue probability learning", a specific kind of causal learning. I feel a little obliged to plug this, because one of the authors is my PhD supervisor.


Does the lexical hypothesis have any role in 'creativity'? The lexical hypothesis was used to I think create the 5 factor model of personality.

Has anything similar been done in the science of 'creativity'?

While, clearly, "creativity" is a component of intelligence, even if it is also one in personality.

What got me thinking about this, is the measurement of 'creativity', which is I think notoriously difficult, even more so that aptitude in general. Specifically, I was thinking about how it seems that 'fluency' seems lexically close to some terms close to creativity.

How would general cognitive fluency, as it is measured by cognitive test, correlate with creativity?

fluency, noun

the ability to express oneself easily and articulately.

fantasy, noun

a fanciful mental image, typically one on which a person often dwells and which reflects their conscious or unconscious wishes

imagination, noun

the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of
external objects not present to the senses.

etc.

Jauk et al. (2013) talks about the relationship between intelligence and creativity whilst King, et al. (1996) talks about the the relationship between the 5-factor model and creativity.

  4.2. Personality predictors of creative potential

  When performing separate multiple regression analyses in samples of lower and higher intelligence, we found that openness to experiences predicts creative potential in the subsample above the threshold whereas conscientiousness is negatively related to creative potential in the lower IQ range.

  While it is well documented that that there exists a positive association between openness and creative potential (Batey & Furnham, 2006; Feist, 2010; King et al., 1996), the present result points to an interaction between intelligence and openness: High creative potential is not possible with a low level IQ; but once the intelligence threshold is met, openness may explain to some extent whether the required cognitive disposition is actually turned into high creative potential (Jauk, et al. 2013)

References

Batey M., Furnham A. (2006). Creativity, intelligence, and personality: A critical review of the scattered literature. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs. 132(4) 355–429.PMID: 18341234

Feist G.J. (2010). The function of personality in creativity: The nature and nurture of the creative personality. In: Kaufman J.C., Sternberg R.J., editors. The Cambridge handbook of creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press;  pp. 113–130.

Jauk, E., Benedek, M., Dunst, B., & Neubauer, A. C. (2013). The relationship between intelligence and creativity: New support for the threshold hypothesis by means of empirical breakpoint detection. Intelligence, 41(4), 212–221.DOI: 10.1016/j.intell.2013.03.003

King L. A., Walker L. M. & Broyles S. J. (1996). Creativity and the five-factor model. Journal of Research in Personality. 30(2), 189–203.DOI: 10.1006/jrpe.1996.0013


What is it called to think without language? Are there studies around it? I think there are two types of thinking:
with and without language.

For my entire life, in my opinion, I have always thought without language. Some people say it's impossible and that we think with language without knowing it. But the fact is that I can distinguish them pretty well.

Reading the answers on https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/5462/is-it-possible-to-think-without-language I see that the answers focus on other "senses thinking". By this I mean, the answers focus on other forms of communication that we have, turned into thinking, such as, thinking based on images, sounds, etc. But in my opinion those are just "tools for thinking", they are just something like super rapid accesses on memory to rationalize things and not the real source of "thinking".

So here I am, stuck on "What is this thinking process? How does it happen? It just looks like magic."

If you ask me to describe it, I would say it is a weird mix of--well, I can't even explain it. I just have some perception of the mix of things received from memory like something operating on memory really, really fast.

I am very slow and bad at thinking with language which results in big difficulties in explaining anything.
I feel language is like putting what we have in so many dimensions into a single one like taking a colorful picture with a sense of depth and turning it into a flat black and white image.

Does anyone know any studies done on this? What is this weird form of thinking? It's hard in terms of communications, but it's awesome to feel things intensely.

Please remember I am really talking about this "weird thinking" and not confusing it with feelings.

Well, obviously it's called non-verbal thought, and its most researched sub-topic appears to be visual thinking.

In general, questions like are there papers about X are frowned upon when the choice of answers is large, as it happens to be in this case, but I'll still point out one recent paper, Amit et al. (2017), using neroimmaging which has an interesting (even if somewhat obvious) hypothesis  at the end of its abstract:

  Humans rely on at least two modes of thought: verbal (inner speech) and visual (imagery). Are these modes
  independent, or does engaging in one entail engaging in the other? [...]
  An asymmetry was observed between inner speech and visual imagery. In particular, inner speech
  was engaged to a greater extent during verbal than visual thought, but visual imagery was engaged to a similar
  extent during both modes of thought. Thus, it appears that people generate more robust verbal representations
  during deliberate inner speech compared to when their intent is to visualize. However, they generate visual
  images regardless of whether their intent is to visualize or to think verbally. One possible interpretation of these
  results is that visual thinking is somehow primary, given the relatively late emergence of verbal abilities during
  human development and in the evolution of our species.

Some linguists, particulary those who support the strong Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (which posists that language determines thought) will probably be livid after reading this paper... I for one am a little skeptical of the generalizability of Amit's findings because of the limited set of experiments his group performed. I'm quite curious what neuroimaging has to say about the brain activation of mathematicians who work in really abstract areas of mathematics; do they also have visual aids popping in their head all the time during their work? And what about the congenitally blind? It's known they have a capacity for mental imagery, but that it is more limited than that of the non-blind. What's the brain activation pattern when the congenitally blind think?

And if the above sounds too abstract, Laura Otis has a blog entry with some vignettes of how some people self-describe their visual thinking process. She also cites some published studies supporting the idea that there is not just one mode of visual thinking, i.e. there is heterogeneity in "visual thinking styles"; this claim is mostly based on the work of Maria Kozhevnikov and her colleagues e.g. 2005, 2010a, 2010b.

And I'm not sure to what extent producing music counts as thought, but a neuroimaging study of musicians who improvise interactively as form of musical dialogue (Donnay et al. 2104) found activation in syntactic but not in semantic areas of the brain regions responsible for processing language.


What advantages does a neuron with multiple dendrites have? What advantages does a neuron with multiple dendrites have, as opposed to one with fewer dendrites?

More dendritic input makes a neuron more suitable as an integrator. The more dendrites a neuron has, however, the less faithful it will transmit a single incoming signal, as other incoming input may interfere with transmission. Hence, a neuron with a single dendrite will be better suited to faithfully relay incoming signals.

Among the most faithful neurons are the cone bipolar cells in  the central part of the retina, who receive a single input and transmit a single output (Purves et al., 2001) via a single axon to the retinal ganglion cell who's axons make up the optic nerve, while on the other end of the spectrum there are, e.g., the Purkinje cells in the cerebellum that can receive input from as many as 80,000 fibers (Konnerth et. al, 1998).

References
- Konnerth et. al, PNAS (1998); 87: 2662-5
- Purves et al. (eds.), editors. Neuroscience. 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates (2001) Functional Specialization of the Rod and Cone Systems


Homoparental Adoption Studies Such as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which involves a relative large group of professional for concluding about Transgender protocols and studies, and somehow unrelated but such as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, is there some neutral organization involving Systematic Reviews of studies concluding about the effects -rather positive and|or negative- about Homoparental Adoption?

The most comprehensive reference I have found is a paper from Schofield 2016 which summarizes 81 studies. But this paper is still a single person document, which perfectly could be subject to an author bias.

Thanks in advance.

There is a technical report by the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health at the American Academy of Pediatrics (Perin et al, 2002) which looks at all the scientific literature concerning homoparental upbringing, and they concluded that:

The small and nonrepresentative samples studied and the relatively young age of most of the children suggest some reserve. However, the weight of evidence gathered during several decades using diverse samples and methodologies is persuasive in demonstrating that there is no systematic difference between gay and nongay parents in emotional health, parenting skills, and attitudes toward parenting. No data have pointed to any risk to children as a result of growing up in a family with 1 or more gay parents. Some among the vast variety of family forms, histories, and relationships may prove more conducive to healthy psychosexual and emotional development than others.

They also concluded that:

Although gay and lesbian parents may not, despite their best efforts, be able to protect their children fully from the effects of stigmatization and discrimination, parents’ sexual orientation is not a variable that, in itself, predicts their ability to provide a home environment that supports children’s development.

References
Perrin, E. C., & Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health. (2002). Technical report: coparent or second-parent adoption by same-sex parents. Pediatrics, 109(2), 341-344. doi: 10.1542/peds.109.2.341


At what impedances should one gold plate 12.5-µm diameter nichrome wire tetrodes for targeting different brain areas? Extracellular electrophysiological recordings of rodent brains using tetrodes requires plating them with gold solution in order to achieve appropriate impedances.

How does the ideal plating impedance depends on the size, depth of the desired recording structure, and the packing density of the objective cells?

The ideal impedance of any electrode aimed at recording low-amplitude neural signals (barred suction glass-pipette electrodes for patch clamping) is simply: as low as possible.

In case of tetrodes, i.e., electrodes consisting of a bundle of four microwires that can record from multiple neurons simultaneously in the brain of freely moving animal, they are usually electroplated to reduce their impedance from 2-3 MΩ to 200-500 kΩ (measured at 1 kHz). Low impedances increase the signal-to-noise ratio and allow for the recording of small-amplitude signals. Tetrodes with lower impedances could theoretically further improve SNR, but this is technically not possible with the standard electroplating methods, per an article from 2009 (Ferguson et al., 2009).

A straightforward way of reducing impedance is to increase the surface of the electrode. Increasing the absolute size may very well be detrimental to the purpose of collecting single unit recordings, as larger electrodes inherently pick up the activity more neurons. A more feasible way is to increase the surface by means of altering the microstructure of the electrode, i.e., increase its roughness (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. smooth (A) and rough electrode surface (B). source: Jeff-Du et al (2015)

A method where tetrodes were plated with a gold solution with added polyethylene glycol (PEG) or multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) solutions was reported to to lower the impedance further to 30-70 kΩ. MWCNTs and PEG reportedly act as inhibitors in the electroplating process and create a larger surface area, thereby lowering the impedance on the tetrode tips (Ferguson et al., 2009).

References
- Ferguson et al., Sens Actuators A Phys (2009); 156(2): 388–93
- Jeff Du et al., J Mater Chem C (2015); 3: 6515-24


Is there a graph with extroversion-introversion score on one axis and IQ on the other? I can't find one on Google Images.

Extraversion and IQ typically have zero correlation. In Bates and Rock (2004),we suggested that if the arousal value of the testing environment varies, this might induce a modest correlation with IQ (introverts doing best in silences, ambiverts with some noicse, and extraverts performing best under fairly loud white noise background. More basic measures like inspection time were unaffected.

Based on some followup queries, here's a graph of Extraversion against IQ-score in 597 adults from a normative sample in the United States: The MIDUS.

The plot shows the raw data points, and also a loess best fit curve: no relationship, even at the extremes.


"Do it yourself" Cognitive-Behavioral-Therapy-style intervention methods In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, what should happen between the occurrence of a negative automatic thought and, finally, its neutralization is logical thinking: looking at the evidence for the automatic thought, and the evidence against the automatic thought, and coming to the conclusion that the automatic thought is not worth thinking about. Or that it wasn't valid at all.

In an emergency situation coupled with very high anxiety, an intervention is needed. The therapist uses the CBT model to show the patient that the negative automatic thought is not valid. This is especially important for patients with anxiety disorders. This is CBT performed in a timely, efficient and immediate manner (perhaps on the phone), when waiting for the next therapy session to come by is not an option.

Is there a way patients can perform a CBT intervention without the aid of a therapist in a high intensity, emergency situation, with high propensity for negative thinking, and high anxiety, just in case the therapist isn't reachable/available at that moment?

Actually, reconceptualization is only one tool of CBT.

The basis is still what you might call "conditioning" or "skills training" (depending on the disorder). The depressed person does not "think away" (or "feel away") his depression, but learns and practices new behaviors until they become habitual. And it is this behavior change that leads to different experiences, new insights, and to a different "feeling" and "thinking".

For example, a person with Social Anxiety will simply learn social skills and practice them until they become second nature. This person experiences that they are not repulsive (as they had thought), when their new skills (e.g. smiling when approaching a stranger) lead to positive outcomes (e.g. the stranger smiling back). Discussing the mental concepts ("Believing that you are repulsive has the function to help you avoid situations that cause you fear.") and changing them ("I behave in a way that repulses people, and I can change that behavior.") helps motivate the patient to commit to the therapy and supports the practical exercises.

Reconceptualization accompanies behavioral methods and complements them. That is why it is not called Cognitive Therapy, but Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

Basically, what CBT does is "faking it": you act as if you weren't afraid of spiders, until you have lost your fear; you act as if you weren't depressed, until you no longer are. The C-part helps you understand what you are doing and process your experiences.

What you also need to keep in mind is that behavior change might entail removing the patient from a pathogenic environment. For example, an alcoholic might profit from not going to bars to meet his dinking buddies. A depressive might profit from divorcing an abusive spouse or finding a job more in tune with his values and interests.

Reading through the old edits of your question, I realize that I have probably misunderstood your intent. Please comment, if you are looking for something else.


How can Semantic Pointer Architecture be used to capture dynamical systems? Most uses of SPA I've seen seem to be representing static systems, such as recognizing digits, categorizing images, rapid variable creation (also called "completing a pattern") and planning a path for writing those digits back out. Can it be used to represent dynamics as well, such as the general movement from a series of images?

As explained in the NEF book, all non-linear dynamical systems can be represented in the NEF.

The SPA is simply applying semantic meaning and manipulations to the vectors represented by the NEF. The two most prominent examples of this are the motor system and the inference system in Spaun, which are shown in the aforementioned "rapid variable creation" task.

The vision system represents symbols (numbers) which get sent to the inference system. The inference system figures out the answer and sends it to the motor system. The motor system converts the symbol to a path and follows it.

Adding dynamics in a similar system with dynamics being visually identified, manipulated and then output, instead of static paths. One could imagine a system where the dynamics of the movement of an object are identified, manipulated neurally and then imitated. For example, having the running of a cheetah represented a series of limb movements, mapping them onto the human body and then having a human imitate that gait.

Of course this hasn't been implemented yet (and would look quite silly), but it shouldn't be super difficult. The main problem would be a good "demo" or psychological data to match, but I think this is still a good example.


Neurotransmitters by neuron types I'm looking for a concise overview table of all types of neurons (whose number is at least in the hundreds) indicating which neurotransmitters they use pre- and post-synaptically (of which there are over 100 different ones).

If a type of neuron releases (or receives) more than one neurotransmitter the relative amounts would be interesting.

Furthermore: For each neurotransmitter there seem to be more than one receptor, so the table should include also the receptor (per neuron type and received neurotransmitter).

Ideally, to each pair of neuron type and released neurotransmitter the neuron types should be listed that receive this transmitter from this type of neuron. (It might turn out that "anything goes".)

Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of neurotransmitters, categorized as (a short list):

Amino acids: glutamate, aspartate, D-serine, γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), glycine
Gasotransmitters: nitric oxide (NO), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen sulfide (H2S)
Monoamines: dopamine (DA), norepinephrine (noradrenaline; NE, NA), epinephrine (adrenaline), histamine, serotonin (SER, 5-HT)
Trace amines: phenethylamine, N-methylphenethylamine, tyramine, 3-iodothyronamine, octopamine, tryptamine, etc.
Peptides: oxytocin, somatostatin, substance P, cocaine and amphetamine regulated transcript, opioid peptides
Purines: adenosine triphosphate (ATP), adenosine
Catecholamines: dopamine, norepinephrine (noradrenaline), epinephrine (adrenaline)
Others: acetylcholine (ACh), anandamide, etc.

They then specifically present about 100 transmitters and the respected receptors in the tables and most of both are additionally presented in separate articles. They mention specific actions of main transmitters and they further categorize them by systems: noradrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, histamine and acetylcholine system.

What can be interesting to focus on:

Which neurotransmitters/receptors are excitatory or inhibitory
Which neurotransmitters are antagonistic or synergistic
Which neurotransmitters/receptors are related with specific diseases
Drugs that act on specific receptors


List of experiments contradicting the expected utility model I proposed this question as an example question for the Area51 proposal "Mathematical modeling". User Artem Kaznatcheev suggested that it be asked here too, which I thought was a good idea.

So I am looking for a list of experiments which cannot be accounted for by the expected utility model. By the expected utility model, I mean the model of individual preferences over vectors of uncertain events (e.g. $\Big(P(rain) = 0.4, P(sunshine) = 0.6\Big)$ and $\Big(P(rain) = 0.6, P(sunshine) = 0.4\Big)$)  which satisfies a list of axioms proposed by Von Neuman and Morgernstern, namely

Completeness
Transitivity
Continuity
Independence

A rigorous formulation of these axioms can be found on page 8 of Axiomatic Foundations of Expected Utility and Subjective Probability, by Edi Karni, from the Handbook of Economics of risk and uncertainty.. The violations of these axioms I am most interested in are the ones related to the Independence axiom (violations of completeness, transitivity and continuity would deserve a separate question. See this question for an example of intransitivity.).

Alternatively, by Von-Neuman and Morgenstern's representation theorem (page 9 of the same reference), these axioms are know to be equivalent to the fact that the preferences of the agent can be represented by a utility function of the form (in the discrete case):

$U(L) = \sum_{all~possible~events "e"} P(e)u(e)$

where $P(e)$ is again the probability that $e$ occurs and $u(e)$ is the utility of getting event $e$ for sure.

I am looking for situations which cannot be accounted for by the expected utility model. Some well-known examples are the the Allais and Ellsberg paradoxes (although there is still a debate regarding Ellsberg paradox). On the other hand, I do not see the Saint-Peterborough paradox as contradicting expected utility theory, because it can be accounted for by the theory if one assumes an appropriate degree of risk aversion.

I hope this question can serve as a repository of famous experiments contradicting expected utility theory, so feel free to add many.

I asked the same question in the private beta of the newly open Economics.SE and got some interesting answers. You can check them out at https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/95/experiments-contradicting-the-expected-utility-model


Paul Ekman suggests that in near-accidents, fear motivates people to hit their car brakes. Is the fear response fast enough to do this? Recall a time when you were driving your car and suddenly
  another car appeared, going very fast, seeming as if it were about to
  hit you. Your conscious mind was focused on an interesting conversation with a friend in the passenger's seat or the program on the
  radio. In an instant, before you had time to think, before the conscious, self-aware part of your mind could consider the matter, danger was sensed and fear began.
  As an emotion begins, it takes us over in those first milliseconds,
  directing what we do and say and think. Without consciously choosing to do it, you automatically turned the steering wheel to avoid the
  other motorist, hitting the brake with your foot.

Paul Ekman writes in "Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life" that in near-accidents people hit the brakes because they feel fear.

Is the fear response fast enough to do that or do people first hit the brakes and then switch to an emotional state of fear?

This was much longer than I expected! There's quite a bit of ground to cover, but I try to go over it quickly.

So, there are two implicit theoretical assumptions in your question:

We have an "affect program" for fear in our brain (e.g., Ekman & Cordaro, 2011).  When the fear program is activated, a specific pattern of changes in experience, behavior, physiology, and cognition occur (i.e., the fear response).
Present emotions are the primary causes of future behavior.

I'll briefly examine these assumptions, and then I'll draw a conclusion.

Assumption #1:  Affect programs

By "affect program" I mean a discrete module or circuit in the brain that, when activated, automatically produces a fear response.  So if I see a car about to hit me, it might activate my fear program, which will produce my fear response.

Your question uses this assumption by asking about the speed of the fear response.  How fast can my fear program activate my fear response (which would motivate me to hit the brakes)? Does my fear program trigger a response too slowly, such that my fear response will occur after I hit the brakes?

In recent years, the "affect program" idea has been called into question (e.g., Barrett, 2006; Lindquist et al., 2012).  As it stands, it's a fairly controversial assumption that I would argue has iffy empirical support and explanatory power.

If there isn't a "fear program," then what is there? Well…that's tricky. I could get into a whole lot of theory, but that would take up a lot of space (although if you're interested, see Satpute, Wilson-Mendenhall, & Barrett, 2015).  I think the point that I want to make is that it's difficult to talk about the speed of the fear response.  Without having a consensual definition of "emotion," we can't talk very easily about the nature of fear (i.e., what it is, what it looks like, when it begins, when it ends, its function, its neural basis, its evolution, etc.).

Assumption #2: Present emotions cause future behavior

The idea that fear causes me to run away, that anger causes me to approach, or that sadness causes me to withdraw seems very intuitive.  In fact, despite its mixed empirical support, many researchers seem to accept this idea without reservation.

On the other hand, Roy Baumeister and colleagues have argued that present emotions affect future behaviors indirectly (Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, & Zhang, 2007). In fact, they argue that behavior tends to follow emotions, not the other way around.

To make a long story short, Baumeister argues that anticipated emotions are the more direct causes of present behavior.  So If I anticipate feeling relieved as a consequence of hitting the brakes, then I will hit the brakes.  That is, I will hit the brakes because this will lead to future relief. My fear is not motivating this behavior; instead, my expectation of relief is. Indeed, a recent small-scope meta-analysis supports this theory (DeWall, Baumeister, Chester, & Bushman, 2015)

Conclusion

So I made things pretty complicated! I posed two questions:

Can we meaningfully talk about the speed of the fear response without a consensual definition of emotion?
Do present emotions cause future behavior (e.g., fear causing me to hit the brakes)?

My answers to both questions were no.  However, I think if we ignore the yuckiness of the first question, we can say that fear probably doesn't cause us to hit the brakes, but rather the expectation of relief does (or some other anticipated feeling).

When and how quickly the fear response occurs during this situation is hard to answer (but can be resolved somewhat depending on your theoretical perspective). If we assume that emotions are multi-componential, then we might imagine that the experience component need not occur at the same moment as the behavioral component (mirroring studies of emotion coherence, e.g., Mauss et al., 2005).  Thus, the experience of fear could (hypothetically) occur before or after the braking behavior.


Pygmalion effect and negative expectations I've been reading about the Pygmalion effect. From what extracted, it means positive expectations positively influence performance.
Now I'm curious to know this... does the Pygmalion effect also apply to negative expectations in addition to positive expectations?

Overall one can't deny the influence of expectations.
After reading more about the matter, I'd say that Pygmalion effect (or Rosenthal effect) only speaks of positive expectations others might have on us, so it doesn't apply to

negative expectations.
expectations we have for ourselves.

For the negative expectations there's the Golem effect and according to Wikipedia it is

a psychological phenomenon in which lower expectations placed upon individuals either by supervisors or the individual themselves lead to poorer performance by the individual.

In this case it's irrelevant who has the expectations (if they come from outside or from ourselves). Also, from Babad, E. Y.; Inbar, J.; Rosenthal, R. (1982), "Pygmalion, Galatea, and the Golem: Investigations of biased and unbiased teachers", the effect

represents the concerns of social scientists and educators, which are focused on the negative effects of self-fulfilling prophecies

Notice that the German-born American psychologist Robert Rosenthal is behind both of these effects.
Then, and according to Psychologinie, there's the Galatea effect which is

a phenomenon where people's own opinions about their ability and self-worth influence their performance.

The following image (also from the same website) pretty much describes the difference between Galatea and Pygmalion effects


Is there a pictograms repository under an open-commercial license? I'm looking for pictograms repositories for non-verbal people. I found two types:

ones that I need to pay like PECS or SPC,
and others that are free but they have a no-commercial license like arasaac or PiktoPlus.

My question is: Is there a pictograms repository under an open license and that I could use its pictograms with commercial purposes?

I found one! http://straight-street.org/

Those pictos have a Creative Commons BY-SA license.


Picture of eye promotes good behaviour I remember a study about how a picture of an eye made people more well behaved. The experiment was in an unsupervised coffee room where there was a box where participants were expected to deposit money after getting their coffee. However, due to lack of supervision, the participants had the option of leaving no money in the box and getting a free coffee. The study had two conditions, when a picture of a plant hung over the coffee maker and a picture of an eye. They found that participants contributed more money in the eye condition.

What is the original reference and name of this study? What mechanisms did the authors propose to explain this effect? Have the results been replicated in similar studies? How does the increase in contribution compare to cases with passive surveillance like an easily visible camera in the room (but not eye shaped)?

A study that used the field setting you describe is done by Bateson et al. (2006).

As for the mechanism, they write:

  we believe that images of eyes motivate cooperative behaviour because they induce a perception in participants of being watched. Although participants were not actually observed in either of our experimental conditions, the human perceptual system contains neurons that respond selectively to stimuli involving faces and eyes (Emery 2000; Haxby et al. 2000), and it is therefore possible that the images exerted an automatic and unconscious effect on the participants’ perception that they were being watched. Our results therefore support the hypothesis that reputational concerns may be extremely powerful
  in motivating cooperative behaviour.

Similar findings have been found in a lab setting by Haley and Fessler (2005). They also compared the effect to other cues (such as auditory cues) of presence of others and found similar effect. So I don't have a direct answer to the surveillance camera scenario, but these results suggest the effect would be similar.

However, it is clear that this effect depends on many variables. For example, it has been shown not exist in darkness (Tane and Takezawa, 2011), and to depend on culture (Raihani and Bshary, 2012).

References

Bateson, M., Nettle, D., & Roberts, G. (2006). Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting. Biology letters, 2(3), 412-414.
Haley, K. J., & Fessler, D. M. (2005). Nobody's watching?: Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game. Evolution and Human behavior, 26(3), 245-256.
Tane, K., & Takezawa, M. (2011). Perception of human face does not induce cooperation in darkness. Letters on Evolutionary Behavioral Science, 2(2), 24-27.
Raihani, N. J., & Bshary, R. (2012). A positive effect of flowers rather than eye images in a large-scale, cross-cultural dictator game. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279(1742), 3556-3564.