Is it possible to increase the capacity of human brain like “Lucy”? I saw the film "Lucy" in 2015. The film says that humans can use 100% percent of the capacity of their brains.

According to my personal ideas, the capacity of the brain will changed based on the basic knowledge of a person. We all know Albert Einstein was a great knowledgeable human in the world. This level of knowledge can change by the time, for example he was arguably the best scientist or philosopher of his time; he used his brain as much as possible for innovation.

At the present, there are many more scientists in the world, but the world is filled with knowledge, new technology etc. Man's basic knowledge could be higher than a scientist in the past, because this knowledge is openly available everywhere. But the problem is that they don't use their brain to the same level as Einstein or any other scientist that has lived in the past. That means that they don't use the highest capacity of the brain.

So according to my idea, the capacity of the brain will vary depending on external environmental factors.

According to comments and suggestions in this article I read, I was unable to identify the truth: whether people can enhance their brain capacity like "Lucy". And I need to know whether humans have a fixed brain capacity or not.

Most religions say that their saints had used 100% of their brain capacity. So what about other humans?

This may provide you with extra supplementary information regarding the notorious "10 Percent Myth".
To respond to your statement regarding increasing brain capacity through am increase in knowledge:

  Synaptic Consolidation is the process by which items are transferred from short-term to long-term memory. Within the first minutes or hours after acquisition, the engram (memory trace) is encoded within synapses, becoming resistant (though not immune) to interference from outside sources.

Knowledge has to do with "saving" the original memory traces followed when first learning the information. It does not necessarily have to do with active brain capacity. Thus, an increase in knowledge will not necessarily cause an increase in used brain capacity.

You see, the primary issue here is energy cost. Although the brain typically only constitutes 2 percent of the body's weight, it utilizes around 20 percent of the body's energy intake. As a species, we have been "designed" through the filtering of many "versions" our species to be most efficient. As we have not found a particular need to utilize such a large percentage of our brain at a time throughout the millennia, our brains have been simplified into a somewhat energy-efficient structure, utilizing a portion of the total capacity at a time. However, if Man had originally needed to use more of the brain capacity for a majority of his or her daily activities, it would be safe to expect that we would use a larger portion of our brains at any given instance. Assuming you are still in a state of heightened neuroplasticity, it is potentially possible to "increase the amount of brain capacity used at a time" by participating in activities requiring multiple parts of your brain.

But how many different activities can you think of that would require reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, emotions, problem solving, movement, orientation, recognition, perception of stimuli, visual processing, perception, recognition of auditory stimuli, memory, and speech?


Good conferences on (computational) neuroscience in Europe and whether to submit to conference or journal? I'm looking for good (computational) neuroscience conferences in Europe that $\textbf{have proceedings}$. Recommendations? Or are there even such conferences? Should I just send my work to a journal? I'm new in neuroscience, and it seems (compared to CS/Physics) that conferences are not so respected in this field.

To touch on your broader question, as I understand getting full text publications in conferences are highly respected in computer science. In psychology and neuroscience (note I don't know so much about computational neuroscience), publishing papers in high impact journals is more respected in the field. While some conferences do have full-length papers, such publications often carry little weight. It is often tricky to even hunt down such conference proceedings. As such they are often barely part of the published research literature.  So yes, in psychology and neuroscience, you should generally submit your work to journals if you want to maximise its scientific impact.

That said, conferences are important in psychology and the neurosciences. As with any field, conferences are an important opportunity to network, share ideas, form collaborations, learn about developments and so on. A very common strategy is to present a work in progress at a conference. This allows you to set a preliminary deadline, get some feedback, and then refine your ideas before submitting to a journal.


Why does having many options harm decision making? I wonder what is the negative of having many possibilities. I sometimes find my self stagnate in some process when it comes to decision making. An the more opportunities I have the more I struggle. Are there studies, books, articles comprising this phenomenon?

The problems presented by having too many choices are defined at the personal level by Overchoice and at the organization level as Analysis Paralysis. However, they both cover the same idea, wherein too many choices overwhelm a person's decision making process as each alternative is considered.


Emotions VS Maslow pyramid Where are the emotions in the Maslow pyramid?

When we go from inside of basic emotions outside like this:

in which direction at the Maslow pyramid we would move?

Update:

Based on @ArnonWeinberg Comment i need to  mention these information about my prose of asking this question:

  I like to have one theory about this relations between the Psychology
  emotional growing and the Maslow pyramid levels, so i asked this kind,
  but could be another Emotional diagram which is more Updated

new Update:

i found this paper which is saying about computational mode of Emotions:

The Relationship Between Emotion Models and Artificial Intelligence

and this power-point:

Thanks for your attention.

The 2 concepts you are referring to are Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow, 1943) and Plutchik’s general psychoevolutionary theory of emotion (Plutchik, 1980). They are totally separate concepts, but can be linked only to a small degree.
As someone progress within Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the person can experience a variety of different emotions, depending on their experiences leading up to and upon achieving that level of attainment.
For example, someone who has met all their safety needs may experience a sense of optimism and trust in their environment. When meeting their love and relationship needs there will probably be experiences of love, but also there may be joy and serenity.
If for some reason the person loses an aspect or more of their safety needs, for example, there could be apprehension, worry, fear, annoyance, pensiveness...
References
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological review, 50(4), 370-396. doi: 10.1037/h0054346 Free PDF: https://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Maslow-1943.pdf
Plutchik, R. (1980). A general psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. In Theories of emotion (pp. 3-33). Academic press. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-558701-3.50007-7 Google Books: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Ie1GBQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA3


Why is the sound of running water soothing? What is it about the sound of running water that soothes the brain and the soul?

This is what I found on the internet:

  Our species evolved where trees met savannahs and where freshwater
  sources were present. Our brains are deeply encoded with the love of
  water – we revel in the delicious feel and noise of burbling brooks…

and

  I personal think we LOVE the sounds of running water because inside
  the womb of our mothers, that's what we hear...along with the sounds
  of her beating heart. I was told that we hear the blood running
  through her veins in utero.

There cannot be a single answer to this question which would be entirely correct. Different theoretical approaches to psychology will yield different explanations. This is evident from the other answers in this question (some which you provided) which all stem from different theoretical accounts:

Evolutionary Psychology: Species evolving around water
Developmental Psychology: Prenatal development in womb
Sensory and Perception Psychology: White noise account
Behaviorism, specifically Classical Conditioning: We develop a learnt association between the sound of water and relaxation.
A prediction based on a cognitive science approach is less clear in my opinion. It would likely stem from a combination of sensory arguments (white noise) and from neural networks of association.

Why do we see so many different accounts for the same phenomena? Firstly, it is difficult to produce a falsifiable explanation for why such a perverse qualitative effect exists. In order for any given explanation to be scientifically valid, it has to be able to be tested. The explanations provided so far do not generate meaningful hypotheses which we can test using experimental studies. Therefore, it is difficult to form a single model accounting for why we find water sounds relaxing. Consequently, we see a range of explanations with little evidence for any of them (they are all just untested just-so stories). Note, even some of the better responses, such as this one (linked above), do not provide falsifiable or testable answers.

A second reason we see such variation could be that there is no simple answer. The "true" answer probably will draw upon a wide range of reasons for this phenomena. In this way, perhaps the best explanation at this point is that there are a variety of reasons why certain individuals find water sounds relaxing (those aforementioned). Although perhaps not the most satisfying conclusion - it is likely the most accurate.


Free online survey and diary software for conducting experience sampling studies Are there any open source online survey software that enable researchers to use experience-sampling methods, e.g. online diaries (where people answer similar survey questions repeatedly and are notified and reminded)? Free, but not open source, would also be interesting.

Please only post solutions, that you have actually used for experience-sampling research, not ones that "might be easily adapted".

The best review of experience sampling tools I've found is here.

Specifically, to answer you question, check out "MyExperience". To quote the website:

  MyExperience is a BSD-licensed open source mobile data collection tool
  developed for Windows Mobile devices (including PDAs and mobile
  phones) using .NET CF 2 and Microsoft SQL Compact Edition.

  MyExperience is available for free on SourceForge in beta release.
  Please see our wiki for documentation and our blog for updates.
  MyExperience combines sensing and self-report to collect both
  quantitative and qualitative data on human behaviors, attitudes and
  activities in the field. Using a mobile phone's wireless connectivity
  to the internet, researchers have the ability to access MyExperience
  data as it's collected allowing for ongoing analysis of study data and
  early detection of subject compliance or technology issues.

  MyExperience is based on a three tier architecture of sensors,
  triggers and actions; triggers use sensor event data to conditionally
  launch actions. One novel aspect of MyExperience is that its behavior
  and user interface are specified via XML and a lightweight scripting
  language similar to the HTML/JavaScript paradigm on the web.


How to recognize contempt What are the obvious signs of contempt/hatred in human relations and what is the cause for these behaviors?

In other words, are there physical and behavioral traces/signs of contempt and hatred? Can a person be kind and friendly with you, but in reality he/she feels a great amount of contempt and hatred towards you?

The fundamental question here is: Can we "read" emotions in a perceiver-independent, objective way?

The answer, I'd venture, is: We don't really know (although, currently, we cannot do this with great reliability or specificity).

It would be painstaking to go through the history of emotion research and to go over every emotion theory that supposedly has a definitive answer to this question.  Fortunately, a great overview of this history can be found here.

It would also be a pain to go through every emotion perception study, in cultures near and far, every psychophysiology study, every behavioral or neuroimaging study, and the many (sometimes quite giant) limitations of this literature.  Fortunately, you can find meta-analyses on these topics, which mostly suggest we cannot "recognize" contempt, or any other emotion, with notable reliability or specificity (although we can "perceive" it; e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4.)

So, it's hard to answer this question.  We might be able to one day, but we are very, very, very, very far away from sampling the dynamic and highly variable range of potential expressions of "contempt," let alone any other emotion (no study has actually tried to do this ever).  Moreover, quite a few emotion theories do not recognize contempt as universal (see here for a recent overview).

If the above doesn't confuse you enough, I'll pull in the picture I pointed to in the comments.  Same "disgust" face, different emotion.  Well, what about contempt?

I realize my answer is pretty unsatisfying, but if you read a great deal of the emotion literature, you might just arrive to the same conclusion.


What is the correlation between Grade Point Average (GPA) and intelligence? What is an authoritative empirical estimate of the correlation between pscyhometric measures of intelligence and Grade Point Average (GPA)?
What are the main factors that influence the size of the correlation? E.g., country, level of schooling (e.g., primary, secondary, university), method of GPA measurement, etc.

Specifically, I'm interested in estimates derived ideally from meta-analyses. But estimates based on large sample studies would also be welcome.

Assessing Adolescent And Adult Intelligence (Kaufman & Lichtenberger, 2005) goes through quite a bit of the research on this.  Or you can use the correlation of 0.7 that they report, which is based on an aggregation of more recent studies of adult intelligent test scores and academic achievement.  I don't see where they break down country, but they do look at level of schooling a bit.  Perhaps some of their sources will help.


Does limiting mental activity during the day increase mental performance later in the day? Is there any scientific evidence to support the idea that you only have so much cognitive energy in a given day; and if so, would the mental abilities of someone who focuses on as little as possible all day be greater than someone who stays engaged all day long?  Can the brain experience fatigue?

In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990), he says:

  At this point in our scientific knowledge we are on the verge of being
  able to estimate how much information the central nervous system is
  capable of processing. It seems we can manage at most seven bits of
  information - such as differentiated sounds, or visual stimuli, or
  recognizable nuances of emotion of thought - at any one time, and that
  the shortest time it takes to discriminate between one set of bits and
  another is about 1/18 of a second.

He goes on to infer that "psychic energy" should be invested and shouldn't be wasted. At least, this was my interpretation.

Very interesting question, however, cognitive exhaustion may be a learned phenomena ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5413468/ ) as referenced by this 2017 article finding it to be conditioned to the individual. Though I cannot provide a concrete answer, I would estimate that cognitive stamina, so to speak, can be trained into the individual much like aerobic or muscular stamina.


Is variation in human brain size related to mental functioning? It seems that the head size of human beings has evolved to be relatively similar, yet there is still some amount of variation. While I'm sure the correlation is not absolute, I read that larger heads do imply larger brains.

Thus, my questions:

What is the correlation between head size and brain size?
What is the relationship between brain size and mental processing ability (e.g., intelligence, emotional responses to certain stimuli, reaction time, etc)?
Why might these correlations exist or not exist?

One relatively recent review on this topic is Rushton & Ankney (2009). They report that there have been a large number of studies with varying results:

28 studies, covering a total of 1,389 subjects, used brain imaging techniques to estimate the size of the brain. Correlations with general mental ability (GMA) ranged from 0.04 to 0.69, with an unweighted mean of 0.40. Weighting the correlations with the sample size produces a mean of 0.38.
59 studies, covering a total of 63,403 subjects, used external head measurements to estimate the size of the brain. Correlations with general mental ability ranged from 0.02 to 0.55, with an unweighted mean of 0.21. Weighting the correlations with the sample sizes produces a mean of 0.20.
6 studies used Jensen's method of uncorrelated vectors to distill g, getting a mean correlation of 0.63.

The last point probably needs some explaining. The g-factor, or g for short, is the quantity that IQ tests are designed to measure. The name "g factor" comes from the fact that it is a common, general factor which all kinds of intelligence draw upon. For instance, Deary (2001) analyzed an American standardization sample of the WAIS-III intelligence test, and built a model where performance on the 13 subtests was primarily influenced by four group factors, or components of intelligence: verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working memory, and processing speed. In addition, there was a common g factor that strongly influenced all four. The model indicated that the variance in g was responsible for 74% of the variance in verbal comprehension, 88% of the variance in perceptual organization, 83% of the variance in working memory, and 61% of the variance in processing speed. In other words, if a person has a lot of g, then (s)he is likely to also get a high score on tests measuring all subtypes of intelligence. This is possibly because g is something in the brain that all the subtypes of intelligence benefit from. But note the word likely - the correlation is not perfect, so it's still possible to have a high g but be worse than average in some subtype of intelligence. It's just less likely than the converse.

Now experts might be cringing at that previous paragraph, because I talked about an individual having a lot of g. Technically, g is something that is computed from the correlations between various test scores in a given sample, and there's no such thing as the g of any specific individual. The technique doesn't even guarantee that g actually corresponds with any physical quantity, as opposed to something that the method just happened to produce by accident. So when you want to measure someone's intelligence, you make a lot of people take tests that are known to be strongly g-loaded. That means that the performance on the tests is strongly correlated with g. Then you take their raw scores and standardize them to produce an IQ score, so that if e.g. only 10% of the test-takers got a raw score of X, then anyone getting the raw score of X is assigned an IQ indicating that they're in the top 10% of the population. And although this still doesn't tell us what an individual's g score is, it gives us a score that's closely correlated with g. IQ also seems to predict a large number of things like life outcomes and performance in a variety of tasks and so forth. See e.g. Jensen (1998) for (much) more on this.

So now that I've explained all that, what does the "6 studies used Jensen's method of uncorrelated vectors to distill g" bit mean? Well, if I'm understanding the paper right, then the 28 + 59 other studies calculated the correlation between brain size and IQ. In other words, between brain size and performance on some particular intelligence test, that ultimately measures performance on one or more subtypes of intelligence. Subtypes which are closely, but not perfectly, correlated with g. The 6 studies were different in that they attempted to calculate the actual correlation between g and brain size, which is different from the correlation between IQ and brain size. Which one is better? Here I must admit that my expertise isn't sufficient to answer the question confidently, but I'd suppose that it depends on what you're trying to measure. If you want to know the extent to which the common factor influencing all the subtypes of intelligence varies between brains, then you want to use the estimate where g has been extracted. If you want to know how much brain size seems to correlate with mental ability in practice, you might want to use the correlation with IQ. Neither is more correct than the other.

Other findings from the paper:

The brain volume–GMA correlation is equally strong in males and females.
It is also found in people of East Asian, East Indian, European, Turkish, African, South American, and Amerindian descent.
Studies using a narrow age range of younger or older samples show the same magnitude of correlation.
Many studies appear to show that the size effects are manifest throughout the brain and not specific to any particular region; however, other studies show GMA centered in the frontal brain regions. Two studies found support for both positions - the more g-loaded subtests were distributed throughout the brain but concentrated most in the frontal lobes.
The correlation between head size and GMA is found both within families and between families. From the paper: "the within-family finding is of special interest because it controls for most of the sources of variance that distinguish families, such as social class, styles of child rearing, and general nutrition, that differ between families."
Body size and brain size are correlated. The average correlation is 0.2 for MRI studies, or 0.3-0.4 for studies that use skull measurements. But body size and GMA are also correlated, at around 0.20-0.25. There is disagreement about whether the size of the body should be controlled for when estimating brain size/GMA correlations, but a correlation is found regardless of whether or not body size is controlled for. In other words, both relative and absolute brain size are correlated with IQ.
The brain size/intelligence correlation is also found in non-human animals, both within a species (e.g. rats) and between different species (e.g. species of birds, species of primates).
Brain size is also environmentally sensitive: for instance, rats raised in complex environments have thicker cortices and larger brains than rats reared in impoverished environments.
The paper also reviews results showing that brain size and GMA are correlated with age, socioeconomic position, sex, and population group differences, but those aren't relevant for the question so I won't go into them here.

References:

Deary, I.J. (2001) Human intelligence differences: a recent history. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5, 127–130.

Jensen, A.J. (1998) The g Factor – The Science of Mental Ability. Praeger.

Rushton, J.P. & Ankney, C.D. (2009) Whole Brain Size and General Mental Ability: A Review. International Journal of Neuroscience, 119(5), 692-732.


What is the relationship between neurotransmitter release and resting potential in retinal bipolar cells? Retinal bipolar cells are known to have resting potentials from which they can become more or less polarized. What I'm wondering is whether a bipolar cell's neurotransmitter-release rate is zero when it's at resting potential, or whether it's zero when it's fully hyperpolarized.

Bipolar cells reduce transmitter release when hyperpolarized, see the wikipedia page. When the bipolar cell is fully hyperpolarized it will basically stop releasing neurotransmitters. If transmitter release ever becomes totally zero I do not dare to say, however.


How do neurons know where to send transmitters? If a single neuron can have thousands of synapses with other neurons, how do each neuron "knows" to which further neuron to send transmitters? i.e. selectivity

When a neuron fires an action potential, it doesn't "select" a target. It releases neurotransmitter (somewhat probabilistically, as vesicle release has a probability <1 at most synapses) to every cell it synapses on, all of the thousands you reference.
What is important for selectivity is the development of synapses, which are shaped by axon guidance cues and later by synaptic plasticity. All of this is laid down well before an action potential causes neurotransmitter release.
However, for almost all connections in the brain, a post-synaptic neuron won't fire due to the activity of a single pre-synaptic cell. Therefore, the selectivity in which neurons will fire an action potential is driven by the population of neurons that are previously active, not any one cell. Neurons that fire in the near future can be said to be determined by the combination of all the neurons firing in the recent past, including both excitatory and inhibitory neurons. This gives brains an incredible diversity of possible states. If we are to simplify neurons as "firing" or "not firing" in a given time window that would equal 2^(number of neurons) possible states, each leading to a different subsequent state.


Does having wrong answers available while studying distract the mind from the correct answer? I am studying for a big exam which will include 100 out of the 300 questions I was given as material for the exam. They are the exact questions that will be used on the exam, including answer choices.  While I am reviewing, should I make the incorrect answers available to myself, so that when I am taking the test I see the questions and answers I have been reviewing, or should I make no answers available to myself except the correct answer on the other side of a flash card?

Which is the best way to learn the correct answer?

Which is the best way to learn the correct answer?

There is no correct or best way to learn if phrased that way, let me elaborate:

In the first case you are really learning 2 things:

A series of statements : a),b),c), d).
4 relationships : a)= false, b) = false, c) = true , d) = false.

In the second case you are only learning a single relationship:

statement X ( c in the previous case) = true

This might sound counter intuitive, but the first case will prepare you better (even though it takes longer to practice), Why ? Because it simply matches better the recall task,which can be read as: out of this 4 cases which 3 are false and which one is true. ( a discriminating strategy can even be formulated by grouping the wrong ones via some similarity)

The opposite learning strategy is expected to fare poorly since instead of being helpful, the additional wrong choices work as recall distracters, they will each elicit the same response ( technically the correct one will also have an extra priming effect, but in order to outweigh the distracters, it would need to be consolidated over time), that is you would be expected to write it down word by word.

So your choice comes down to either learn to discriminate or learn to recall perfectly, in general we fare poorly on the second task for short to medium term memories and only after repeated (or emotional) and complementary exposure can we master perfect recall ( mnemonic devices can also be used).

Sources:

The Oxford Handbook of Memory(Tulving,Craik) (expertise, familiarity, distracters,etc,etc)
Cognitive Science (Gazzaniga) General discrimination in memory.


Can experience alter one's preferences for beauty? My friend (a woman) is convinced that all men who find those posters of "women scantily clad in their bathing suits or thongs and big breasts (often fake)" attractive are simply brainwashed by society.

I told her I disagreed. I told her that her experiences with a previous boyfriend (who was ugly, chubby, but she loved him dearly) had radically changed her views, such that she was the outlier, not "everyone else". What the average male thinks of those posters is the default genetic predisposition that males have towards women -- we tend to look for big breasts for breastfeeding our children, good WHR, typically healthy-weight (toned,not excessively fat but not crazy skinny either) as an indicator of overall health, etc.

Is there any literature on:

Whether experience can alter one's perception of attractiveness (i.e. over time x women you find hot will no longer be attractive to you). Note, I certainly think this is true, but I never learned about it specifically in psychology so if anyone know's more that'd be awesome

If experience can alter this perception, to what extent?

Whether the average person is "brainwashed" into thinking that the not-entirely-natural (makeup, breast implants, etc) women on TV are attractive.

There are many reasons why men may find 'not-entirely-natural' women more attractive.

One reason, perhaps obvious, is simply based on evolutionary preferences. A rosy complexion may indicate good health, whereas larger breasts may signify fertility. Whether fake or not, women use makeup and surgery to accentuate features that men already find attractive. Though it is true that some women may accentuate features to the point of unrealism, it is worth noting that aesthetic reactions are established prior to one's cognitive appraisal for attractiveness [citation needed]. The mechanism in our brain that judges instantaneous beauty is likely not privy to information such as 'that woman in front of me has fake breasts'.

That being said, I think a better answer to your question relies on the notion of fluency--the metacognitive experience of difficulty associated with any cognitive act. Familiarity fosters high fluency, because our mind processes familiar things more quickly or easily than novel things. Several studies have shown that familiarity or fluency leads to an increased rating on any number of positively valence dimensions, including likability and attractiveness. [1][2] (As a side note, it's also interesting that the reverse is also true-- attractive faces are judged a more familiar [3]).

The media certainly plays a large part in increasing this familiarity through what we see on TV and in magazines. Different cultures develop different cultural norms for attractiveness as a result of their exposure. The same effect is frequently observed in people who are attracted to  others of the same race. This preference is shown even in young infants, as a result of increased exposure to faces of their own race. [4]

Lastly, the 'message' conveyed by media likely influences our perception of beauty as well. Ads tell us that we have to constantly use the right shampoo, or diet supplement, or facial cleanser-- pressuring us to believe we won't be beautiful if we don't use these products. The message is not cryptic-- products often reference the 'healthy' or 'attractive' effects of their use. Perhaps someone better versed in the literature on belief formation or persuasion could add some useful citation here as well, this it not my area of expertise. (I often refer people to Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice for an overview of the literature related to persuasion, which may be worth checking out if no one can provide more targeted references).

  [1] Peskin, M. & Newell, F. N. (2004). Familiarity breeds attraction:
  Effects of exposure on the attractiveness of typical and distinctive
  faces. Perception, 33, 147-157.

  [2] Reber, R., Schwarz, N., & Winkielman, P. (2004). Processing
  fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiver's
  processing experience? Personality and Social Psychology, 8, 364-382.

  [3] Monin, B. (2003). The warm glow heuristic: When liking leads to
  familiarity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85,
  1035-1048.

  [4] Kelly, D.J. et al. (2005). Three-month-old, but not newborns,
  prefer own-race faces. Dev Sci, 8, F31-F36.


At what age do children typically reach adult reading speed? A kid who just started to read puts a lot of effort in processing sentences. These efforts will decrease as he/she gets older and, at some point (around 12, 15?), will read as fast as an adult.

Is there an age when reading speed becomes stable enough to be considered as adult speed?

My guess is that it should depend on each individual (particular pleasure/difficulty to read, variable exposition to written material), but there should be an average measure. I searched the web for some references without success - maybe this question was answered long before the digital era.

vand den Bos et al (2002)

van den Bos et al (2002) summarises research over various ages.
They reported:

  The reading task was to read in 1 min, as fast and accurately as
  possible, the unique and unrepeated words of a stan- dardized
  word-reading test. Results indicate that word-reading speed and naming
  speeds of colors and pictures continue to increase into mature
  adulthood.

Figure 1 (shown below) indicates that reading speed got quicker over time.

They conclude with :

  This is interpreted as supporting the the- ory that describes reading
  recognition development as a domain-specific learning process with
  reciprocally facilitating links to alphanumeric symbol-naming speed
  development.

References

van den Bos, K. P., Zijlstra, B. J., & lutje Spelberg, H. C. (2002). Life-span data on continuous-naming speeds of numbers, letters, colors, and pictured objects, and word-reading speed. Scientific Studies of Reading, 6(1), 25-49.


What do we mean by saying: Narcissist are not empathetic? I was amazed by finding out the dark triad
But I have a doubt. I know some "narcissists" and I would not say that they cannot see other people emotions. I would say that they think they have the right to disrespect them or they cannot realize when they are disrespectful.

For example, I imagine the following beliefs from a narcyssist:
People have to make effort
Who doesn't make effort doesn't deserve pity

Or

Bullism is very bad
Who is a bullist doen't deserve to live

Of course seeing emotions and respecting them is really different.. Narcyssism is ONLY about not perceiving other emotions?

The people you know may have narcissictic personality traits, but that doesn't mean that they meet all the criteria. Criteria lists can be very confusing. Most of the time, people who are diagnosed with mental illnesses don't meet all the clinical criteria, even if their pathology is quite severe.

I don't think the statements you give are necessarily narcissitic. A statement that describes the style of lack of empathy of a narcissicist might be something like, "I don't care if you want to eat pasta, because I want to eat sushi and what I want is more important." This is how psychology usually describes lack of empathy: a pathological inability to recognize that other people's feelings are equally as valid as one's own.

At any rate, lack of empathy is only one of several features of narcissicistic personality.


When are dreams created? My question asks whether it is understood that dreams are created on-the-fly as they are experienced, or whether they are pre-recorded and played back to the dreamer.

I have experienced interruptions such as loud noises become part of a dream, as if they are inserted in real-time into the dream.
Also this Psychology Today article suggests that thoughts just before sleeping can be inserted into dreams.

From Arnon Weinberg's excellent answer to the question How long do dreams last?, I understand that it is possible for real-life input to be added to dreams on-the-fly.

Chris' answer and SimplyPsychology's article about Sigmund Freud mention something called dream work, the process of converting an underlying wish into a dream, an experience that satisfies an unconscious - possibly immoral - desire in a morally acceptable way.

I'm looking into when this dream work process occurs, if they are formed during the first stages of sleep, or created as the dreamer dreams, or before sleep.

The origins of dreams have been studied by many different people and your approach to understanding the origins depends on your approach, however, dreams seem to originate within the unconscious part of the mind.

This is a huge subject and therefore the following is only a taster to lead you into further reading on the subject.

In the psychodynamic approach, Sigmund Freud studied dreams and in 1900, he wrote a book on his theories.  If you are unfamiliar with the psychodynamic approach and psychoanalysis, it may be worth reading the full article at SimplyPsychology, however if you are familiar with terms such as ego, id and superego along with Freud's theroies of the unconscious mind, then you can skip to the Dreams Analysis bit.

Basically, Freud believed

  dreams to be the royal road to the unconscious as it is in dreams that
  the ego's defenses are lowered so that some of the repressed material
  comes through to awareness, albeit in distorted form. Dreams perform
  important functions for the unconscious mind and serve as valuable
  clues to how the unconscious mind operates.

Repressed material is referred to being disturbing or threatening thoughts which are repressed by the ego by an unconscious mechanism called the ego defence mechanism.

In the person centred approach, Carl Jung talked about the compensatory nature of dreams and Carl Rogers said in his book A way of being (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980)

  In relating to the client a Jungian will want to relate to the
  unconscious as well as the conscious side of the client's personality.
  This means that it will be natural to give special attention to such
  things as dreams, fantasies, and projections, which from a Jungian
  point of view are our chief means of contact with the unconscious.

  Dreams will be given special significance, since the dream provides a
  view of the client's problem that is different from his or her
  conscious view, yet is still an aspect of the client's view.

Putting these ideas together in a summary, dreams

can sometimes be pre-recorded in the form of memories of what was said or thought - e.g. in nightmares relating to past traumatic events such as war or abuse - although they can sometimes be a little skewed towards the person's understanding of what happened, and
they can sometimes be a product of repressed or unrepressed thoughts and feelings just as the article you linked to in your question suggests.

I would also like to draw on a word of caution mentioned in the SimplyPsychology article.

  'Dream dictionaries', which are still popular now, were a source of
  irritation to Freud. In an amusing example of the limitations of
  universal symbols, one of Freud's patients, after dreaming about
  holding a wriggling fish, said to him 'that's a Freudian symbol - it
  must be a penis!'

  Freud explored further and it turned out that the woman's mother, who
  was a passionate astrologer and a Pisces, was on the patient's mind
  because she disapproved of her daughter being in analysis. It seems
  more plausible, as Freud suggested, that the fish represented the
  patient's mother rather than a penis!

It is believed from both approaches that dreams perform important functions for the unconscious mind, and these dreams can be beneficial in therapy if carefully and correctly examined by the therapist with the client, as they can open you up to a different view of how things happened in the past or are happening in the present.

Edit: to reflect alteration of OP question

On reflection on my answer above you concluded that Freud's work covered

  the process of converting an underlying wish into a dream, an
  experience that satisfies an unconscious - possibly immoral - desire
  in a morally acceptable way

Whilst dreams can reflect unconscious immoral desires, the desires can be moral but repressed for other reasons such as personal prejudice.  Repression is a powerful ego defence mechanism whereby it can prevent a thought or memory which can be psychologically damaging from reaching the conscious.

Repression is unconscious. When we deliberately and consciously try to push away thoughts, this is suppression.

The combination of the answers given in this posting point to the fact that dream creation can occur either before dreaming, at the start or during dreaming.  Repression and suppression of thoughts and memories can lead to your unconscious creating the dream when in sleep as your ego defenses are lowered.


Why are counsellors not supposed to give advice or lead the client? Is it possible for a counsellor not to be leading? I’ve taken a course on counselling psychology and have attended a counselling sessions myself. All the literature I’ve read has said counsellors should not give advice. My question is why is this possible?

I know when talking to a counsellor they think they’re being self-empowering by not “giving advice” or asking leading questions, but I don’t believe it’s possible to have a neutral conversation with someone where they have no effect over you. In a sense, is the way councillors/psychologists speaking to people actually underhanded as they try to dress-up advice as non-advice? I know at advance stages of counselling the counsellor is supposed to challenge the client’s incongruent views. Which views the councillor challenges are up to him, so that’s exerting change on the client. Wouldn't it be better for a councillor to clearly say what he thinks instead of trying to trick a client into thinking they came up with the idea?
For example if a counsellor says “you’ve listed many bad qualities about your girlfriend” while this may be a fact, the councillor is trying to steer you in a certain direction. Wouldn’t it be more honest to say “you’ve listed many bad qualities about your girlfriend, maybe you should breakup with her?” even though the breaking up bit is considered advice?

UPDATE: I think I've finally found the words to express what I'm thinking. I know councilors are not supposed to give advice and act in a very "neutral way" as to allow the client to sort things out for them self, as this is seen as self empowering. It's been my observation that councilors (inadvertently) just find ways to mask what they are asserting as a question or a seemingly neutral statement. For example, client "my neighbor was parked in my drive way and it made me late for work", councilor "I could see how that would make a person mad" (this implies the correct response would be mad). client: "my date cancelled on me", councilor "do you feel let down?" (this is planting the idea in his head). Now wouldn't it be better if the councilor gave advice like "there are plenty of fish in the sea". I know councilors are not trained to ask leading questions or make leading comments, but as humans, I believe it is inevitable to do this, and it's much better just to say something directly than to (subconsciously) think up a way to hint at it.

Counselors can be taught to "not give advice" and there are good reasons for this school of thought. But in professional practice such passivity is only one style among many counselors may choose. If you find yourself unhappy with your counselor's style, do both of you a favor and keep looking for greater compatibility. Better results will follow from greater comfort in sessions. The burden of finding the best match is on the client - the counselor will try to help the client as well as possible with the style the counselor believes is best for the client, but if you don't like such passivity, look for another counselor and say what you want during the first meeting (on the phone, even better.)

As to "why" some counselors believe it is helpful to not give advice: much work in psychotherapy requires the client to make every step, every decision following the client's own insight; this is a process of internal awareness and growth which places the counselor in the role of facilitator. A facilitator will make it easier for the client to make progress, but will not tell the client answers even if the counselor has opinions or preferences. As you put it, the goal is for the client to become more "self-empowering."

I hope this helps.
I have a Counseling M.A. and years' practice in a variety of healing arts.
clinical-psychology, conversation, style,counseling


How rare is synesthesia? I visited a neuropsychologist recently who told me I have Synesthesia. I never really knew what it was, but it's fascinating and I can't believe it isn't the norm among people. For me, certain numbers just have had personalities.

For some reason, the more difficulty I had with the number, the more complex personality it had. For instance, I had a lot of trouble with odd numbers, and larger numbers. Therefore, 1 and 2 do not have personalities. On the contrary, 7 and 9 are the most developed personalities.

How rare is this condition?

From Hubbard & Ramachandran (2005):

  [...] the estimated prevalence of synesthesia has varied dramatically, between as many as 1 in 20 (Galton, 1883) and as few as 1 in 25,000 (Cytowic, 1989). The most widely cited study to date suggests that synesthesia occurs in at least 1 in 2000 people (Baron-Cohen et al., 1996), although this is now generally regarded as an underestimate. Our own informal samples have suggested that the prevalence of grapheme-color synesthesia might be between 1 in 200 (Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2001b) and 1 in 100 (Mulvenna et al., 2004). Subsequent large-scale studies have suggested that the prevalence of synesthesia might be as high as 1 in 20 across all forms and 1 in 100 for grapheme-color synesthesia (J. Simner, personal communication). This high prevalence argues against the notion that synesthesia is merely a “benign cognitive variant” (see Ward and Mattingley, 2005) and instead suggests that it is a widespread phenomenon that may provide novel insights into the neural basis of the mind (Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2001b).

References

  Hubbard, E. M., & Ramachandran, V. S. (2005). Neurocognitive mechanisms of synesthesia. Neuron, 48(3), 509.


Is there a way to have strangers tag my images? I would have liked to know what thoughts people get from various images, so that I could trigger targeted thought patterns with images.

An easy way to do this would be if I could find an online service that lets strangers "tag" my images with their own keywords. Especially if I could somehow count votes for each keyword/tag.

Does there exist any kind of service like this?
Or does anyone know of a similar approach I could use?

Amazon Mechanical Turk is perfect for something like this.  In fact, tagging content is one of their default project types, so you should be able to just load in your images and use their template for tagging.

If you haven't seen it before, MTurk is basically a labor marketplace for very small tasks. It works best for paying people a few cents to complete very short tasks, but it is frequently used to recruit subjects for longer behavioral studies as well.


Books on Neurological functions? Are there any books anyone can recommend that do not have any or much in the way of prerequisites but go through the anatomy of the central nervous system while laying out in detail the functions of the various regions of the brain especially the higher brain.
I do not mean a book that merely cuts the brain into brain stem, the mid brain and higher regions like the cortices and then simply divides those regions into a dozen or so further categories. I am looking for something that is a lot more detailed and focuses on the functions of thought, emotions, sensations, perceptions, and memory and the cellular anatomy that goes along with them.

I realize it might be difficult to find a textbook without any prerequisites, so let me say as few prerequisites as possible.

Any basic Neuroscience book would suffice, really. For example, a really good and widely used book is

Principles of Neural Science from Kandel et al. I read it nearly from cover to cover, and it details the workings of the nervous system from bottom to top. Parts IV to IX are probably most relevant to you:

Part IV: The Neural Basis of Cognition
Part V: Perception
Part VI: Movement
Part VII: The Unconscious and Conscious Processing of Neural Information
Part VIII: Development and the Emergence of Behavior
Part IX: Language, Thought, Affect, and Learning


Can we use a scale even if one of the answer levels was not added? I have a set of 20 participants for a study who were given a 7-point Likert scale that was made incorrectly by a graduate student. The student accidentally did not add the 6th answer level. The scale for these 20 participants arguably has no validity now. However, I am hoping there is a way to use it for a pilot or preliminary poster. The study will continue for a couple years and is proposed to have 300 participants. But I would like to use these 20 participants for a small pilot or preliminary poster. Is there a way for me to still use that scale (missing the 6th answer option) and the 20 participants?

I don't know if I can impute it because the data is not MCAR, the answer level was not added to the scale as it should have been. But can I weight the low and high-ends of it or something still? I would like to see if the measured construct from that scale relates to either another variable (such as Engagement) or the outcome variable. It is a longitudinal study, they come in once a week for three weeks. Each time they come in to the lab and use the online intervention they take the scale three times (i.e., Baseline, after first half of website, and then after second half of website), which means we have each participants using the scale 9 times.

I think you'll come unstuck if you don't have a balanced scale.

If you consider a typical five-point scale:

Strongly disagree
Disagree
Neither agree nor disagree
Agree
Strongly agree

If we forget to put Strongly disagree on the scale, it is positively biased, because it is heavier on the Agree side of the scale. If we forget to add Strongly agree we have a negatively biased scale.

If you intend the questionnaire to be used for research purposes, you'll need to ensure the scale is correct - otherwise it may affect your findings, and it will definitely cause people to question whether the outcome would have been the same as if the correct scale was used.


Is there a specific term for the notion of storing "algorithms" in human memory? It seems to me that there is a pretty sharp distinction between storing a "fact" like "Chickens are birds" and storing an algorithm or routine like "how to multiply two 3-digit numbers". I find the latter idea to be very interesting, and I'd like to read more on what has been written on this subject, but I don't know how people in psychology/ cognitive science denote this specific aspect (if they even make such a distinction at all).

I'm familiar with the ideas of episodic and semantic memory, and it seems that memorizing an algorithm like the one mentioned above, falls into the overall domain of "semantic memory", but within that area, I'm not finding the term(s) that deal with representation/ storage of this kind of algorithmic/ routine based knowledge (as opposed to "simple facts").

"Sequence memory", as used by Hawkins in this paper seems to come close to capturing some of the spirit of what I mean, but that doesn't seem to be exactly right either.

This is called procedural memory.

In textbooks, memory is often broken down into a hierarchy of types.  Note that this taxonomy is primarily a guide to language use - ie, how types of memory are labelled or referred to, not how memory is actually organised in the brain.  In standard hierarchies, recalling a mathematical formula would fall under semantic memory, while the process of applying the formula would be stored in procedural memory.

Procedural memory is considered implicit (unconscious) memory, and is most often associated with motor skill or muscle memory, but includes any learned procedure or process.  Notably, the process of learning a motor skill (such as riding a bike) mirrors that of learning a cognitive skill (such as playing chess), in that initially, the process can be acquired consciously (explicit), but with practice, it becomes unconscious (implicit).


Can curiosity be described as an emotion? Can curiosity be described as an emotion?

On one hand it is definitely an emotion in the sense that is a feeling. IT feels like you want to know something. Furthermore, it can be pleasant or unpleasant according to the circumstances. So there is a basis for thinking that I could. I am wondering if there are good arguments on why it would be problematic to define curiosity as an emotion?

The currently accepted model of curiosity is that of Litman. It describes curiosity as a sort of motivating factor:

  Curiosity as a feeling of deprivation (CFD) reflects feelings of uncertainty and tension that motivate information-seeking and problem-solving behavior.

Now we only need to establish a link between motivation and emotional intelligence. In this study, scientists found a link between the two, but came to conclusion that:

  Structural
  equation modeling indicates that motivation is not a factor of emotional  ntelligence but that it is related to the construct particularly through the regulation of emotion and the appraisal of others’ emotions

Edit based on more updated study:

Before we proceed further, I tried to find further proof that curiosity is indeed a motivation. I found confirmation of that here, which categorises curiosity as an intrinsic motivation.

Back on topic, Here is an invaluable resource that I found thanks to mrt: The Psychological Construction of Emotion - Edited by Barrett and Russell

The entire chapter 11 is relevant. It contains lots of relevant citations too (Specially the works of Panksepp). I can't quote all of it because fair use has a limit. I will just post a glimpse:

  In view of the clear evidence linking DA transmission to aspects of
  motivation, what does this say about dopaminergic involvement in emotion? Is DA irrelevant as an ingredient in emotional states? Not necessarily.
  Burgdorf and Panksepp (2006) suggested that ventral striatal mechanisms
  are not related to “pleasure” or “consummatory reward” in the traditional sense, but instead are involved in anticipatory or appetitive energizing effects of stimuli.

The book establishes a difference between hedonic "liking" and dopamine-induced "wanting". [ Dopamine has been linked to pleasurable simulations as well as aversive stimulations ] Depressed people do not lose their appreciation of pleasurable things like tasty food (quoting the book here), but find no energy in their pursuit of motivational stimuli, exertion of effort, and motivational anticipation.

In conclusion: I would like to propose that being curious is similar to being a foodie, or adventurous. Not sure about lexical term, but there seems to be a need to differentiate between core emotions and their drive.


Evidence for EFT (Emotional Freedom technique) for PTSD What is the evidence for Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT for PTSD?

Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT is a form of therapy for PTSD. EFT combines the cognitive components from CBT and exposure therapy and combines it with stimulation of eight acupuncture points.

From Church, D. et al. (2018):

  A typical sequence in the treatment of PTSD might be to have the client vividly recall details of a traumatizing event (exposure) while pairing the memory with emotionally neutral statements (cognitive reframing). To these cognitive and exposure elements, EFT adds the stimulation of a pre-established set of eight acupuncture points (acupoints) by tapping on them with the fingertips, a form of acupressure.

Church, D., Stapleton, P., Mollon, P., Feinstein, D., Boath, E., Mackay, D., & Sims, R. (2018, December). Guidelines for the Treatment of PTSD Using Clinical EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques). In Healthcare (Vol. 6, No. 4, p. 146). Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.

The meta-analysis on anxiety referred to by Church, D. et al. (2018) was performed by Sebastian & Nelms, (2017) was published in a questionable journal.

This critique by Ferrara found that

  four studies suffered from two fatal flaws: they had a small number of participants, and EFT was compared to waitlist controls that did nothing. These studies really tell us nothing about the effectiveness of EFT and they do not validate the theory behind it.

  Small, biased studies without comparison groups from one group of researchers with a financial interest in EFT have shown the treatment is associated with improved PTSD symptoms. However, when it has been compared to CBT, there are no differences between the approaches.

https://healthybutsmart.com/emotional-freedom-technique/

Church, D., Stapleton, P., Mollon, P., Feinstein, D., Boath, E., Mackay, D., & Sims, R. (2018, December). Guidelines for the Treatment of PTSD Using Clinical EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques). In Healthcare (Vol. 6, No. 4, p. 146). Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.

Sebastian, B., & Nelms, J. (2017). The Effectiveness of Emotional Freedom Techniques in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Meta-Analysis. EXPLORE, 13(1), 16–25.


What is the neurological basis of maintaining self discipline? Self Discipline, as defined in this meagre Wikipedia article as being

  as the ability to motivate oneself in spite of a negative emotion

This is partly distinct from self control and willpower which from Wikipedia, is defined as

  the ability to control one's emotions, behavior, and desires in order to obtain some reward, or avoid some punishment.

I am referring to the former, where there may not necessarily be a reward or punishment involved.  I am interested in the neurological basis of self discipline, specifically, are there more primitive areas of the brain at play in trying to defeat our self-discipline that are in turn, inhibited by the frontal cortex or other parts of the brain?

Studies have shown that some people can mentally isolate stressors so that they do not affect performance in other areas. This is sometimes referred to as isolating or repressing the memory of the stressor so that it does not influence secondary reactions. The recollection of the memory is just as painful as it would be for anyone else, but the memory itself remains isolated, and thus there is no opportunity for the memory to form associative links with other memories, where it could thereby affect self-esteem, sense of achievement, or productivity. [1][2]

There have been numerous studies that support this idea of isolation. First is the notion that this effect is not observed in those who demonstrate high neuroticism, or difficulty controlling affective discipline. Studies have shown that people suffering from depression will respond to damaging thoughts by thinking about other negative thoughts, thus reinforcing the depression. [3] In contrast, those who demonstrate low neuroticism and high defensiveness were more likely to process negative feedback in a minimal fashion [4], thus "isolating" the negative feedback from the self. In addition, they were more likely to minimize relative impact by spontaneously generating positive thoughts afterwards.

This is an important notion, as the role of emotional regulation and achievement is readily apparent. Studies have shown that emotional regulation in school children can predict teacher-student relationships, academic achievement, and productivity [5]. Furthermore, positive emotions, moreso than negative emotions, appear to be associated with heightened attention and thought-action repertoires. [6]

Thus, it may be the case that with increased self-discipline comes an increased ability to inhibit (or 'isolate') negative emotions and stressors. This can be mediated by executive functioning tactics such as inhibition, or by shifting cognitive focus (particularly onto the task at hand). [7] Executive functioning abilities are largely mediated by the frontal lobes and by the prefrontal cortex. However, the ability to 'isolate' stressors in order to maximize productivity and motivation may be more closely related to neuroticism, which is in turn related to reduced connectivity between the left amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex, as well as reduced cardiovascular activity. [8]

Sources used:

[1] Hansen, R. D.; Hansen, C. H. (1988). "Repression of emotionally tagged memories: The architecture of less complex emotions.". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 55: 811–818.

[2] Schul, Y; Schiff, M. (1995). "On the costs and benefits of ignorance: How performance satisfaction is affected by knowing the standard prior to performance". Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21: 491–501.

[3] Edwards, J. A.; Weary, G. (1993). "Depression and the impression-forming continuum: Piecemeal processing despite the availability of category information.". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64: 636–645.

[4] Bonanno, G. A.; Davis, P. J.; Singer, J. L.; Schwartz, G. E. (1991). "The repressor personality and avoidant information processing: A dichotic listening study.". Journal of Research in Personality 62: 386–401.

[5] Graziano, P. A., Reavis, R. D., Keane, S. P., & Calkins, S. D. (2007). The role of emotion regulation in children's early academic success. Journal of school psychology, 45(1), 3-19.

[6] Fredrickson, B. L., & Branigan, C. (2005). Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought‐action repertoires. Cognition & emotion, 19(3), 313-332.

[7] Wegner, Daniel M.; Schneider, David J.; Carter, Samuel R. & White, Teri L. (1987). "Paradoxical effects of thought suppression". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53 (1): 5–13.

[8] J. Ormel, A. Bastiaansen, H. Riese, E.H. Bos, M. Servaas, M. Ellenbogen, J.G. Rosmalen, A. Aleman. (2013) The biological and psychological basis of neuroticism: Current status and future directions. Neurosci. Biobehav. pp. 59–72


Why didn't the Left Twix/Right Twix ad campaign take off? This is intended to be a psychology question about human decision making and behavior as concerns advertising. As this is only my second ever question on Cognitive Sciences SE, please advise as to any reasonable improvements to the question, and now for the fun part!

A few years ago, Mars the candy company decided they weren't selling enough Twix candy bars, and launched an ad campaign centered on the idea of the left and right sides of the candy bar being a point of controversy, based on the idea that one is better than the other. Now, three years later, they are even selling packages carrying "only left Twix" or "only right Twix". Now obviously, this entire ad campaign is preposterous. There's no difference between the left side of a Twix bar and the right side of a Twix bar.

And yet the idea of stoking controversy over meaningless polarization of the public has been a very successful strategy for viral marketing in the past. Remember that yellow and gold dress? It seems to be fact at this point that pointless controversy creating conflict between two polar-opposite groups of people is an immensely successful means of propagating the story. In my limited marketing expertise, I'd say Mars did everything right with their Twix campaign.

So why does no one care? People as a matter of fact think it ridiculous. Why isn't it working?

Because people do not see the parallels between the candy and any other dividing issue. People, just like Twix are neither left nor right when created. It is through labeling that divisions are made. So while left and right Twix are still just Twix, a difference in labeling makes them seem different to those that bestow the labels.


Is a low Emotional Intelligence (EQ) pathological? A sufficiently low cognitive intelligence is generally considered in society to be inherently pathological, or at least very nearly so. In fact, until recently, a diagnosis of Intellectual Disability (ID) could formally be made on the basis of a low (below a cutoff value) IQ test score alone, without any evidence that the person's low intelligence actually caused any significant practical problems (e.g. the "clinically significant distress or impairment" frequently mentioned in the DSM).

Is there a similar phenomenon with respect to Emotional Intelligence (EQ)? That is, is having a sufficiently low EQ very strongly correlated with or otherwise significantly indicative of a diagnosable medical or psychological disorder, or is there a significant population of people with low (or even abysmally low) EQ's who function well enough in society that they cannot be diagnosed with any disorder?

Please do not simply quip that "Low EQ==Autism" unless you have something to back that up!

Shortly , a low EQ is not a sufficient condition to diagnose a mental psychiatric disorder.

This is the DSM-V Proposal for the Definition of Mental/Psychiatric Disorder

All these features have to be satisfied in order to diagnose a Psychopathology. Having said that, a low emotional intelligence is a risk factor to contract a Mental Disease. According to Eisenberg (1995), our mind is influenced by biological and social factors and we shouldn't embrace simplifying approaches.

Finally, a good psychiatrist has to consider four perspectives from which to view a psychopathology:

1) The disease perspective: in which patient is identified whith his illness

2) The behavior perspective: which looks at the behavior of the patient

3) The dimensional perspective: which looks at cognitive and emotional dimensions of the patient

4) The life story perspective: which looks at the life story of the patient

References

Dan J. Stein, Katharine A. Phillips, Derek Bolton, K.W.M Fulford, John Z. Sadler, and Kenneth S. Kendler "What is a Mental/Psychiatric Disorder? From DSM-IV to DSM-V"
Eisenberg L. The social construction of the human brain , "Am J Psychiatry 1995; 152: 1563-75


What is the leading alternative to the "stages" model of grieving? In "Cautioning Health-Care Professionals: Bereaved Persons Are Misguided Through the Stages of Grief" by Stroebe et al. the popular "5 stage model" of Kübler-Ross is incorrect. Stroebe et al. argue:

  the regularities of stage theory are too simplistic and limited; they
  fail to represent the complex emotions and processes of grief and
  grieving. They also lack empirical foundation. Using stages in
  practice is potentially harmful, and yet an (perhaps the) ultimate
  goal of theory construction in our field is to enable health-care
  professionals to provide tangible help to those who need it.

What are the leading theories/models of bereavement and how are they superior?

According to "Theories of Grief and Bereavement" by Boerner et al. (2015) the leading theories are:

The Four Component Model from Bonanno and Kaltman

Context in which loss occurs
Subject meanings associated with loss
Changes in representation of the lost loved ones over time
Presence of coping and emotion processes

The Dual Process Model from Stroebe and Schut

Loss-oriented coping
Restoration-oriented coping

The article also notes that further work needs to be done in terms of:

Effects of inter-personal relations
Influences of cultural background
Biological aspects


Why is positive semi definiteness a sufficient condition for Lyapunov stability of the Hopfield networks? For a given Hopfeild network :
$\tau\frac{dx}{dt} = -x + f(Wx + b) $

a general Lyapunov stability function for Hopfeild networks is :

$L(x) = -\frac{1}{2}x^TWx + b^Tx + F(x)$

where $F(x) = \int^{x} f^{-1}(y)dy$

In the case of linear networks, $f(x) = x$, the Lyapunov function becomes:

$L(x) = \frac{1}{2}x^T(I - W)x + b^Tx$

It is asserted that if $(I-W)$ is positive semi definite, then the $L(x)$ is the Lyapunov function and the system is stable.
Why is that a sufficient condition?

The fact that it's a Lyapunov function means that
$$
\frac{dL}{dt} = \frac{\partial L}{\partial x} \cdot \frac{dx}{dt} \leq 0
$$
If $I-W$ is positive semidefinite, $L$ is bounded from below by $-\frac{1}{2} b^T (I-W)^{-1} b $.
This means that the network will end up in a minimum of $L$ and cannot keep moving for ever.


What are the neurological differences between those who have a high tolerance to pain and those who do not? I am curious to learn what are the neurological differences between those that have a high tolerance to pain than to those that do not.  Specifically, by high tolerance to pain, I am referring to those people who can just 'work through' any moderate and even severe injury (e.g. a broken arm - as I have seen a couple of people do).

Much of the "higher order" sensation of pain is processed in the anterior cingulate cortex.

From Wikimedia Commons

There is a movement towards performing anterior cingulotomies in patients with intractable pain.  These procedures are also used to help patients with severe depression or obsessive compulsive disorder, so we have some idea that this area of the brain is a point at which emotional salience is associated with our experience of the world around us.  In the case of pain, post-surgical patients still experience all of the "lower level" symptoms (prostaglandin synthesis, etc.), but do not attach any meaning to them.

So, it is likely that individual differences in this anatomical region could partially account for those who can "work through" the pain versus those for whom it becomes overwhelming.  It's certainly possible that those who can tolerate pain have a lower sensitivity to prostaglandins in their spinal circuitry, but I can't speak to whether that's a valid explanation.

  Yen CP, Kuan CY, Sheehan J, Kung SS, Wang CC, Liu CK, Kwan AL (2009) Impact of bilateral anterior cingulotomy on neurocognitive function in patients with intractable pain. J Clin Neurosci., 16(2), 214-9.


Body temperature increasing when trying to solve difficult problems [ I am unsure if this is the correct site to ask this question ]
I am a HS student, currently studying IT and personally I focus on the field of software (programming) and of course where there is programming there are problems which require you to have the skills to solve problems that occur. So I wanted to improve my skills by trying to solve problems and I've been doing some on hackerrank.

However, whenever i try to solve a problem which is difficult to me and that I'm not capable of understanding it, I begin "overheating", literally. This keeps me from taking further steps to learn about the problems and different ways to approach to the solution. Basically, I feel  like a moron and stop working on the problem.

my question to you is, why do I "overheat" (body temp. increases) when i try to solve problems that are difficult to me?

is it because I don't have a goal which motivates me hard enough or am I just... a moron ? Is there are way to "turn off" this overwhelming feeling?

EDIT :

After some more research i've come across this article which I believe could be the answer to my question (not sure).

The "overheat" (flushing of the skin) you experience is a common-enough reaction to stress, part of the fight-or-flight response. It's not uncommon for people to experince it during exams; generally exam/test axniety is related to both internal and external factors (or perception thereof)

  Self-esteem was a significant and strong predictor of test anxiety. Perceived difficulty of the test and the high-stakes nature or consequences of the test was also related to higher test anxiety.

It's beyond the scope of this site to suggest individualized treatments, but generally  you may want to read about anxiety disorders and panic attacks, more specifically.

Although there are vast amounts of academic publications about the measurement and the effects of test anxiety, the amount of publications trying to assess coping strategies appears a lot more limited. E.g. I found a small study about relaxation techniques, Larson and Rose (2011), which found them effective on reducing the anxiety, but ultimately having no impact on test resuts.

Although I usually recommend Wikipedia as a good first read on many topics, their article on test anxiety is pretty bad, especially in the treatment section, with a heavy emphasis on medication... almost entirely sourced from a poor-quality site. That's in sharp contrast for instance with NHS' take on the matter, which makes virtually no mention of medication. Even the (US) Mayo clinic for instance doesn't place much emphasis on medication for test anxiety.

And what I discovered in the last two paragraphs turns out is also reflect in others' conclusions e.g. UCLA's  Center for Mental Health in Schools:

  In a 2013 review, von der Embse, Barterian, and Segool (2013) concluded that “there are few studies
  that have examined test-anxiety interventions with elementary and secondary school students.
  However, techniques including biofeedback, behavior therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, priming
  competency, and mixed approaches have demonstrated promising results.” While medication also
  is discussed, it is not the preferred treatment and, if prescribed, is to be used in conjunction with
  psychological interventions (Tracy, 2012).

Alas this UCLA source/quote is focused on pre-university education and tests. However the paper of von der Embse pointed to an older meta-analysis that didn't have this narrower focus, Eregne (2003), which concluded that

  The treatment of test anxiety has been quite successful in reducing the test anxiety level of clients. The most effective treatments appear to be those that combine skill-focussed approaches with behaviour or cognitive approaches. Individually conducted programs, along with programs that combined individual and group counselling formats, produced the greatest changes.

And this older paper (whose primary studies were almost exclusively aimed at university students) has a fairly detailed assessment of the effectiveness of various types of interventions (although I personally wonder if there was enough statistical power for each kind to draw such definitive conclusions):

  Test anxiety reduction groups was
  categorized into 21 different interventions. The observed differences
  among these interventions were significant. Type of the intervention
  was related to the effectiveness of the intervention. Behavioural treatments
  included systematic desensitization, relaxation training, anxiety
  management training, hypnosis and other behavioural treatments such
  as modelling and extinction. Systematic desensitization and other
  behavioural techniques were found to be effective, E+ = 0.90 and E+ = 1.01
  respectively. Relaxation training alone and hypnotherapy were
  moderately effective, E+ = 0.50 and E+ = 0.52 respectively. Although
  Hembree’s (1988) meta-analytic study supported the effectiveness of
  relaxation training, this finding has been contradicted in the literature.
  Among cognitive therapies, cognitive restructuring produced the
  largest effect size (E+ = 1.11). However, rational-emotive therapy and
  other cognitive techniques produced moderate effect sizes, E+ = 0.54 and
  E+ = 0.48 respectively. These findings are also consistent with previous
  studies (DiTomasso, 1980; O’Bryan, 1986; Thompson, 1987). These
  interventions may be effective on the emotionality and ‘worry’ components
  of the test anxiety construct as proposed by Spielberger and Vagg (1995).
  The result of this meta-analysis indicate that effectiveness of cognitive
  therapies increased when they were combined with skill-focussed
  techniques. This finding is consistent with O’Bryan’s (1986) metaanalytic
  study. Clients may increase their sense of readiness and their
  confidence level by learning different study and test taking skills.
  Cognitive behavioural interventions were found to be small to moderately
  effective in reducing test anxiety. This contradicts the findings of the
  studies conducted by DiTomasso (1980) and Gambles (1994).
  Study skills training alone had a small effect size (E+ = 0.28). This
  indicates that test anxiety cannot be explained by a learning deficit
  model which indicates the lack of effective study skills and test taking
  skills. While cognitive and behavioural treatment techniques focus on
  relieving symptoms of test anxiety that interfere with an individual’s
  ability to perform well or be comfortable in testing situations, other
  researchers have conceptualized test anxiety as a result of a deficit of
  knowledge, training, ability to study, or test-taking skills. These theorists
  suggest that improving an individual’s skills in these areas will result in
  improved performance and comfort. Results of this meta-analysis indicate
  that this may not necessarily be the case. Study skills training when
  measured by test anxiety show only small and moderate effect sizes
  (E+ = 0.28, E+ = 0.43, E+ = 0.45). These results indicate that subjects
  treated with study skills training have only moderate improvement
  when compared with individuals who receive no treatment. However, a
  trend is indicated for significant improvement when study skills training
  is combined with cognitive or behavioural interventions. One of the
  significant findings of this study is that effectiveness of behavioural or
  cognitive interventions is increased whenever they are combined with
  study skills training.
  Although a number of interventions have been suggested and tested in
  test anxiety reduction, an integrated approach, utilizing various strategies
  in combination, is likely have special value. Such a combined program
  might include such components as: (1) applicable information about
  studying and test taking skills; (2) opportunity to observe someone take
  tests, or test-like problems; (3) increasing self-monitoring and practice
  self-control especially of behaviour and thought in test-taking situations;
  (4) practice in attending to the task in hand, attentional training and
  (5) learning how to relax under test specific conditions.
  Modality. The test anxiety reduction programs which were done with
  groups and individuals together produced larger effect sizes (E+ = 0.84);
  second, the group format had an effect size of (E+ = 0.67). The individual
  format had the smallest effect size (E+ = 0.34). Most of the intervention
  programs (83 percent) were conducted in the group format. It is highly
  likely that clients in groups can get other students’ perceptions and get
  alternative solutions to their problems. They may see that they are not
  the only person who has problems related to test anxiety; they may gain
  therapeutic benefit in group formats and easily transfer it into their
  daily lives.

Also his ("E+") measure of effect size is based on Hunter and Schmidt (1990) methodology, which itself has been criticized by some for allegedly inflating effect sizes.


Is there a way to compare the subjective experiences of two different subjects upon an object? It is the major problem of all cognitive sciences to deal with subjectivity. On the other hand, in order to figure out what is cognition or psychology, one must ultimately deal with this problem. As a starter, I wonder if there is any study about identicalness of perceptions among subjects. Are the perceptions of two different subjects on an object identical? In other words, can the perceptions of two subjects about a tomato differ from each other? One may experience the redness of tomato as what the other call blue.

Can We Compare Subjective Experience?
Consider this pain scale, variations of which are commonly used in medical settings:

If two people answer "6 - distressing, miserable pain," can we reliably compare the subjective pain intensities between the two individuals? How would we know that one person's experience of "distressing, miserable pain" is the same intensity as the other's?
Supertasters and Taste Perception
What's helped us to answer a question like this comes from Linda Bartoshuk's work on taste perception in so-called supertasters vs. normal tasters.
Bartoshuk famously uses blue dye to reveal the number of tastebuds on participants' tongues. As you can see below, supertasters have a lot more tastebuds than normal folks (and what Bartoshuk calls "non-tasters"). As a consequence of this, we see variation in taste perception.

What's important is that the number of taste buds provides a reliable physical/genetic basis by which to predict taste perception (e.g., bitterness intensity). So we would expect reports of bitterness intensity like so: supertasters > normal tasters > non-tasters.
Consider this 9-point scale assessing bitterness intensity:

If a supertaster and taster both rated a 5 on this scale, we'd wonder why there wasn't a difference.  In fact, how could we know that a 5 for a supertaster is the same intensity as a 5 for a normal taster?  Perhaps a 5 is twice as bitter for a supertaster than a normal taster, but this scale is not suitable for determining that.
Cross-modality Matching
Without getting into too much detail, the solution to between-group comparison is cross-modality matching.  Basically, we ask participants to compare their experiences of bitterness to, for example, the brightness of a light.
Importantly, perceptions of brightness are presumed to be independent of perceptions of taste (i.e., having more/less taste buds isn't related to perceptions of brightness).  So variation in brightness between the two groups will be the same on average.  Thus, it can serve as a potential means by which to compare subjective intensity of taste perception.
Bartoshuk uses this example with sound that I find easy to understand:

We put earphones on everyone and ask both groups to adjust the loudness of a tone to the sweetness of the soda. If hearing and taste are really independent, then the average perception of loudness should be the same in the two groups, but subjects with the high density of taste buds set the tone to 90 decibels (about the loudness of a train whistle), and those with the low density set the tone to 80 decibels (about the loudness of a dial tone). As we know that a tone of 90 decibels sounds twice as loud as a tone of 80 decibels, we can conclude that the soda tastes twice as sweet to those with the high density of taste buds. We have identified a systematic difference in taste intensity between these two groups.

You can also use imagined sensations. For example, Fast (2004) has found that:

supertasters matched the bitterness of dark chocolate to the brightness of low beam headlights at night, while nontasters matched it to the brightness of the moon.

Consider this scale, which uses cross-modality matching to assess perception of candy sweetness intensity between supertasters (ST) and non-tasters (NT):

When using these matched modalities, you get systematic differences in sweetness perception that you otherwise wouldn't see using the standard 9-point sensory scale above.
Further Reading
I didn't give a particularly comprehensive outline of cross-modality matching, so for more information, consult the sources below.
Bartoshuk, L. (2014). The measurement of pleasure and pain. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(1), 91-93.
Bartoshuk, L. M., Fast, K., & Snyder, D. J. (2005). Differences in our sensory worlds: Invalid comparisons With labeled scales. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(3), 122-125.
Kalva, J. J., Sims, C. A., Puentes, L. A., Snyder, D. J., & Bartoshuk, L. M. (2014). Comparison of the Hedonic General Labeled Magnitude Scale with the Hedonic 9-Point Scale. Journal of Food Science, 79(2), S238-S245.


Flow diagram of how information flows through the brain? I am a Artificial Intelligence researcher with a interest in neuroscience.

I was wondering if flow diagrams exist of the way information flows from sensory inputs through the parts of the brain (and their function) to form output actuation signals for moving the body?

This kind of flow diagram might be used as a kind of blue print for constructing intelligent systems.

Such diagrams of information flow of other animals besides humans (less complex systems) would also be very welcome and useful.

Most flow diagrams with the detail your require are for rudimentary sensory functions (such as seeing, eye tracking and other simple functions) can be found in any neuroanatomy textbook. The one I have experience with is "Neuroanatomy: Text and Atlas" by John H. Martin.

Alternatively, if you're looking for a more functional interpretation of how information flows through the brain in terms of behaviour, the most detailed model that I know is Spaun. A diagram of the brain model taken from the Science paper can be seen below:

Other models using the Neural Engineering Framework and the Semantic Pointer Architecture used in Spaun may also have the types of diagrams you are looking for. For example, consider this motor control diagram from Travis DeWolf's PhD thesis on Adaptive Control.


Any documented applications of engineering psychology? Do you know about any documented application of engineering psychology?

If you know about something, please provide your answer with a reference.

After some brief research, it seems that most mechanical forms that are designed with human use in mind are examples of engineering psychology. Engineering psychologists specialize in the relationship between humans and the products we use every day.

Tufts University, MA, offers a major in engineering psychology called "Bachelor of Science in Human Factors Engineering (Engineering Psychology)" which seems to support this idea.

So any tool that has been designed specifically to improve the relationship between humans and their working environment is an applied example. Take, for example, this hilarious hamster wheel desk. Probably not the greatest example of engineering psychology, but an interesting example anyway.

Perhaps a more practical example, taken from a text-book:

  Research by engineering psychologists has demonstrated that using cell phones while driving degrades performance by increasing driver reaction time, particularly among older drivers, and can lead to higher accident risk among drivers of all ages. These and similar research findings are instigating state regulation of cell phone use.


Does pain reduce cognitive abilities? Does subjecting a person to pain reduce his cognitive abilities?

If so, what is the process that reduces the ability? (By process, I mean the changes happening in the nervous system as a result of the pain and the subsequent loss of cognitive abilities)

Does this differ with gender?

For the purposes of this question, it would likely be useful to consider "pain" as simply a stimulus demanding the attention of the individual. In this light, any decrease in "cognitive abilities"—however you define that phrase—would likely be explainable as resultant from the same cognitive decrease that accompanies multitasking (or "task switching", as it is sometimes referred to) in general, which is a well-known and well-published finding.

Relevant papers can be found at the above link.


Conditioning and Contingency I've learned, that spatiotemporal neighborhood among the conditioned and the unconditioned stimuli is a presupposition of conditioning (classical or operant). A second presupposition is called "contingency" in my notes. The explanation is, that the CS has to predict the US with certainty. But in my opinion the meaning of the word "contingency" is quite the opposite of predictability with certainty (necessity). Why is the second presupposition called "contingency"?

"Contingent" means "dependent upon".

See the first definition of
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/contingent?s=t

The reason the second definition there (which is the one you are thinking of) has the same word is because if B is contingent on A, then B is not for sure going to happen.  B will only happen if A does.


Does nostalgia contribute to overrating past experiences? We all have something in our lives that we are sentimental about, and even a glimpse of that object/idea can bring back happy memories. And nostalgia makes the remembrances of those experiences feel better than comparable experiences today.
However, my question is differentiating between the extent of happiness gathered through these different experiences:

Happiness received in those times by those experiences. (Playing Diablo 2 in 2001)

Happiness experiences by remembering those times,  today (aka nostalgia) (Reminiscing about Diablo 2 sessions today after seeing some images of Rogue Encampment)

Happiness by doing those same things today. (Playing Diablo 2 today)

Which of these is the strongest and why?

The answer to this is most definitely a broad one. This depends on the persons experiences and how they take it all in. The answer before made a good point about happiness is defined differently among everyone. It’s up to you what you connect that with. Most people have a sentimental feeling when thinking about their family some might be completely opposite, maybe it’s because their family aren’t good to them and they were abused before by them or some sort of behavior to leave them with negative memories.
Life is strange and so are people. We have plenty of studies to explain this and so far people still seem to be lost without direction in their life.
great article you should take a look at
References
FioRito, T. A., & Routledge, C. (2020). Is Nostalgia a Past or Future-Oriented Experience? Affective, Behavioral, Social Cognitive, and Neuroscientific Evidence. Frontiers in Psychology, 11(1113). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01133


Is there a way that an infection could target a specific area of the brain? My question is in regards to a fungal infection, but I am open to learning about viral or bacterial infections. That being said, is it possible that a fungus/virus/etc could target a specific area of the brain? For example, causing swelling in specifically the amygdala, or attacking neurons only the prefrontal cortex. My knowledge of neuroscience is limited, so I was wondering if there are proteins that only occur in some areas, or differing levels of extracellular ion concentrations that an infectious agent could use to localize an attack on the brain in a way that was beneficial for the disease to spread.

I'm trying to see if there is a way that a fungal infection could attack the amygdala and/or prefrontal cortex in order to induce aggression in a victim and cause it to spread faster.

Any help or additional input is appreciated.

There are many variation in terms of proteins or peptides across the cortex, as well as structurally (layers etc), and how it is connected to the rest of the body (axonal projections, blood vessels, etc) but basically all areas are constituted of the same basic building blocks. So most viruses will tend to affect some areas more, but I don't think an infection could ever be targeted that accurately to a specific area (let's say affect Broca's area and cause a very specific aphasia). For example rabies travels back to the brain from muscles, so it will reach the primary motor cortex first. But then it will diffuse from there. This is even more true for bacterial infections which as far as I know don't even target neurons specifically. Usually a bacterial infection will start somewhere else like an open wound, teeth or the ears. I don't think a bacteria could jump directly to the brain (I might be wrong). For example when a syphilitic infection reach the neurosyphilis stage, it has already propagated to most of the body. The neurosyphilis tends to affect frontal and parietal lobes first but that's far from an accurate targeting. I believe fungal infections are more similar to bacterial infections and don't tend to target neurons specifically.

This is not my area of expertise so if anyone with better knowledge cares to answer I would be interested as well.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3679988/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurosyphilis


Valence conveyed in simple geometric shapes I've seen neuroscience and facial recognition studies that give evidence for this idea of simple geometric shapes causing emotional responses or quicker recognition of negative affect.

Are there studies exploring the other end? (i.e. positive valence of simple geometric shapes)

Larson, C. L., Aronoff, J., Sarinopoulos, I. C., & Zhu, D. C. (2009). Recognizing threat: A simple geometric shape activates neural circuitry for threat detection. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 21(8), 1523-1535.
Watson, D. G., Blagrove, E., Evans, C., & Moore, L. (2012). Negative triangles: Simple geometric shapes convey emotional valence. Emotion, 12(1), 18-22. doi:10.1037/a0024495

I love this kind of research because it shows how there's an affective undercurrent to essentially every part of our lives.  This is formalized in microvalence theory (Lebrecht et al., 2012), which posits that all objects, even ordinary ones, are imbued with valence (e.g., explaining why you prefer one chair over another).

As far as positive geometric shapes, there is evidence for consistent positive reactions to circular and curvilinear shapes (e.g., Bar & Neta, 2006; see also Larson, Aronoff, & Steuer, 2011).  There may be some obvious top-down mechanisms mediating this effect, such as positive associations with a smile (vs. a frown; Salgado-Montejo, 2015).