432 Hz vs. 440 Hz frequencies: health and psychological effects? Search for “432 Hz” in YouTube and you’ll find plenty of examples where people have applied a pitch shifter to alter music ranging from a Mozart Requiem to Oasis’ Wonderwall.

But some claim that there is more to this than just preference. There are several blogs that claim that using a normal concert tuning of 440 Hz is bad for our health, but then what do you expect from something first promoted by the Nazis?

  The recent rediscoveries of the vibratory / oscillatory nature of the universe indicate that this contemporary international concert pitch standard may generate an unhealthy effect or anti-social behavior in the consciousness of human beings … There is a theory that the change from 432 Hz to 440 Hz was dictated by Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. [Source: Zen Gardner.]

Also,

432 Hz is said to be mathematically consistent with the patterns of the universe. Studies reveal that 432hz tuning vibrates with the universe’s golden mean PHI and unifies the properties of light, time, space, matter, gravity and magnetism with biology, the DNA code and consciousness. When our atoms and DNA start to resonate in harmony with the spiraling pattern of nature, our sense of connection to nature is said to be magnified. The number 432 is also reflected in ratios of the Sun, Earth, and the moon as well as the precession of the equinoxes, the Great Pyramid of Egypt, Stonehenge, the Sri Yantra among many other sacred sites.

  “From my own observations, some of the harmonic overtone partials of
  A=432hz 12T5 appear to line up to natural patterns and also the
  resonance of solitons. Solitons need a specific range to form into the
  realm of density and span from the micro to the macro cosmos. Solitons
  are not only found in water mechanics, but also in the ion-acoustic
  breath between electrons and protons.”

– Brian T. Collins

Another blog wrote that,

  The noticeable difference music lovers and musicians have noticed with
  music tuned in A=432 Hz is that it is not only more beautiful and
  harmonious to the ears, but it also induces a more inward experience
  that is felt inside the body at the spine and heart. Music tuned in
  A=440 Hz was felt as a more outward and mental experience, and was
  felt at the side of the head which projected outwards. Audiophiles
  have also stated that A=432hz music seems to be non-local and can fill
  an entire room, whereas A=440hz can be perceived as directional or
  linear in sound propagation.

Also, there is a group on SoundCloud where people everyday shares different sound tracks based on 432 Hz frequencies.

It is still kind of ambiguous and unclear to me. Does it really work to tune your music to 432 Hz, or it is just a hoax? Does it really effect your sub-conscious state and your health?

One of the claims that is somewhat easy to validate empirically is that "432 Hz sounds better than 440 Hz." This informal experiment tests this in a straightforward way. People listen to pitch-shifted versions of songs at a variety of different frequencies and rate their preference for the song. Importantly, they don't know which frequency the song has been shifted to.

The results pretty clearly debunk the claim that 432 "sounds better" than 440:

The preference ratings were highest at 440, and there was no statistical difference between 432 and 440.


What is the ACT-R model of learning? I am reading this paper titled: Effect of Temporal Spacing between Advertising Exposures

In this paper, the author mentions the ACT-R model and how it explains an optimal information- retrieval system in which items are stored in such a way that the cost of retrieval is minimal.

However, as I am not from a cognitive psychology background, I was unable to find the paper which proposed the model. (As the model is used and extended in many paper, I wasn't been able to find the original one).

So, can anyone give a (dumbed down) explanation of how the ACT-R model works, and how it explains information storage?

[Update] From the wikipedia link of ACT-R, I understand how the information is segregated. However, I still didn't understand how it is being stored and the learning process, and how it tries to minimize the cost of retrieval and (try to) maximize recall.  (If it is already present in the wiki page, then the technical jargon might have confused me.)

ACT-R can best be summarized with this (tiny but more recent) graph:

ACT-R is a cognitive architecture that tries to explain as much of human behavior as possible with as little rules as possible. It works at a high level of abstraction and came down to a list of so-called "modules", each having its own functions. The exact mechanisms of each of these modules are actually mathematical models which are based on many years of research. Each module has an accompanying buffer, which can be seen as an accompanying temporary storage unit which allows information to flow between modules.

One module is the visual module, in which vision and attention are modeled. When a stimulus is presented, the model will/may focus its attention on it. The time for it to do so is based on the location the model's attention was focused and the distance to the new location (Fitts's Law like).

Then, there is the manual module, which calculates how long a particular motor movement might take. Again, Fitts's law is a large part of this.

The more interesting modules are the Declarative Module and the Imaginal Module, and the Goal Buffer. In the declarative module factual information is stored. I also wrote something about it here. The paper I cited over there described how memories decay over time and how this decay may become slower (the effect of studying at intervals). This paper may especially be interesting also. Incorrect facts may also be stored but, since incorrect facts are encountered less often, they are are more easily forgotten.

The imaginal module is similar to working memory. Here you store information temporarily to allow short-term memorization. When a piece of information, also known as "chunk" is removed from this module, it automatically goes to the declarative module. There, depending on how often you use that "chunk", it will decay in a more or lesser degree. Placing something in the imaginal buffer is thus similar to mentally rehearsing.

The Goal buffer keeps track of what you are doing. For every little sub-task there is, you can set a goal. The goal-buffer is especially important for selecting the right production rule (see below).

The core of ACT-R

All these modules come together in the Procedural module, in which production rules are stored. Production rules is analogous to procedural memory, which is the knowledge of how to execute a (part of) the task. It is here that all information comes together, and determines what the next step of action may be. In ACT-R, the procedural module is a BIG if-then-statement. If the goal is to do X (taking from the goal buffer), and we have knowledge y (from the retrieval buffer), and we see information z (from the visual buffer), then we can perform action A (via the manual buffer).

Sometimes, there are more production rules having the same conditionals. That means, if the goal is to do X (taking from the goal buffer), and we have knowledge Y (from the retrieval buffer), and we see information Z (from the visual buffer), then we can either perform action A or action B (via the manual buffer). This, the conditionals and corresponding action, are stored as two separate production rules. So we have Rule A and Rule B, which may be selected if we see X, Y and Z. Both production rule has a Utility value, i.e. a value of how successful the outcome was of that execution. The higher utility is, the bigger the probability of selecting it. This allows humans to make mistakes (selecting a wrong production rule) and to learn from these mistakes. Production rules that are successful will increase their Utility, whereas rules that are more often unsuccessful will have their utility decay over time.

Example

One thing ACT-R has modeled is solving mathematical equations. For this, we need some assumptions. We are highly trained in additions from up to 50, so we can retrieve these facts without a problem. Then, we go into our production rule:

  IF
  Goal = addition
  Visual = 5+9
  THEN
  new Goal = retrieve
  Imaginal = 5+9 (to temporarily remember)

Now the next rule:

  IF
  Goal = retrieve
  Imaginal = 5+9 (here you use the temporarily remembered info)
  THEN
  Declarative = 14  (here, the result of the memory retrieval is saved)
  New Goal = Type answer

Then a final rule:

  IF
  Goal = Type answer
  Declarative = 14
  THEN
  Manual = Type 14. (here, a value is calculated of how long it would take to move your hand from Base position, to 1, to 4).

This is pretty much how ACT-R works. I bet that the IF-THEN syntax is not completely correct, but this is the essence. With basic IF-THEN rules, and knowledge and information from different modules, you can perform any task. Do note that ACT-R works at a very high level of abstraction (plus you can manually adapt the decay rate of memories to make the data fit better). Not every module is thus very well explained and there is quite some criticism on the model. However, the simplicity-explainability ratio (Occam's razor?) is very nice. For the best description of the model, I recommend the book "How does the human mind occur in the physical universe" by John Anderson.

Examples of mistakes

For completeness I will also describe two mistakes that can occur. The first mistake is an incorrect memory retrieval. As a beginner in learning to count, you may have accidentally answered 13 once instead of 14 on the equation. This means it is saved in the declarative memory, but, most likely, activation has decayed a little. Because the retrieval process is stochastic and the activation value only serves as probabilities, it is possible that you accidentally select 13 instead of 14. Very simply, the second conditional will become the following.

  IF
  Goal = retrieve
  Imaginal = 5+9 (here you use the temporarily remembered info)
  THEN
  Declarative = 13
  New Goal = Type answer

The second way a mistake can be made is by selecting a wrong production rule with the same conditionals. For instance, during additions, you learn that 5+9 equals 14, and you see a pattern: you add a one and remove one from 5. because this is a successful strategy in some cases, it may actually gain some utility. So, as the innocent child that you are, when you see 15+9 you answer 114; you added a one and removed one from 5. This will be a production rule with the exact same conditionals, but where you perform a different action. The first production rule could then look like this:

  IF
  Goal = addition
  Visual = 5+9
  THEN
  new Goal = move One
  Imaginal = 5+9 (to temporarily remember)

After this, you would not follow the same steps anymore, because the goal buffer holds a different value ("move One" instead of "retrieve"). This means a different production rule will be selected.

Tutorial

A tutorial of ACT-R exists which rather nicely takes you through the steps of basic model making, the exact syntax and the structure of the modules/buffers.


Is there a formal name for "I'm right, don't try to challenge me" / "if you push against me I will be 100x more stubborn" personality trait? Some persons gets really annoyed if we try to demonstrate our thesis to them or to put in light that they are behaving in a childish way.

Dale Carnegie, in his most famous book: How to win friends and influence people, wrote that it's almost completely unuseful to try to criticize others even if we are completely right. Even if we are trying to help them. The psychological reason behind is that we hurt their self-esteem / ego.

But when does this come to be extreme? When people are extremely stubborn and any attempt to change their mind or to show a different point of view becomes like a fight with them?
(Of course this definition is usually related to some of their belief on which they can become oversensitive).

It can happen when they have a strong need to confirm their beliefs, but also if their belief is that to insist is disrespectful.

I think this trait is very frequent in Narcyssistic (which thinks to be super rational).

This trait can be explicitated both in an aggressive way and in a passive resistence. The description provided by wikipedia:

  In psychology, passive-aggressive behavior is characterized by a
  habitual pattern of passive resistance to expected work requirements,
  opposition, stubbornness, and negativistic attitudes in response to
  requirements for normal performance levels expected of others. Most
  frequently it occurs in the workplace where resistance is exhibited by
  such indirect behaviors as procrastination, forgetfulness, and
  purposeful inefficiency, especially in reaction to demands by
  authority figures, but it can also occur in interpersonal contexts.

Defensive Pride I would say match your question title.


Why am I sometimes astonished when I doze Why am I sometimes extremely astonished with no reason when I doze, especially I am really exhausted?

When I am tired and doze, I am sometimes stunned so suddenly that my whole body shakes and punches things in front, messing evrything placed in front of me. (e.g. a cup with cocoa drink, pencilcase which was open.. etc , about twice a year)

Is there any scientific reason for it?

When you are awake, the muscles in your body are always at least a little tense to keep your body in your current position. Even when you lie down (while awake) you will usually not be completely relaxed, but holding yourself "in place".

When you begin to fall asleep, your muscles relax, and depending on the position you were in, part of your body will follow gravity and begin to sink from the "tense" wakeful position into a relaxed posture. Your body notices this involuntary movement of your body parts (you may even dream of a falling sensation or some movement) and startle you awake, often with a sudden countermovement to "catch" what your subconscious perceives to be a dangerous "fall".

If you fall asleep at your desk, as you seem to do, you may well knock over something on the table in front of you, when your arms jerk forward to prevent you from falling.

It happens to all of us, except that most of us go to bed to sleep ;-)


Is quick left brain vs right brain test fake? When I saw it at first she did rotate to the right.

With some mental effort I could make her rotate either way in half rotations where it looks like she dances not rotating in my minds eye, but I can only hold that until she starts to rotate either way again. After a few minutes it looked like her leg twisted one way and her body the other.

What would a person see if their brain is equally balance without a dominant side? What does it say when a person has the inability to only see a rotation?
Does this test have any basis if you are left or right brained? Does switching the direction from mental practice of build any part of your brain when you get to a point where you can do it more freely?

Does this picture identify anything about cognitive abilities?

Without references, you state:

  In this picture if you noticed her rotating clockwise you are right
  brain dominant.

We discourage asking questions on this site (or in science in general) which are based on unverified/referenced premises. However, given that this is a very common notion found online, I will try to answer your question by first helping you rephrase it.

What you should have asked is something along the lines of:

  I have read online articles (e.g., on learning-mind.com) which claim that if you perceive the
  figure in the following image rotate clockwise it means you are right
  brain dominant and when you see her rotating counterclockwise it means
  you are left brain dominant. However, the mechanism behind this is not
  well explained. How does this test work and what exactly does it imply?

To answer:

This figure is known as the 'Spinning Dancer' and there is a wikipedia article on it. The wikipedia entry states that:

  In popular psychology, the illusion has been incorrectly[6] identified
  as a personality test that supposedly reveals which hemisphere of the
  brain is dominant in the observer.

They link to NEUROLOGICAblog, "Left Brain – Right brain and the Spinning Girl", which explains that:

  This news article, like many others, ignores the true source of this
  optical illusion and instead claims it is a quick test to see if you
  use more of your right brain or left brain. This is utter nonsense,
  but the “right-brain/left brain” thing is in the public consciousness
  and won’t be going away anytime soon.

Instead, they explain what is actually going on:

  The spinning girl is a form of the more general spinning silhouette
  illusion. The image is not objectively “spinning” in one direction or
  the other. It is a two-dimensional image that is simply shifting back
  and forth. But our brains did not evolve to interpret two-dimensional
  representations of the world but the actual three-dimensional world.
  So our visual processing assumes we are looking at a 3-D image and is
  uses clues to interpret it as such. Or, without adequate clues it may
  just arbitrarily decide a best fit – spinning clockwise or
  counterclockwise. And once this fit is chosen, the illusion is
  complete – we see a 3-D spinning image.

In case you have specific questions on what 'hemispheric dominance' is and how we can determine it, the article (to my understanding, correctly) mentions:

  We also do have hemispheric dominance, but that determines mostly your
  handedness and the probability of language being on the right or the
  left. There is also often asymmetry for memory, with some being right
  or left hemisphere dominant.

I'm certain you can find more scientific sources on this by googling (I would recommend Google Scholar), or by looking on this site. At the time of writing, we have 12 search results on 'hemispheric dominance'.


Voltage sensitive dyes technique: What is the underlying measure? I just discovered voltage sensitive dyes technique:

I have seen that figures are labelled with dF/F0, what does it stands for?

I found that dF/F0 stands for the relative difference in fluorescence at a certain wavelength.


How to assess the effect of individual difference measure on quadratic fit of a within-subject factor? In my task, there are 8 levels of a within-subjects/repeated measure factor. The overall relationship that this factor has with  the DV is in the shape of an inverted-U, such that their DV scores at levels 1 and 8 are generally lowest, and those at 4 and 5 are highest.

What I want to test is whether my individual difference measure interacts with the within-subjects factor to make the inverted U (quadratic) shape fit better or worse. My hypothesis is that those high on my indiv diff measure will have more of a straight line than the curvey one in the overall sample. And I'd like to keep the indiv diff measure continuous.

Input and insights on good statistical approaches to this question are greatly appreciated!

Emmett

By default your 8 levels are probably coded linearly: e.g.,

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Or

-3.5,-2.5, ..., 2.5,  3.5

To examine quadratic effects you could simply square these values. Interpretation of linear and quadratic parameters will be clearer if you first center the linear variable before squaring.

So you could enter (-3.5)^2 = 12.25; (-2.5)^2 = 6.25, etc.

Equally, some data analysis software will allow you to specify polynomial contrasts (i.e., linear, quadratic, cubic). And in such software you can specify interactions.

In R, you would specify that the 8-level variable is an ordered factor.

In SPSS, the GLM - Repeated measures dialog allows you specify interactions and polynomial contrasts.


What is the neurological mechanism responsible for losing one's temper? I'd imagine that losing one's temper is quite normal, I can not think of anyone who has not experienced it.  For me, it is rare, but does happen, I find that there can be 3 broad stages occur (note: this is not a self help question, but just an example), a generalized example would be:

"The calm before the storm" - I actually feel calm just after the object of frustration occurs and before the next stage - this step is usually very short.
"The storm" - it feels like the anger/rage comes from within and erupts, for me, it is in shouting, for some it is violence, for others, it is both.  The length of this stage varies.
"Sunshine again" - not all sunshine and lollipops, but calmer with rationality kicking in.

My question is what neurological triggers initiate each step?

I have addressed your three points in three parts.

The calm before the storm.

I would dispute the calm before the storm. I would suggest this would depend on the trigger. Sometimes people can experience a feeling of shock at what they are processing, before they become angry.

The storm.

The sympathetic nervous system is the part of the autonomic nervous system that is responsible for our fight and flight response.
What causes people to get angry?

You might have many things to feel threatened about — from financial
crises and peer pressure to drug addiction and war — and some people
respond in a negative way. Still, most people don't walk around
feeling mad all the time. When someone explodes with anger, there's
usually a triggering event — such as a disagreement at work or being
stuck in traffic — that brings a mix of simmering emotions to the
boiling point.

What happens when we get angry?

When we get angry, the heart rate, arterial tension and
testosterone production increases, cortisol (the stress hormone)
decreases, and the left hemisphere of the brain becomes more
stimulated.

Increased heart rate and arterial tension primes the body for fight or flight.
Testosterone is linked with aggression.

Cortisol is released in response to stress, sparing available glucose
for the brain, generating new energy from stored reserves, and
diverting energy from low-priority activities (such as the immune
system) in order to survive immediate threats or prepare for the
exertion of rising to a new day.

The left side of the brain is responsible for;

Dopamine [II] is the neurotransmitter that is not only responsible for
modulating a lot of our physical movement, but also sex, aggression,
motivational drive, and, counter-intuitively, long-term planning and
restraint or impulse control. In nearly all right-handed and most
left-handed humans who are left-brain dominant, dopamine rules the
left side of the brain.

Calm after the storm

The parasympathetic nervous system is the part of the autonomic nervous system  responsible for the more restful activities and will restore the autonomic nervous system's  balance.

The body takes about 20 minutes to return to normal after a full
fight/flight response. ..//...
...//...  Angry people will not completely comprehend any explanations,
solutions, or problem solving options until their body returns to
normal again.  [III]

What happens when we get angry? Hormonal, cardiovascular and asymmetrical brain responses
Neus Herrero, Marien Gadea, Gabriel Rodríguez-Alarcón, Raúl Espert, Alicia Salvador.    Hormones and Behavior, 2010; 57 (3): 276 DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2009.12.008
How dopamine may influence gender differences in psychiatric disorders [II]
Published on May 17, 2011 by Emily Deans, M.D. in Evolutionary Psychiatry
Controlling Angry People  [III}
What would you do if you came face-to-face with an angry person?
Published on January 5, 2011
Jack Schafer, Ph.D.
Let Their Words Do the Talking


Visual search: complexity of positive vs negative search tasks Thinking about experiments where participants perform visual search tasks, I remember hearing in a Cog Psych lecture that if the instructions of the task were of the form "find the element that has property X", the participants would accomplish the task faster and with greater ease than when the instructions were of the form "find the element that does not have property Y".

It was then discussed that this exemplifies one of the themes in cognitive psych: The cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative information. Is this positivity effect?

I wonder if there is something about the second task that is algorithmically more complex than the first. Would a computer show the same slow-down for these tasks? Anyone know of any research exploring this?

I would doubt that the effect you described is an example for the positivity effect, which is a form of attributional bias, rather than connected to basic perceptual phenomena.

Instead I think that the experimental results you described can be explained by a priming effect. Priming describes the phenomenon that the exposure to one stimulus influences the processing of following stimuli. If the first stimulus shares perceptual, semantic, or conceptual similarities with the next stimulus, processing is enhanced (positive priming). If it provides conflicting information, processing can be depressed (negative priming).

Would a computer show the same behavior for these tasks?

Attempts to explain (positive) priming effects usually discuss an activation of associated memory contents, which, in turn, lead to enhancements in the following processing steps.

Since memory access is often indeed a limiting factor of computer performance, priming effects can possibly observed with computers, too. Computer have different types of storage systems which differ in access speed (e.g., hard disc, RAM, cache). For instance, information that is (pre-)loaded into cache memory (which is limited) can be accessed faster than information that is stored on the hard disc. Since it is context dependent which information is in cache memory at a point in time (i.e., it depends on the things you are doing at the moment), memory contents connected to the things you do right now are probably accessed faster (because they are in the cache) than other memory contents, hence, a priming effect.


If someone becomes a split-brain patient, which side will "maintain" the continuity in their consciousness? The brain injury might apparently produce two "independent" consciousnesses, and I'm wondering where the original person's "consciousness" would "transfer".

We had a debate on this over at Reddit some time ago, but it didn't really get resolved. What's more important is that Christof Koch (one of the top researchers in the field) explicitly said that splitting the corpus calloseum would produce two conscious minds in one skull.

  About two hundred million fibers that keep the two cortical
  hemispheres in constant communication. These are cut in split-brain
  patients, creating two conscious minds in one skull.

If by continuity you mean, "a feeling that I am who I was before the operation, (perhaps with some changes)", then it seems that each hemisphere would separately maintain continuity, in the same way patients after massive strokes and other sudden brain injuries don't usually feel "they are a different person".
Research by Turk et al. (2003) suggests it's just the left hemisphere, because only the left hemisphere has the 'interpreter' module.
However, other research by Turk et al. (2002) find that both hemispheres of a split brain patient recognize his own face, similar to Sperry et al. (1979). I think these face recognition tests tell us less about the 'feeling of self' than tests of access to autobiographical memories before the operation, and their emotional content, but I couldn't find any such studies.
A good review of the field instead was done by Uddin in 2011.

Sperry, R. W., Zaidel, E., & Zaidel, D. (1979). Self recognition and social awareness in the deconnected minor hemisphere. Neuropsychologia, 17(2), 153–166. doi:10.1016/0028-3932(79)90006-X
Turk, D. J., Heatherton, T. F., Kelley, W. M., Funnell, M. G., Gazzaniga, M. S., & Macrae, C. N. (2002). Mike or me? Self-recognition in a split-brain patient. Nature Neuroscience, 5(9), 841–842. doi:10.1038/nn907
Turk, D. J., Heatherton, T. F., Macrae, C. N., Kelley, W. M., & Gazzaniga, M. S. (2003). Out of Contact, Out of Mind. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1001(1), 65–78. doi:10.1196/annals.1279.005
Uddin, L. Q. (2011). Brain connectivity and the self: The case of cerebral disconnection. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(1), 94–98. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.09.009


What is the proportion of excitatory vs. inhibitory neurons in the feline thalamus? Is there a scientific reference on the numbers (or proportion) of excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the thalamus of the cat?

I found two articles:

Madarasz et.al. (1985)
GABA cells

27 % LGN
33 % Ventrobasal complex
25 % Antero-ventral nucleus

Penny et.al. (1983)
GAD-immuninoreactive neurons

30 % VentroPosterior

Madarász, M., Somogyi, G., Somogyi, J., & Hamori, J. (1985). Numerical estimation of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-containing neurons in three thalamic nuclei of the cat: direct GABA immunocytochemistry. Neuroscience letters, 61(1), 73-78.
Penny, G. R., Fitzpatrick, D., Schmechel, D. E., & Diamond, I. T. (1983). Glutamic acid decarboxylase-immunoreactive neurons and horseradish peroxidase-labeled projection neurons in the ventral posterior nucleus of the cat and Galago senegalensis. The Journal of Neuroscience, 3(9), 1868-1887.


Stiffing the tip as groups get larger ... like the prisoner's dilemma but ...? Is there a game theory analysis or other research or modeling describing the commonly perceived phenomenon whereby the amount by which people underpay a gratuity seems to be proportional to the number of people at the table?

In other words is there term of art for this behavioral pattern just as we use the phrase "Prisoner's Dilemma" to describe the game theoretical mechanics of two parties who can collude (to their mutual benefit) with risk, or betray their colleague in an effort reduce or eliminate their own risk?

(I would suggest that the mechanisms by which people exploit common resources and by which people fail to invest and maintain such resources (for example ecologically) are similar to this other group dynamic but I'm curious what research has been done on this).

Bystander Effect

The Bystander Effect could be your answer. The more people, the less personal responsibility.

Person gets assaulted and mugged on a crowded street in broad daylight, nobody calls the cops.
Software bugs slow company productivity almost to a halt, many employees, nobody reports the problem.

Tragedy of the Commons

The tragedy of the commons has been studied from many perspectives. You can use that commons dilemma link as a jumping off point to hopefully happen across something relevant. But I would start by looking at the psychology behind the bystander effect.


What's the human behaviour called that often makes us warp realities to appease another? Whenever people experience specific medical symptoms, they might research it online and find out that there is a possibility of a certain cancer being the culprit, they then might see that the chances of getting that cancer is 1 in a million. So they would often shrug it off as "Well that will never happen to me!", whereas that same person might go to the local store to purchase a lottery ticket that has a chance of winning set at 1 in 30 million and they then feel like the chance is high enough to win.

I am looking to find out if there is a particular name for this type of behaviour / thought process. I'm interested in research papers regarding these behaviours.

This is called optimism bias:

  ... a tendency for people to overestimate their likelihood of
  experiencing a wide variety of pleasant events, such as enjoying their
  first job or having a gifted child, and somewhat underestimate their
  risk of succumbing to negative events, such as getting divorced or
  falling victim to a chronic disease.

Optimism bias is a type of self-enhancement:

  ... a preference for positive over negative self-views.

and positive illusions:

  ... unrealistically favorable attitudes that people have towards
  themselves or to people that are close to them.


Which intervention improves the ability to remember names the most? Is there research about psychological interventions to help the average person remember names? If so, which intervention or interventions have the best evidence base to support them?

Are there good academic books about the subject of how humans manage to remember names?

Too long for a comment, so given as answer.

I know of no studies, but what teachers do is connect each name to a face (that is "elaborate") and repeat this elaboration each time they enter class and check attendance (sort of like learning vocabulary or a poem). Personally, I write down the names in the sitting order of the pupils or students, because I remember where which "face" sat. Another option is to find the person on Facebook, download a photo from their profile, and add that to a list of the names. Then I repeatedly look at that list. What also helps is actually addressing the person by name each time you speak to them, especially after they gave their name to you the first time, but also when you meet them again.

Hope this helps in case you want practical proven advice.


What is a "norming experiment"? I am a non-psychologist reading some papers from psychology. I keep seeing the term "norming experiment" (e.g. "Normative Representation of Objects: Evidence for an Ecological Bias in Object Perception an
d Memory" by Konkle and Oliva). What do psychologists or neuroscientists mean by a "norming experiment"? It seems like the idea is to see which presentations of a stimulus  are preferred to others?

Yes, a norming experiment is an experiment looking to establish what (if any) is the perceptual norm for a given stimulus, i.e. the level of the stimulus that appears neutral. In the paper you referenced, the stimuli are the size(s) of various objects, and the subjects were instructed to pick for each object a size that appeared neither too big nor too small, thus psychologically "just right" or neutral.

More generally, quoting from another paper:

  Many sensory dimensions are thought to be represented relative to a norm, which itself appears psychologically neutral
  or unbiased. In vision, classic examples of these norms include “white” in the perception of color, or “static” in the
  perception of motion. Norms have also been implicated in the representation of higher-level stimulus attributes. Thus
  current models of face perception assume that faces are represented by their “identity trajectories” relative to a
  prototype or average face [...]. Such diverse examples suggest that norms may in fact be central to most perceptual
  judgments.


Is something not worth remembering? Does it affect brain negatively if I remember unimportant things? In other words: Is the capacity of the brain (or just too much chaotic data densed together) sometimes a significant factor for an individual's inteligence? Is something practically not worth remembering?

There are capacity limitation, especially at the working memory, that makes it impossible and inefficient to process everything we experience in the past. Our brain creates abstractions of things i.e. we do not remember every dog we have seen, but we remember the dog category. We forget unimportant details, but we maintain episodic memory for things that are important or recent.

The dysfunctional aspect of remembering everything can be demonstrated through a Hyperthymesia patient called AJ.

  Hyperthymestic abilities can have a detrimental effect on cognitive
  capacity. The constant, irrepressible stream of memories has caused
  significant disruption to AJ's life. She described her recollection as
  "non-stop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting" and as "a burden".

...

  At school, AJ was an average student, clearly unable to apply her
  exceptional memory to her studies.

...

  Deficits in executive functioning and anomalous lateralisation were
  also identified in AJ. These cognitive deficiencies are characteristic
  of frontostriatal disorders.


Does putting something on a scale of left-to-right bias people in one direction? I'd like to know what research has found about whether talking about politics on a scale of left to right biases people in any way. Perhaps to answer questions such as if the scale were to be inverted, would it have any difference?

Yes.  In fact, it has been demonstrated in experiments that you can get people to assert they believe the opposite of what they previously said if you can successfully frame the idea with its political polarity inverted.

I can't remember the experiments off the top of my head, but I think this podcast episode touches on it.  https://youarenotsosmart.com/2019/03/01/yanss-146-tribal-psychology-rebroadcast/

It has been established that people who hold ideologies, or just very strong political beliefs, are motivated by the perception of whether something is left or right.  Objective facts, even reproducibility, are less important.


Bias of finding others guilty of own shortcomings I haven't been in cognitive sciences for long, but in my work I have noticed a curious pattern: Individuals who overwhelmingly attribute the responsibility of their own actions to external causes, accuse others of behavioral patterns that represent the same patterns that they themselves do not accept to be guilty of.

Or maybe it's the other causal direction; they see others being guilty of certain behavioral patterns and subconsciously start behaving in the same ways.

For example: A patient who sees sexual predators in most men, sometimes in very subtle behavioral traits, accuses her partners of not respecting her decisions, of reversal of guilt, etc. However in the process of the accusation, she is unable to accept her partners' decisions ("He doesn't want to continue the relationship, but he doesn't care that I want to"), is uncompromising (Does not accept to establish a basis of communication) and blames them for her lack of communication ("I should not have to always be able to show you what I don't want, it is your responsibility to know.").

What I am interested in is; is there science on this that confirms my observation, or even a name or field of research for it? If yes, are there explanations on why this paradoxical attribution of responsibility happens?

Your first paragraph, in particular, reminds me of the 'fundamental attribution error':

  ... the fundamental attribution error (FAE), also known as the
  correspondence bias or attribution effect, is the claim that in
  contrast to interpretations of their own behavior, people place undue
  emphasis on internal characteristics of the agent (character or
  intention), rather than external factors, in explaining other people's
  behavior.


To what extent does culture affect emotion perception? In a globalized world, in spite of cultural differences, we share, at least at the symbolic level (language level), lots of things. Considering pictures that display emotions (affect), such as those offered by the International Affective Picture System, could we speak of their 'international' character without affecting the specific and local cultural influence that might influence us in rating them?

Long story short: at least in facial affect perception/expression, there is not a definitive answer to this.  The field is only just beginning to get a handle on the fact that what have been long thought of as "universal" expressions of emotion don't seem to be, so there is considerably less work on how exactly culture affects these expressions.  However, current consensus is that between-group affective judgments have lower agreement rates than within-group affective judgments.

There is longstanding work from Paul Ekman suggesting that perception of six basic emotions in faces is universal (he wrote an argument for this point of view here and, more recently, here).  This was based on quite a lot of work showing that participants agreed at very high rates on the emotion displayed in a set of pictures of emotionally expressive faces.  However, there are methodological weaknesses in this work (there is fulltext of an excellent review on it available here).  Basically, these can be summed up as a preference for forced-choice (making participants choose from a limited list of answers about the emotion on display), within-subject designs, and stimuli from Ekman's original set; when different experimental design choices are made, the agreement largely disappears.

This opens the field for suggestions that most or all affective expression is in fact culturally influenced; a more recent study here found less agreement between groups than within groups, and more agreement between groups that had more exposure to eachother than groups that had less exposure to eachother.  This paper is a highly detailed answer to your question, at least as currently understood.

References:

1) Universals and cultural differences in facial expressions of emotion. Ekman, Paul. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Vol 19, 1971, 207-283.

2) An argument for basic emotions. Ekman , Paul. Cognition & Emotion : Vol. 6, Iss. 3-4, 1992.

3) Is There Universal Recognition of Emotion From Facial Expression? A Review of the Cross-Cultural Studies. Psychological Bulletin 1994, Vol. 115, No. 1, 102-141.

4) On the universality and cultural specificity of emotion recognition: A meta-analysis.
Elfenbein, Hillary Anger; Ambady, Nalini. Psychological Bulletin, Vol 128(2), Mar 2002, 203-235.


Defining shyness towards strangers in confrontational situations First of all, I would like to stress that I am not a cogsci person and I have almost no background in those areas of science.
The question is whether there exists a definition of a phenomenon I recently encoutered: A person is shy, but only in confrontational situations - has no social phobia regarding making friends and so on. Furthermore, this "shyness" is only demonstrated towards strangers, i.e. the person in question has no problem confronting somebody they know. Lastly, the problem occurs only in person, not over the Internet or telephone.
All in all, the question is - is this phenomenon described somewhere? And most importantly - does it have a name? Maybe it has already been defined and studied by someone.

Meaning of confrontational
By 'confrontational' I mean 'having different opinions' or 'having to sort out a disagreement'. To provide an example illustrating the problem:

After being ripped off at a restaurant (food bad, late, cold, etc), the person prefers to let the whole thing go and pay rather than argue with the waiter (thus avoiding an in-person confrontation). But,

If the person were ordering a pizza over a phone and it did not arrive for an hour, they would have no problem calling the restaurant and discussing the problem.

I'm not a native speaker :) Hope the above description clarifies the problem a little bit.

That sort of non-confrontational attitude has been researched as an aspect of interpersonal conflict-resolution style/mode/behaviour. The bulk of the research seems to have been conducted in the field of organisational psychology (which is not my field) since it's particularly relevant to how business is conducted.

From what I've been able to glean from Google Scholar, Blake and Mouton were the first to publish on this topic, defining five interpersonal conflict-handling styles: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating. Avoiding is simply defined as withdrawing from the conflict situation. Since then other researchers have developed a number of alternatives. The Thomas-Kilmann version dropped one style, compromising, and placed the rest along two dimensions, assertiveness and cooperativeness. This is the result:

Based on your description, your friend could be described as having an avoidant conflict-resolution style when dealing with strangers.

This is an interesting topic for me because I'm somewhat like your friend. I'm quite introverted and I suspect your friend is too to some degree, since there is a link between introversion and having an avoidant interpersonal conflict-resolution style.

In business contexts it's not surprising to find that people who show a high need for dominance are averse to using an avoidant conflict-resolution style.

I'm not sure what the research says about why your friend might choose a different style of conflict-resolution with friends. I'll see what else I can find.

References

Blake, R.R & Mouton, J.S. (1964). The Managerial Grid: The Key to Leadership Excellence. Houston: Gulf Publishing Co.
Thomas, K.W. & Kilmann, R.H. (1974). The Thomas–Kilmann mode instrument. Tuxedo Park, NY: Xicom
Schneer, J.A. & Chanin, M.N. (1987). Manifest Needs as Personality Predispositions to Conflict-Handling Behavior. Human Relations, 40, 575-590
Wood, V. F., & Bell, P. A. (2008). Predicting interpersonal conflict resolution styles from personality characteristics. Personality and Individual Differences, 45(2), 126-131.


Modelling the Human Brain as a directed graph A mathematician on the MathOverflow, Hans-Peter Stricker, recently(2016) considered the possibility that human brains may be modelled as directed graphs with neurons as nodes and synapses as edges. I think this makes sense as neurons are mostly unidirectional.

Now, what I am curious about is whether there are ever errors in the developmental process such that there are 'collisions' between two neurons. I can imagine this occurring in two ways:

Is it possible for dendrites to connect to other dendrites?
Alternatively, can axon terminals connect to other axon terminals?

If so, are there publications that estimate the natural frequency of such errors in a human brain?

References:

Edward T. Bullmore and Danielle S. Bassett. Brain Graphs: Graphical Models of the Human Brain Connectome. 2011.
Danielle S. Bassett and Edward T. Bullmore. Small-World Brain Networks Revisited. 2017.

Axo-axonic synapses and dendrodendritic synapses exist, and are not errors. They are particularly common in invertebrate nervous systems but are also found between particular cells in mammalian brains. I would say they are relatively understudied but not ignored.

True errors of the type you describe seem extremely unlikely to me. Synapses do not simply impinge on other fibers, there is extensive pre- and post-synaptic machinery, and bidirectional communication is necessary for proper synaptogenesis. Synapses are held together by connective proteins that are anchored in each membrane.

However, in terms of thinking of the brain as a "directed graph" one need not consider these uncommon synapses to have bidirectional connectivity: it is entirely possible, if not common, for cells to make traditional axon-dendrite synapses on another neuron that makes a reciprocal axon-dendrite synapse.

Graph theoretical approaches to understanding the brain are quite common, however, and certainly did not arise on StackExchange in 2016, as your own references make clear. There is no need for a directed graph to only have connections in a single direction, either. Any connectivity matrix can be interpreted in terms of graph theory.

Haydon, P. G., & Drapeau, P. (1995). From contact to connection: early events during synaptogenesis. Trends in neurosciences, 18(4), 196-201.

Kawaguchi, Y., & Kubota, Y. (1997). GABAergic cell subtypes and their synaptic connections in rat frontal cortex. Cerebral cortex (New York, NY: 1991), 7(6), 476-486.

Pinault, D., Smith, Y., & Deschênes, M. (1997). Dendrodendritic and axoaxonic synapses in the thalamic reticular nucleus of the adult rat. Journal of Neuroscience, 17(9), 3215-3233.

Somogyi, P. (1977). A specific ‘axo-axonal’interneuron in the visual cortex of the rat. Brain Res, 136(2), 345-350.


Is a safe driving record correlated with any psychometric test scores? A few years ago I was interviewing for a position with a subdivision of a large company in New York City. One of the things that hit me as odd about this interview was that the recruiter was interested in my driving record and wanted to know if I have any traffic violations.

Is there any connection between a safe driving record and personality traits or other psychometric test scores? Can anything about a person's personality (e.g., agreeableness, neuroticism, or "lawfulness") be understood by looking at the person's driving record?

In this context, "safe driving record" only refers to the absence of recorded infringements. For example, a person who engages in unsafe driving but for whatever reason does not get caught, would still have a "safe driving record".

A lot of organisations are concerned about work place safety and integrity. Some jobs require driving as part of the job. Furthermore, in some jurisdictions personal injury that results from accidents that occur while commuting to work are covered by workers compensation. Thus, in some cases, driving behaviour is directly relevant to the job. In other cases, asking such a question could be seen as an example of a biodata item.

It seems reasonable to me that, in general, frequency of getting driving infringement notices would be a rough and approximate measure of a general tendency to drive safe. No doubt there would be many other factors that would contaminate the measure (e.g., people who drive more are more likely to et a ticket; some jurisdictions or areas enforce speeding, drink driving, etc. more rigorously).

Research has correlated personality with various dimensions of driving behaviour. Oltedal and Rundmo (2006) provide one example based on a sample of 1356 Norwegians. The table below shows the correlations between various measures of personality and driving related variables. Excitement-seeking, anxiety and agression were all taken from the NEO (i.e., a typical measure of personality). Risky driving behaviour was a composite measure that incorporated self-reported levels fo speeding, driving rule violations, and self-assertiveness. Accident involvement measures were obtained were binary measures based on whether the participant had ever been in such an accident.

These results suggest that there are correlations between several personality traits and self-reported risky driving behaviour, particularly excitement seeking and low anxiety. These measures seem less related to actual accident incidence. However, the accident measure has a number of issues (accidents are uncommon; they are confounded by amount of time a person has spent driving; many accidents are not the fault of the driver).

Anyway, if you are interested in learning more, have a read of some of the many articles returned by a search on Google Scholar for "personality driving behavior".

References

Oltedal, S., & Rundmo, T. (2006). The effects of personality and gender on risky driving behaviour and accident involvement. Safety Science, 44(7), 621-628.


Is there such a person as a "social" homosexual? One of my former work colleagues was an (unhappily) married woman, who divorced her husband. Afterward, she "dated" (and lived with) a number of women.

Apparently "sex" wasn't the driving force in her new lifestyle. It was more that she wanted the dominant "man's" role in her relationships (she was a "boss" at work).

Conversely, could there be a male homosexual that was such mainly because of a submissive, passive, nature rather than sexuality?

And could such a woman and such a man find mutual happiness is a socially "roles reversed" relationahip between a dominant "masculine" woman and a submissive "feminine" man, while enjoying their natural physical "fit?"

This question seems to be asking several things at once, but to answer to the title: yes, there exist "social" relationships where either one or all of the people involved are disinterested in sex. The term for a person who is not interested in sex is "asexual", and asexual people may be aromantic (not interested in any romantic relationship), or bi-, hetero- or homosexual (though bi-, hetero- or homoromantic would probably be a better term here). Scherrer (2008) reports on a survey of asexual people:

In this sample, eleven participants described themselves as aromantic while twenty-five described themselves as romantically oriented. Like the issue of masturbation, I did not know to include questions regarding romantic identity, however, as this data suggests, this theme emerged as important for many participants. For Mark, his romantic identity, “means [that] I separate the romance feeling from the sexual aspect.” For Mark, as well as others, there is a difference between sexual and romantic identities. Alice, a twenty-two year old white woman, describes her identity as, “Asexual. (And aromantic, i.e. no 'romance drive', no desire to find a partner).” For Alice, as well as others, claiming a romantic identity is descriptive of a person's interest in being in a partnership. [...]
While a romantic dimension might be a relatively unique axis of sexuality, asexual individuals in this survey also described their sexual identity in relation to the gender of their partner(s). Twenty three participants indicated some type of queer identity and twenty-eight indicated a heterosexual or straight gender identity. None of the self identified aromantic asexual individuals indicated gender as important in relationships, in contrast to those who identify as romantic, where all but one described the gender of their partner(s) as important to their sexual identity. Lydia, a twenty-two year old white woman, describes her sexuality saying, “I am asexual. I am also queer but that isn't about my sexuality. Just thought I'd mention that.” [...]
While only twenty-three of the ninety (25%) participants who responded to this question indicated an lgbtq identity, this nonetheless represents a relatively substantial subset of participants who describe their romantic orientation incorporating same-sex attachments as either possible or preferred. For instance, Hannah, a twenty-four year old white woman emphasized that for her, “In asexual circles, I tend to identify as asexual or asexual lesbian. In the (sexual) queer community, I tend to identify first as queer, then lesbian, then asexual lesbian.” As this description of Hannah’s highlights, while adopting an lgbtq identity is not at odds with an asexual identity, neither are these identities uncomplicatedly related. Hannah invokes the sexual identity that both fits her sense of self, and fits the community she is actively engaged with. This is not dissimilar from other findings that individuals may invoke particular aspects of one’s sexual identity as they are relevant (or less stigmatized) in a given situation Chrobot-Mason et al., 2001; (Horowitz & Newcomb, 2001; Rust, 1992; 1996).
Of the twenty-three queer individuals in this sample, eleven (48%) of them identified as bi-, bisexual, or bi-curious. This is a relatively high percentage of bi-identified individuals as in most studies that include bisexual and lesbians or gay males find much lower percentages of bi-identified people (Rodriguez-Rust, 2000; Rust, 1992). While I am not making a claim about the demographics of asexual communities, this concentration of bi-identities does illuminate the construction of asexual identities.

In addition to the article I cited, you may also want to take a look at http://www.asexuality.org/ , which has more information and perspectives on asexuality.
References
Kristin S. Scherrer (2008). Coming to an Asexual Identity: Negotiating Identity, Negotiating Desire. Sexualities. 2008 October 1; 11(5): 621–641. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2893352/


Can a person be subjected to long term physical pain as a result of psychological abuse Can psychological abuse in the past lead to long term physical pain in the present?

Pain will usually become less severe as the injury heals, but what about pain not resulting from physical injury?  How does that happen and how can it be sorted out?

The subject area regarding this question is psychosomatic disorders and problems like what you describe can be difficult to deal with.

First of all it is imperative that all physical and neurological causes of the pain are ruled out, including neuropathic problems, through medical examinations and tests.

Psychosomatic medicine involves diverse specialties including psychiatry, psychology, neurology, internal medicine, surgery, allergy, dermatology and psychoneuroimmunology.

Whenever any physical pain arises without physical injury, it is important to see your doctor to get the source of the pain checked out.  If you jump to the conclusion that it is all psychological without seeing your doctor first, you could cause serious problems now and further along in time.

It is possible that it could be psychological, but only if medical examinations and tests have found no physical cause and the source is not anything but psychological or psychiatrical.

When a diagnosis is made that the pain is psychological, it doesn't mean that the pain is "all in your head".  The pain being felt is very real and in some cases can be debilitating.  You cannot just tell yourself it isn't real in order to stop the pain from being felt.

If the pain has a psychological cause, then therapy will be needed to deal with it.  The therapy will enable you to discuss the issues affecting you and enable you to live your life the best you can.

If the problem is not psychological, although psychological therapy will not deal with the pain, therapy can also help with pain management if the problem has been a long term problem and causing stress, depression, anxiety or other psychological problems.  There are also complementary therapies which may help with both psychological and non-psychological problems.


What are the psychological differences in camelCase and underscore_case programming conventions? In computer programming, spaces are often forbidden in the declaration of variable names, so programmers have created alternate methods of identifying word boundaries in variable names: camel case and underscores being two of the most popular.

variablesInCamelCaseLookLikeThis

variables_in_underscore_case_look_like_this

There's no shortage of debate about the superiority of one or the other on the internet, including within Stack Exchange, and on blogs approaching the question from a variety of perspectives, but like many questions in psychology there's probably no clear winner here. Instead, there are likely to be advantages and disadvantages of each approach.

What does the cognitive science literature say about the relative advantages and disadvantages of camel case and underscore case programming conventions?

As the author of the blog post you refer to, I can state that at the time of writing (early 2011) there were not too many studies reporting on this specific topic, which is why I reported on the single study I found at the time (Binkley et al. 2009). However, I advise you to read a follow-up study by a different group of researchers (Sharif and Maletic 2010). They address some of the shortcomings in the earlier study.

The common finding for both studies is that camelCasing is slower to read, which I summarized in a follow-up post:

  No difference in accuracy was reported (as opposed to Binkley et al.),
  but on average, camel-cased identifiers took 932ms (20%) longer than
  underscored identifiers, in line with the 13,5% longer as reported by
  Binkley et al. The eye tracking results also give some insight into
  visual effort. Camel-cased identifiers require a higher average
  duration of fixations.

Based on more general studies in cognitive science (Epelboim et al. 2009) (as I mentioned in the summary of the first study) this was to be expected:

  Natural language research in psychology found that replacing spaces
  with Latin letters, Greek letters or digits had a negative impact on
  reading. However, shaded boxes (similar to underscores) have
  essentially no effect on reading times or on recognition of individual
  words. Removing spaces altogether slows down reading 10-20%.

However, I haven't done any follow-up research on this, thus it would definitely be worthwhile to dig into more recent citations. The ones listed below should provide a suitable starting point to this end.

Binkley, D., Davis, M., Lawrie, D., & Morrell, C. (2009, May). To camelcase or under_score. In Program Comprehension, 2009. ICPC'09. IEEE 17th International Conference on (pp. 158-167). IEEE. [PDF]
Sharif, B., & Maletic, J. I. (2010, June). An eye tracking study on camelcase and under_score identifier styles. In Program Comprehension (ICPC), 2010 IEEE 18th International Conference on (pp. 196-205). IEEE. [PDF]
Epelboim, J., Booth, J. R., Ashkenazy, R., Taleghani, A., & Steinman, R. M. (1997). Fillers and spaces in text: The importance of word recognition during reading. Vision Research, 37(20), 2899-2914.


How am I able to distinguish between Chinese and Japanese when I don't speak either language? The only words in Chinese that I know are "Ni How" (hello) and "she she" (thank you). And the only words I know in Japanese are "Domo arigato Mr. Roboto" (thank you very much Mr. Roboto). Yet I am able to tell the difference between when a person is speaking Chinese and when a person is speaking Japanese.

How am I able to do this?

Japanese is not very tonal, is spoken very fast, and has relatively few phonemes. Consonants are often followed by a vowel. Chinese on the other hand is highly tonal and is spoken relatively slowly, as information is encoded extensively in tone. They are almost complete opposites. There are also various phonemes that occur more often in one language than the other, and emphasis is very rare in Japanese (e.g. it's "wa-ta-shi", never "wa-TA-shi"). It is also very regularly paced, with each syllable usually taking the same amount of time. Chinese varies the syllable lengths considerably.

Compare the following (romanized) Japanese

  mou ichido itte morae masu ka

with the equivalent (romanized) Mandarin Chinese

  qǐng zài shuō yíbiàn

It's clear that they are different languages, and that one is far more tonal than the other. These both mean the same things, asking the speaker to repeat what they had just said.


Is there any (free) program that allows the recording of text input and the speed of input? I am planning to run a study where participants will been shown questions on a computer monitor and their task is to type their responses in a text box as quickly as they can. Their input and input speed will be recorded. So any recommendation of preferably free programs is welcome. Thanks!

I imagine most software designed for creating psychological experiments will be able to do this. (e.g., EPrime, Direct RT, MediaLab, SuperLab, etc.). I've mainly used Inquisit to record responses and response times. These are all proprietary options.

You could also readily implement a trial interface with a textbox and response times in standard programming languages. For example, I've used visual basic on occasion to record data in textboxes.

Finally, as @Dan M mentions there is psychopy which is free. I have not personally used it.


Threshold time for stimulus to be consciously perceived. Why? A visual stimulus must last longer than some threshold duration to be perceived consciously. For example, a light dot flashed for a duration of 10ms can't be consciously perceived. Why? What prevents a sub-threshold flash to be consciously perceived? Does this mean the relevant neurocircuits have to keep on firing for some threshold time in order to reach consciousness? If so, why?

If by consciously perceived, you mean recognizing a feature (and possible reactions accordingly), there are several tasks to be considered that seem to cause delays:

Saccades and eye movements: During saccades we are blind, so we must wait a little to bypass a saccade so participants are able to see. It is called saccade masking.
Transmission: neurons are not that fast (around 100m/s for myelinated ones), so transmitting action potential from retina to the primary visual cortex takes time, of around hundreds of milliseconds.
From visual cortex to other area of the brain (for verbal responses, reasoning, matching, or further recognitions that are not simply visual features),
Transmitting reaction signals from motor cortex to the hand so participants can respond.

These are just neurological pathways. Considering some other cognitive shortcuts (e.g. schemas and categories), participants need to bypass their default reasoning modes (unconscious?) that are learned by training, stereotypes, or being stimulated so long that it's been moved from foreground to the context (speaking of perception without awareness).


Why do I forget important things and remember things that I don't care about? Why do I forget things that I want to remember? And when I forget them, I seem to remember small details that aren't so important.

I might forget what the main topic of a YouTube video is, but I can remember what the guy who was talking in the video looked like.

I might forget where I left off when I'm working on the computer, but I can remember a time when Microsoft Word auto-corrected my spelling.

This has happened many times. I recall unimportant details and forget the important things. Everyone will recognize this for sure, for example when studying topography, you know which number accompanied the city, but you can't recall its place on the map during the exam.or you can remember which chapter and section number the question is explained in, but you dont't know the answer.

My question is why is memory selective in storing sometimes irrelevant details and discarding important things?

There could be several reasons, I'm sure. One particular explanation that sticks out to me is a concept called 'feature integration theory'. I mention this because the things you say you remember -- what the guy in a video looked like, a time when your spelling was auto-corrected, general mundane details or 'features' -- are in line with this theory. You might find this document helpful, but as it is rather long, I'll provide a shorter explanation.

Feature integration theory is a theory of attention developed in 1980 by Anne Treisman and Garry Gelade that suggests that when perceiving a stimulus, features are "registered early, automatically, and in parallel, while objects are identified separately" and at a later stage in processing.

In other words, our perception of features are quicker and more automatic, registered early on. The object itself is recognized later, and thus we do not always fully integrate it into our attention. We must provide ourselves enough time to integrate the features that we have perceived into one main object or idea, and if we shift our attention away during this mandatory time of attention, we will not recognize the object as one larger entity or idea, but rather a collection of the features that we noticed automatically. This also might explain why you retain less information while multi-tasking.

Treisman distinguishes between two kinds of visual search tasks, "feature search" and "conjunction search". Feature searches can be performed fast and pre-attentively for targets defined by only one feature, such as color, shape, perceived direction of lighting, movement, or orientation. Features should "pop out" during search and should be able to form illusory conjunctions. Conversely, conjunction searches occur with the combination of two or more features and are identified serially. Conjunction search is much slower than feature search and requires conscious attention and effort. In multiple experiments, some referenced in this article, Treisman concluded that color, orientation, and intensity are features for which feature searches may be performed.

Indeed, this theory is supported by the existence of Balint's syndrome [1], a not-quite-understood condition in which damage to the parietal lobe renders the patient with a variety of symptoms, including simultanagnosia, or the 'inability to perceive simultaneous events or objects in one's visual field.'

This spatial disorder of visual attention—the ability to identify local elements of a scene, but not the global whole—has been referred to as a constriction of the individual's global gestalt window—their visual "window" of attention. People fixate their eyes to specific images in social scenes because they are informative to the meaning of the scene. Any forthcoming recovery in simultanagnosia may be related to somehow expanding the restricted attentional window that characterizes this disorder.
Simultanagnosia is a profound visual deficit. It impairs the ability to perceive multiple items in a visual display, while preserving the ability to recognize single objects. One study suggests that simultanagnosia may result from an extreme form of competition between objects which makes it difficult for attention to be disengaged from an object once it has been selected. Patients with simultanagnosia have a restricted spatial window of visual attention and cannot see more than one object at a time. They see their world in a patchy, spotty manner. Therefore, they pick out a single object, or even components of an individual object, without being able to see the global "big picture."

Sources:
[1] Udesen H, Madsen AL (May 1992). "[Balint's syndrome--visual disorientation]". Ugeskr. Laeg. (in Danish) 154 (21): 1492–4.


Ritalin for treating attention and lack of focus in depression I’d like to know if there’s research about the use of ritalin for treating attention deficit in Major Depression Disorder.

Yes, there is 2014 review of Corp et al. on stimulants in the treatment of MDD (and bipolar). There is another 2015 review by Pary et al. just on stimulants in depression.

Some researchers reviewing this, e.g. Mahli et al. (2016) have been critical of this use of stimulants, on the argument that the effects appears to be short-lived:

  Clinically, the rapid amelioration of depressive symptoms with traditional psychostimulants is often dramatic but short-lived, and this suggests that they likely operate via different mechanisms to conventional antidepressants. More importantly, there is little evidence from randomised controlled trials supporting their efficacy in treating depression, although modafinil has been shown to be effective in reducing prominent depressive symptoms, such as fatigue. Research is urgently required to clarify psychostimulants’ mechanisms of action and to evaluate their long-term benefits and risks in the treatment of major and bipolar depression.

There aren't a lot randomized-control studies either.

UpToDate says

  Stimulants (eg, methylphenidate) are indicated for late-life, treatment-resistant unipolar major depression. In addition, stimulant-like drugs (eg, modafinil and pramipexole) have limited evidence for efficacy in the general population of patients with treatment-resistant major depression. The use of stimulants and stimulant-like drugs is consistent with multiple treatment guidelines [11-13]. Based upon our clinical experience, we are more inclined to use stimulants and stimulant-like drugs for patients who lack energy, drive, motivation, interest, optimism, pleasure, and the ability to initiate activities

I didn't review those guidelines cited (American Psychiatric Association's or CANMAT) to see if they really say that. The last review they mention there is a little older, from 2007.


What happens when a person "imagines" how food could taste like just from looking at it? What processes are triggered by imagining the taste of food (let's assume it's sealed so that its smell doesn't reach the test subject's nose) only by looking at it, based on memories of food with similar color, shape, texture and size?

If the food seems to be good, usually saliva is generated, but what other things happen?

As Josh Gitlin said, imagining something activates more or less the same parts of the brain as actually experiencing it. Behrmann (2000) is a good introduction to this in the visual domain, though that article is a bit outdated now. There is also a lot of evidence that representations of meanings (semantic memory) involve a distributed network of perceptual regions (e.g., Binder & Desai, 2011; also Barsalou, 2008) and there are some computational models that try to capture this (e.g., Rogers et al., 2004). Putting this evidence together suggests that the sight of food (visual input) would spread activation through the semantic network and would activate the other perceptual, emotional, and linguistic associations (taste, smell, food-related memories, etc.). Salivation is one possible outcome of the activation of taste and smell representations; but I think it is also reasonable to expect activation of memories of eating related foods, etc.

Dana Small is one person who has done some very interesting studies on the neuroscience of taste and smell perception, including top-down effects like anticipation (e.g., Small et al., 2008).

References

Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617–645.

Behrmann, M. (2000). The mind’s eye mapped onto the brain's matter. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9(2), 50–54.

Binder, J. R., & Desai, R. H. (2011). The neurobiology of semantic memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(11), 527–536. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2011.10.001

Rogers, T. T., Lambon Ralph, M. A., Garrard, P., Bozeat, S., McClelland, J. L., Hodges, J. R., & Patterson, K. E. (2004). Structure and Deterioration of Semantic Memory: A Neuropsychological and Computational Investigation. Psychological Review, 111(1), 205–235.

Small, D. M., Veldhuizen, M. G., Felsted, J., Mak, Y. E., & McGlone, F. (2008). Separable Substrates for Anticipatory and Consummatory Food Chemosensation. Neuron, 57(5), 786–797.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2008.01.021


What is the name of the scientific study of hypothesis formation? As a layperson, I am interested about the scientific method but whenever I search it online I get endless results about how to formulate and test hypotheses for the purpose of writing a scientific paper.

I'm trying to find the term of the process by which people make and test informal theories and hypotheses during their daily lives.

Example
A young child touches an unfamiliar object and, purely by coincidence, there is a distant clap of thunder.  The child 'hypothesized' that the touch caused the clap of thunder. This is now testable because the child can repeat the experiment.

If I want to read more about this in psychology, what do I put in my search engine to avoid getting thousands of results about null hypotheses and t-tests?

One umbrella term is causal reasoning, though this is a bit broader since there are theories of causal reasoning that are not about hypothesis testing.

A Google Scholar search for "causal reasoning psychology" generates several hundred thousand hits, and the first page is full of relevant papers.

Getting more specific, Klayman & Ha (1987) wrote an influential article about the kinds of hypothesis testing you describe. Looking at the papers that cite that article might give you some additional leads into the literature.


Why does being in a natural environment induce some kind of "peace" state while mecha/tech ones induce the opposite? Usually, natural environments (being out in "nature") tend to induce a happy and peaceful state, while mechanical and technological ones tend to induce stress and sadness.

Why does this happen?
Are we born with this notion, or do we just build up that in our minds over time? and even so, why?

Maybe we should ask a vietnam vet if he feels less stress in nature than inside a building.

I think the reason we feel tense inside is because we've been conditioned to expect stressful situations to happen while inside, so we're on guard for it (ie tense).  Nothing bad has ever happened to us while sitting on a park bench listening to the birds chirp.  Now, if tigers start leaping out at us on a consistent basis while at the park, this feeling may change.  We might decide the sounds of clicking keyboards and tapping shoes to be more relaxing.

Another point to consider is that the sounds of birds chirping means "things are ok".  Bird have a high viewpoint compared to terrestrial animals and when birds are singing, there probably isn't a tiger stalking us.  Also, if you notice, birds sing after storms pass.  I know when I hear the birds singing, I can go back outside and get back to work... the storm is over.  Its possible this knowledge is instinctual.

The same could be said of crickets and frogs.  When you hear crickets and frogs, things are ok.  When the crickets and frogs suddenly stop, that when you grab the flashlight and see what's lurking in the woods.

An odd one is the sound of water.  If you're a prey animal, which humans would be in the wild, you'd have a large chance of being ambushed while getting a drink.  All predators gather around the watering hole and stalk victims.  So this raises the question... why are water sounds relaxing?  This is evidence against instinct.  Water sounds would be relaxing as a result of association rather than instinct.  When I take a drink of water, I feel better.  When I go fishing, I don't have to worry about anything but fishing.  Water has always been good to me, so when I hear it, I feel better.  Also, the sounds of water tends to drown-out other sounds.  That's why spies on tv tend to have their conversations near moving water.  There is something about the randomness of water sounds that won't allow pattern recognition in other sounds.  When we hear water, its hard to be disturbed by other sounds, therefore, easier to be at peace.


Jung's Anima and Neurological Basis in Split-Brain Patients; Left-Persona and Right-Anima So, having skimmed some studies on split-brain patients, it makes me wonder about the whole "left-brain/right-brain" dichotomy that made its rounds in public perception some time ago.

I'm not sure how much of that is really good science, but it looks like there's some real truth to the different sides taking on different roles and cognitive abilities.

One thing in particular I wonder about now, is can you map Carl Jung's concept of Anima (I'll refer to the Anima, but what I have to say applies to Animus, as well) onto the right half of the brain?

Jung's idea of Anima was essentially the male brain's mental image of "the typical woman". Thus it would posses typically feminine traits.

Since the right half of the brain is associated with creativity, emotional response to (ie, recognizing) faces, and is more typically "feminine", would it be possible to devise an experiment with MRI to see if invoking the anima fires more neural activity on the right half of the brain?

Say, have a subject describe "the typical woman" and watch activity, have them describe "the typical man" and some other controls to also invoke creativity and see how the neural activity compares? See if when men don a dress, their right-brain fires more activity than if they just don any other unfamiliar clothing (a hospital gown or a robe are gender-neutral but may also be unfamiliar enough to control for that part alone)?

It's a very roundabout way of asking, but hopefully the questions kind of highlight the underlying question;

in terms of Jungian Psychology, is it reasonable to hypothesize that you could split the hemispheres of the brain into "persona" and "Anima" as "left" and "right"? (and perhaps reversed for Persona and Animus)

The interesting thing is that this leads to a testable hypothesis perhaps some people here already know the answer to: Is there any link between gender dysphoria and right-brain dominance? If there is, that would seem to support that hypothesis that the left hemisphere generally takes the masculine identity and the right houses the Anima (in general, though I would expect if the Anima exists as a largely separate neural network (or combined set of networks) that it would probably at least share a little activity on the left hemisphere).

Perhaps a more useful way of looking at these concepts is to consider anima in terms of the hindbrain, which takes sensory inputs from both the body and external stimuli and creates a virtual model strongly colored by memories ( with associated feelings) and our conditioning. This model is then "presented" to the forebrain as images + feelings. Animus could be seen then as associated with the forebrain, which analyzes this information and determines what actions to take.

However, such a way of thinking degenderizes the concepts, so won't support your hypothesis.

Solms and Turnbull have written about the neuroscience (Solms & Turnbull 2011) [among others], and James Hillman's "Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion" is a good source on anima and animus. Hillman agrees that psychology should not pretend to be an objective science as the realm of the psyche eludes traditional methods of scientific study.

References

Solms, M., & Turnbull, O. H. (2011). What is neuropsychoanalysis?.  Neuropsychoanalysis, 13(2), 133-145.
DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2011.10773670 [Free PDF Available]


Efficiency of multitasking depending on task difficulty How does the efficiency of multi-tasking differ by task type? My understanding is that multitasking impairs efficiency for cognitively challenging tasks.

Does this apply to trivial tasks as well?

First, it is important to disambiguate between concurrent multitasking and sequential multitasking (Salvucci et al, 2009). In a recent publication I present a short overview on related work of both (Jeuris and Bardram, 2016):

  During concurrent multitasking cognitive resources have to be divided across several competing parallel tasks, such as driving while talking on the phone. Many ‘dual-task’ studies investigate dual-task interference and reduction of performance while performing two simultaneous tasks. ...

  In contrast to concurrent multitasking, sequential multitasking denotes the interleaving of several primary tasks which are executed one at a time. ... Studies investigating sequential multitasking are among other things interested in measuring the effects of task interleaving on productivity and accuracy.
  ...

  Results show an inverted U-relationship between multitasking and productivity; there is thus an optimal amount of task switching which leads to the highest productivity. However, increased levels of multitasking lead to a significant loss in accuracy, indicating a trade-off between productivity and accuracy (Adler & Benbunan-Fich, 2012).

In regards to the effect of task difficulty on sequential multitasking, "subjective task difficulty has been found to be a determining factor: easy tasks benefit from multitasking by increasing stimulation, whereas hard tasks decrease performance as the result of an overload in mental workload (Adler & Benbunan-Fich, 2015)".

So to answer your question, at least one study has found that for the tasks they used more challenging tasks do 'suffer' more from multitasking. However, there is still an optimum amount of multitasking.

Salvucci, D. D., Taatgen, N. A., & Borst, J. P. (2009, April). Toward a unified theory of the multitasking continuum: From concurrent performance to task switching, interruption, and resumption. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1819-1828). ACM.
Jeuris, S., & Bardram, J. E. (2016). Dedicated workspaces: Faster resumption times and reduced cognitive load in sequential multitasking. Computers in Human Behavior, 62, 404-414.
Adler, R. F., & Benbunan-Fich, R. (2015). The effects of task difficulty and multitasking on performance. Interacting with Computers, 27(4), 430-439.
Adler, R. F., & Benbunan-Fich, R. (2012). Juggling on a high wire: Multitasking effects on performance. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 70(2), 156-168.


Is emotional processing lateralised in the brain? It was easy for me to find that language processing is lateralised and that creativity/logic processing possibly not (against pop-psychology claims). But which is the current view hold by experts on emotion about the lateralisation of emotion?

Although there is a wikipedia entry suggesting that emotional processing is lateralised in the brain

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

I found that recognised neuroscience books like this:

Gazzaniga, M. S. The cognitive neurosciences. MIT press.

does not seem to talk about emotional lateralisation.

Furthermore, I found that the bulk of references about emotional lateralisation are quite old and a meta-analysis of fmri/pet does not show much emotional lateralisation:

Wager, T. D., Phan, K. L., Liberzon, I., & Taylor, S. F. (2003). Valence, gender, and lateralization of functional brain anatomy in emotion: a meta-analysis of findings from neuroimaging. Neuroimage, 19(3), 513-531.

Alright, so I'll give this question a go...  Admittedly, I'm not really familiar with theories of emotion lateralization, but let's look at some meta-analyses for insight!!!

As a quick theoretical note, a single study cannot confirm emotion-related lateralization. The representation of emotions or affect in the brain can change from context to context, person to person, and over time.  This is why we need to rely on meta-analysis (in my opinion)!

Lindquist et al. (2015)

This is a meta-analysis of positive and negative affect in the brain. Overall, the meta-analysis shows large correspondence between the brain regions that are involved in positive vs. negative affect (in favor of a valence-general "workspace").  Moreover, affect seems to be represented bilaterally in most regions as well as right temporal/occipital cortex (see image below).

These areas represent the "salience network," which is involved in self-relevant attention (e.g., to internal bodily sensations and "feelings").

However, the above image shows that the left amygdala and the left insula are more often involved in negative affect than positive affect.  No regions seem to show preference for positive affect over negative affect.

Wager et al. (2015)

This is a meta-analysis using very, very fancy statistical techniques to differentiate among discrete emotion categories (e.g., fear, disgust, anger, etc.).

The above image (B) shows activation intensity in cortex, amygdala, basal ganglia, and thalamus for each emotion.  You can see that some regions are more strongly active for certain emotions in a lateralized manner (R and L mean Right and Left Hemisphere).

The most significant lateralization was for happiness, which showed "left-hemisphere dominance in the hippocampus" (p. 16).

Conclusion

While these meta-analyses provide interesting clues about emotion lateralization, I'm going to go ahead and say that we don't really know whether emotion is lateralized. Moreover, the idea of "emotional processing" is incredibly vague and is likely constituted by more basic psychological processes (e.g., interoception and exteroception).

The theory about sympathetic/parasympathetic afferent streams to the right vs. left insula seems plausible (outlined in Wikipedia; Craig), especially given the importance of interoception to affect and emotions (Barrett & Simmons, 2015).

However, overall, it's just not clear.


Possibility of using the effects of sleep to induce a virtual environment? I'm not sure what this guy is trying to say, or why his question got closed, but I think I can build upon it and form a solid question. When the brain enters REM Sleep, all sensory input to reality is eliminated or dulled. The person will begin dreaming as the brain creates random impulses and sends them through the brain. Through the techniques of Lucid Dreaming, the subject can learn to control the false dream reality completely. These conditions provide everything necessary for a virtual environment except they are isolated to the individual's brain.

If we were able to induce the physiological conditions of sleep (which should be a simple injection of hormones), and generate these impulses artificially(connecting the brain to a high-end computer program), then we should be able to immerse the person in a virtual environment. Lucidity could be achieved easily by programming the system to leave clues for the subject. The ramifications of this are enormous. For example, a man in China and a man in Russia could go bowling together, without leaving their own homes.

(I'm not sure if this theory already exists, but I definitely reached these conclusions myself.)

My main questions are:

What are the hormones necessary to induce sleep in this way?
Is this a safe and reliable way to immerse a subject in a virtual environment?

As a matter of fact, this can be possible in the future. There have been "predictions" that within this century we will be able to upload our consciousness into computers, creating an environment where it will actually be like reality.

Now, off of theoretical, as of now it's impossible to do virtual reality. All I can provide you with is a theoretical answer, which is above.

As for hormones and safety:

Use sleep hormones, melatonin, serotonin

As for safety, it hasn't been done, I can't answer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT1vxEpE1aI

That video is an interesting video by Michio Kaku on this topic.


How can we determine if a traumatic event in our youngest days can influence our present behaviour? Suppose that a little kid found him/herself in a traumatic situation at an age of which he or she has no conscious memories (let's say between 1 and 3 years old). For example, the kid was put in a situation where the little one experienced a lot of fear (of course you can ask if a very young kid can experience fear, but I can assure you it can). Maybe its mother wasn's paying attention to him/her while it was playing on the beach and a "mad dog" (who maybe was treated badly by his/her boss while being a puppy) attacked the poor one, while at the same time a police car with its siren on maximum volume was driving along the boulevard near the beach. Our kid grows older and when old enough he/she notices that every time it hears the loud sound of a police car's siren a feeling of "unusual" (I mean, everybody gets a little frightened when hearing the siren's sound, though less in the city than someone who never heard the sound before high fear comes bubbling up (I found myself in a very stressful situation when I was a kid of which I can remember nothing; I know this because my mother told me). The question is somewhat similar to this one but certainly not a duplicate.

Now, is there a way to determine if the story I told can be true and, if so, can we find out what the traumatic event was (assuming that no one told you, as my mother did; this is, by the way, the reason I know almost certainly that the story can be true)?

It is an interesting question, there is a lack of data to answer with certainty, but some comments can be made about the development of fear, phobias and vital events:

The consequences or effects in the present of such events would be the result of learning, conditioning, those processes would depend on:

The degree of importance that the event had, that is, characteristics such as the intensity of the stimulus and interpretation (causal attributions, control, possibility of restitution, etc.), if it is an event that is estimated may affect the survival of the individual, it will be considered as a vital event of the utmost importance. If the event produces a state of alarm or significant anxiety or if the event or related events or effects last for a considerable time.
Conditional situations or situations similar to the event, in psychology are commonly labeled as generability. In general, it is expected that there will be a conditioning to all of the characteristics of the situation. For psychologists it is usually more convenient to study adverse events and not just cases of phobias or fear. For example dog phobias can focus on a specimen of certain characteristics, however, a certain degree of emotional reaction or anxiety or fear to all dogs is expected. The event (main) and its characteristics must be studied, the scope of the generability and the intensity of the stimulus to the different specimens or similar members or similar situations.
A person can develop a specific phobia without having any direct experience. The person could learn the phobia by vicarian learning (for example, a person could develop a phobia based on observing effects on other people). In addition to dealing with fear or adverse emotional reactions it is maintained that people can learn by learning these reactions by social learning.

How can we determine if a traumatic event in our younger days can influence our current behavior?
If you do not remember the event, the effects on your current behavior would come from the process of vicarious and social learning, that is, in your current behavior you would be conditioned by the information you have received about those events with the attribution (extra) that they are about yourself. In the supposed case of your mother (or other relatives who experienced the event and remembered) the expected effect would be much greater.


A question on synapses we are looking into running simulations of the nervous system of C. Elegans. It is believed by most people that the worm's nervous system encodes information through graded potentials and/or plateau potentials rather than action potentials, as would be the case for example in many parts of the human nervous system.

We are planning on building upon a NEURON simulation created by the OpenWorm team. We want to see where we can get by including channel mechanisms and most importantly by making the transition from a spiking network model to a model reflecting the above belief that C. Elegans does not use action potentials. We then want to compare this with data collected at the University of Vienna.

Now, I am a student of mathematics and this is a project for university, so I am hopelessly confused by the neuroscience books I have been looking at. Instead, I hope that you guys can help me out with my question. To explain, consider the following scenario inside of C. Elegans:

Say I have neurons A and B, connected through some type of synapse. Neuron A is stimulated by a voltage clamp and generates a varying, graded potential lasting over a prolonged period (say 20 ms). Now what would a typical membrane potential of neuron B that one would expect in this situation look like? In pictures:

I realize this is a somewhat ill-posed question, but I am not asking for a detailed chemical or biological explanation of the process, but rather a heuristic that can serve as a starting point for a simulation. In case there is something already known in this respect, I would be thankful if you could point me to the references.

The next question would then be how one could implement this in NEURON, which has only NetCon to create networks. I figured I could use an artificial simulated synapse by drawing a small long cylinder with several compartments between neurons and then using a gap junction type connection, but I really don't know if this even makes sense.

According to this research paper by Lockary and Goodman, the resting membrane potential of C.Elegans is two fold because its a stepped resting potential of -70mV and -35mV. After an initial activation a resting potential of -35mV is held following a higher depolarisation, so on your graph the initial depolarisation would be a little higher, and then drops to -35mV for roughly 60+ secs. When terminated, or receiving a inhibitory signal this drops to -70mV. I don't see any reason why the receiving neuron would respond any differently so long as the activation strength was enough to create positive depolarisation. As mentioned by Izhaki in the comments, the strength of the synapse connections plays an important role. Here is a good thesis on transfer between neutrons in C.Elgans, it also explains the methods to investigates neutrons in the central nervous system of C.Elegans, and seems to see two patterns of activation depending on the method applied. Only a few of the neutrons have been fully recorded in C. Elegans so its possible that different potential patterns may occur, nervous systems are far from homogeneous, humans appear to use more than one type.

I can't respond anymore than this at the moment as I don't have time for the extra reading but I hope this is at least useful.