How to analyse 3 by 3 design with Likert scale ratings? I want to understand what would be the best way to analyze the results of an online likert-scale ratings of pictures on 3 dimensions. I have 3 groups of participants from different countries. They are not equal. I got the data into SPSS already but now I wonder what would be the appropriate way to deal with the data.

A rating scale is not necessarily a Likert scale.  It sounds like you have a single rating for each picture across each dimension but I could be wrong.  More details would be needed for better advice and Ana's comment should be answered in your question.

You would be best off doing a multi-level cumulative link model (multi-level ordinal regression).  You can include subject and picture as random variables.  See the ordinal package in R.  The vignettes will be very helpful.

Keep in mind that with the pictures you also have item level variance and generalization issues that people doing research on words struggle with as well.  Even if you can get reasonably good looking data for your analysis that satisfies an ANOVA you'll have to consider random and fixed effects issues of both the people and the pictures.  The multi-level modelling can include both and avoid the sort of patchwork hoops required with ANOVA.  Therefore, regardless of whether you have a true likert scale and you satisfy requirements for treating the responses continuously or you should be treating it as ordinal data, multi-level modelling is your best bet.


What's the difference between perseveration and hyperfocus? Dr. Russell Barkley says hyperfocus goes with autism while perseveration goes with ADHD.

I read that perseveration is the same as hyperfocus or that hyperfocus goes with ADHD.

So what's the difference? Is Dr. Russell Barkley right?

I myself have never found evidence to suggest a difference between perseveration and hyperfocus when referring to ADHD. However, while 'hyperfocus' can be a psychiatric or non-psychiatric condition, perseveration is typically considered a psychiatric condition in all instances.
The wikipedia page for hyperfocus has an entire section dedicated to the confusion between hyperfocus and perseveration, particularly as it pertains to ADHD.

Hyperfocus may in some cases also be symptomatic of a psychiatric condition. In these cases it is more commonly and accurately referred to as perseveration (or perseverance) - the inability to, or impairment in, switching tasks or activities ("set shifting"), or desisting from mental or physical response repetition (gestures, words, thoughts) despite absence or cessation of a stimulus, and which is not excessive in terms of quantity but are apparently both functionless and involve a narrow range of behaviours, and are not better described as stereotypy (a highly repetitive idiosyncratic behaviour).
It is typical for individuals with ADHD to say they 1), can not focus on boring things and 2), can only focus on stimulating things, and that focus is often extreme. Thus it is both a concentration deficit and over-concentration, or generically: "hyperfocus.


What's the psychological reason for the fascination with gossiping or scandalous life? Why do people find fascination in a tabloid magazine, paparazzi magazine, gossiping or whether prince and kings are dating or not or if actors, actresses, singers having any scandalous affairs or not?

I find gossiping similar to character assassination.

I have no business in their lives.

So what's the psychological reason for the fascination with gossiping or scandalous life?

Only evolutionary psychology seems to have something to say about the "why" here. And (somewhat predictably) the hypothesis advanced has something to do with social information in ever larger groups:

From Dunbar's evolutionary theories, gossip originated to help bond the groups that were constantly growing in size. To survive, individuals need alliances; but as these alliances grew larger, it was difficult if not impossible to physically connect with everyone. Conversation and language were able to bridge this gap. Gossip became a social interaction that helped the group gain information about other individuals without personally speaking to them. It enabled people to keep up with what was going on in their social network. It also creates a bond between the teller and the hearer, as they share information of mutual interest and spend time together. It also helps the hearer learn about another individual’s behavior and helps them have a more effective approach to their relationship. Dunbar (2004) found that 65% of conversations consist of social topics.
Dunbar (1994) argues that gossip is the equivalent of social grooming often observed in other primate species. Anthropological investigations indicate that gossip is a cross-cultural phenomenon, providing evidence for evolutionary accounts of gossip.

FYI: depending who you ask, it's a social skill and not a character flaw.

When disparaging gossip, we overlook the fact that it’s an essential part of what makes the social world tick; the nasty side of gossip overshadows the more benign ways in which it functions. [...]
In the workplace, studies have shown that harmless gossiping with one’s colleagues can build group cohesiveness and boost morale.
On the flip side, the awareness that others are likely talking about us can keep us in line.
Studies of California cattle ranchers, Maine lobster fishers and college rowing teams confirm that gossip is used in a variety of settings to hold individuals accountable. In each of these groups, individuals who violated expectations about sharing resources or meeting responsibilities became targets of gossip and ostracism. This, in turn, pressured them to become better members of the group.
For example, lobstermen who didn’t respect well-established group norms about when and how lobsters could be harvested were quickly exposed by their colleagues. Their fellow lobstermen temporarily shunned them and, for a while, refused to work with them.
Belgian psychologist Charlotte de Backer makes a distinction between strategy learning gossip and reputation gossip.
Indeed, de Backer discovered that our interest in celebrities may feed off of this [latter] thirst for learning life strategies. For better or for worse, we look to celebrities in the same way that our ancestors looked to role models within their tribes for guidance. [...] From an evolutionary standpoint, “celebrity” is a recent phenomenon, due primarily to the explosion of mass media in the 20th century. Our ancestors, on the other hand, found social importance in the intimate details of everyone‘s private life, since everyone in their small social world mattered. [...]
[Additionally, in a highly mobile, industrial society] Because of the familiarity we feel with celebrities, they can serve an important social function: they may be the only “friends” we have in common with new neighbors and coworkers. They’re shared cultural touchstones that facilitate the types of informal interactions that help people become comfortable in new surroundings. Keeping up with the lives of actors, politicians and athletes can make a person more socially adept during interactions with strangers and even offer inroads into new relationships.

I.e., it's a matter of degree and content whether it greases the wheels of society enough to make them spin well (rather than slip).
A couple of peered-reviewed refs for the latter quote (from that research group):

De Backer, C., Nelissen, M., Vyncke, P., Braeckman, J. & McAndrew, F. (2007). Celebrities: From Teachers to Friends. A Test of Two Hypotheses on the Adaptiveness of Celebrity Gossip. Human Nature, 18(4), 334-354. (IF2007: 1.814)

De Backer, C. J., Larson, C., Fisher, M. L., McAndrew, F. T., & Rudnicki, K. (2016). When Strangers Start to Gossip: Investigating the Effect of Gossip on Cooperation in a Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 1-10.

The latter paper concludes that:

gossip may spark initial relations, yet is insufficient to ignite a social bond sustained by cooperative action among complete strangers.

And the former:

The Learning Hypothesis explains interest in celebrity gossip as a by-product of an evolved mechanism useful for acquiring fitness-relevant survival information. The Parasocial Hypothesis sees celebrity gossip as a diversion of this mechanism, which leads individuals to misperceive celebrities as people who are part of their social network. Using two preliminary studies, we tested our predictions. [...] In support of the Learning Hypothesis, age proved to be a strong predictor of interest in celebrities. In partial support of the Parasocial Hypothesis, media exposure, but not social isolation, was a strong predictor of interest in celebrities. The preliminary results support both theories, indicate that across our life span celebrities move from being teachers to being friends


How does modulation of the activity of an afferent neuron lead to increase in MEP's? I was confused reading this:

  Another example has been described with the primary motor cortex,
  where the afferent axonal synaptic input (Figure 1) can be facilitated
  by anodal tDCS (Rahman et al., 2013), leading to the increase in motor
  evoked potentials

I interpreted this as saying: a neuron had a greater effect on a downstream neuron because of tDCS, which ultimately lead to more MEP's.

I was confused by the fact that the neuron is an afferent neuron. Since efferent neurons relay signal to muscles I figured the activity of efferent neurons would be more important in the generation of MEP's. Is this not the case?

Does greater activity in an afferent neuron lead to greater activity in an efferent neuron, which then leads to more MEP's?

The passage you reference is talking about connections within the motor cortex in the brain. Afferent/efferent can be confusing terminology in the brain.

In the periphery, the terms have clear meanings as you say: efferents go to muscles, afferents carry sensory information back to the CNS. No real controversy there. However, the meaning of "efferent" is just outwards/away from; afferent is the opposite, meaning towards. In the context of the periphery, we consistently use these terms in relation to the CNS: efferents go outwards relative to the CNS, afferents go towards. If the terms are used in the spinal cord, the convention is to relate to the brain: afferents are signals heading towards the brain, efferents are heading towards the spinal cord (and then likely to the muscles next).

Within cortex, you're already in the brain, so it makes little sense to talk about afferents or efferents relative to the brain: we are already in the brain so neither makes sense unless you are talking about cells that specifically project outside the brain. Instead, we use the terms with respect to whatever structure we are in. Confusingly, that means nearly every axon in the brain is simultaneously both an afferent and an efferent, it's all a matter of perspective. If you are studying thalamus, you could refer to efferents projecting to cortex; your friend studying neocortex could refer to afferents projecting from thalamus. They could be the very same axons.

In the Rahman et al 2013 paper that your link is referring to, they are talking from the perspective of cells in motor cortex, and when they refer to afferents they mean axons projecting to a cell in motor cortex. Really, they almost could have dropped the word "afferent" and just said "axon" throughout the whole paper; probably the only reason they used the term is because they are not talking about descending axons leaving motor cortex headed towards the brainstem/spinal cord, they are talking about axons terminating on cells in cortex.

Rahman, A., Reato, D., Arlotti, M., Gasca, F., Datta, A., Parra, L. C., & Bikson, M. (2013). Cellular effects of acute direct current stimulation: somatic and synaptic terminal effects. The Journal of physiology, 591(10), 2563-2578.


What cognitive bias is it when an (ideally objective) evaluation is influenced by the prior opinion of another person? I'm looking for the name of the cognitive bias that describes the following phenomenon:

Person A asks person B to evaluate and give feedback on a certain topic (a student, a manuscript etc), casually warning person B that the student/manuscript is not very good and so the task will not be particularly pleasant.
Person B then tries to objectively do the evaluation, however inadvertently and unavoidably gravitates towards person A's premise, and subsequently has a hard time deciding whether the fact that he too now thinks the student/manuscript is poor is in fact his own opinion or just a regurgitation/confirmation of what person A told him.

First it seemed to me that this is an instance of the hindsight (knew it all along) bias, but I don't think it is, as there the extra (bias inducing) information comes after person A's appraisal, rather than before as is the case in the scenario I describe.

Any other cognitive biases this could be an instance of?

It's an example of the confirmation bias:

  Confirmation bias (...) is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses.

Research has shown that people have a strong tendency to engage in a positive test strategy when investigating a hypothesis (see e.g., Klayman & Ha, 1978). That is, when testing an expectation (such as in your example) they tend to search for confirming, rather than disconfirming evidence. This tendency then results in the kind of confirmation bias you are describing in your example.

References

Klayman, J., & Ha, Y. (1987). Confirmation, disconfirmation, and information in hypothesis testing. Psychological Review, 94, 211–228. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.94.2.211


Any work being done on Perception, Action, and/or Cognition in Video games? Call it a nerd crossover, but I've always been curious about how we play games on a mechanistic level. However, even coming from a rational viewpoint video games seem like a fruitful domain of study, since data collection is simple and complete, environmental variables can be easily manipulated, and the task is far richer than typically used in cognitive psychology experiments.

So, have any psychological theories been formed by/applied to in this domain? It seems like eye-tracking and cognitive modeling approaches are both particularly well suited to this domain, but any work in cognitive science on the phenomena involved here would be interesting to see.

The only things I've found are the interesting experimental work on semantic actions in Tetris, and some modeling work done on unreal tournament within the ACT-R community. It should be noted however, that the latter example uses a video game environment as decent simulation of reality and thus models an agent inside the game, whilst the former focuses on the game from the player's point of view. This might be a personal bias, but the latter seems much more fruitful and more in line with the spirit of my question.

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Video Games (C. S. Green, D. Bavelier, 2004) is a good if somewhat dated overview of cognitive research on video game players. They note that ordinary video game users show a number of differentiated and improved mental skills:

  Video game play has been shown to dramatically
  enhance visuo-motor skills.  In particular, video game players have been shown to
  possess decreased reaction times, increased hand-eye coordination and augmented
  manual dexterity.  Video game play has also been shown to improve spatial skills such as
  mental rotation, spatial visualization and the ability to mentally work in threedimensions.  In addition, video game play has been shown to enhance numerous aspects
  of visual attention including the ability to divide and switch attention, the temporal and
  spatial resolution of visual attention, and the number of objects that can be attended.

BrainHex: Preliminary Results from a Neurobiological Gamer Typology Survey is a study that mapped personality types to "gamer archetypes":

  The model presents seven different archetypes of players: Seeker, Survivor, Daredevil, Mastermind, Conqueror, Socialiser, and Achiever. We explain how each of these player archetypes relates to older player typologies (such as Myers-Briggs), and how each archetype characterizes a specific playing style. We conducted a survey among more than 50,000 players using the BrainHex model as a personality type motivator to gather and compare demographic data to the different BrainHex archetypes. We discuss some results from this survey with a focus on psychometric orientation of respondents, to establish relationships between personality types and BrainHex archetypes.

Their archetypes present an interesting insight into personality types as mapped to certain kinds of gamers.


Differences between anger and rage Can rage be considered a subset of anger or possibly a separate neurobiological process.

What are the neurobiological, evolutionary and psychological differences between anger and rage?

In more detail an examination of the similarities and differences between anger and rage, their roles and purposes for us as a species.

what is the difference in neurochemistry
what are the evolutionary advantages of these states.
how do these two neurochemical processes assist us psychologically with regard to survival of our species

An examination of misplaced anger or rage, as possibly less useful states, although perhaps not entirely redundant, and possible pathology arising from this may or may not be included within answers.

The American Psychological Association appears to view this emotion as a continuum of intensity, whith annoyance at the mild and rage at the extreme end.

http://www.apa.org/topics/anger/control.aspx

Excessive anger and rage might be caused by suppressing milder forms of anger until this repression becomes unbearable and "the pot cooks over". Psychology Today calls anger a "corrosive emotion": it eats away at you, if you don't express it.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/anger

The continuum and boiling-over idea of anger are nicely summed up in this paragraph of another Psychology Today article:

  Irritation, frustration, anger, rage: these are all forms of anger. And they are feelings first. But when a person’s rage becomes behavior even before thought has a chance to plug in, it is usually because of one of two reasons:  1) it’s been repressed for a long time, and when someone drops the proverbial straw, it explodes; 2) it works for manipulative purposes.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/traversing-the-inner-terrain/201205/is-rage-choice


What is the difference between two models of situation awareness? The most famous definition of situation awareness (SA) is the three-level model proposed by Endsley (1995):

  the perception of environmental elements with respect to time or space [(Level 1 SA)], the comprehension of their meaning [(Level 2 SA)], and the projection of their status in the near future [(Level 3 SA)].

However, the definition of Smith and Hancock (1995) is based on Neisser's perceptual-cycle model (Neisser, 1976) and states that SA is:

  adaptive, externally-directed consciousness that has as its products knowledge about a dynamic task environment and directed action within that environment.

How do these models differ from each other, and do these differences have practical implications?

Ps. Many more definitions of SA exist. These are all summarized in this document.

References

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

Neisser, U. (1976). Cognition and reality: Principles and implications of cognitive psychology. WH Freeman/Times Books/Henry Holt & Co.
ISO 690

Smith, K., & Hancock, P. A. (1995). Situation awareness is adaptive, externally directed consciousness. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 37(1), 137-148.

Short answer

Endsley considers SA to be a product. Smith and Hancock argue that SA is a process. Deciding for a definition is important, since it can determine the focus of the research and methodology.

Long answer

The Three-level model proposed by Endsley considers SA to be a product. In other words, SA is a mental picture that can be tested by testing an operators knowledge about the current situation. On popular mean of doing is the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT; Endsley, 1988). With the SAGAT, researchers freeze the task (in a simulator) and present the operator with a set of queries, that cover each of the three levels. Examples of these questions in the domain of train traffic controlling is shown in Table 2 (taken form Lo, Sehic and Meijer, 2013).

The perceptual-cycle model argues that SA is a cyclical process of attention, in which perception, knowledge, anticipation and action-taking take place concurrently, in order to generate a `product of consciousness', that is, an understanding of the current situation (see Figure 3, taken from Smith and Hancock, 1995). The product can not be not be seen separately from the process, however; The perception of relevant information will lead to a better understanding, but a better understanding will also direction your attention.

Measuring one's SA as a process implies measuring how well the acquisition of SA is over time. This has, among others, been done with tools such as eye tracking and EEG (For a review, see Salmon, 2006). The perceptual-cycle model does acknowledge the existence of a product of consciousness (and the testing of it with the SAGAT), but this provides an incomplete picture.


What's a simple definition for reactive attachment disorder? I read an article on Reactive Attachment Disorder.

Here's what I know so far

Reactive means to react in response to something. Action = reaction.
Attachment is the act of bonding or connecting with another human or object.
Disorder, something that is not normal by way of what society thinks as normal.

Here's what I do not know. Does RAD mean that someone is too emotionally attached to someone or something, and when that person or thing is gone, they react, sort of like grief?
Or, does it mean that the person cannot trust oneself to connect or bond with others for fear of something bad happening as a result of that?

The beginnings of theories based on attachment regarding long and short term interpersonal relationships is Attachment Theory which was started by John Bowlby.  Attachment Theory is primarily applied to studies in relationships concerning children, even though it was expanded in the 80's to include adults.

In attachment theory, as highlighted in the link you provided, attachment is not just "the act of bonding or connecting with another human or object".
 It is the deep connection established between a child and caregiver (parent, grandparent, foster parent...).  When there are problems because attachments have not been made, it is called an attachment disorder.

Reactive Attachment Disorder is an Attachment Disorder resulting from a reaction to past experiences which were not ideal for the child.  Some examples given amongst others on the link you provided are:

A baby cries and no one responds or offers comfort.
A baby is hungry or wet, and they aren’t attended to for hours.
No one looks at, talks to, or smiles at the baby, so the baby feels alone.

The main thing is that no matter how detached or insecure a child seems, or how frustrated or exhausted a caregiver may feel at trying to connect, attachment disorders can be repaired. With patience and perseverance, caregivers can help the affected child feel safe and secure and able to develop healthy, meaningful, and loving relationships.  It just takes time with the right comfort and support provided to the child.

A good book I can recommend on the subject of attachment disorders is:

Shemmings, D. & Shemmings, Y. (2011). Understanding Disorganized Attachment: Theory and Practice for Working with Children and Adults. London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

  Synopsis

  Disorganized attachment, the most extreme form of insecure attachment, can develop in a child when the person who is normally meant to protect them is a source of danger. This usually leads to 'fear without solution' and the effects can be lasting and damaging.

  This book is a comprehensive and accessible text on disorganized attachment. It outlines what it is, how it can be identified and the key causes, including neurological, biochemical and genetic explanations. Factors that contribute to disorganized attachment are covered including unresolved loss and trauma, and the behaviour of caregivers. The authors also discuss evidence-based interventions to help families and carers as well as how to work with adults to prevent or minimize its occurrence. To root the theory in practice and to illustrate real-life examples of disorganized attachment case vignettes are included.

  With an authoritative research base, this accessible text will be invaluable to practitioners and academics in the fields of social care, psychology, counselling and allied health professions as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students.


How much alcohol is negative for brain function? How much alcohol can you consume before it starts to kill a single neuron or interfere with proper brain functioning? Does it happen:

If you take just a few drops of alcohol?
If you drink a rum and coke cocktail?
If you get so drunk that you cannot remember what you have done?

I like drinking a bit when I go out to pubs or the like, as I didn't consider that taking a pair of cups approximately once per month could do anything to my brain, but I've reconsidered it, so I'd like to know how much is needed to produce negative effects on the brain. Hope you can guide me with this.

There is some debate as to wether alcohol consumption actually destroys brain cells or not. Jensen & Pakkenberg (1993) counted the neurons in the neocortex of deceased acoholics and found that they have the same number of neurons as non-alcoholic men.

Unfortunately the non-alcoholic control group did not consist of teetotallers but only "did not have any history or histological signs of alcohol abuse". It is not unprobable that the brains of people who never drank any alcohol and those of people who drank an amount of alcohol that is merely not considered abusive – a level that is certainly strongly influenced by cultural norms – do differ, so the results of this study have to be interpreted with some caution.

What Jensen and Pakkenberg did find was a reduction of white brain matter to which they attribute the functional deficits that follow alcohol abuse. This brain size reduction is replicated by several other studies, some of which find a reduction in grey matter volume of the frontal lobe as well (Pfefferbaum et al., 1997). For example, Ding et al. (2004) found that the chronic consumption of even smal amounts of alcohol causes brain size reduction. Ding et al. asked 1909 middle-aged adults for their drinking habits, took MRI scans, and found that "each additional alcoholic drink per week was associated with a 0.01 grade greater ventricular size (P=0.03) and a 0.009 grade greater sulcal size (P=0.02) after adjustment for age, sex, race, body mass index, smoking, income, sports index, and diabetes." The ventricles are cavities inside the brain, filled with cerebrospinal fluid, the sulci are the furrows that structure the surface of the brain. What the study found, in other words, was that chronic alcohol consumption enlarged these spaces between brain matter, which means that the brain matter was being reduced in volume.

While Jensen & Pakkenberg (1993) found no difference in the number of neurons of alcoholic and non-alcoholic brains, other studies did find differences, although limited to certain cortical regions. Harper and Kril (1989) found "that alcoholics have reduced neuronal counts in the superior frontal region of the cerebral cortex". That Jensen and Pakkenberg did not find these differences can probably be attributed to a "combined analysis of several cortical regions (Brooks, 2000).

  In summary, a combination of neuroimaging and histopathological data indicates that heavy alcohol consumption over a long period of time as occurs in chronic alcoholics can result in the death of neurons in specific regions of the human brain, particularly the frontal cortical regions. Careful selection criterion of subjects, along with unbiased stereological techniques, has provided strong evidence that this neuronal loss in ‘uncomplicated’ alcoholics is due to direct neurotoxic effects of alcohol itself, and not to other factors such as malnutrition or liver disease. (Brooks, 2000; emphasis mine)

The good news is that stopping to drink will have a positive effect (Pfefferbaum et al., 1998):

  However, brain atrophy and related neurological deficits induced by chronic alcohol abuse may be partially reversible through sustained abstinence. (Ding et al., 2004)

"Sustained" in this context means that it will take years for the brain to recover, not just the five workdays between weekend drinking bouts ;-)

Apart from neuronal death and brain atrophy directly caused by alcohol, chronic alcohol consumption has many other negative effects on the human organism. For example it damages the blood-brain barrier (Philips, 1982; Kornhuber et al., 1987; Elmas et al., 2001), which is a main factor in the development of neurodegenerative diseases (Singh et al., 2007). Effects on other organs such as the liver or heart can indirectly cause damage to the brain.

I was unable to find any sources that give exact numbers for how much alcohol (in what period of time) destroys how many neurons, directly or indirectly. The only indication I came upon is the correlation between brain volume reduction and drinks per week given in the study by Ding et al. (2004), that I quoted above. This gives some indication at least to the amount of damage, and that every glass per week counts.

Note:

When you read scientific studies about the effects of alcohol, you must consider the author's affiliation. Many studies are financed by the beverage industry and may be biased. For example, a study that found that alcohol protected against diabetes was financed by the Alcohol Task Force of the foundation International Life Sciences Institute, in which Moët & Chandon, Allied Domecq, Brasseries Kronenbourg, Heineken und Diageo are members (Exler, 2007). Studies that show that consumption of red wine reduces the threat of cardiovascular diseases, were forged (Jaslow, 2012).

Sources:

Brooks, P. J. (2000). Brain atrophy and neuronal loss in alcoholism: a role for DNA damage?. Neurochemistry international, 37(5), 403-412.
Ding, J., Eigenbrodt, M. L., Mosley, T. H., Hutchinson, R. G., Folsom, A. R., Harris, T. B., & Nieto, F. J. (2004). Alcohol Intake and Cerebral Abnormalities on Magnetic Resonance Imaging in a Community-Based Population of Middle-Aged Adults The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study. Stroke, 35(1), 16-21. doi:10.1161/01.STR.0000105929.88691.8E
Elmas, I., Küçük, M., Kalayci, R. B., Çevik, A., & Kaya, M. (2001). Effects of profound hypothermia on the blood–brain barrier permeability in acute and chronically ethanol treated rats. Forensic Science International, 119(2), 212-216.
Exler, A. (2007, March 7). Vom Wein beseelt. Die Zeit. http://www.zeit.de/2007/11/Weinlobby
Harper, C., & Kril, J. (1989). Patterns of neuronal loss in the cerebral cortex in chronic alcoholic patients. Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 92(1), 81-89.
Jaslow, R. (2012, January 12). Red wine researcher Dr. Dipak K. Das published fake data: UConn. CBS. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/red-wine-researcher-dr-dipak-k-das-published-fake-data-uconn/
Jensen, G. B., & Pakkenberg, B. (1993). Do alcoholics drink their neurons away?. Lancet, 342(8881), 1201-1204.
Kornhuber, J., Kaiserauer, C. H., Kornhuber, A. W., & Kornhuber, M. E. (1987). Alcohol consumption and blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier dysfunction in man. Neuroscience Letters, 79(1), 218-222.
Pfefferbaum, A., Sullivan, E.V., Mathalon, D.H., & Lim, K.O. (1997). Frontal lobe volume loss observed with magnetic resonance imaging in older chronic alcoholics. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 21, 521–529.
Pfefferbaum, A., Sullivan, E. V., Rosenbloom, M. J., Mathalon, D. H., & Lim, K. O. (1998). A controlled study of cortical gray matter and ventricular changes in alcoholic men over a 5-year interval. Archives of General Psychiatry, 55(10), 905-912.
Phillips, S. C., & Cragg, B. G. (1982). Weakening of the blood-brain barrier by alcohol-related stresses in the rat. Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 54(2), 271-278.
Singh, A. K., Jiang, Y., Gupta, S., & Benlhabib, E. (2007). Effects of chronic ethanol drinking on the blood–brain barrier and ensuing neuronal toxicity in alcohol-preferring rats subjected to intraperitoneal LPS injection. Alcohol and Alcoholism, 42(5), 385-399.


Why neural architecture is not hardwired for N-dimensional vision but hardwired for abstract math? In The Theoretical Minimum, in lecture 1, Leonard Susskind says that you can only visualize 3 dimentional images. (see yourself). Therefore, he says, in order to deal with N dimensions, you need to deal with abstract algebra. I wonder why the brain is hardwired for abstract algebra.

It might be worth to note that mnemotechnicians remind us that your mind thinks in pictures, and remembers pictures, not words or abstract thoughts?

Abstract algebra and n-dimensional space are constructs of the human mind. Since they are constructs of the human mind, it is of course possible for the human mind to grasp them.

N-dimensional space is a mathematical construct. That human mathematics allows for the construction of something, does not mean that it exists in reality.

For example, in mathematics, there are 3 apples. In reality, there are no 3 apples, because all apples are different (in size, color, ripeness, taste etc.), and the equation 1 apple = 1 apple is always false.

Mathematics is an abstraction from reality, and the fact that it is an abstraction means that relevant information is lost in mathematical representation. If you turn this around, it means that a mathematical model has an unkown relation to reality, because you don't know which information is not present in the model.

Even more basic, it is unknown if anything relating to that model even exists. For example, the equation 3 - 4 = -1 has no relation in reality. There are no negative objects or lengths. (All scales that include negatives, such as temperature, have an arbitrary zero point and can be transformed to a scale without negatives, e.g. Kelvin.) Even simple mathematics is fictional. The existence of a mathematical object or model, such as n-dimensional space, does not prove, nor even imply, the existence of a related reality.


How does the mind build a model of reality? I'm interested if there has been any research or experiments that deal with how the human mind creates and perpetuates the idea of knowing something.

I'm struggling to concisely express the question, so a roundabout explanation is in order. I'm thinking of the succession of frameworks that explained how the world works to a layman:

ancient pagan religions, which explained the reality in terms of the complicated interaction of spirits and forces of nature.
Then came monotheistic religions which once again have attempted to explain the world.
Somewhere in between there have been many forms of philosophy
Then came a myriad of scientific models which are erected in all
domains of science:from biology to psychology, etc.

Each one of these frameworks attempts to explain the world. Each one has been at the cutting edge of thought at the time.  Yet it seems to me that even the most accomplished physicist(the pinnacle of modern knowledge?) may still live with a patchwork of a world model, because said physicist may not be as well versed in neurobiology or some other "arcane" domain of science.

It seems to me that in this chain of succession, because knowledge is preserved, most of the successive models incorporate at least bits and pieces of the previous models. Do individuals build their own models of reality from whatever knowledge is available to their minds?

In the example above (from Nous on wikipedia), the model is neatly created from the understanding that was available to the medieval mind. I'm interested if this kind of tendency to "fill in the holes" and present a finite understanding of a infinitely(?) complex reality as complete is a natural part of how the human mind works.

For example, would the contemporary physicist's model of reality be primarily shaped by the knowledge of physics, with other knowledge "filling in the holes"?  I know that there are such things as cognitive biases and follies of thought, are these the mechanisms by which the model of the world is shaped?

Thank you for your feedback! This question is rather broad, and I would appreciate if you suggest keywords or names of articles that I can investigate further.

Taking @BenCole's suggestion on the bolded parts...

  how the human mind creates and perpetuates the idea of knowing something

I think the philosophic response to this is "What does it mean to know something?". I'd recommend Searle's Chinese Room argument [1] and the many rebuttals to it (which include some computational explanations of understanding) to get a better idea.

  Do individuals build their own models of reality from whatever knowledge is available to their minds?

The simple answer is yes. But the interesting question is how much of our reality is shared vs how much of it is specific to each individual. In Computational Cognitive Science, the one area that tries to address this separation is Cognitive Architectures. CAs divide rational thought into two parts - the architecture that represents the common functionality across all humans and the knowledge which is different for each of us. For further reading, see Newell's Unified Theories of Cognition [2] for the groundwork, Anderson's How can the human mind occur in the physical universe? [3] for an emphasis on ACT-R (an example CA), and Laird's The Soar cognitive architecture [4] for an emphasis on Soar (another CA). Soar and ACT-R are the big two of the CA field but there are many others.

  present a finite understanding of a infinitely(?) complex reality as complete.

I'd argue that the opposite is true. That is, instead of presenting reality as complete, the  mind lives off of the differences between its understanding and the reality. Expectation-based cognition suggests that people are always generating expectations of what they expect to sense (see/hear/smell/feel etc) in the near future. These expectations are matched against observations. If expectations and observations match, then all is good. When they don't match, cognition is alerted. In this view, predictions flow top-down and errors (discrepancies between the prediction and the observation) flow bottom-up. Some good references on this idea are [5] and [6]

[1] J. Searle. (1980). Minds, brains and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (3): 417–457.

[2] A. Newell. (1994). Unified theories of cognition. Harvard University Press.

[3] J. Anderson (2007). How can the human mind occur in the physical universe? Oxford University Press.

[4] J. Laird. (2012). The Soar cognitive architecture. MIT Press.

[5] Lee, T.S., Mumford, D. (2003) Hierarchical Bayesian inference in the visual cortex. Journal of Optical Society of America, A. . 20(7): 1434-1448.

[6] Hohwy, J., Roepstorff, A., & Friston, K. (2008). Predictive coding explains binocular rivalry: an epistemological review. Cognition, 108(3), 687-701. ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV. Retrieved from http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/136548/


Free software to run questionnaire based experiments I am looking for free software to build experiments that do not heavily rely on accurate timing (where I use PsychoPy and heard a lot of good things about OpenSesame) but more on an easy way to implement different types of items and response options.
That is, for example, an experiment which starts in presenting some texts to the participants, then some questions contingent on this text and on what participants entered before (potentially more than one question per page with different response options) followed by some standard questionnaires. How would you implement such a study?

Background and motivation
I used to do such things using MediaLab which unfortunately is proprietary software. However, implementing items and questionnaires was easy. You could program a simple html page (even using variables and placeholders) using html forms and MediaLab would present this page using ie engine in fullscreen and collect the responses. Those responses could then be used or handed over to DirectRT for response time experiments.
Currently I am using PsychoPy to control the screen and data collection and code all questionnaires and such stuff per hand using wxPython. It works, but designing questionnairs in wxPython is a lot less handy and more difficult than programming html pages with html forms and definitely nothing for people not too profficient in coding.
Any ideas or hints would be really appreciated.
Note that I read "What's the best program for creating computer based psychology experiments under OS X?", but my question concerns specific implementations. Furthermore, I work on Windows 7.

It sounds like you're looking for a platform on which to implement computerized adaptive tests (since subsequent questions are contingent on prior responses).

I found Concerto, which is based in R and MySQL, but allows some flexibility in presentation (it says it uses HTML directly, but you could probably couple it with another language).


Do humans mentally discretize numbers? It seems reasonable to me that humans discretize numbers: this number is bigger than than number, or when faced with a series of numbers that range from 0 - 100, 50 is "middling", 10 is "low" and 90 is "high". It doesn't seem to me that the brain would place much value in the difference between 76 or 77.

I ask this in the context of scoring in games: many games present scores to players as numbers, but it seems to me the numbers themselves are meaningless, and actually translate to mental buckets where you can say "this is a good score" or "this is a bad score". Players don't actually perceive the numbers. This would indicate that games that use grading systems like A-F would be better communicators of player performance.

Is there any research to back up this theory? I'm coming up short, but I can't believe no-one has tried to answer this question.

One common way of framing numerical cognition is in terms of a "mental number line". This mental number line is thought to have a logarithmic scale, so perceived differences are inversely proportional to their magnitude. For example, the difference between 6 and 7 is perceived as bigger than the difference between 76 and 77. This is just a variant of the Weber-Fechner Law, which applies in many perceptual domains (sound loudness, object weight, light brightness, etc.). So people don't exactly put numbers into discrete bins, but small differences begin to blur together for larger numbers.

In typical, educated adults there is also thought to be an explicit symbolic or linguistic representation of numbers that captures their exact value and allows us to do exact calculations.

For theories of numerical cognition, one good place to start is:

Feigenson, L., Dehaene, S., & Spelke, E. (2004). Core systems of number. Trends in cognitive sciences, 8(7), 307-314.


Can meditation be associated to lucid dream? The principal reason of this question is that I know people that can willingly enter in lucid dream (and so do what they want in it, and wake up when they want). Some of then use EEG (not professionnal one, ZEO sleep manager or Olimex) and they lucid are on NREM2 or REM.
So it's still sleep (the brain waves length are said to be sleep). But they can basically fall asleep and start lucid dream.
Important point to mention: those people are doing polyphasics sleep, hence the capacity to fall asleep for a nap really easily. But because of this they don't try to sleep outside their schedules.
However, the thing is that they relax and then fall asleep in a lucid state.
Meditation can be observed in theta wavelength (Manocha, n.d.; Aftanas & Golocheikine, 2001) (referenced by Wikipedia). But it's mindless meditation.
Also this question refer meditation as a good method to fall asleep.
If you simplify it (a lot) meditation and lucid dream can have a lot of common points.
But is there any known relatio between the two? Is it possible to fall in lucid dream by meditating?
References
Aftanas, L. I., & Golocheikine, S. A. (2001). Human anterior and frontal midline theta and lower alpha reflect emotionally positive state and internalized attention: high-resolution EEG investigation of meditation. Neuroscience letters, 310(1), 57-60. doi: 10.1016/S0304-3940(01)02094-8
Manocha, R. (n.d.). Research Summary: Brain Waves. Retrieved from: http://www.researchingmeditation.org/meditation-research-summary/brain-waves

Stumbrys, Erlacher, & Malinowski (2015) found a positive correlation between mindfulness during wakeful states and lucid dreaming during sleep. However, there is no explanation about how the actual processes of meditation and lucid dreaming are related.

Stumbrys, T., Erlacher, D., & Malinowski, P. (2015). Meta-Awareness During Day and Night: The Relationship Between Mindfulness and Lucid Dreaming. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 34(4), 415–433. https://doi.org/10.1177/0276236615572594


Drawing Parallels Between Finance and Psychology: A Psychology Metaphor This question starts out with some finance theory to set the scene:

Background

Let's consider the stock price of Google (the value of holding a share in Google). The volatility in Google's stock price is the degree of variation in that price. An implied volatility can be derived from the market price of an option.

An option is an instrument which gives the buyer a right to buy or sell a particular stock in the future at a particular price, if they want to. Volatility is one of the inputs required to price (determine the correct value) of an option. It is the range in which a a stock price is expected to fluctuate.

Organisations are often considered as organisms. Organic metaphors are often used to describe how organisations work.

Question

If I was to use psychology to create a metaphor for volatility, what theory could I use?

If stock price is an individuals self worth or self esteem and an option price is their outlook on what their self worth might be at a point in the future. Finance theory would suggest that a correct view of future self worth would require something comparable to volatility.

Does it sound reasonable to consider volatility as emotional modulation? Emotional dysregulation at one end of the scale, a level head at the other? Is there a psychological term for level head?

Any good reading you would suggest to help me continue this comparison/analysis?

Classically, we might call emotional volatility neuroticism.  We could also refer to a continuum of affective reactivity (high vs. low reactivity; e.g., Gross, Sutton, & Ketelaar, 1998).

Emotion dysregulation need not imply emotional volatility. For example, depressed patients show stable depressed mood or emotional inertia (Brose et al., 2014), which is related to impaired affective updating under stress (Pe et al., 2015) and perseverative thinking (Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco, & Lyubomirsky, 2008).

A lot of these ideas can be pushed under the umbrella of affective dynamics, or how affect/emotions change over time (for recent theory, see this special issue of Emotion Review, 2015).

We can also say that fluctuations in affect represent deviations from allostasis (Sterling, 2013), which motivate us to engage in self-regulatory behaviors that bring us back to allostasis (Inzlicht, Bartholow, & Hirsch, 2015).

As part of a predictive regulation framework, emotional instability may result from feedback dynamics between positive and negative predictions about the world (Eldar et al., 2015; see the image below).  Relatedly, maladaptive priors and associated attentional biases (i.e., inappropriately weighted prediction errors) may also account for volatility (Huys, Daw, & Dayan, 2015).


Is there a random walk theory that can account for situations with more than two choices? In the article "Two-stage Dynamic Signal Detection: A Theory of Choice, Decision Time, and Confidence" from 2010 by Pleskac and Busemeyer, a random walk model is presented for situations where a discrete choice is made (that is, signal present/not present, yes/no, 1/0 et cetera). Here, if there is no time pressure involved, a threshold value is set which has to be reached before an answer is given. Contrary, if there is a time pressure involved, the value at the last time point is used to decide which answer is given, even if the threshold point hasn't been reached at that time.

I wonder whether there are any extension of this model which can incorporate situations with more than two choices (from 3 alternatives and up to a fully continius choice space). I guess you just could incorporate more dimensions (the model referred to above is two-dimensional), but if the answers are non-independent (for example, when using a rating scale), I guess the random walk function would have to be fairly complicated. That is, if strong evidence is accumulated for number 3, how much evidence should be added to 4 and 2? Should evidence be subtracted from 1 and 5?

Instead of having a single integrator with two bounds for two choices (symmetric random walk model), you can have many competing integrators each with a bound (race model). For example, see Fig 2. of Gold and Shadlen 2007 and references therein.

As for the continuous choices case, it is important to understand a limit of discrete choices can be very different from a continuous choice. For such a limit to make sense, there should be a notion of similarity between the choices, and I don't think those race models would generalize easily. A high dimensional continuous attractor dynamics is more likely to support such theory.


Does social interaction increase intelligence? Unless I am mistaken, I recall hearing an English teacher say that social interaction can increase IQ, but I found no sources discussing this when I searched on Google and Google Scholar for it. So, can social interaction increase IQ or intelligence?

NB: my apologies, not enough rep points to post additional links.

this is far too nebulous a statement, and if it were true, would most likely be based on non-experimental data. one example that immediately comes to mind is case studies looking at the effects of social deprivation amongst children in romanian orphanages. there are also a lot of different ways to interpret this question.

for example, is it possible that your teacher was actually referring to vygotsky's  zone of proximal development -- a theory of childhood learning, wherein learning is thought to occur best when interacting with an older, slightly more competent peer?

in animal behavioural models involving rodents and the like, there is robust empirical evidence that social deprivation is associated with cognitive deficits.

some examples:

Social isolation rearing-induced impairment of the hippocampal neurogenesis is associated with deficits in spatial memory and emotion-related behaviors in juvenile mice.
Long-term social isolation exacerbates the impairment of spatial working memory in APP/PS1 transgenic mice.

when looking at animal models one caveat, amongst many, however, is obviously the presumption that we are modelling the same phenomenon in animals as we are in humans. in this case, it certainly looks like social deprivation studies might give us a clue about the effect of social interaction in humans. but could this be modelling something else, say, environmental deprivation? in other words, is there something intrinsically important about social interaction, or is it a form of environmental enrichment, one whose contribution could be supplanted if one were to be exposed to alternative stimuli. but i digress.

  but I found no sources discussing this when I searched on Google and Google Scholar for it.

rather than social interaction and intelligence, searching for the keywords social deprivation and social isolation may prove more fruitful. instead of IQ, you should use some of the purported factors of IQ, such as working memory. but generally, you will likely find more data on animal behavioural studies than humans.

one exception to this may be the effect of social interaction and acquisition upon language ability, particularly foreign languages. in these domains, you will likely find more robust evidence to support the importance of social interaction:

Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning.

  So, can social interaction increase IQ or intelligence?

the cliff's notes of it:

i think you could confidently say that social deprivation has deleterious effects on cognitive ability.
social interaction is significant in the development of language development, perhaps also verbal ability.
social deprivation notwithstanding, its contribution in a normative population is unclear.


Can you Counteract the Negative Effects of Sleep Deprivation? There are many studies accounting the negative effects of sleep deprivation which all seem to detail the deficiency of time for your body to "reset" and how this leave it in a depleted state.
If you:
efficiently supplemented the body with nutrients, also accounting for the extra time awake;
rested enough throughout the day for your body to recover fully;
maintained a healthy and focused mindset;
maybe even adapted/trained your body to prevent the negative effects, could you go without sleep?

Nutrients have little to do with it*, it's the rest cycles that are important.

Cells  are messy, stumbling, statistically functional things.  Periodically, a cell needs to take a break so it can perform basic maintenance tasks and undo the disorder its incurred handling numerous signaling and protein construction mechanisms [1].  For neurons, this is particularly difficult. If they take a break, they begin to lose information as they undergo long term changes in response to their activity level. So instead, animals with sufficiently complex nervous systems enter a state of reduced activity (called sleep) to help perform maintenance [2] - there's also some question to how it might contribute to memory, but that subject is more contentious [3].

There may be volitional mental states that are achievable that can do the same things as sleep can (give all the different parts of the nervous system rest cycles and slow down metabolism) but nobody has been able to prove it yet, that I know of.  Harvard researcher, Dr. Herbert Benson, claimed it was possible in The Relaxation Response, but I don't know of any one actually demonstrating it in trials.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25325492
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3972489/
[3] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627304005653

*Granted, if you don't sleep, your metabolism doesn't slow down and you burn through nutrients faster.


Why do some people believe that life is a zero-sum game and that if you harm someone, you will benefit? I have a strong feeling that many people consider life as a zero-sum game, i.e. they always assume that you'll benefit, if you harm/disadvantage someone. Any research on this?

There is definitely more than one aspect to this question. One of them is if there is a certain type of person that views life as a zero-sum game. What I looked into is if there is a certain type of person that actually gains something from hurting others.
There seems to be: The everyday sadist.
Buckels, Jones and Paulhus (2013) mean that there is a sadist personality type that is expressed in everyday life. (See: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/24/11/2201 and http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/everyday-sadists-take-pleasure-in-others-pain.html for an article summing up the scientific article).
These researchers have been looking into traits that they call the "Dark Triad". "When aggression was easy, sadism and Dark Triad measures predicted unprovoked aggression. However, only sadists were willing to work for the opportunity to hurt an innocent person."
People strong in this trait would probably feel affirmed by a world view that enables them to fund pleasure with a rationale behind it.
This answer is inadequate as a complete response to your question.
Something I'd like to look into further is the Just World hypothesis, where the belief that the world should mete our justice leads us to act in a certain way.


Physiologically speaking is anxiety and adrenaline the same? I am wondering from a physiological perspective what is anxiety. From my experience anxiety feels like muscle tension and lots of suppressed energy. For what I know the only thing that can make the body feel like that is adrenaline. So I am wondering if the two are the same or if anxiety is caused by different hormone. However what doesn't seem right about my hypothesis is anger increases adrenaline, but I don't think anger feel like anxiety for the general population. It would be helpful if someone could clarify me what causes the physiology of anxiety.

Not quite the same, although there is some overlap.

What's colloquially known as an "adrenaline rush" (e.g. what you'd experience in a roller coaster or more generally in a fight-or-flight situation) is the result of the body's fast reaction system to stress, sometimes called the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary (SAM) axis. SAM activation causes the adrenal medulla to release epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline);.

On the other hand, sustained/chronic stress (eventually) activates the slower stress-response axis, known as the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis. In humans, HPA activation releases cortisol from the zona fasciculata of the adrenal cortex. (The adrenal cortex is the outer layer of the adrenal gland, while the adrenal medulla is the inner area of the gland.) One of the actions of cortisol is to contain the activation of the SAM axis. (Textbook of
Anxiety Disorders, 2nd ed., p. 571 citing the highly influential paper of Munck et al.) Cortisol has its own negative-feedback loop.

So, in a panic attack you'd experience mostly SAM activation, or at least this will be the dominant effect. On the other hand, anxiety generally refers to a broader class of reactions to stress, including long-term ones. E.g., [older] people with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) may experience elevated cortisol, and this is reduced by SSRI medication. Other anxiety-related disorders such as PTSD have a much more complicated picture; cortisol levels are not terribly useful in distinguishing PTSD patients from controls. Recent research suggests however that a dysfunctional cortisol feedback loop may be present in PTSD; administration of cortisol after a potentially traumatic event seems to reduce later symptoms.

What I said above is a pretty simplified picture, in which I completely glossed over the complex pathways of stress-mediation in the brain, which actually make studying/treating anxiety disorders much less trivial.


Does our brain react as if we were physically hurt when we are lied to? I think I've read somewhere that our brain acts as if we were physically hurt (as if we feel pain) when we catch someone lying to us. I couldn't find anything about it on google, and my memory is not reliable enough for me to be anywhere near sure of this.

Can anyone confirm this & give a reference to something scientific?

Perhaps you're referring to Naomi Eisenberger's work on the neural basis of social pain. Her seminal paper found that the neural correlates of distress from social rejection overlapped with those of physical pain, i.e., dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula.

She's recently published a literature review on social pain in the brain (Eisenberger, 2015), summarizing her work and addressing its various controversies.

However, Woo et al. (2014) recently challenged the notion of overlapping neural bases for social and physical pain. They used fancy multivariate methods to analyze the shared vs. distinct neural representations of social vs. physical pain.  They conclude:

  These findings demonstrate that separate representations underlie pain and rejection despite common [shared] fMRI activity at the gross anatomical level. Rather than co-opting pain circuitry, rejection involves distinct affective representations in humans.


What would make parents lose their instinct to protect their own children? I've seen footage of the holocaust where parents and their children were shot, with the parents just standing there, doing nothing to protect their children.

I have enormous difficulty in understanding the mindset/attitude/reason for this, fatalistic?, conduct. Being a parent myself, I know I would just go berserk.

What would make parents act like those in the footage?

Sounds like you have had a distressing encounter with "learned helplessness" as madsun also described. Learned helplessness is a well-studied psychological phenomenon and reaction that explains the terrible situation that you have described. It is situational and explains the "fatalism" that is so difficult to understand. The simplest explanation I can find seems to be

  a phenomenon observed in both humans and other animals when they have been conditioned to expect pain, suffering, or discomfort without a way to escape it (Ackerman blog, 2019)

Chris describes the different types of learned helplessness in an another question

How does one escape learned helplessness?

References:

Learned Helplessness: Seligman’s Theory of Depression (+ Cure). PositivePsychology.com blog (2018, March 24).


What is it called when a person seeks to compare themselves to others? What is it called when a person consciously or unconsciously looks for similarities and differences in other people's reasoning, behavior, actions or past events and compares them with his/her own traits? I.e., Noticing them, with or without reacting, relating or comparing yourself with others.

Cognitive Bias

  A cognitive bias  is a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations. Implicit in the concept of a "pattern of deviation" is a standard of comparison; this may be the judgment of people outside those particular situations, or may be a set of independently verifiable facts.

One being:

  Social comparison bias can be defined as having feelings of dislike and competitiveness with someone that is seen physically, or mentally better than yourself.

There are other types of bias that would be appropriate to cover what you have asked in your question, I suggest having a look. For a list of cognitive biases.

This question What are the possible causes of pettiness? and answer touches upon some of the reasons people compare themselves to others.


What is Asperger's Syndrome? I have read through the Wikipedia article on and looked at the diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome (AS) and am still not sure how it is connected with autism. It seems like compared with autism it is really hard to distinguish between an average person and someone with AS.

The only criteria seems to be that people with AS are anti-social and do not have some other more serious psychological disease. Is there some sort of way of using neuroimaging to show a significant difference in the brains of an average person and someone with AS?

From ICD-10 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems),
Asperger's syndrome (F8.45) is:

  A disorder of uncertain nosological validity, characterized by the same type of qualitative abnormalities of reciprocal social interaction that typify autism, together with a restricted, stereotyped, repetitive repertoire of interests and activities. It differs from autism primarily in the fact that there is no general delay or retardation in language or in cognitive development. This disorder is often associated with marked clumsiness. There is a strong tendency for the abnormalities to persist into adolescence and adult life. Psychotic episodes occasionally occur in early adult life.

Actually, the Wikipedia article that you are pointing to also makes it clear:

  It differs from other autism spectrum disorders by its relative preservation of linguistic and cognitive development.

However, there is no consensus if there is difference between Asperger's Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism. Perhaps also there is no clear distinction between clinically-significant autistic traits and complete absence of them.

Currently autism and Asperger's Syndrom alike are not fully understood on neurobiological basis (there are ongoing research, for a review see e.g.  E. Pisula, The autistic mind in the light of neuropsychological studies (2010) or a special issue of Nature on autism).

However, the premise

  The only criteria seems to be that people with AS are anti-social and do not have some other more serious psychological disease.

is clearly false.


neurolinguistics: origin of language Taking the definition of language a symbolic way to represent an object, is there any explanation for its origin? Is it dependent of any part of the brain?

Scientific info about this issue will be welcome.

The origin of language may be as much structural as cerebral. I think the key words are larynx and hyoid bone.

I included a link below, but you should really compare several sources, because there are a lot of details, and science's understanding of human evolution is constantly evolving itself.

For example, there's genetic evidence that all living humans are descended from a single African male sometimes called "Scientific Adam." No one knows exactly what made this individual so special, but there's speculation that he might have been the first to really master language. But that might be nothing more than speculation, and I'm just throwing it in as an anecdote. Lots of stuff has been written on the topic.

I believe language is linked with a certain part of the brain, but I don't know any specifics.

The Origins of Human Language: One of the Hardest Problems in Science

P.S. I might add that archaeological evidence suggests that modern humans (Home sapiens) made far greater use of symbols, including art, than Neanderthals did. This is believed to derive from the fact that our species had more advanced language skills, which translated into a better grasp of symbolism.


Can Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) present symptoms from very particular stimuli? Sensory processing disorder can cause over or under reactions to sensory input, like loud sound. Can those afflicted with this disorder be okay from a particular sound played at a particular volume but react to a different sound played at the same volume? How can this disorder be differentiated from a phobia or various other disorders?

To answer your first question, I am fairly certain that those afflicted with this disorder, or more directly, a person who cannot tolerate a particular sound at a particular volume but react differently (find tolerable) to another sound even at the same volume, is definitely possible. For example, to provide a concrete example, let's assume an individual with SPD throws a tantrum when he hears a note out-of-tune, but can tolerate in-tune notes, regardless of volume. Some associate SPD with Autism Spectrum Disorders [1] (even one of the symptoms in the DSM-IV-TR for Asperger Disorder [2] make note of sensory hypersensitivity and hyposensitivity). In the example I mentioned, I don't think one would use the term "phobia" to characterize the reactive behavior to the stimuli. And someone with auditory SPD might not be able to simplify tolerable versus intolerable noises based solely on volume. SPD is a matter of difficulty in processing information received through the senses [3] - though difficulties may arouse anxiety, "phobia" is a pretty specific irrational fear, not to be attributed to a difficulty in processing.
Specific phobia(s) and SPD aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but one way in which they can be differentiated is by one of the symptoms for Specific Phobia.

C. The person recognizes that the fear is excessive or unreasonable. Note: In children, this feature may be absent. [2]

In SPD, what seems to be critical in response to stimuli is the idea of the "just-right" perception. In SPD, the reactive response to stimuli may not necessarily be indicative of a phobic response. For example, someone with SPD may absolutely hate being poked by others. But this person would not go out of his way to avoid being poked - dislike for tactile response purposes is different from a fear of pokes.
References

Frith, U. How Cognitive Theories Can Help Us Explain Autism. Speech. UC Davis Mind Institute.
DSM-IV-TR® Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
SPD Foundation - Ten Fundamental Facts About SPD


Does personality imply an inclination to be an expert in one field or average in "all" fields? The question of whether it is better to be an expert in one domain or average in many is too vague.

However, instead, I'd like to focus on the following:

Are individuals born to prefer being an expert in one domain or average in many domains?
Is there any serious research on this?

For example I'd very like to be an expert in swimming but after some time of hard training this activity becomes boring for me. I need to run, I need to play ball team games etc. Conversely, Michael Phelps, world swimmer, incline to be an expert in one branch.

We can talk about branch of study, hobbies, sport, social interactions, languages, etc.

I imagine there are many ways of looking at this question. Here are just a few ideas:

Society and specialisation:
One lens for viewing this question is to focus on the reward structure of our society. There are many forces in society which encourage specialisation and the development of specific expertise. Careers are typically built around developing expertise in a particular domain (e.g., doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, etc.). The nature of the reward structure that is facilitated by large economic markets means that the most popular actors, musicians, and politicians, and the most successful athletes get more of the financial and social rewards than those that just dabble in such activities. The flipside of a specialised society is that you don't need to know how to do many things, because you just pay someone else to do it. Thus, from this perspective, in historical terms society appears to be encouraging expertise more than in the past.

General individual differences: The concept of need for achievement refers to an "individual's desire for significant accomplishment, mastering of skills, control, or high standards."

Self-actualising: You could look at research on how people find meaning in their life and how mastery and expertise fits into that experience. In particular, the journey of acquiring mastery in a domain has often been linked to feelings of meaning and purpose. For example, have a look at something like Self Determination Theory and the role of competence in achieving a sense of personal growth.

Expertise and deliberate practice research: There's a substantial body of research that has studied people acquiring expertise in particular domains. Ericsson et al (1993) provides a good introduction to this research. A central claim in Ericsson's model is that deliberate practice is key to acquiring expertise. And given that deliberate practice is optimised for improving performance it may not necessarily be intrinsically enjoyable. Thus, this suggests that the motivation to engage in deliberate practice over an extended period of time may be a key differentiator between those who do and do not acquire expertise.

References

Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological review, 100(3), 363. PDF


How many items in a list can a human create without repetition? Consider the question "Name as many animals as you can."

An average person could no doubt list off about 20-30 animals without repetition.

This is odd seeing as we have a 7-9 item maximum short term memory.

The theory would suggest that as soon as we got to animal 10 we would start repeating the same animals without realising it. Whereas of this is plainly not what a person does. We sort of know "I've already said that one". Even though we wouldn't be able to repeat the whole list back.

Is there a limit to this kind of memory? How many animals can a human list off until they forget whether or not they have named a certain animal? Is it time based or number based?

It feels like we're marking off different neurons in the brain when we say them. So we don't say them again.

Recalling items from short term memory is a very different task from creating a list of all unique items. There are a number of strategies for recalling items from short term memory without repeating, you can remember all the items in the list in a random order and all the items you have recalled or you can remember all the items in a fixed order and where you are in the list. When creating a list of unique items you need to create a rule, remember this rule and the number of items you have recalled. The list itself is in long term memory

For example, if you are name as many numbers as you can without repetition, you could say the positive integers 1, 2, 3, ..., N. Equally valid would be the even positive integers 2, 4, 6, 2N. You could also list the Fibonacci sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, ..., $\frac{\phi^n-(-\frac{1}{\phi})^n}{\sqrt{5}}$ or if you know them the digits of $\pi$ 3, 1, 4, 1, .... In all of these cases there is a limit to how far you can get since you need to remember the number of items you have given.

Numbers are obviously easier to create rules for than animals, but for animals you could do something like ant, bat, cow, dog, eel, fly, ..., zho, anoa, bear, cuis, deer, ..., zobo, addax, bison, camel, dingo, ..., zebra, ...  I am not sure how far one can really go with this rule, but it will get you pretty far


Reconciling one-dimensional valence with distinct mechanisms for reward/punishment It is a widespread notion in psychology that there are two dimensions to emotion: valence (aversiveness or attractiveness of some entity) and intensity. However, recent experimental studies in neuropsychology (e.g. those listed below) have given strong evidence for two distinct pathways which process reward and punishment associated with some input. This in turn compellingly suggests that valence is in fact made up of two independent dimensions, and I'm guessing there are behavioral studies reaching similar conclusions (i.e. that persons are able to have "mixed feelings"). How do we reconcile these views? Are we forced to reject one-dimensional valence on the basis of the evidence?

Distinct pathways for reward/punishment:

Paton, Joseph J., and Kenway Louie. "Reward and punishment illuminated." Nature neuroscience 15.6 (2012): 807.
(http://www.researchgate.net/publication/225043743_Reward_and_punishment_illuminated/file/e0b495227b6d325c3d.pdf)
Fujiwara, Juri, et al. "Segregated and integrated coding of reward and punishment in the cingulate cortex." Journal of Neurophysiology 101.6 (2009): 3284-3293.
Monosov, Ilya E., and Okihide Hikosaka. "Regionally distinct processing of rewards and punishments by the primate ventromedial prefrontal cortex." The Journal of Neuroscience 32.30 (2012): 10318-10330.

A meta-analysis of 397 neuroimaging studies was just published looking at this very question (see here).

They tested three hypotheses:

Bipolarity - negative and positive are on the same continuum
Bivalence - negative and positive are independent
Affective workspace - valence is supported by a "flexible set of valence-general regions".

Their analyses are rather complicated, but they didn't find much support for the bipolarity or bivalence hypotheses.  Instead, in support of the affective workspace hypothesis, they conclude (emphasis mine):

  These findings suggest that, at the level of regional brain activity, there is no single region or even voxel that uniquely represents positivity or negativity. Limbic tissue, including the anterior insula, rostral ACC/ventromedial prefrontal cortex, dorsal ACC, amygdala, ventral striatum, as well as several other regions including the thalamus and occipitotemporal cortex, appears to contain cells that are part of the brain’s valence-general affective workspace or “affective neural reference space

But they note that some brain regions have preferences for negativity or positivity, meaning that these brain regions may tend to represent negativity or positivity over the other.

This meta-analysis isn't definitive, but it's the best we have right now.


How are hallucinations generated, is it related to dreaming? I was thinking how powerful auditory and visual hallucinations must be, for the individual experiencing them to be unable to distinguish them from reality. I, personally, have not experienced a hallucination, but have experienced vivid dreams and know that when I'm dreaming it can seem real, and at that point, that is my reality (even though I am asleep).

Is there a correlation between the part of the brain responsible for dreaming and hallucinations?

What generates hallucinations, to make them indistinguishable from reality?

Psychosis results in hallucinations. States of psychosis are thought to be like seizures caused by imbalanced levels of at least dopamine and serotonin. Psychosis like depression creates new pathways in the brain which allow for the senses to be flooded with internal information. The person who is experiencing hallucinations may be forced by the psychosis to think that it is real. Some are able to realize that the hallucination is not real. For instance, it is a common condition of humanity to have isolated instances of hallucinations. People hear music when there is none or think someone calls their name but no one did. Normal people are able to recognize that there was no music and no one called their name.

Psychosis can be caused by extreme excitement. Excitement alone impairs judgment but if it goes to an extreme a person can become psychotic and begin to hallucinate or have other odd behaviour.

Often times people schizo type and bipolar disorder are accompanied with insomnia. If the illness progresses far enough the sick person can become caught in a state between awake and asleep. The hallucinations are combined with greater degrees of dissociation (day dream).


mirror-writing using non-dominant hand easier with closed eyes I've learnt to mirror-write as shown below  using my non-dominant hand. One of the things I've observed is that it's a lot easier when I do it with my eyes closed. For e.g. if my eyes were closed, I'd be able to write faster and with less mirror-mistakes (writing regular b - b instead of mirrored b - d)

Is there any existing research that can explain this?

There has been some recorded research in this area from more than 150 years back (1858). The concept is called Bilateral transfer of learning.

Definition:
"Bilateral transfer is an aspect of the transfer of learning and is the transfer of learning or performance from one side of the body after training to the other. So, for example, after training a task with the right hand there, is an improvement in left handed performance."

I could also find a mention of this very specific example (Ref: Slide #8 in this slideshare presentation)-

"He (E H Weber) observed that some children trained to write with the right hand were able without further training to produce very good mirror writing with the left hand".

Why closing the eyes helps may be due to the fact that it reduces distraction but I haven't been able to find any reference for this.


How does the neuron recover from hyperpolarizationn? Assume we're at the state where the potassium gates have closed. Inside the membrane should still be more negative relative to its resting potential. This source claims that the sodium-potassium pump brings the membrane potential back up to the resting potential. However, as far as I understand, sodium-potassium pump creates a net negative charge inside the cell by pumping out three Na+ molecules and bringing in two K+ molecules. How would the pump make the membrane potential more positive? Please let me know if I am misunderstanding something.

The sodium potassium pump keeps ion concentrations consistently imbalanced with sodium higher outside and potassium higher inside the cell. The direct impacts it has on voltage are negligible, I'd recommend just ignoring them. If your source specifically says the pump returns the cell to rest after hyperpolarization, this is wrong. A cell could fire several action potentials and return to rest without any pump required, because ion concentrations hardly change during the whole process. You only need the pump in the long term to maintain ion concentrations.
What is important for determining membrane potential is conductances to various ions and the weighted sum of their reversal potentials. Individual reversal potentials can be determined by the Nernst equation; the weighted sum can be determined by the Goldman equation. All the questions you have about what voltage a cell is moving towards are answered by these related equations.
The reason a cell can become hyperpolarized after action potentials is because the weighted sum of ion reversal potentials at rest is less negative than that of potassium alone. If you have extra potassium channels open (voltage gated potassium channels), membrane potential will head closer to potassium reversal.
Nothing special has to happen to return to rest, it's just that at rest the combined conductances of all ions through leak channels and other channels give an expected membrane potential that is not as negative as potassium alone. You can think of this as mostly due to modest resting conductances of sodium and chloride.


Recommended resources (journals, blogs, etc) for nurturing a background of statistical/methodological rigour in behavioural science research? Background :
There seems to considerable debate regarding the output of psychological research lacking
a) appropriate, rigourous statistical treatment of data
b) replicability
As a second year undergrad psych student, it's one of my biggest fears that my future research might be marred by my lack of knowledge in the above two.

What I am asking for in this post:
I would like reading suggestions in the form of journals, blogs, textbooks or even specific paper/articles that may lead me to other resources.  My aim is to develop a sound background in stats/methodology to avoid making embarrassing errors. I feel like it's important to mention my current mathematical level so that suggestions may be easier to make: I'm comfortable with univariate calculus and basics of differential equations, introductory probability theory and high school (done in South Asia) algebra and geometry.

Extra:
I have read this post on psychology.stackexchange regarding replicability and found it to be helpful.
Please let me know if I must edit this post in order to receive fruitful answers.

There are various loosely-defined 'camps' among reform-minded methodologists, so you probably want to try to follow a representative of each.

Andrew Gelman is a prominent landmark in this area, and runs a really nice frequently-updated blog at statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu with frequent paper critiques.

The JASP crew also have a blog, https://www.bayesianspectacles.org/ which is a bit on the aggressive side, but JASP is great and it'll point you to things like the recent 'redefine statistical significance' paper, which will give you plenty to talk about if you run into a methods guru on their coffee break.

You might also enjoy http://daniellakens.blogspot.com/ and the author Daniel Lakens has a Coursera MOOC on this sort of thing. To be sure, there are a ton of good stats MOOCS, just this one happens to be by a psychologist with similar concerns to you :-)

This is a short list but I think it cuts across the camps I'm aware of (I'd love to know more about the camps in methodology myself, maybe some other StackExchange folks have some pointers!) My impression is that at minimum you should try to read someone who solves their problems with parameter estimation and cares about S and M errors (Gelman, Kruschke), someone who solves their problems with model selection and cares about Bayes Factors (EJ Wagenmakers 2018 "Bayes factor design analysis" maybe?), and someone who is happy to be frequentist so long as you're super careful about the interpretation (Lakens, I think? Or, like, most of statistics? Efron's awesome feats of bootstrapping are a great antidote to Wagenmakers' extreme takedowns of everything frequentist).

In my particular corner of psychology, Stan is taking over the world, if that's interesting to you you might get some good mileage out of http://elevanth.org/blog/ I reckon upwards of 20 people recommended the 'rethinking' textbook to me, and they were right! It's pretty great.


Why does the graph have a logarithmic shape? That is, why does the increase rate in %/hr decrease over time? The graph attached has a logarithmic line, but I can't figure out why.
Does anyone have any potential justifications with respect to neuroscience?

Thanks!

A really satisfying answer would need a full account of what memory is and how forgetting happens, and the full story on that does not exist yet. But there's been some pretty solid progress since Ebbinghaus.

The first step towards an answer would be to nail down exactly what shape that curve is.
There's a careful look in:
Averell, L., & Heathcote, A. (2011). The form of the forgetting curve and the fate of memories. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 55(1), 25-35.

But the TLDR version is that the first-pass description of the shape as logarithmic is pretty ok, there's a power-law rule for forgetting. Interestingly the asymptote doesn't seem to be zero! So some elements of memory seem to be effectively permanent.

Why and how that works is a bit of a mystery. Averell and Heathcote cite

Arshavsky,Y.I.(2006). The seven sins of the Hebbian synapse: can the hypothesis of synaptic plasticity explain long-term memory consolidation?

as discussing possible biological mechanisms for the results they found about the shape of the function, so that might be a nice place to start. But I don't think that's the last word on this! It's an ongoing research question.


What is the fear of having regrets called? What is the clinical name of fear of regrets? I'm thinking of something like arachnophobia or something ending with the prefix "-phobia"
could it be something like apóleiafovía? (the literal greek translation of fear of loss)

Although not a clinical diagnosis, in research on social media the term "Fear of Missing Out" (FoMo) is often used (Przybylski et al., 2013):

Defined as a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent, FoMO is characterized by the desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing.

This sounds related, but perhaps more specific in that it focuses specifically on regret of not having experienced a rewarding experience online.
Przybylski, A. K., Murayama, K., DeHaan, C. R., & Gladwell, V. (2013). Motivational, emotional, and behavioral correlates of fear of missing out. Computers in human behavior, 29(4), 1841-1848.


Do action potential thresholds vary in "capacity" significantly, and if so, does input frequency correspond to action potential thresholds? To clarify, I'm asking if the level of stimulation / polarization required for a neuron to reach action potential / excite the neuron varies significantly from neuron to neuron- even differing in neurons of the same type.

And if so, I'm curious to know whether the number of the neurons feeding into a neuron (and the frequency by which they normally fire) corresponds to the level of stimulation required for excitement. I'm wondering if neurons' thresholds for action have sensitivities (levels of input required to reach action potential) based on the number of neurons feeding into them in order to create a balance of input rate / excitement rate.

To rephrase the question, I'd like to know if the action threshold of a neuron changes to fit the frequency with which it's excited.

The key to determining if depolarizing a neuron will result in an action potential is the threshold potential of the cell. The threshold potential is basically the voltage, around -55 mV, at which the Na+ channels open. A number of factors (covered in Wikipedia) affect the exact threshold potential.


How do you analyse visual analogue scales with an ambiguous response? For example, I might ask participants to complete a visual analogue scale for pain. They would be given a line that is 100mm long, and one end says 0 (No pain) and the other end says 100 (worst possible pain). The participant is asked to make a mark on the line with a pencil or pen to rate their level of pain. I would then use a ruler to measure the distance from the origin. E.g. how many millimeters away it is from the start of the line (i.e. zero).
The problem is that many times, people do not place a mark such as an x on the line, but they might circle a part of the line, or put a tick (check mark) there instead. I attach a picture of the standard response (participant 1) followed by 5 possible scenarios where the answer is ambiguous (participants 2 to 7), so I have left it as missing data/blank. Should these be excluded from the dataset (coded as missing data) or are some of them salvageable?

By way of explanation: In number 2) the line is very large so there isn’t one place that it intersects the horizontal line (usually it has to be accurate to the nearest mm).
Participant 3) has placed a circle on the line so it is difficult to say where on the line they meant.
Participant number 4) has circled one of the numbers at the end. Can I be sure that they meant 0? Participant 7 is a variation on this.
Participant 5) has placed a tick (check) mark underneath the line (or sometimes they place a tick on the line itself). Which part of the tick do I measure from?
Participant 6) has placed a tick (check) mark on one of the numbers at the end of the scale. Can I be sure that they meant 100?
What is the best way to minimize bias while maximizing the use of the available data? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I am not an expert on these scales, but my 2-cents worth would be the following, which are simple work-arounds to include all the data:

Fine as is;
Take the middle of the thick line (the 'average');
Take the center of the circle (draw a cross in it, the intersection is the middle);
Apparently "0" - no pain;
Take the tip as the marker;
Apparently "100".
As in 4. ("0" - no pain);

Points #4 and #6 are obviously the most risky, especially in a small population. In a large population (say N=100) a few outliers don't matter too much. So in case the study sample is small, you may want to consider excluding uncertain cases (#4 and #6 as examples), or try to contact the subjects and re-assess.


Can time be perceived differently depending on a user's feeling? You often hear that time passes more quickly when you're having fun. And the opposite is also "true" in common belief, that when you're bored time is very slow. But we know that time is almost linear and constant.

Is there any scientific proof of that time is perceived differently depending on feeling or mood?

There's definitely scientific evidence that one's perception of time can be influenced by actions which in no way something's duration.

It's not quite the happy/sad affect you're asking about, but it definitely suggests that one's perception of time can be meaningfully influenced by wholly unrelated information:

2010 Study: When doctors sit for patient consultations, they are perceived as staying longer, providing higher quality care

Patients consistently overestimated the time doctors spent with them much more when the doctors sat down while talking to them then when they remained standing.  (The multiple was about 85% higher relative to the actual for the doctors who sat.)


Can one "understand" emotions, yet not "feel" them? Prometheus Viral Clip #3 - David is a good clip of a fictional character in a science-fiction movie that helps frame my question; but I am interested in the general question, not the specifics of this movie.

An robot named David claims to "understand human emotions, although [he] does not feel them [himself]."

I personally feel as though his claim is false - I would argue that to be able to state an understanding of human emotions, one must [have the capacity to?] feel them oneself. Is there existing knowledge or papers on this matter?

When asked what makes David sad, he responds with things like war and poverty. When asked if David would like to supply any additional statements before ending the feed, he expresses "gratitude" explicitly. If one "is" sad, isn't one by definition, "feeling" sadness?

Related questions

Are there emotions that only some people can feel?

There are two ways to approach your question: with or without dualism. I will highlight the dualist approach since it is more salient. Keep in mind that I do not find this approach reasonable, and doubt my summary will do it justice.

You might be interested in the concept of philosophical zombie, it is a modal argument against physicalism in the spirit of Saul Kripke that was polished by David Chalmers in The Conscious Mind. The basic idea is that you can have a zombie which is behaviorally equivalent to a human (including making utterances like "Ouch, I feel pain") yet it does not actually experience those emotions. There is nothing that if "feels like" to be a zombie. A zombie can say "I feel sad" and act like it is sad, but it doesn't feel anything.

If you adopt this stance it often becomes impossible to make a good theory-of-mind since everyone except yourself could actually be a zombie. In fact, Chalmers takes this further by talking about a whole parallel Z-universe where all creatures are zombies (including a copy Chalmers that goes around talking about a parallel universe). From this perspective, David's statement can be perfectly valid.

A second approach is looking at this point from the polar opposite perspective: behaviorism. Here, "to understand human emotion" would mean to be able to make predictions of human behavior based on knowledge that the human asserts to be in a certain emotional state. To "feel human emotion" would not be as well defined, but would be roughly equivalent to make the same patterns of behavior as a human that asserts to feel a certain emotion would usually make.

It is easy to see how David's statement can be perfectly valid from this perspective: if David simple stood in the corner and wrote down predictions of what the humans around him would do, then a behaviorist would say that David "understands human emotion". However, since standing in a corner and making predictions while your crew is eaten by aliens is not a typical human response, the behaviorist could conclude that David does not "feel human emotion" (if the behaviorist was tricked into using the word 'feel').

What I provided are two extreme philosophical stances, and each individual lays somewhere in between the two in terms of their personal philosophy on this issue (and maybe some lay on other extremes I did not imagine). Unfortunately, a scientific answer will come down to definitions and semantics. It will depend on what definition of 'feeling' the scientists in question find more reasonable.


For what kind of concepts do we really need an analogy? Literature suggests that analogies are helpful in teaching and learning science concepts. But every concept can not and should not be taught using analogies as there are some concepts that can be better taught using examples and learning by doing .

My question is " for what kind of concepts do we really need an analogy ?"
Answers may include a reference to a piece of literature / some insights from teaching experience /blogs etc.

Loosely defined, analogy is the process by which "novel situations and problems can be understood in terms of familiar ones". By this definition, a number of cognitive scientists would and do say that analogy plays a role in acquiring just about any new concept - they would say that especially examples and learning by doing are means of refining one's ability to map from the known to the unknown and uncover the latter's structure/properties. In addition to the linked book, which offers a collection of papers/essays in cognitive science on analogy, you could check out Douglas Hofstadter's Surfaces and Essences: "Analogy-making, far from happening at rare intervals, occurs at all moments, defining thinking from top to toe, from the tiniest and most fleeting thoughts to the most creative scientific insights." In the appendix there is a very long list of scientific publications supporting his assertions.


How does one add a commutator to the UCLA miniscope cable? The UCLA miniscope is an open source alternative to the Inscopix system for calcium imaging in freely behaving animals.  One of the benefits of their system that they tout is the ability to have a commutator on the data cable. A commutator allows for a cable to rotate without twisting, a major problem when trying to record from freely moving animals. Other methods that I have heard of to allow rotation include a MMCX connector on the cable.

I haven't seen any specific recipes for solving this problem; the miniscope website has no instructions on including a commutator in the cable, only vague references to the possiblity.

Any solutions out there?

I'm one of the developers of the Miniscope. We have been very happy with #FL-2-C from dragonfly. This commutator is very low torque and we have never had an issue with sending power or data through it. The key is to minimize the length of non-coax cabling coming out of the top and bottom of the commutator. We trim the lead wires short and solder coax connectors to both ends of the commutator.

For a slightly cheaper option you can check out the commutators sold by MOOG. I should mention that we haven't tested these with the Miniscope system yet.