How would I know if I've been brainwashed? Thinking about the "re-education" camps in parts of the world. They attempt to replace one idiology in you head with another and is considered brainwashing.

On the other hand, the first idiology got in their head by their parents. So is that not also brainwashing of a sort?

How would I know if I have been brainwashed to believe things that aren't necessarily true? How can I prevent being brainwashed by the media?

For example I believe that we can find out how the world works through science and experiment but maybe I've just been brainwashed to believe that and really the only way to find out about how the world works is by divine revelations by angels.

So how can I tell?

I'll go about this question focusing on the definitions, rather than jumping onto the answer proper. Clarifying definitions may already help you a step closer to an answer.

  On the other hand, the first id[e]ology [of children] got in their head by their parents. So is that not also brainwashing of a sort?

the definition of Brainwashing...:

  a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic
  political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept
  contrasting regimented ideas

...readily answers this Q, namely a kid's brain is a clean slate, virtually devoid of "political, social, or religious beliefs". So no, this is not brainwashing.

  How would I know if I have been brainwashed...[?]

Brainwashing was coined by journalist Edward Hunter in September 1950 described how Mao Zedong’s Red Army used terrifying ancient hypnotic techniques to turn the Chinese people into mindless, Communist automatons. "Brainwashing” was a word-for-word translation from xi-nao, the Mandarin words for wash (xi) and brain (nao). In the Korean war later in the '50s, thousands of American soldiers, including high-ranked officers, petitioned to end the war, made false claims of war atrocities by the Us and even refused to re-enter the army after they were freed. The US jumped on it and said these people were brainwashed. However, when the media hype was over, scientific research revealed what truly made these soldiers following the ideas of the "communists"; they were tortured (source: Smithsonian Magazine).

Your question seems also to radiate the mystical origins of the word brainwashing, namely that the media can somehow hypnotize you and change your thoughts mysteriously. Those are false believes. Of course the media affects your thinking, but it cannot "brainwash" you.

  I believe that we can find out how the world works through science and experiment but maybe I've just been brainwashed to believe that and really the only way to find out about how the world works is by divine revelations by angels.

Some people believe God created the earth and all its life on it. Others choose evolution to be key to life, and the big bang for the creation of the universe instead. It's a choice you can make. Many scientists are also believers. In other words, you don't have to choose, and support both views. Nothing brainwashy about either side.


How are newly created neurons recruited into existing networks? As far as I understand, the basics of neurogenesis (abstracted down to the level that makes sense to a computer scientist) is as follows:

Neural progenitor cells differentiate into new neurons that have zero (or very few) synaptic connections, but are sensitive to the local chemistry.
(Optional) Sometimes (such as in adult neurogenesis in the olfactory bulb) these immature neurons-to-be are produced far away from where they are needed and follow standard pathways to migrate to the correct brain region
The immature neuron extends dendrites towards upstream neurons and starts to develop an axon
The immature neuron extends axon towards downstream neurons, and
The neuron matures and becomes indistinguishable from the network it joined.

I've eliminated many of the biological details, since I want to just capture the details (more info). The part that seems to be not well described, and my question, is:

How do neurons select where to make their initial dendrite and axon connections?
How/when does a given network notify the progenitor cells that they should differentiate?

Partial results
Cecchi et al. (2001) proposed a model where the new neurons produce initial connections randomly, and then the only the ones that contribute to the function of the network end up firing frequently and surviving, and the rest die. This inspired by the observation of high death rate among immature neurons. However, there is not biological evidence to support that the initial connections are in fact random, and I hope that there has been more evidence gathered since the early work in 2001.
Notes

This question is motivated by the search for computational models with a biologically reasonable account of neurogenesis.

I am looking for some sort of abstract local explanation to my questions at-least at the rule-of-thumb level. For examples, if I was asking about plasticity of established connections (and not neurogenesis in particular), then Hebb's "neurons that fire together wire together" would be a sufficient answer, although STDP would be a better one. However, I do not need all the biological details, just the high level rule if one is known.

References

Cecchi GA, Retreanu LT, Alvarez-Buylla A, Magnasco MO – “Unsupervised Learning and Adaptation in a Model of Adult Neurogenesis” Journal of Computational Neuroscience; 11:175-182; 2001 [preprint]

There is a huge body of literature on axon growth cone guidance which will give you some insights into how the biology works.  Unfortunately, incorporating it all into a model is probably going to make it unwieldy unless your express purpose is to model the physiology, which doesn't seem like the case.

Here are some references:

  Hong K, Nishiyama M. (2010). From guidance signals to movement: signaling molecules governing growth cone turning. Neuroscientist, 16(1),65-78.

This is pertinent because it explicitly mentions adult neurogenesis, as much of the subject is devoted to the developing nervous system in models like the developing chicken.

  Kolodkin AL, Tessier-Lavigne M (2011).  Mechanisms and molecules of neuronal wiring: a primer.  Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol, 3(6), 1-14 Free PDF

To call Marc Tessier-Lavigne a leader in the field of neuronal growth would be an understatement.  This article also covers some of the cues of synaptogenesis as well.

  Simpson HD, Mortimer D, Goodhill GJ (2009).Theoretical models of neural circuit development.  Curr Top Dev Biol, 87, 1-51.

Regrettably, I do not have access to this article, but it appears to be more along the lines of computationally realistic representations.  It does state that their models for synaptic strengthening are based on Hebbian Learning, so that's at least in line with what you presumed that you needed.

In searching for more computational models, ephrins and integrins are two of the cell surface agents that are heavily involved in the process, so any abstractions of those would make for a good model.


Functional fixedness for defining problems Initial caveat: I have very little formal education in psychology or other cognitive sciences - just a couple classes in college.  I read the guidelines in the site FAQ, but I'll understand if this question isn't right for this site.

My background is in mathematics, and over the years I've taken an interest in those aspects of cognitive psychology that pertain to problem solving with the hope that I would develop an awareness of my own cognitive biases and strategies for overcoming them.  One that I latched onto is functional fixedness, which as I understand it is the inability to discover uses for an object other than the obvious purpose for which it was designed.  For instance, functional fixedness might inhibit a person from observing that a hammer can be used as a weight because they can't see past its ordinary function of hammering nails.

Functional fixedness affects our ability to solve a problem effectively with a given set of tools.  I am wondering if there is a similar concept (with accompanying literature) which describes the inability to define a problem differently from how it is normally defined.

A standard example from mathematics involves the classical impossible ruler-and-compass constructions (such as trisecting an angle).  If one views these as geometry problems then it is extremely difficult to understand why they are impossible, but everything becomes much clearer if they are viewed as number theory problems.
High frequency trading provides another good example: for a long time people viewed algorithmic trading as a software problem - write an algorithm which recognizes a good trade as fast as possible.  But high frequency trading really took off when somebody instead viewed it as a geography problem - if everybody has really fast algorithms then the person who is physically closest to the exchange (as measured by the length of the wire over which information is being transmitted) is the winner.

Is this a recognized phenomenon, and has it been studied systematically?

What you are describing is called mental set. The following extract is from this excelent article.

  A mental set is a tendency to only see solutions that have worked in
  the past. This type of fixed thinking can make it difficult to come up
  with solutions and can impede the problem-solving process.

  For example, imagine that you are trying to solve a math problem in
  your algebra class. The problem seems similar to ones you have worked
  on previously, so you approach solving it in the same way. Because of
  your mental set, you are unable to see a simpler solution that might
  be possible.

Additional reference:

Galotti, Kathleen M. (5 February 2009). Cognitive Psychology: In and Out of the Laboratory. Cengage Learning. pp. 341–344. ISBN 978-0-17-644065-7. Retrieved 25 March 2011.


someone who doesn't grasp that others don't know what they know I once heard of a disorder that described someone that didn't readily understand that others don't know what they know.  So, the person would often start conversations with vague comments about esoteric concepts then become aggravated when other's weren't familiar.  Does this have a name?

The skill of understanding that other people have different knowledge, beliefs, etc, falls under the concept of theory of mind (note that the name is possibly a bit misleading...it's not referring to some scientific theory or to philosophy of mind but rather to this ability to understand that others have different minds).

Difficulties with theory of mind are a common aspect of autism, but can arise from other causes as well including schizophrenia. I don't know of a specific term to describe precisely the symptom you are describing, however, and there may not be such a term.


Is the hypothalamus part of the limbic system? I believe the hypothalamus is involved in control of appetite and defensive and reproductive behaviours, which are functions of the limbic system, and according to this website http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/limbicsystem.html it would seem that it is part of the limbic system, however Wikipedia and other sites seem to disagree... Any help would be much appreciated :)

Short answer
Yes

Background
There is no universal agreement on the total list of structures comprising the limbic system. The brain regions constituting the limbic system according to Rajmohan & Mohandas (2007) are:

Limbic cortex
Cingulate gyrus
Parahippocampal gyrus
Hippocampal formation
The dentate gyrus
Hippocampus
Subicular Complex
Amygdala
Septal area
Hypothalamus

Note that wikipedia agrees on the inclusion of the hypothalamus. I dare say that in general the hypothalamus is included as an essential component of the limbic system, as it is involved in the expression of emotional responses, such as rage and fear (Purves et al, 2001).

References
- Purves et al, Neuroscience, 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates; 2001
- Rajmohan & Mohandas Indian J Psychiatry (2007); 49(2): 132–9)


What is the name of the bias that associate a thing as good because it has a relation to another good thing? A customer buys X from "brand A" and has positive experience with it. "Brand A" also sells Y. Now the customer things it is good to buy Y because of his/her positive experience with buying X from brand A and that since it was good, buying Y from brand A should also be good. They bought Y because of association.

What would be the name of the psychological process or cognitive bias that lead the customer to buy Y ?

It's called the Halo Effect:

  The halo effect is a ... cognitive bias, where a person making an
  initial assessment of another person, place, or thing will assume
  ambiguous information based upon concrete information.

  The term halo effect is used in marketing to explain customer bias
  toward certain products because of favorable experience with other
  products made by the same company. ... A notable example is the manner
  in which the popularity of Apple’s iPod generated enthusiasm for the
  corporation's other products.


Do we have a sub- or super-unconscious? Being conscious (awake) and unconscious (asleep) are two mutually exclusive states.

The boundary between them ("falling asleep") is very pleasant. Why?

Conscious => Unconscious

Some people say sleeping is their favorite thing (or one of); but it's not really sleeping that they love, because they are unconscious and thus unaware of the state they're in; it has to be the boundary between the two that they love so much.

Going the other direction (waking up) is not usually so pleasant. Why not?

Conscious and subconscience are two coexisting areas:

Conscious
------------
Subconscious

e.g., our conscious may realize that the light turned red before we got to the intersection, while our subconscious is noting that the tree on the corner was trimmed yesterday. It may be that we have a "superconscious," too - known as "intuition" or such.

But what about in our unconscious state - is there a sub and/or super unconscious, like so:

Superunconscious
----------------
Unconscious
----------------
Subunconscious

?

If so, which or both? Is that where our dreams live? And why is it that in that part of our unconscious (the dream state) we sometimes seem to have no conscience?

Do we have a subunconscious and/or a superunconscious?

When we cross over from consciousness to unconsciousness, do we ever go straight into the dream state, or is a dreamless unconsciousness always achieved first (we have to get to the dream state from the unconscious state)?

BTW, I realize that dreaming is referred to as a state, but it is not mutually exclusive to unconsciousness (you are dreaming while you are unconscious/sleeping, not dreaming instead of sleeping).

Sleep and dreaming is somewhat of a specialty of mind, so I can comment on the wake-sleep-wake transition.

People typically love the feeling of relaxation and warmth associated with sleep.  Waking up naturally can feel just as good - imagine lounging in bed on a Sunday morning without having to get out of bed. Waking due to alarm is an abrupt event which is indeed unpleasant.

In terms of conscious - unconscious transition at wake/sleep. There are a number of techniques, sharing the acronym WILD - Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming, where a person, through practice, enters dreaming state directly from waking state, while remaining conscious. There are different variant of this technique, some accompanied by vivid hallucinations and sleep paralysis, while other are more subtle.

I believe the existence of wake induced lucid dreaming demonstrates that the wake-sleep transition is not a binary event, but instead is a sequence of predictable events. Typically the ability to record short term memories is gone first, followed by intensification of mental imagery, followed by seamless transition into a dream featuring that imagery. You can think of dreaming as "dimming" of consciousness, rather than turning it off.

There are a number of drugs/supplements that are known to boost vividness of dreaming or increase subjective experience of consciousness (such as use of logic, decision making and control). After a certain threshold the person becomes self aware of the fact that he is dreaming.

In this way, consciousness can be described as a hologram. Adding pixels to hologram makes it more vivid, removing pixels makes it more fuzzy. At a certain number of pixels, the ability to recognize the image is gone. Add these pixels back and the image returns.


Do people wake up faster with inconsistent alarm sounds? Many people have one alarm clock sound that wakes them up every morning.

Is having this consistent sound the optimal way to wake someone up?
Or can you startle someone faster by changing to a different sound clip every day?

Assume the alarm clock is going off at the same time every morning.

A general model of processing stimuli suggests that when information does not provide informational value, then we gradually begin to ignore it. Such a model is consistent with the experience of many people in relation to background traffic noise when moving from a quiet to a noisy neighbourhood. I.e.,  the frequency with which external traffic noise enters into personal awareness gradually decreases over time.

Habituation to traffic noise while sleeping

It seems that there is quite a lot of research on the effect of traffic noise on quality of sleep and the role of habituation (see this google scholar search on "habituation to noise sleep").

Kawada (1995) provides a review of the effect of traffic noise on sleep. Specifically in relation to habituation the author wrote:

  Habituation to noise:  Views and opinions on this parameter differ. Thiessen et al. reported habituation to intermittent
  wakefulness10～12. In their study, subjects were exposed to passing
  truck noise less than 20  times a night with a peak level of 65 dBA.
  The  probability of a shift to shallower sleep and the  amount of deep
  sleep demonstrated failure of adaptation over 24 successive nights.
  The probability of awakening decreased by almost one  half in two
  weeks. Griefahn also studied  habituation of 36 students to
  high-density road  traffic noise and detected an all-night effect of
  noise on sleep for 12 consecutive nights13. Deep  sleep was prolonged
  and shallow sleep including  intermittent wakefulness became
  progressively  shorter at 37 to 63.5 dBA. Vallet at al. indicate  that
  there is no habituation to noise14. According to experiments on
  subjects living in a noisy  environment for more than four years,
  young  subjects showed less deep sleep and older subjects, less REM
  sleep under conditions of silence.  Both Di Nisi et al. and Ohrstrom
  reported that  there seems to be no habituation to noise
  exposure15,16. They exposed subjects to randomly distributed noise
  and it was impossible to  predict either the time of exposure or the
  type of  noise presented. Kawada and Suzuki could find  no definite
  habituation to a noisy environment17.  Their interval of noise
  exposure was 15 minutes  and there was only one pattern of passing
  truck  noise. Essentially the same noise characteristics  are reported
  by Thiessen, but the findings differed from each other. Based on
  inter-individual  variation in sensitivity to noise, habituation
  should differ according to the person.

I find this summary a little confusing. The between subject studies are not especially relevant in that habituation should presumably reduce the disruption caused by noise, but not necessarily remove the effect. Thus, it seems like longitudinal evidence would be the most relevant.

General review of noise on sleep

Muzet (2007) provides a relatively recent review of research on the effects of environmental noise on sleep.
With regards to habituation the author wrote:

  [Autonomic responses, such as heart rate changes and vasoconstrictions
  in response to noise while sleeping] have bee found not to habituate
  over long exposure times compared with clear subjective habituation
  over successive noise-exposed nights.

Research on alarm clocks

I found an article by Moorcroft et al (1997) that discussed the role of alarm clocks in peoples awakening process

  The ability to awaken oneself from sleep at a preselected time without
  external means (such as alarm clocks) was studied using, first,
  subjective and, second, objective methods. First, in a telephone
  survey of 269 unselected adults, over one-half said that they never
  use an alarm clock (or other external means) or always awaken before
  it. Another 24% said that they sometimes awaken before the alarm.
  Furthermore, this ability positively correlated with age and was
  related to consistency in the amount of nightly sleep but not
  consistency in wake-up time. Second, 15 people who said they regularly
  self-awaken were objectively tested for this ability in their own beds
  using actigraphy for three consecutive nights while choosing their own
  wake-up times. Five awoke within 10 minutes of their target time
  (mostly before) on each night, five did so on two of the three nights,
  and of the remaining five, four did so on one night. Choice of target
  times varied considerably within subjects but more so for those who
  were more successful. Taken together these results show that many
  people have the ability to regularly awaken themselves from sleep at a
  desired time and that such an ability is of practicable utility.

Does having a consistent alarm clock decrease ability to wake up

I haven't found any specific empirical data on your question.

Habituation processes would suggest that a consistent noise that is deemed to carry a lack of informational content will gradually be more frequently ignored, and thus an inconsistent noise may be more effective in generating attention and perhaps wakefulness. That said, alarm clocks do carry informational content, and people could potentially tune themselves to that noise as the important noise to indicate the time to wake up.

References

[10] Thiessen, G.J.: Disturbance of sleep by noise,
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 64, 216-222 (1978).
[11] Thiessen, G.J. and Lapointe, A.C.: Effect of
intermittent truck noise on percentage of
deep sleep, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 64, 1078-1080
(1978).
[12 Thiessen, G.J. and Lapointe, A.C.: Effect of
continuous traffic noise on percentage of
deep sleep, waking and sleep latency, J.
Acoust. Soc. Am., 73, 225-229 (1983).
[13] Griefahn, B.: A critical load for nocturnal
high-density road traffic noise, Am. J. Ind.
Med., 9, 261-269 (1986).
[14] Vallet, M., Gagneux, J.M., Blanchet, V.,
Favre, B. and Labiale, G.: Long term sleep
disturbance due to traffic noise, J. Sound
Vib., 90, 173-191 (1983).
[15] Di Nisi, J., Muzet, A., Ehrhart, J. and Libert,
J.P.: Comparison of cardiovascular responses
to noise during waking and sleeping in
humans, Sleep, 13, 108-120 (1990).
[16] Ohrstrom, E. and Bjorkman, M.: Effects of
noise-disturbed sleep: A laboratory study on
habituation and subjective noise sensitivity,
J. Sound Vib., 122, 277-290 (1988).
[17] Kawada, T. and Suzuki, S.: Instantaneous
change in sleep stage with noise of a passing
truck, Percept. Motor Skills, 80, 1031-1040
(1995).
Muzet, A. (2007). Environmental noise, sleep and health. Sleep medicine reviews, 11, 135-142.
Moorcroft, W.H., Kayser, K.H. & Griggs, A.J. (1997). Subjective and objective confirmation of the ability to self-awaken at a self-predetermined time without using external means. Sleep, 20, 40-45.


Why do we require social interaction/engagement? By requirement I mean there are so many ill side effects of isolation, and everyone feels loneliness after too much time spent alone (although that threshold is different for different people, e.g. some people can't make it a day without talking to someone, others can spend weeks or months in complete isolation, but everyone eventually will feel loneliness, and it's side effects) whereas there are so many mental health benefits of proper social engagement that it might as well be a necessity of life as much as food and drink.

Isolation is a lot more common than we might realize, just because you are not physically alone does not mean that you are not isolated many of us even fail to realize they are living in isolation (mostly because of the notion that isolation only comes in the physical form of being a shut-in). After isolation when the loneliness starts to kick in, Introverts turn to online communities (often gaming, facebook, or some forums) and extroverts have a tendency to turn to partying (MORE PEOPLE!) and often as a side-effect, alcohol and drugs, both confusing these activites with fulfilling social engagement; while they're really just turning into addicts of their own escape mechanisms which are only momentary reliefs from their feeling of loneliness, always feeling deep down inside like something is missing. The introverts that are isolated are usually physically isolated (shut-ins). While the extroverts that are isolated tend to be isolated mentally (closing themselves off; often without even realizing it) building superficial relationships that do not fulfill them.

We all have an instinct that tells us to interact with other people, an instinct that disregards whether that interaction is positive or negative (as we see for example in "attention seekers" that attract as much attention as they can without any regard for what kind of attention it is)

There is some need every human being has to express themselves to other humans.

Why do we so actively seek social interactions? What exactly are we seeking from these social interactions? Acceptance? Acknowledgement? Approval? Understanding? All of these? None of these?

I need to know the full answer to this because I am wondering what kind of social interaction will most fully satisfy our needs. What kind of environment to look for to truly overcome the isolation element, and the long term loneliness that follows and plagues so many of us.

I think you phrased this well, but you are correct that it is a hard question which could be answered in many different ways which, perhaps, may not satisfy you. It is a "why" question so let me give some speculative answers:

-an evolutionary psychologist might say that we have evolved to seek social interactions because humans in groups are more successful (e.g., they can mate, raise offspring together, defend each other from predators etc). It is hard to refute this kind of explanation, and indeed many/most species show a desire to interact, although some niches may have encouraged more solitary behaviour.

-a behavioural neuroscientist might say that we seek social interactions because they are rewarding on a biological level, for example because they release oxytocin which has a range of positive effects on physiology.

-a social or developmental psychologist might focus more on the way that social interactions change self-reported well-being, or on the qualities of the interaction which are most important (perhaps in line with your bolded question). While it is true that particular types of (positive) interaction are best, even minimal contact increases a feeling of belonging. The developmental literature on social enrichment might be a good place to look if you want to find out how to make satisfying interactions.

So, like most "why" questions, it depends what level of analysis you are interested in, but all of these are probably true to some extent.


Are there any studies (fMRI scans, etc) showing why some people (supposedly) are more open to hypnotism? In this article published in Harper's magazine back in 1996, journalist David Foster Wallace described his experience with hypnotist Nigel Ellery (see the last section of the article, titled "THE HEADLINE ENTERTAINMENT"). Mr Ellery was providing part of the entertainment on the cruise ship that David was on.

As to hypnotism, David writes that:

  First off, we learn that not everyone is susceptible to serious hypnosis: Nigel Ellery puts the Celebrity Show Lounge's whole 300-plus crowd through some simple in-your-seat tests to determine who is suggestibly "gifted" enough to "participate" in the "fun" to come.

In the footnote to that paragraph just quoted, David writes that:

  I, who know from hard experience that I am hypnotizable, think about sports statistics and deliberately flunk a couple of the tests to avoid getting up there.

The question I wanted to ask is, are there any studies looking into why some people would be more susceptible to hypnotism?

What I am particularly interested in is whether this has something to do with a habitual activation or inactivation of parts of the brain, or perhaps the levels of some neuromodulators?

Overall, while there are developing cognitive neuroscience theories of how hypnotic states are produced, there does not appear to be any known cognitive neuroscience basis for individual differences in hypnotic susceptibility based on a reasonable Google Scholar, Web of Science and Scopus search on the topic.

There is at least some evidence to suggest that highly hypnotic participants exhibit different EEG activity patterns (Sabourin et al., 1990). A later review of the hypnosis literature proposed an attentional explanation for the difference in hypnotic behavior for highs and lows (Crawford, 1994). They specifically propose that:

  highly hypnotizable persons (highs) possess stronger attentional filtering abilities than do low hypnotizable persons, and that these differences are reflected in underlying brain dynamics.

Finally, a still later study more specifically implicated the anterior cingulate cortex, the thalamus, and the ponto-mesencephalic brainstem in the production of hypnotic states (Rainville et al., 2002), but they make no mention of differences of highly and less hypnotically susceptible individuals. This seems to be a trend in the literature I reviewed, suggesting the concept may have been abandoned.

References

Crawford, H. J. (1994). Brain dynamics and hypnosis: Attentional and disattentional processes. International journal of clinical and experimental hypnosis, 42(3), 204-232.
Rainville, P., Hofbauer, R. K., Bushnell, M. C., Duncan, G. H., & Price, D. D. (2002). Hypnosis modulates activity in brain structures involved in the regulation of consciousness. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 14(6), 887-901.
Sabourin, M. E., Cutcomb, S. D., Crawford, H. J., & Pribram, K. (1990). EEG correlates of hypnotic susceptibility and hypnotic trance: Spectral analysis and coherence. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 10(2), 125-142.


How can we be formed by our childhood's environment if we don't remember much of it? Studies with rats have shown that how much a pup is licked during their early childhood predicts their adult personality [1]. Also, many psychologists say that early childhood is the part of our lives where our personality is formed [2]. However, recent evidence suggests that childhood memories are actively removed, to be replaced with new ones [3]. So how can childhood affect us so much?

It all comes down to the type of memory.

Infantile amnesia is largely associated with the loss of episodic memory, a type of explicit memory that can be consciously recalled (eg, remembering a past event).  Implicit memory, such as learned skills (eg, remembering how to tie your shoes), the learned part of personality, and priming associations, are largely unaffected.

Though the reasons for infantile amnesia are not well understood, it has some similarity to retrograde amnesia, that also affects mostly episodic memory, but not implicit memory (so again, you lose memories of past events, but not your personality).  The hippocampus, an area of the brain associated with memory consolidation, is an important factor in both types of amnesia.

PS: The first article you link to is about genetics, or specifically epigenetics, that is to do with gene expression.  This is a completely different factor that is also immune to amnesia since it is not related to memory, and so far it is only implicated in a very few traits.


Why do some parents prefer some children more than others? Is it true that parents tend to love or have a higher preference for some particular children of theirs?

If so, why?

Have any studies stated which of their children they love or prefer more?

There is quite a lot of research on parental favoritism. I'll summarize some of the findings:

girls are more often parental favorites (Harris & Howard, 1985)
women more often report parental favoritism (Chalfant, 1994)
parents favor less aggressive children (which partially explains their preference for girls; Tucker et al., 2003)
the youngest child is more often the parental favorite (Harris & Howard, 1985; Rhode et al., 2003; Tucker et al., 2003)
the middle child is least often the parental favorite (Harris & Howard, 1985; Hertwig et al., 2002)
19% of 1st-born siblings, 30% of middle-born, and 26% of last-born claimed to be their father's favorite (Chalfant, 1994)
23% of 1st-born, 10% of middle-born, and 28% of last-born siblings claimed to be their mother's favorite (Chalfant, 1994)
favoritism was most often reported from a parent of the opposite sex (Chalfant, 1994)
only about 10% of children and 10% of parents felt or admitted that they had been favored or favored a child (Bedford, 1992)
more than 75% of the siblings felt themselves to be the favorite of at least one of their parents (Kiracofe & Kiracofe, 1990)

As you can see, findings are somewhat contradictory.

Parental favoritism has consequences:

Self-esteem in the child correlates to perceived parental favoritism (Felson & Zielinski, 1989; Zervas & Sherman, 1994). Children, whose parents had treated all children equally, rated highest in self-esteem; favored children rated lower, nonfavored lowest (Zervas & Sherman, 1994). Parents' supportive behavior affects the self-esteem of children but child self-esteem also affects how much support children report their parents give them; in addition, parents have a greater effect on the self-esteem of girls than of boys (Felson & Zielinski, 1989).
Siblings express less warmth and greater hostility toward one another when parents show favoritism (McHale et al., 1995)
over time, being unfavored by parents produces behavior problems in children (Richmond, Stocker, & Rienks, 2005)

Explanations for parental favoritism include:

Stress predicts favoritism. Favoritism is more common when parents experience marital problems and when children have serious health problems (Singer & Weinstein, 2000).
Personality of the child predicts favoritism (see e.g. aggression above).

There is research on favoritism of children for parent also, as well as favoritism of adult children, both of which I did not report.

All of the above is limted to Western cultures. As we know, there are some cultures where parents go so far in their favoritism that they kill female children. The conclusion is that favoritism is not universal but culture specific.

Note: Most of the text above is copy/pasted directly from the quoted papers. I did not mark it as quotes as this would have greatly reduced readability.

Sources

Bedford, V. H. (1992). Memories of parental favoritism and the quality of parent-child ties in adulthood. Journal of Gerontology, 47(4), S149-S155.
Chalfant, D. (1994). Birth order, perceived parental favoritism, and feelings toward parents. Individual Psychology: Journal of Adlerian Theory, Research & Practice.
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How fast can the brain react in order for someone to pull a trigger? Just out of curiosity, regardingly highly unlikely situations of ever needing to disarm someone - using neuroscience to make informed self defence decisions:

How fast can the brain recieve a visual or reflexive (seeing me beginning to move my hand, or feeling my hand hit the wrist -- I suspect the two impulses might have differing response times) signals from the body, to the moment of signaling the finger muscles?

Short answer
The motor response latency to a visual stimulus is approximately 210 ms.

Background
You are basically asking for the visually induced reaction time of a motor response. Reaction times have been assessed many times in various studies. In a very recent study with an impressive subject population of more than 1400 (aged 18 - 65), the motor response latency to a visual stimulus was estimated at an average of 213 ms. Reaction times increased with age, but were unaffected by sex or educational level. Old age mainly affected the motor latency, and not so much the visual processing speed.

Reference
- Woods et al., Frontiers Human Neurosci (2015); 9:131-12p


Is there an analog to the five factor model for emotion? To the best of my understanding, the five factor model of personality comes from a factor analysis on a large list of adjectives that can be used to describe an individual's personality. It is validated, in some sense, by its usefulness in predicting behavior and life outcomes in a wide range of contexts.
It seems like something very similar could be done for emotion. I.e. list words describing a persons present state (angry, remorseful, sad, bitter, frustrated, etcetera) and do a factor analysis on those. Then, see if the resulting model (assuming that the analysis yields something useful) is predictive of shorter term / state dependent behavior.
Has any work like this been done?

The recently published Atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour is possibly what you are looking for(Mobbs, 2020).  Over 3,000 emotions are included in the analysis, a summary of which is below.  The article has a more comprehensive version.  The five factor model was derived through factorisation whereas the atlas was developed using a lexical/network approach.

References
Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLOS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877
Declared Interest
I am the author of the atlas paper.


Are some facial features more important than others in human facial recognition? I'm often surprised by the human ability to correctly identify other individuals despite significant modifications due to ageing, hairstyle, injury etc. But, sometimes the addition of a beard and a hat can radically increase the identification error.

Are all facial regions  equally important when we try to recognise human faces?
Do we focus more on some regions than others?

In a study by Pelphrey et al., 2002 the authors show that when people are asked to scan a face, they spend about 80% of the time looking at the eyes, about 10% on the nose region, and a few percents on the mouth (the remaining few percentages were spent on other non-core features such as ears, forehead etc). Hence, the eyes by far draw the most attention and represent the most important feature when it comes to facial processing.

A typical example of a visual scan by a human subject as examined by eye tracking is the following (taken from Pelphrey et al., 2002), which shows that the subject scanned the core features of the facial image (eyes, nose, mouth):

Nonetheless, the presence of a complete face makes recognition more efficient than when looking at incomplete faces (Tanaka & Farah, 1993)


Unilateral vision in split brain subjects I am just beginning to learn psychology and came across concept of split brain. I was wondering if a person has only left eye working and has their corpus callosum cut, would they be effectively blind since the left brain won't receive any visual stimuli?

Short answer

The corpus callosum is not necessary for low-level visual processing;
Both eyes project to both hemispheres; the left visual hemifield of both eyes is projected to the left hemisphere, the right hemifield to the right.

Background
The site where the right and left visual hemifields are split occurs in the optic chiasm. This structure is different from the major highway between both hemispheres, namely the corpus callosum (Fig. 1). Hence, your question...

  [I]f a person has only [functionality in the] left eye[,] and [..]their corpus callosum [is severed], would they be effectively blind[,] since the left brain won't receive any visual stimuli?

...can be answered with no, as both eyes will still transmit their input to the visual centers in the brain (Fig. 1). In fact, when one eye is not functional, the fieldof view will still be nearly complete, as both hemifields of the one remaining retina is projected to both cortices (Fig. 2).

The function that is effectively lost when there is only one eye left, is depth perception; the use of both eyes, and the fact that they are slightly offset, allows us to see depth, using binocular vision through a process referred to as binocular disparity.

Fig. 1. Mid-saggital section through the brain. source: Studoku

Fig. 2. Visual pathway. source: The Brain Recovery Project


Term for remembering the location/position of text on a page as part of the memory recall process? Is there a name for the phenomenon of remembering the position on a page or location in a book as part of the process of recalling a memory? For example, knowing that something was on the left side half-way through the page about two thirds of the way through a book? How would you describe that experience or classify someone that often used that type of memory retrieval process.

How would you describe that experience or classify someone that often used that type of memory retrieval process.

Based on what I think you are asking, you might call this "eidetic memory". Less formally it is known as "photographic memory", or sometimes "perfect recall". However, these abilities do not generalize to all domains of memory. Usually the memory is limited to certain experts of specific domains who have just developed an ability to recognize certain meaningful patterns. This is evidenced by the fact that random arrangements of pixels are not nearly as memorable as learned special patterns, even for people supposedly having perfect recall.

  Is there a name for the phenomenon of remembering the position on a page or location in a book as part of the process of recalling a memory?

There is no term I am aware of that is so specific to describe the memory of book pagination, let alone where on the page something was located. Eidetic memory essentially covers that.


Calculation of d'prime in forced choice experiment I am working on psychtoolbox and in my experiment I have given two images containing two roads (one is shortcut and other is longer way). In one image, the longest way is safe and in the other the shortcut way is safer. The images appear randomly. Students have to press left arrow key of laptop if longest is safe and right key for shortcut way.

I am confused in this whether it come under forced choice or 2AFC (alternative forced choice)?

It sounds like you are struggling with the terminology. The terminology is not particularly clear.

As it sounds like you are forcing them to respond with either the left or right arrow key, I would describe the task as forced choice. If you ask subjects to rate how likely the longest path is safe with the 0-9 keys, I would describe it as a rating, despite them being forced to give an answer on every trial. If you allowed them to skip trials with the space bar, some people would not call this a forced choice task. Things are messy though since you could think of the left arrow as 0, the space as 5, and the right as 9. In terms of $d'$, what matters is that there are two choices.

The two most common paradigms with exactly two response choices are typically called the yes/no paradigm and the 2AFC paradigm. Despite it's name, the yes/no paradigm can have any response labels, including left arrow and right arrow. In the typical setup, in addition to both paradigm having 2 responses, both paradigms have exactly two stimulus classes (e.g., signal and noise, or in your case long and short). The defining characteristic that differentiates a yes/no paradigm from a 2AFC paradigm is that in a yes/no paradigm each trial (and hence response) is based on a single presentation of one of the stimulus classes while in the 2AFc paradigm there is a single presentation of both stimuli classes (either concurrently or sequentially). This difference is critical for calculating $d'$ and a $\sqrt{2}/2$ scale factor is needed to correct for the fact that in the 2AFC paradigm there is more information.

So to answer your question, it is not clear from your description if you need to scale $d'$ by $\sqrt{2}/2$.


Have the effects of MRIs and other electromagnetic devices on human psychology been studied? What are the effects of MRIs and other electromagnetic devices on the human brain? Naturally they could move metals to or through the brain cell's membrane. I can also see the experience of being in a strange position, meditating, and attempting to be as still as possible for an hour and a half, might cause some long term effect. Have the effects of MRIs and other electromagnetic devices been studied comparatively on human psychology or neurology? Could you also mention the mental health aspects?

Yes, the effects of electromagnetic fields on the brain have been studied extensively, especially with respect to cellphone, WiFi, and other small devices that emit such fields.  The results are typically mixed, but the overall consensus is that "it depends" - on the strength of the field, the environment, length of exposure, etc - and most modern consumer devices operate at levels well below safety margins.

The effects of MRIs on cognitive function have been studied to some degree, starting in the 1990s, early in their history.  The most prominent cognitive effects known include dizziness, vertigo, concentration, and awareness.  Most of these effects are temporary (limited to the time spent inside the MRI machine), typically only found in high-intensity MRIs, and in most cases require movement (movement is theorized to induce a changing magnetic field).

The long-term effects of exposure to MRIs are not well known.  However, as MRIs are in very common use, and are often a core part of studies on mental health and cognitive function, their safety is indirectly tested regularly.  As such, there is not much impetus to conduct a controlled long-term study.  Note also that MRI-related health risks tend to be more important for the operators who are chronically exposed, rather than for the patients who are only briefly exposed.

For your case, you should find out the MRI field strength used: "the majority of systems operate at 1.5T, commercial systems are available between 0.2T–7T.".  Most of the known effects on cognitive function are found with MRIs above 3T, which are relatively uncommon.  Even if you were inside a particularly powerful MRI machine, as long as you remained perfectly still, no significant magnetic field fluctuations should occur, and even if you did move, the effects are temporary.


Do children show top-down processing as much as adults do? There has been much research into how top-down processing works, such as the suggestibility of patients to mishear lyrics based on what the patients are told they are.

Is there any research to show that this behavior is evident at a young age, specifically less than about 10 years old?

Much evidence suggests children do not show as much top down processing as adults. This depends on your definition so I'll state that I generally mean that use of top-down processing appears to increase as a child develops.

Here is the abstract explaining the results of the study Developmental increase in top-down and bottom-up processing in a phonological task: an effective connectivity, fMRI study.

Emphasis mine:

  In older children, top-down control process may selectively enhance the sensitivity of the LTC to bottom-up information from the FG. This may be evident especially in situations that require selective enhancement of task-relevant versus task-irrelevant information. Altogether these results provide a direct evidence for a developmental increase in top-down control processes in language processing.

Why is this the case? Generally speaking children need to develop a greater understanding of the world around them before they can put Top-Down and Bottom-Up processing to good use. Piaget framed this in terms of Schemas.

Piaget's Stages of Development (which are contraversial mind you) suggest strongly that children start almost at a clean slate and build up schemas as they develop and learn. A younger child simply hasn't had the time to build up schemas for every situation, thus they won't always have a relevant schema to process information in a proper top-down fashion.

Note that other studies suggest that older children have an advantage in some tasks because they learn when to not apply top down processing. Younger children may simply not "know" the relevance of each processing method as well.

As stated in Visual search in children and adults: Top-down and bottom-up mechanisms:

  The authors argued that with increasing age, children became able to consider multiple dimensions when making relevant comparisons. One interpretation of these data is that the older (but not the younger) children were able to switch off the top-down system to allow salience to emerge via bottom-up processing.


Hard to think when hearing audible speech I don't know what is the exact cause of this but when there is some song playing around me or someone is talking near me its harder for me to concentrate my thoughts or imagine something. However pure instrumental music is fine

I am a frequent video game player where you need to keep listening to enemy movements and to keep track of their positions.

Playing games like that has led me to be able to operate without concentrating all of my senses on one thing. Like I can do do something carefully by my hands looking at it and at the sane time hear what people are talking about around me, often involuntarily.

But this means when someone talks or a song plays with recognisable speech in it then my concentration involuntarily shift to the audio and it's harder to concentrate on my thoughts. I have to put effort to ignore the sound and keep at my thoughts.

What is this phenomenon called?

There are many things at work here. A lot of your sensitivity to human voice can be attributed to the tonotopic organization of the basilar membrane. Check out this image of the cochlea and notice how its sensitivity to different frequencies does not decrease linearly over space https://media1.britannica.com/eb-media/98/14298-004-99934987.jpg , this entails that we are most sensitive to frequencies in the 2-4kHZ range, which significantly overlaps with the frequency range of human speech https://users.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave.Marshall/Multimedia/node271.html .

There is also evidence for using a network of domain specific mental processes to do complex tasks like navigating a room. Specifically, it seems that linguistic processes make spacial navigation tasks easier(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3572715/ ; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2745626/) --if this is true we could predict that overloading someone's linguistic capabilities by, say, speaking to them, would make spatial navigation tasks harder, which could explain how some stimuli can be "less distracting" than others within different contexts.


Why is depression a diagnosable issue? To me, it seems strange that something such as depression, which anyone can feel at any given time, is diagnosed and treated medically as if it is a mental disorder. I believe depression should be treated with constructive sessions, communication and through giving people a sense of meaning.

Why is depression being treated as if it is a medical problem when it's a problem of thought?

In my opinion, diagnosing a person as being depressed may re-enforce their negative ideas, while the more obvious approach would be to positively re-enforce this person?.

"Depression" is a symptom or state of being, one that everyone can experience.

"Major Depressive Disorder," however, is a diagnosable medical disorder for many reasons. The following list is by no means exhaustive:

Major Depressive Disorder runs in families, and a genetic component is well established by family and twin studies.
Anyone who experiences a major depressive episode is at increased risk compared to the general population.
Major Depressive Disorder costs the US $200 billion per year in medical treatment and workplace costs.
There are many specific ways in which functioning in the brain is altered in depressed patients. Decreased functioning in the prefrontal cortex (executive functioning) is a good example.
Contrary to belief common in the 80s and 90s, clinical depression is much more complicated than "a deficiency in serotonin" - the neurology is multifactorial and still poorly understood. However, clinically depressed patients (usually) respond to SSRIs in a manner different from healthy individuals. Prozac is not a "happy pill" if you are not depressed.

"A problem of thought" is one aspect of depression. Most individuals have some combination of cognitive, behavioral, neurochemical, and genetic elements.

I agree with you that telling people "you have a disease" is not always helpful and can be counter-productive in many instances. I too am a fan of positive psychiatry, and I think most individuals could benefit from caring for their mental wellbeing in the same way that healthy people benefit from exercise. On the other side of the coin, it is a serious issue that many patients do not take seriously enough, and non-compliance to medication and therapy is common and can have very serious adverse consequences.

Your question is a good one, and a common one. Thank you for asking. Be aware, though, that it may come off as insensitive and offensive to some who have it bad.

To use rationalist terms: depression and suicide has been a large problem for many people throughout human history. From that, you can assume that 1) many people care very deeply about it, and 2) it is a difficult problem. Given those facts, any statement along the lines of "All it requires is ____", someone will likely take offense.


Computational model of biological object recognition The human brain can achieve a remarkable ability to recognize visual patterns in an Invariant, selective and fast manner. The human visual system is quite powerful. It has an exquisite selectivity that allows us to distinguish among very similar objects. In addition, iy also allows Robustness (Invariance) to transformations.

In the model (Ventral stream pathway and architecture proposed by Poggio's group) shown in the image below, why the model is selective in S layers and invariant in C layers ?
I didn't understand well why the S layer achieves selectivity and C layer achieves invariance. Please can someone explain to me in details why the model is selective in S and Invariance in C layers?

And who know the HMAX model, the model is called "Hierarchical Model and X". why X? what was meant by "X" ?

This figure is from Serre et al.'s A quantitative theory of immediate visual recognition. Prog Brain Res. 2007.

Any help will be very very appreciated.

The question is resolved :

The name HMAX ( Hierarchical Model And X ) was coined by “Mike Tarr”, who wrote the “News and Views” accompanying the paper in Nature Neuroscience.

What was meant by Hierarchical?

The model has a hierarchical architecture : it contains different stages (layers).

-- Increase in receptive field size and complexity in unit feature preferences along the
   hierarchy.

What was meant by X?

I think it is the pooling operation (it refers to the MAX).

Selectivity in S layer

The activity of each S unit is highest if all the afferents have the specified values.

Invariance in C layer

In contrast to S units, the C cells pool over their afferents, and the response is high if
one of the afferents is high. This increases invariance if the afferents are tuned to the
same feature, but at different positions or scales.


Using Cognitive biases for behavior change? I'm interested in using cognitive biases as basis for behavior change, similar to what we see in gaminfication (e.g. instant gratification to hook people to continue playing). I'm new to the field and I wonder if there are some underlying theories I should be aware of.
I found Cognitive bias modification however they seem to focus on clinical applications helping patients with depression, anxiety or addiction.

Is there a theory about how to apply cognitive biases for more general or other behavior change directions (not clinical applications)?
Let's say I have a certain unwanted habit I want to get rid off, depending on the habit and my background, there might be cognitive biases to help me change the habit.

CBM is not so much a theoretical framework but rather a label attached to a collection of methods and biases. In a way, this reflects the state of research on heuristics and biases, at least in behavioral economics. As many famed findings in the field have come from attempts to "disprove" traditional economic theory, the resulting effects (biases) have often remained without a satisfying explanation in the form of a plausible cognitive process. This has hindered
the formulation of a common theoretical framework in which various biases
could be classified (according to, e.g., underlying cognitive mechanisms,  preconditions w.r.t. context and subject, effective interventions).

(To name an exception, a framework covering comparison selection was recently proposed by Simonson, Bettman, Kramer & Payne 2012. The authors cover a number of effects which may commonly be labeled "biases". In addition, various frameworks based on some form of dual-process theory have been proposed, but there is a lot of redundancy between them.)

In addition, the "heuristics and biases" literature has remained largely separate from the psychology of behavior change and, arguably, from cognitive psychology. Look no further than the popular "Nudge" by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein: almost all of their implications are derived directly from the biases "as effects" rather than being derived within a more general framework grounded in cognitive process theory.

In short, to the best of my knowledge, the framework that you seek does not exist. I expect that you will find it necessary to devise behavior change strategies one bias at a time.

As a final remark, the heuristics and biases literature has been criticized for tarnishing what may actually be highly adaptative and efficient cognitive strategies (see the illuminating works by Gerd Gigerenzer). Accordingly, many a bias may be exploitable only under rather specific and unusual circumstances.


How will the pet therapy aid the child with autism? As a Special Education Teacher at ACCEL, behaviors of individuals with autism has been remarkably consistent over time with the help of ABA therapy services, which include pet therapy and individualized education program.

What are your thoughts about pet therapy for this population? How is it proven to be beneficial?

There is some evidence that pet therapy are effective for individuals with autism. The studies did not differentiate between children and adult though it is likely that the studies are focused on children.

This 2012 systematic review by O'Haire found increased social interaction and communication as well as a decrease in problem behaviors, autistic severity, and stress. There is a strong suspicion of publication bias and also a lack of control arms for comparison. O'Haire found 14 studies ranging from 1989 to 2012 that had outcome data for her review.

Another interesting 2012 French study by Grandgeorge et al) looked at the prosocial impact of having a pet in 260 families with children. What I thought was interesting was that having a pet since birth had minimal impact on the child which were the same rate as children without pets. However, if the family got a new pet after the age of 5, there was evidence of an increase in prosocial behavior.

References:

Grandgeorge, M., Tordjman, S., Lazartigues, A., Lemonnier, E., Deleau, M., & Hausberger, M. (2012). Does Pet Arrival Trigger Prosocial Behaviors in Individuals with Autism? PLOS ONE, 7(8), e41739.

O’Haire, M. (2012). Animal-Assisted Intervention for Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Literature Review. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Vol 43, pg 1606–1622.


Solving for HR and FAR, given ACC and C Lets say I have an equal variance SDT framework with an equal number of target present and target absent trials:

$d'=Z^{-1}(HR)-Z^{-1}(FAR)$

$C=\frac{Z^{-1}(HR)+Z^{-1}(FAR)}{-2}$

$ACC=\frac{HR+(1-FAR)}{2}$

where $HR=$ hit rate, $FAR=$ false alarm rate, $d'=$ sensitivity, $C=$ bias, and $ACC=$ accuracy.

If I know the value of $C$ and $ACC$, how do I solve for $HR$ and $FAR$?

To put it another way. In ROC space, I know my iso-bias curve and I know my iso-accuracy curve, and I want to know the coordinates where they intersect in terms of $HR$ and $FAR$.

It seems that I should take my equations for $C$ and $ACC$ in terms of $HR$ and $FAR$, and work them to give me $HR$ and $FAR$ in terms of $C$ and $ACC$, but I haven't managed to successfully untangle the inverse CDFs in order to do that.

Edit:

I can rearrange the equation for $ACC$, to express $FAR$ in terms of $HR$ and $ACC$:

$FAR=HR+1-2ACC$

And then I can plug that into the equation for $C$:

$C=\frac{Z^{-1}(HR)+Z^{-1}(HR+1-2ACC)}{-2}$

And rearrange that a bit:

$Z^{-1}(HR)=-2C-Z^{-1}(HR+1-2ACC)$

And then I could do this:

$HR=Z(-2C-Z^{-1}(HR+1-2ACC))$

And then I get stuck, because I'm not sure how to "free" the $HR$ buried on the right-hand side.

I tried to do the math and got stuck. I asked for help at math.se and didn't get any further. My thinking is that it is not possible to write down a nice simple answer even though it is two equations and two unknowns, since system is not linear. When faced with math I cannot do, sometimes it is easier to just bring out the MATLAB hammer:

function [HR, FAR] = findHRFAR(c, acc)
    ACC = @(HR, FAR)(HR+1-FAR)./2;
    C = @(HR, FAR)(norminv(HR)+norminv(FAR))./2;

    HR = fminbnd(@(HR)temp(HR, c, acc), 0, 1);
    [SSE, FAR] = temp(HR, c, acc);

    [HR, FAR, C(HR, FAR), ACC(HR, FAR), SSE]

    function [SSE, FAR] = temp(HR, c, acc)
        [FAR, SSE] = fminbnd(@(FAR)((c-C(HR, FAR)).^2)+...
            ((acc-ACC(HR, FAR)).^2), 0, 1);
    end
end

It runs pretty fast, but ... the nested bounded optimization is ugly, and there may be a more efficient way to find the answer. I also don't see any reason this could not be done in Octave, Python, or any similar type program of your choice.


What does "affect component" mean in this article on well-being? Previous research lends support to the view that the negative affect component of well-being is strongly associated with neuroticism and that positive affect component has a similar association with extraversion. This research also supports the view that positive emotions—central components of well-being—are not merely the opposite of negative emotions, but are independent dimensions of mental health that can, and should be fostered.

Emphasis mine. Source.

As the CDC page you linked states,

  Well-being integrates mental health (mind) and physical health (body) resulting in more holistic approaches to disease prevention and health promotion.

Mental health and physical health are the 2 main components to well-being, and both these components have components within them.

Mental health will have positive affects and negative affects as 2 of its components.


Can memory access be detected via fMRI? Can the use of memory, in it's various forms (working memory, procedural, semantic), be detected and distinguished from one another via fMRI?

In theory, yes, because there are now many theories, supported by evidence, which map different memory processes onto different regions and patterns of activity in the brain.

In practice, there are many difficulties with doing this. First, it would depend on what stage or process you are thinking of (are you considering encoding? or retrieval?). Second, many subtypes of memory are defined according to the stimulus (for example whether you are remembering facts or actions), and so differences in brain activity might be due to the stimulus and not the process per se. Thirdly, fMRI has limitations which might make it difficult to isolate the relevant differences, especially if you were trying to do this on a trial-by-trial basis or if you were looking at subcortical structures.

There are plenty of papers which try and address this. For example, here is one looking at dissociations within recognition, here is one in Alzheimers and here is an influential review.


Does Andler's (2012) article on 'Mathematics in Cognitive Science' provide an accurate picture of mathematics in cognitive science? Andler (2012) wrote:

  What role does mathematics play in cognitive science today, what role
  should mathematics play in cognitive science tomorrow? The cautious
  short answers are: to the factual question, a rather modest role,
  except in peripheral areas to the normative question, a far greater
  role, as the peripherys place is reevaluated and as both cognitive
  science and mathematics grow. This paper aims at providing more
  detailed, perhaps more contentious answers.

Questions

Does Andler's (2012) article on 'Mathematics in Cognitive Science' provide an accurate picture of mathematics in cognitive science?
How do I prepare for the kind of advanced work described in the article?

Reference:

Andler, D. (2012). Mathematics in Cognitive Science. In Probabilities, Laws, and Structures (pp. 363-377). Springer Netherlands PDF

Thoughts on the paper

The paper appears to provide a high level overview of the role of mathematics in cognitive science. I'm not a sufficient expert in the overall field of cognitive science where I'd feel comfortable to truly judge the accuracy of the overall synthesis that Andler (2012) provides. That said, much of the paper is about providing examples of how mathematics integrates with cognitive science. And the examples seem reasonable. I could think of other examples that pertain to my work, but their absence does not really detract from the paper.

Andler also makes a number of distinctions about how mathematics can integrate with cognitive science. For example there is the kind of integration that statistics has with many experimental disciplines which is both fundamental and not very specific.

So in short, I think the paper provides a thought provoking big picture overview of the issues of interfacing maths with cognitive science.

Implications for you doing advanced work

This paper could potentially be motivating, but it might also be discouraging. It's so high level that it creates a vision, but the vision is so large that it might be overwhelming.

To do ground breaking research in cognitive science (or any area for that matter), you need to specialise. If you want to do research interfacing maths with cognitive science you would also specialise. The result is that you would only need a small subset of mathematics and cognitive science mentioned in the article. I use mathematics and statistics a lot in my research, and there's plenty of mathematics mentioned in that paper which I know little about.

If you are wanting to do research in this area, exposing yourself to a good undergraduate curriculum in mathematics, statistics, computing, and cognitive science would be a good start along with exposure to research. Then pursue a PhD with an appropriate advisor where you can hone your skills in a particular domain.

In terms of mathematics my own bias would favour learning calculus, linear algebra, probability, and statistics, but that's just my bias. It's also useful to learn how to code.


What is the cause of frequent nightmares? Is there a reason why people dream of demons, ghosts, and other scary creatures? More specifically:

What factors cause frequent nightmares to occur?

Nightmares can be defined as (Pagel, 2000):

  ...vivid and terrifying nocturnal episodes in which the dreamer is abruptly awakened from sleep. Typically, the dreamer wakes from REM sleep and is able to describe a detailed, associative, often bizarre dream plot. Usually, the dreamer has difficulty returning to sleep.

Nightmares are common and can be a normal reaction to stress. Frequent occurrence of nightmares, however, may become a disorder when it impairs the sufferer's everyday life and may then be referred to as Nightmare Disorder (formerly Dream Anxiety Disorder) or "repeated nightmares," which is a term defined more specifically as a series of nightmares with a recurring theme (source: Psychology Today).

Nightmare disorder is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as:

  [R]epeated awakenings with recollection of terrifying dreams, usually
  involving threats to survival, safety or physical integrity.

Causes of nightmare disorder, according to WebMD, Psychology Today and (Sheaves et al., 2015) are:

Anxiety or stress, for example due to a major life event
Depression
Psychosis
Sleep deprivation
Illness with a fever
Medication side effects
Drug or alcohol withdrawal
Excessive alcohol consumption
Sleep apnea, narcolepsy or restless legs syndrome or other sleep disorders
Eating just before going to bed, which raises the body's metabolism and brain activity

References
- Pagel, Am Fam Physician (2000); 61(7): 2037-42
- Sheaves et al., Can J Psychiatry (2015); 60(8): 354–61


What's the feeling where you feel weird in places where people in movies get stabbed etc For example in the matrix, when the little bug crawls through his belly button my belly button feels weird.

What you are describing seems to be a form of mirror touch synesthesia

  Mirror-touch synesthesia is a condition which causes individuals to experience the same sensation (such as touch) that another person feels. For example, if someone with this condition were to observe someone touching their cheek, they would feel the same sensation on their own cheek. Synesthesia, in general, is described as a condition in which a stimulus causes an individual to experience an additional sensation. Synesthesia is usually a developmental condition, however recent research has shown that mirror touch synesthesia can be acquired after sensory loss following amputation.


Is there a term for enjoying or liking the feeling of guilt Obviously not sociopathy - or anything like that.

I just wondered if there was a term for enjoying the sensations of guilt  :)

EDIT can you go on - and say something about the differences between fear and guilt :) ?

I don't think there's a term specifically for pleasurable guilt.

However, depending on whom you ask, there's a couple ways we can talk about this feeling.

If we assume that guilt can only be experienced as negative, then we might describe pleasurable guilt as pleasure about guilt (i.e., a positive meta-emotional experience of guilt; for a review on meta-emotions, see Mendonca, 2013).  In other words, you experience a sense of pleasure in response to, and perhaps alongside, your emotion of negative guilt.
If we take a psychological constructivist view of emotions (Condon, Wilson-Mendenhall, & Barrett, 2014), then we can hypothesize that even prototypically negative emotions can be experienced as positive (e.g., positive fear, or conversely, negative happiness; see also Wilson-Mendenhall, Barrett, & Barsalou, 2014). So guilt isn't necessarily negative, even though our prototypical conceptualization of guilt is that it's negative.  That is to say that guilt is not made up of a specific and consistent set of experiences, behaviors, and cognitions. Instead, it's a heterogeneous category that can include negative or positive experiences--depending on how the individual constructs his or her affective experience.  The photo below (taken from Condon et al., 2014) shows how fear might be conceptualized as either negative or positive--and perhaps you can extrapolate from there how guilt might be similar.

By the way, the fruit category is meant to show a continuum of typical-atypical fruit examples (orange-olive), which perhaps helps to clarify the idea of typical-atypical fear (and guilt).

EDIT: To be clear, fear tends to be conceptualized as a negative emotion involving anticipation of a negative event in the future (e.g., a snake will bite me).  Guilt tends to be conceptualized as a negative emotion about a negative past event for which you feel personally responsible.  In this case, I'm using fear to describe the continuum of typical vs. atypical emotions, but note that guilt will have a different continuum.


Is eye movement important with eyes-closed EMDR therapy? Original EMDR therapy involved a subject with open eyes tracking a target that moves side to side.

It is now common for EMDR to use devices like electronic "tappers" to alternately stimulate the left and right sides of the subject's body, leaving the subject free to close his eyes and engage in visualizations related to the trauma being treated.

In general, during wakeful visualizations with my eyes closed I often move my eyes in a manner similar to REM sleep.  I have tried a few sessions of EMDR and found it to be uncannily effective.  During closed-eye EMDR I sometimes find myself engaging in REM based on my visualizations, and other times find my eyes moving side to side in synchrony with the "tappers."

My question: Are there any studies or theories that suggest eye movement in closed-eye EMDR is relevant to the efficacy of the therapy?  E.g., does it matter whether the closed eyes move side to side if there is some other bilateral stimulation?

The state of the art in EMDR research (if not yet in practice) supports a "working memory" (WM) explanation of the therapy that does not support earlier "bilateral stimulation" hypotheses of the method.  A particularly salient summary from M.A. van den Hout et al. in Behaviour Research and Therapy 49 (2011) p.93:

  Traditionally, during EMDR, eyes are moved horizontally. In line with
  the WM account, but in contrast to original explanations, moving eyes
  vertically is equally effective (Gunter & Bodner, 2008). Crucially,
  the same effects occur if WM is taxed during recall with
  non-eye-movement secondary tasks, like listening to a series of
  non-words (auditory shadowing; Gunter & Bodner, 2008), drawing a
  complex figure (Gunter & Bodner, 2008), or counting (Engelhard, van
  den Hout, & Smeets, 2011; van den Hout et al., 2010; Kemps & Tiggemann,
  2007). Tasks that are presumably hardly taxing, like simple finger
  tapping, do not have beneficial effects (van den Hout et al., 2001),
  while more complex tapping does (Andrade et al., 1997). Likewise,
  activating memories about a previously seen trauma film while playing
  taxing computer game reduced flashbacks in the week afterwards
  (Holmes, James, Coode-Bate, & Deeprose, 2009).

This was backed up by correspondence with one of the authors who confirmed that in all their research protocols going back to at least 2000 research subjects must keep their eyes open so the researchers can confirm compliance.  They have no evidence this reduces the effectiveness.  In fact, the WM model suggests this should improve the effectiveness of the therapy vs. allowing subjects to close their eyes.


A definition of hatred towards your own nation There are such things as xenophobia, nationalism, etc. In other words, various forms of hating and diminishing the foreign and the foreigners.

My question is, is there a term meaning hatred and disparagement towards your own people or culture? Some kind of your-own-nation-phobia?

I don't mean xenophilia, because that's affection towards foreign, it doesn't mean hatred towards your own. I mean exactly hatred towards your own people/nation/culture/etc.

EDIT1: Just one of the examples of how this phenomena may work. An international conference. A person from, say, Russia, talks to a group people from various countries. Suddenly, another Russian joins the group. Our hero realizes that (either he knew that that person was a Russian beforehand or reads that on their badge) and an anger and disgust start boiling within him. He starts to be prejudiced and a bit aggressive towards his compatriot because that person is his compatriot.

The word "Oikophobia" has several different definitions.  In psychology, it usually means an aversion to home surroundings, or to objects in the home.  However, the British philosopher Roger Scruton coined a new meaning, which is exactly what you are looking for:

  The disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours'.
  -  Roger Scruton, quoted on Urban Dictionary

Wikipedia has a more detailed description of the term:

  Scruton uses the term as the antithesis of xenophobia. In his book, Roger Scruton: Philosopher on Dover Beach, Mark Dooley describes oikophobia as centered within the Western academic establishment on "both the common culture of the West, and the old educational curriculum that sought to transmit its humane values." This disposition has grown out of, for example, the writings of Jacques Derrida and of Michel Foucault's "assault on 'bourgeois' society result[ing] in an 'anti-culture' that took direct aim at holy and sacred things, condemning and repudiating them as oppressive and power-ridden."

  "Derrida is a classic oikophobe in so far as he repudiates the longing for home that the Western theological, legal, and literary traditions satisfy. . . . Derrida's deconstruction seeks to block the path to this 'core experience' of membership, preferring instead a rootless existence founded 'upon nothing.'"

  An extreme aversion to the sacred and the thwarting of the connection of the sacred to the culture of the West is described as the underlying motif of oikophobia; and not the substitution of Judeo-Christianity by another coherent system of belief. The paradox of the oikophobe seems to be that any opposition directed at the theological and cultural tradition of the West is to be encouraged even if it is "significantly more parochial, exclusivist, patriarchal, and ethnocentric."  Scruton described "a chronic form of oikophobia [which] has spread through the American universities, in the guise of political correctness."

  Scruton's usage has been taken up by some American political commentators to refer to what they see as a rejection of traditional American culture by the liberal elite. In August 2010 James Taranto wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal entitled Oikophobia, Why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting in which he criticized supporters of the proposed Islamic center in New York as oikophobes who were defending Muslims who aimed to "exploit the 9/11 atrocity".
  -  Wikipedia


How technical can cognitive science get during a Master's? Nice to find this resource on the internet, I’m in need of advice from knowledgeable people in the field regarding the choice of CogSci Master’s program.

My situation is that I have an undergraduate degree (like a B.A.) in psychology, a major which I never really enjoyed because:

Psychology as a "survey science" is not interesting to me.
Theoretically, psychology is a mess, too much "pop science", not enough clarification of the issues.
I’m not enough adequate/motivated enough to perform in the kind of work psychologists do in clinical, educational or organizational settings.

Anyway, now that i'm done with undergrad, and I found out about CogSci as a parallel-associated-updated field which deals with psychology from a computational basis. I would like to get in a masters where the training in analytical methods, be it computational modeling, statistical analysis or other kinds, is good enough, to have new professional horizons closer to what a computer scientist does.

My current interests are cognitive robotics, behavioral operations management and cognitive economics through as I said mathematical and other analytical methods, which end up having to with Applied Cognitive Science

Given that during my BA I didn't train myself in mathematics enough, would CogSci help develop the relevant skills and change my career perspectives? What programs would you recommend which are strong in this sense?

Cognitive science graduate programs are quite diverse, reflecting the diverse interdisciplinary nature of the field. There will be some mix of psychology, computer science, neuroscience, and possibly philosophy, linguistics, and education. Individual programs differ in the relative proportions of those components, which then determines how much technical/computational background is needed and how much is taught. That said, because many people come to cognitive science from psychology, it is fairly common for first year students to be inclined to computational/quantitative approaches but not necessarily trained in those techniques -- in many cases, that's the point of the graduate program. If you haven't already, I recommend checking out the Cognitive Science Society's Study page.

Regarding career paths, CogSci programs tend to be academically-oriented PhD programs. That is, training students to do basic research and to be professors. Of course, many students choose other paths, but few programs specifically prepare them for those other paths. One exception is the Drexel University Applied Cognitive and Brain Sciences program (full disclosure: I'm faculty in that program). We emphasize quantitative training with classes on computational cognitive modeling (Bayesian and PDP models) and statistical tools beyond the core behavioral science statistical methods (multilevel regression, Bayesian statistics, analysis of neuroimaging data, data mining). Our goal is to prepare students for careers in both academia and industry. The Masters program is based on essentially the same coursework as our PhD program.


What determines whether sensitization or desensitization occurs? I am familiar with desensitization. For example, if you are afraid of driving, driving every day will eventually reduce your fear, desensitizing you.

But today I came across another concept, that of sensitization.  I looked up the wiki article on Sensitization, which says at the end,

  Sensitization may also contribute to psychological disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, panic anxiety and mood disorders.

So which is it then? What determines whether repeated exposure to something sensitizes someone or desensitizes them? With the example of PTSD, for instance, should not repeated exposure to war actually desensitize people?

I searched google scholar but could not find a paper that discusses both sensitization and desensitization.  Mostly discuss the latter, in terms of reducing fears.

Appreciate any references or books that might help me understand this.

Thanks you.

The terminology in this area can be a source of confusion because sensitization is not usually meant as the opposite of desensitization but of habituation. E.g., Blumstein (2016)

  People have written about habituation, a process that leads to decreased responsiveness to a stimulus, as
  well as its counterpart, sensitization, or an increased responsiveness to a stimulus, for over 2000 years.

So what's desensitization then? Well...

Systematic desensitization is basically an extinction procedure for (assumed) previously conditioned stimuli:

  Behavior therapy employs interventions based on classical and operant conditioning. An early example is Wolpe’s (1954) systematic desensitization in which patients are taught progressive relaxation techniques and then are systematically exposed to stimuli that elicit fear while in a relaxed state. Because the relaxation response is incompatible with anxiety, it weakens the learned association between a stimulus and an anxiety response.

And desensitization is often taken to mean the roughly the same as the systematic one, e.g. Clay (2007):

  Desensitization is generally described as a process by which the active pairing of a positive reinforcer with a negative event causes the negative event to slowly lose its ability to adversely influence behavior (Chance, P., 2003). This active process is also called counter-conditioning. Systematic desensitization has been used successfully to treat human phobias, such as fear of flying, fear of public speaking, and fear of spiders, and has also been used to reduce the intensity of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in veterans of the Vietnam War (Chance, P., 2003). For animals, a similarly competing response could be eating. Using competing responses to interfere with a fearful response is an integral part of the systematic desensitization process as defined by Wolpe (1958, as cited by Callen, E.J., & Boyd, T.L., 1990).

To add to this confusion, some mean by sensitization only the conditioned version, e.g.

  Sensitization occurs when a reaction to a stimulus causes an increased reaction to a second stimulus. It is essentially an exaggerated startle response and is often seen in trauma survivors.

But this is actually not that wrong, because unlike for habituation, it's hard to come up with many examples of unconditioned sensitization, e.g. what does Blumstein give (for both)?

  Habituation is a process that leads to decreased responsiveness
  to a stimulus with repeated presentation and is often adaptive in
  that it makes it less likely that individuals will respond to harmless
  stimuli. Found throughout the animal kingdom, some plants have
  also been shown to habituate (Jensen, Dill, & Cahill, 2011). However,
  habituation may also have consequences. Aesop recognized
  the consequences of habitation 2500 years ago when he noted that
  the boy who cried wolf would ultimately be ignored when he
  needed help to fend off a real wolf.

  Habituation's counterpart is sensitization--the increased
  responsiveness to a stimulus with repeated presentation. Sensitization
  may be adaptive if it helps animals avoid potentially risky or
  costly situations. Being sensitized to the sound of bees may help
  elephants avoid getting their sensitive trunks stung (sensu King,
  Douglas-Hamilton, & Vollrath, 2007), and may help allergic
  humans avoid an anaphylactic reaction. But it too may be costly. For
  instance, while drug addiction is usually thought to involve some
  degree of tolerance to drugs, indeed, it also involves sensitized
  responses that can be used diagnostically because greater salience
  is attached to the drugs and drug-associated cues (Steketee &
  Kalivas, 2011). Living without risk is impossible (Sagarin et al.,
  2010), and the public may become sensitized to real or manufactured
  threats repeated by the press (e.g. consider the U.S. government
  assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or the
  American response to Ebola cases being treated in the United States
  in September--November 2014). Over-reacting to risk can lead to
  costly foreign policy mis-steps and costly public health responses.

Somewhat more interesting examples are given by Çevik (2014)

  The signal value of a stimulus is correlated with its potential to support responsiveness, which for a given set of physical parameters depends largely on the history of non-associative learning, i.e., habituation and sensitization for the stimulus. Habituation refers to the reduction in the probability or amplitude of responding that is observed upon inconsequential stimulus repetition. For example, repeated delivery of an odor at constant inter-stimulus-intervals (ISI) would eventually lead to the habituation of the response that is initially triggered by the odor. I say eventually, because depending on the parameters of the stimulation protocol (e.g., odor concentration, frequency of odor presentation), a temporary increment in responsiveness might initially be observed. If, however, an appetitive gustatory stimulus (e.g., sugar) is repeated with the same ISI, depending again on the concentration of sugar, frequency of stimulation, and the physiological state of the organism, this protocol is likely to result in an increment in the probability of responding, i.e., sensitization. Finally if odor and sugar are paired instead of being presented separately, the standard paradigm for Pavlovian conditioning would ensue, where the two stimuli would now be termed conditioned (CS) and unconditioned stimuli (US), respectively. Hence, associative learning can be suggested to entail an evasion from habituation for the CS as it signals the arrival of a sensitizing event, the US, and a conditioned response (CR) would then be triggered during the CS in anticipation of the US.

And he actually proposes some general rules:

  habituation might be the default fate for most stimuli in the absence of top-down modulation (although see Horn and Hinde, 1970 for examples of non-habituating reflexes). [...]

  the likelihood of habituation, i.e., the inability of a perceivable stimulus to control behavior is higher for distal stimuli, whereas the likelihood of sensitization is higher for stimuli that come into direct contact with the body to activate gustatory and/or mechanoreceptors.

Although his rules are derived from research on flies.

The wiki sensitization page you mention doesn't talk of PTSD as far as I can tell.

From what I know of PTSD research in this area, it involves conditioned stimuli, e.g. a fairly cited paper in this line, Orr et al.:

  Differential conditioning was assessed in 15 medication-free individuals meeting Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) criteria for chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and 18 trauma-exposed individuals who never developed PTSD (non-PTSD). Conditioned stimuli (CSs) were colored circles, and the unconditioned stimulus was a "highly annoying" electrical stimulus. Individuals with PTSD had higher resting heart rate (HR) and skin conductance (SC) levels and produced larger SC orienting responses. During conditioning, the PTSD group showed larger differential SC, HR, and electromyogram responses to the reinforced vs. nonreinforced stimuli (CS+ vs. CS-) compared with the non-PTSD group. Only PTSD participants continued to show differential SC responses to CS+ vs. CS- during extinction trials. Results suggest that individuals with PTSD have higher sympathetic nervous system arousal at the time of conditioning and are more conditionable than trauma-exposed individuals without PTSD.

In that paper, PTSD patients were harder to de-condition or "desensitize" to use your terminology (see the sentence about extinction in the abstract I quoted above); PTSD patients also showed increased responses (compared to controls) to conditioned stimuli after conditioning took place, although as far as I can tell they were not easier to "sensitize"/condition, at least in that experiment.

The interaction between conditioned and unconditioned exposures to a stressful stimulus is fairly complex (even in animal [models]) and assumed to be of importance in PTSD. It's been known for a long time (Rescorla, 1974) that giving stronger unconditioned footshocks to rats increases their conditioned response to moderate footshock. So this is a kind of sensitization when conditional and unconditional effects interact. A more recent line of work on this interaction:

  Rats presented with a single session of repeated
  painful footshocks normally express a robust and persistent
  associative fear of the training context (Gale et al., 2004; Poulos
  et al., 2009), whereas subsequent new fear learning to a single
  footshock of the same intensity becomes sensitized to a newly
  trained context or a tone (Rau et al., 2005). We call this phenomenon
  stress-enhanced fear learning (SEFL). Pharmacologically
  induced (NMDA antagonism) and naturally occurring (preweaned
  pups) amnesia of the repeated footshock context fail to disrupt this
  sensitized fear learning (Rau et al., 2005; Long & Fanselow, 2012;
  Poulos et al., 2013). These results suggest that prior exposure to a
  repeated footshock stress, independent of a contextual fear memory,
  enhances subsequent fear learning when footshock intensity is
  held constant. Further evidence that stress influences future learning
  and does not produce its effect by generalization between the
  stress and conditioning contexts is that SEFL only occurs when the
  stress occurs prior to the one-trial fear conditioning (Rau et al.,
  2005). [...]

  SEFL would be a particularly problematic component of posttrauma behavior if intense
  stress results in substantial fear conditioning under conditions that would not normally support conditioning.
  Therefore, we determined if SEFL occurred when the conditioning shock was substantially
  milder than the SEFL-inducing shock. The results indicate that exposure to a sensitizing regimen of shock
  can convert a mild footshock that normally does not support measurable levels of fear conditioning into
  one that causes substantial learned fear. Moreover, as the intensity of single footshock increases, so does
  the capacity of the prior stressor to contribute to the sensitization of fear responses.


Canonical Literature for "Big 5" Personality Theory I'm searching for a good reference on "Big 5" personality theory that explains the topic in detail beyond the level of a website. I am hoping to get a pointer to some of the "canonical" literature--i.e. the standard papers/texts/etc. where Big 5 and its connection to factor analysis are presented rigorously.

I would also love a pointer to literature which discusses the psychometric theory underlying the typical Big 5 tests.

I quite like Saucier & Srivastava (2015). They provide a very nice overview of the evidence for different trait models. They give you a good overview of how factor analysis and lexical studies relate to the Big 5.

You can see my own attempt at providing a primer on the Big 5 and trait measurement at Anglim & O'Connor, 2018. You could look at some of the following key references from that paper:

  ... the most influential basis for a Big Five came from Goldberg (1981, 1990) who conducted factor analyses on comprehensive sets of trait adjectives. Over multiple studies Goldberg found support for the “Big Five” factors of personality. Strong support for a five-factor model was also obtained in various studies by McCrae and Costa (1987) who repeatedly found five dimensions across instruments and observers (self and peer- reports). On balance, lexical studies along with studies using large questionnaires tend to support the idea that personality can broadly be described using the Big Five dimensions of personality (Condon, 2017; Costa & McCrae, 1995; Markon, Krueger, & Watson, 2005).

References

Anglim, J., & O'Connor, P. (2018). Measurement and Research Using the Big Five, HEXACO, and Narrow Traits: A Primer for Researchers and Practitioners. Australian Journal of Psychology. https://psyarxiv.com/a78g2/download
Saucier, G., & Srivastava, S. (2015). What makes a good structural model of personality? Evaluating the Big Five and alternatives. Handbook of personality and social psychology, 3, 283-305. http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~sanjay/pubs/structmodpersonality.pdf