Neural oscillations and activity patterns Both single neurons and groups of neurons can generate oscillatory activity spontaneously. In addition, they may show oscillatory responses to perceptual input or motor output. Even memory and thinking is associated with these neural oscillations.
My question is, are these nerve responses always oscillatory in nature? Or do we find patterns in the firing of neurons (action potentials) or in the postsynaptic potentials which are truly chaotic and do not fall under any oscillatory patterns? Or is it that because of the vast amount of inter connections between neurons as well as different sections of brain, synchronous behaviour always pops us?

Frequency analysis
All time-varying signals can be decomposed into the frequency domain, e.g. using the Fourier transform. This is a common technique for analyzing brain signals, e.g. from EEG.
However, doing this transform does not mean that the underlying signals are oscillatory in nature. Even if we talk about power in some particular frequency band, that does not mean we are talking about an oscillation at that frequency. Event-related potentials are often analyzed in the time domain, but nothing would stop you from analyzing them in the frequency domain.
Packets vs oscillations
When you write "memory and thinking is associated with these neural oscillations", this can be true of frequency analyses but yet not really related to oscillations. Artur Luczak and Ken Harris have argued for evidence of "packet-based" communication in neocortex (see for example their Luczak et al 2015 review). Effectively these are bursts of activity lasting on the order of 100-100s of milliseconds. They've shown that in anesthetized states these "packets" are revealed in a slow "oscillatory" power in the EEG/LFP, which makes sense: if you have a bunch of events that last 100-100s of milliseconds, you're going to find power in the low frequency bands. However, these are not oscillations. They are discrete events. In the wake state, the same events happen, but because there are no gaps between them, you don't see an oscillation in the EEG.
More generally, this is true of any events in frequency analysis. If you add a bunch of events lasting, say, 50 milliseconds to a white noise signal, you will see an increase in power in the vicinity of 10 Hz. They need not oscillate at all.
Separating oscillations from 'power law' power-frequency relationships
Some researchers have argued that we should be more aware of evidence for and against true "oscillations" when analyzing EEG. From Donoghue et al 2020:

Following historical traditions, the vast majority of the studies examining oscillations rely on canonical frequency bands, which are approximately defined as: infraslow (<0.1 Hz), delta (1–4 Hz), theta (4–8 Hz), alpha (8–12 Hz), beta (12–30 Hz), low gamma (30–60 Hz), high-frequency activity (60–250 Hz) and fast ripples (200–400 Hz). Although most of these bands are often described as oscillations, standard approaches fail to assess whether an oscillation—meaning rhythmic activity within a narrowband frequency range—is truly present (Fig. 1a,b).

They recommend analyzing frequency-domain signals in terms of the broadband power (dominated by the lowest frequencies), the exponent of power decay with frequency (neural signals are typically in the range of 1/f or 1/f^2, but this easily generalizes to 1/f^a), and then isolating evidence for actual oscillations that deviate from these parametric fits (linear in log-log space):

In this figure, you would only identify an oscillation in the alpha 8-12 Hz range. All of the rest of the power spectrum derives from non-oscillatory time-varying neuronal activity, which still has some detectable frequency structure.
Power-law brain activity, criticality, and chaos
Another area of emphasis in the analysis of brain signals is the idea of criticality, in particular work by John Beggs. Criticality is the border between chaotic and organized (oscillatory) activity. A prediction of this theory is exactly the power-law decay with frequency (1/f^a) described above. This scheme refers to "neuronal avalanches" which are events of synchronized neural activity that share some features with the "packets" of Luczak and Harris. Waking brains tend to be near this critical point, whereas during sleep there is much more oscillatory organization and the brain is further from critical. Although criticality can be described as "near chaos", I think it's important to recognize that it is not chaos, no matter how complicated it is. It's still quite organized, just organized in a way that optimizes information processing. Oscillations that are too organized have little capacity to transmit information (consider the information transmission limitations of radio bands that humans use for television, radio, and cell phones, for example).

Beggs, J. M. (2008). The criticality hypothesis: how local cortical networks might optimize information processing. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 366(1864), 329-343.
Donoghue, T., Haller, M., Peterson, E. J., Varma, P., Sebastian, P., Gao, R., ... & Voytek, B. (2020). Parameterizing neural power spectra into periodic and aperiodic components. Nature neuroscience, 23(12), 1655-1665.
Luczak, A., McNaughton, B. L., & Harris, K. D. (2015). Packet-based communication in the cortex. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(12), 745-755.


Difference between anxiety and stress? I am learning about stress and anxiety recently. I understood what stress is, but I couldn't get exactly what anxiety is. I know there are six types of anxiety disorders, and I understood them. But anxiety is a widely-known term used a lot on the internet, but I don't know what exactly they mean by that.

One difference I came across is that the stress after the stressor is gone is known as anxiety.
So if someone can tell me what exactly this anxiety is, I will be glad.
Thanks.

What is Anxiety?
Give this a read.
I like this explanation of anxiety best, however:

  A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.

What is Stress?
Give this a read also.
For an explanation of stress as it pertains to your question, I like this best:

  A state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances.

How do the two differ? One can cause the other.
Give this a read.
Ultimately, stress can lead to anxiety, meaning that mental or emotional strain can lead to a general sense of fear toward imminent events with uncertain outcomes.

Furthermore, everything we experience in our lives where we feel discomfort can be described as stress or stressful, but it's not until it leads to an immobilizing state where we cannot process the world around us – e.g., inability to move, speak or think because of an onset of fear caused, typically, by an interpretation of a previous event where the outcome was too painful, or in other ways emotionally damaging, that one might then attribute said stress to be anxiety.


Episodic-memory amnesia preserving fear conditioning Are there any experiments in humans where despite episodic-memory amnesia they still preserve (associative) fear conditioning developed during the episode/event that is lost from episodic memory?

I'm hoping maybe it was tested in someone like Henry Molaison whether someone could develop fear conditioning but not remember how they've got it, i.e. a form of source amnesia but for [fear] conditioning rather than the usual notion of source amnesia for some [declarative memory] knowledge.

Wikipedia does mention that:

  Experiments involving repetition priming underscored Molaison's ability to acquire implicit (non-conscious) memories, in contrast to his inability to acquire new explicit semantic and episodic memories (Corkin, 2002).

However, looking myself at that paper, it seems all experiments (mentioned there) were done with semantic priming rather any form of affective priming.

As a sort of partial answer, but since it's too much to add to the question itself... a more encompassing question would be whether fear conditioning can occur without awareness of the conditioning event happening at all. I suppose an affirmative answer to the latter implies the answer is also "yes" to my question because forgetting the association event doesn't seem any more restrictive than not learning (into episodic memory) about it in the first place.

However, the jury seems to still be out on whether unaware conditioning can happen in humans. Some initial (and highly cited) studies answered the question affirmatively, but later studies cast doubt on the results because the level of awareness for the stimuli used seem to vary with the individual. (In other words, there was heterogeneity in awereness in the original studies; for a completely different reason, I've looked into what happens in such a case and asked what the phenomenon is called on cross-validated, but with not very satisfying answers insofar) From a 2005 review by Pessoa, which summarized the research up to then:

  Does the processing of emotional stimuli depend upon awareness?
  Two influential neuroimaging papers, both of which
  appeared in 1998, reported that responses in the human
  amygdala occur in the absence of visual awareness.
  Awareness was manipulated by employing backward
  masking, as introduced by Esteves and Ohman in
  a behavioural paradigm. In one study, fearful faces were
  shown for 33 ms and were immediately replaced by a
  neutral ‘mask’ face that was presented for 167 ms.
  Subjects were naive as to the stimulus conditions, which
  included masked fearful and masked happy faces. Stronger
  responses were observed in response to fearful rather
  than happy faces (both masked by neutral faces), even
  though, upon subsequent debriefing, subjects did not
  report seeing any emotional faces. In another study,
  Morris et al. combined backward masking with classical
  conditioning to investigate responses to perceived
  and non-perceived angry faces. Although the participants
  did not report seeing the masked angry stimuli (angry
  faces were shown for 30 ms and followed by a neutral
  mask that was shown for 45 ms), the contrast of conditioned
  and non-conditioned masked angry faces activated
  the right amygdala. Recent studies have also gathered
  evidence for unaware processing by the amygdala For instance, Glascher and
  Adolphs showed that in normal controls, but not in
  patients with amygdala lesions, arousal ratings correlated
  with skin conductance responses for both subliminal
  (unaware) and supraliminal (aware) conditions (see Glossary).
  Together with the important earlier work by
  Ohman and colleagues, these results have strengthened
  the view that emotional processing occurs independently
  of conscious awareness. In general, a
  stimulus that is shown for about 30 ms before masking
  is considered to be at the ‘threshold’ for awareness.

  However, a recent study by Phillips et al. did not
  observe any response in the amygdala during unaware
  conditions. The authors compared aware conditions, in
  which target faces (fearful or disgusted) were shown for
  170 ms and followed by a mask that was shown for 100 ms,
  with unaware conditions, in which target faces were
  shown for 30 ms and, again, followed by a mask that
  was shown for 100 ms. Unlike prior studies, however,
  no differential responses were observed in the amygdala
  in association with fearful faces in the unaware condition
  (or in the anterior insula for unaware disgusted faces).

  A crucial issue in the assessment of awareness is the
  criteria used to determine whether a participant is aware
  or unaware of a stimulus. According to ‘objective’
  criteria, unaware perception occurs when a subject’s
  performance in a ‘forced-choice’ task is at chance. Under
  such conditions, behavioral effects of unaware stimuli
  (e.g. faster reaction time to undetected fearful faces),
  as well as the associated fMRI signals, constitute correlates
  of unaware perception. According to ‘subjective’
  criteria, unaware perception occurs when subjects report
  that they are unable to perform the task better than by
  chance (independent of their actual objective performance).
  Although some of the previous studies used
  forced-choice objective methods, they did not assess
  performance in a manner that is independent of response
  bias on an individual-by-individual basis [...]. This is important because in the face of weak, noisy signals, subjects might indicate that they do not detect
  target stimuli and thus appear to be unable to detect them
  reliably. A recent behavioral study by Pessoa et al.
  addressed these issues by analyzing performance by way
  of signal detection methods. The authors varied the
  duration (17, 33 and 83 ms) of which a target face (fearful,
  happy or neutral) was shown before being immediately
  replaced by a neutral-face mask (which was shown for
  116, 100, and 50 ms, respectively, such that the target plus
  mask lasted 133 ms in each case). The subject’s task was
  to report explicitly whether or not a fearful face was
  presented in each trial, and also to rate their confidence
  in this decision. Although some subjects only reliably
  detected the fearful targets that were shown for 83 ms,
  36% of the participants were able to detect both the 33 ms
  and 83 ms targets. Remarkably, some subjects could even
  detect fearful faces that were shown for 17 ms before
  masking. These results demonstrated that participants
  differ widely in their sensitivity to fearful faces (Figure 1).
  Moreover, the results revealed that even very brief
  (17 ms) stimuli can be incompletely masked, consistent
  with another recent study [Maxwell and Davidson]. The findings by Pessoa
  et al. also raise the possibility that the discrepancy
  between the results of Phillips et al. nd those of
  prior studies might be caused, at least in part, by variability
  in sensitivity among individuals, which may be
  related to anxiety levels.

I'm not sure if there's a more recent review than this perhaps with different conclusions following newer experiments. The fact that the review was written by someone who also contributed primary research in the "cast doubt" direction casts a little doubt (in my mind) on its objectivity... But the above surely illustrates the difficulty in conducting studies related to awareness.


Thinking, Fast and Slow vs. Mindfulness vs. Flow I've been wondering how dual-process theory, which is described in Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking, Fast and Slow", relates to mindfulness and the state of being in the present moment and the flow experiences coined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.

Dual-process theory describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts, as described on Wikipedia:

  System 1: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic,    subconscious
  System 2: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical,    calculating, conscious

Mindfulness is defined on Wikipedia as follows:

  Mindfulness is "the intentional, accepting and non-judgmental focus of
  one's attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in
  the present moment", which can be trained by meditational practices.

The flow or zone experiences, on the other hand, are defined as follows:

  In positive psychology, flow, also known as zone, is the mental state
  of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully
  immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and
  enjoyment in the process of the activity.

How do these relate? Do they overlap, mutually exclude each other or are the same thing or can exist at the same time independently?

Are there any brain studies that would compare the brain's response under each of those states?

Short answer: Dual-process, mindfulness and flow theory are related by way of attention theory. Two previous posts that may be of interest are "What is the relation between concepts, constructs and measures?" and "How can we realize when a sociological question is impossible to answer?".
Commensurability
This is an apt example of what Thomas Kuhn would have called a question of commensurability.  In normal terms, commensurability means the extent to which we can or cannot talk about two or more theories within a common framework, while incommensurability is a fancy way of saying we're comparing apples to farming equipment or dress shirts. In order for two theories in the cognitive sciences to be commensurable, they generally need to satisfy two criteria:

A common conceptual denominator.
At least one common construct.

If they satisfy these, then can look for comparable ways of operationalizing and measuring these comparable constructs that can be related to the common concept. In other words, two theories are comparable if they are conceptually related AND conceive of this concept in some at least partially related way.
Dual-process, mindfulness and flow theory: commensurable?
In this case, there is a clear common conceptual denominator, and that is attention, although they differ in how they express that denominator. For Kahneman and Tversky, there is a generalized resource allocation mechanism which produces qualitatively different modes of thinking; for mindfulness, there exists a discrete mental state partly characterized by a particular attentional pattern; for flow theory, there exists another discrete mental state partly characterized by another attentional pattern.
We can therefore talk about these theories in principle, although how effective our ability to do so turns out to be will depend on the merits of the underlying theory of attention. For example, it is meaningful to ask whether meditational practice involves fast or slow thinking, or whether flow states may be considered a form of meditation, and so forth, but only insofar as we can state those questions in terms of a third (attentional) theory. If one of the theories had assumed that attention was infinite, for example, it would be incommensurable with the other two.
Concluding remarks
A direct three-way comparison of these theories does not exist in the literature. It is possible that someone has directly related one theory to the other for each combination of theories, but it would take three fairly extensive literature searches (dual-process/mindfulness, dual-process/flow, mindfulness/flow). Even if these comparisons actually exist, summarizing them all would almost certainly be beyond the scope of a single SE answer, so I will leave it at this generalized answer.
I think your question about whether these theories are related by neuroimaging evidence is a good intuition, but establishing that similar brain areas are involved in the same behavior does not provide evidence that these are the same, because brain function is dynamic and areas therefore 'have' many functions. It's not just about what areas are active, but also when they are active, in what order they are active, the exact quality of the activity and where the areas are getting input from and sending output to.


To what extent is time to complete an intelligence test incorporated into the IQ score? In this previous question on scoring IQ tests the OP asked about the effect of speed of test, but it was a bit peripheral to the core question. So I thought I'd ask it as a separate question.
To slightly rephrase the question:

  "If the speed with which a test is completed sometimes
  affects the IQ score, surely for identical test scores where one is
  completed in 10 minutes and another in 30 minutes should affect the
  IQ score."

So the question:

To what extent is time to complete an intelligence test incorporated into the IQ score?

I'm not familiar with all tests out there, but I'll give an example from the fourth revision of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-IV), one of the more popular tests.

The time to complete the whole test does not matter (as long as you complete it in one go without long breaks). Usually testing takes between one and two hours, but if you test very old and frail persons, you might even administer parts of the test on different days.

I have not heard of any IQ test that has an overall time limit for the whole test (which does not mean that there is none). In my opinion that would not work for a paper and pencil test, because there are breaks between subtests where the test administrator gives the instructions for the next subtest, and short breaks where the administrator reads out the questions for individual items of a subtest. Thus, the overall time would depend not only on the test subject, but on the administrator of the test as well. In a computer administered test, it would be possible to measure the time used to solve the questions accurately, but, as I said, I don't know of such an IQ test.

In the WAIS-IV, many subtests have a time limit. For example there is one subtest where you have to mark certain geometrical forms (e.g. a yellow triangle) on a page filled with many different tiny geometric forms. Obviously, given enough time, everybody would be able to complete that subtest without errors. But you have a limited time in which you have to find as many of the specific forms as you can. There are enough forms that no-one can finish that page in the given time. So the number of forms you find and the number of errors you make are your score for this subtest. Other intelligence tests have similar time limits for certain subtests.


Can a depressed person experience the sense of happiness? Has anyone every truly lost their sense of happiness or maybe love? I realize a negative condition like depression can make it seem like it is only possible for one to be sad.  Is it possible for depressed people to evoke the emotion of happiness within themselves?

For example, can depressed people recall the feeling of happiness by remembering a time when they were happy or thinking of something they enjoy?

My understanding is that if happiness can be evoked even once then they haven't lost the sense of it and maybe they can be trained to evoke it whenever by focusing on what is positive instead of what is negative. Much harder than it sounds I realize, you have to first believe you CAN be happy but I guess I am just asking if anyone lost happiness permanently, maybe through brain damage, or was born without it.

Depression is characterized by emotion dysregulation (e.g., Joormann & Vanderlind, 2014).  This means that depressed patients have difficulties decreasing (downregulating) their negative affect and increasing (upregulating) their positive affect.  This may be a consequence of cognitive distortions and deficits (Joormann & Vanderlind, 2014) as well as maladaptive emotion goals (e.g., the goal to increase/maintain negative affect; Millgram, Joormann, Huppert, & Tamir, 2015).

Many kinds of therapies seek to improve (directly or indirectly) the ways depressed patients regulate their emotions, including cognitive-behavioral therapy (Beck, 2011) and cognitive bias modification (Hallion & Ruscio, 2011), which includes memory therapeutics (e.g., aiding recall of positive autobiographical memories or reducing the impact of negative memories; Dalgleish & Werner-Seidler, 2014) and attention training (e.g., Papageorgiou & Wells, 2000).

These therapies are effective/efficacious at reducing the cognitive deficits associated with depression and thus facilitate more adaptive emotion regulation (i.e., less rumination, more positive reappraisal, more self-distancing). This leads to improved mood (decreased negative affect, increased positive affect;  e.g., Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schweizer, 2010).

So, yes, depressed patients can experience happiness via establishment of more adaptive emotion regulation skills. Moreover, positive affect is associated with activation of many different brain regions (Lindquist et al., 2015), which makes it unlikely that depressed patients have a total inability to experience happiness.

Interestingly, positive memory recall may not be effective for depressed patients as a short-term mood repair strategy.  In fact, it may make them feel even worse (Joormann, Siemer, & Gotlib, 2007). Depressed patients may not find positive memories to be intrinsically rewarding, perhaps due to processing disfluency and/or dysfunctional reward circuitry (Chen, Takahashi, & Yang, 2015).


Nobel Prize in Cognitive Science What is the highest award for rewarding someone in cognitive sciences research/applications?

To the best of my knowledge, there is one and only one psychologist who received the Nobel prize: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman

The prize was awarded for economy.

So, it's possible for cognitive scientists to win the actual Nobel prize if his or her work is relevant to any of the Nobel prize categories.

Maybe there are other laureates whose work could be seen as cognitive science.


Can we explain the tendency of investors dollar cost averaging in terms of loss aversion? For those unfamiliar with the term Dollar cost averaging (DCA)

  is an investment strategy for reducing the
  impact of volatility on large purchases of financial assets such as
  equities. By dividing the total sum to be invested in the market (eg
  \$100,000) into equal amounts put into the market at regular intervals
  (eg \$1000 over 100 weeks), DCA reduces the risk of incurring a
  substantial loss resulting from investing the entire "lump sum" just
  before a fall in the market.

Dollar cost averaging appears to perform worse than lump sum investment. If this is the case, then why do a lot of people engage in dollar cost averaging instead of lump sump investment?

My own guess is that dollar cost averaging "allows you to sleep better" at night because the chances of making catastrophic losses are smaller than lump sum investments; in other words, loss aversion is at work here.

Am I right? In other words, I have two intertwined questions here

Does dollar cost averaging have a lesser chance of blowing up?
If yes, is this why people prefer it?

It seems that despite the idea's intuitive appeal, the evidence is currently mixed with respect to whether loss aversion can explain dollar cost averaging strategies. Most research I can find seems to be financial and normative, pertaining to whether the strategy performs well more than behavioral and descriptive concerns for why people engage in the strategy.

An uncommonly direct study of this exact question reported, in no uncertain terms, that we cannot explain the tendency of investors dollar cost averaging in terms of loss aversion (Leggio and Lien, 1995).

  Using prospect theory to create an alternative utility function that does not require investors to be strictly risk averse, we empirically test Statman’s conjecture for four investment strategies and for alternative stock investments. We find loss aversion still does not explain the existence of the dollar-cost averaging investment strategy.

Unfortunately, at least for our sense of certainty, this claim was challenged in a later study by Dicht and Drobetz (2011), which suggested the exact opposite: according to them, prospect theoretic can explain dollar cost averaging strategies with loss aversion within short time scales.

  Overall, our results indicate that the popularity of dollar cost averaging can be explained within the framework of the Tversky and Kahneman’s cumulative prospect theory, at least for short time horizons.

There seems to be a complex, time-dependent relationship between dollar cost averaging and loss aversion. It's plausible that loss aversion drives the tendency to engage in dollar cost averaging over particular time scales or for particular classes of investors, but ultimately, we don't have the evidence to say.

References

Leggio, K. B., & Lien, D. (2001). Does loss aversion explain dollar-cost averaging?. Financial Services Review, 10(1), 117-127.
Dichtl, H., & Drobetz, W. (2011). Dollar-cost averaging and prospect theory investors: An explanation for a popular investment strategy. Journal of Behavioral Finance, 12(1), 41-52.


What were the long-term effects on the participants of the Stanford Prison Experiment? It has been maintained by Dr. Philip Zimbardo that the experiment has had no long-term harm on the participants. However, one out of the 24 initial participants, who had suffered a breakdown within 36 hours of starting, later went on to become a prison psychologist and has been in the profession for at least 14 years.

While the experiment may not have had any "harm" on the participants, the fact that it had such a huge impact on one participant (as the person himself claims in the experiment documentary), calls into question the fact that how much did the experiment end up altering or affecting the participant's lives.

So, were long term effects (not just "harm") of the experiment tracked and documented by the team or anybody else? If tracked, has this been published at any point of time?

Secondly, in most of the popular literature and even on the official website, I do not find any discussion of the experiment in terms of long term effects. Are long-term effects of psychological studies on participants' not considered worth recording? Why?

I found this snippet from Quora: Whatever happened to the participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment?

"They performed extensive follow-ups by bringing all the subjects back individually or in groups over a period of the first year and then for the next ten years they have surveyed them by mail and phone and the consensus is that they did suffer during that week of the experiment, but they learned a great deal about themselves and about human nature that most of them say was quite valuable."

Perhaps within the first decade after the experiment they found constancy in how the participants were affected and felt there was no longer a need for further analysis / recording.


What is the difference between cognition and artificial intelligence in the context of robotics? A lot of research work is being conducted on artificial intelligence and robotics. Terms like cognitive robotics are used. What is the difference between cognitive robotics and artificial intelligence or are they the same?

The distinction isn't rigid, but it has to do with whether the program controlling the robot is designed to mimic the human mind in some way.

If the robot is a model of human cognition, then the term cognitive robotics is sometimes used. Artificial Intelligence is a general term for software that behaves in an intelligent manner. There are plenty of intelligent robots that are not thought to be models of how the human mind works, because they achieve their intelligent behavior in a manner that is inconsistent with what we know about cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.


Is it ethical to deliberately provide incorrect information to participants in a psychological study? I've noticed that several psychological studies purport to measure one thing, but once participants enroll, they end up measuring something completely different.

For example, I recently came across a study where participants were told that the study was meant to help create personalized nutrition and exercise programs. The participants were then given fake DNA test results and what was actually measured was their response to the placebo effect of the test results.

What are the ethics of this? Don't such studies make it less likely that people will enroll in such studies in future and degrade the scientific endeavor in general? Is there no way for psychology to make progress without lying to unwitting study-participants.

The whole point of these lies is to prevent participants from changing their answers because they want to please the researchers or convey their personal beliefs about a topic.

It is typical to inform participants about the true purpose at the end of the study if this is possible. Other times, studies use purposefully vague language in describing the purpose. The point is to provide enough informed consent for participants to agree to the bounds of what a study will ask of them.

All of these decisions about study design are reviewed by an Institutional Review Board that is in charge of research ethics at an institution. Yes, these sorts of lies are ethical.

As far as your specific example, how would you expect a study testing placebo effects to work if you started the study by telling the participants "This is a study about the placebo effect"? - knowing it is a placebo ruins the whole idea of the placebo effect.


What's the relation between firing of dopaminergic neurons and dopamine dispersion in terms of neurophysiological processes? Question: How does the firing of dopaminergic neurons affect the dispersal of dopamine?

Evidence of my limited familiarity with dopaminergic neurons and motivation for asking the question:
Most of what I know about dopamine and dopaminergic neurons comes from reading papers on reinforcement learning and its possible neuronal implementation. I was surprised to see that (if I've understood correctly) firing of dopamininergic neurons might encode an error signal like the one propagated in simple temporal-difference learning (like in Schultz et al. 1997), while dopamine itself seems not to be involved in such basic aspects of learning but instead in higher levels of hierarchical reinforcement learning, like constructing representations of the environment found in model-based RL to be used in executive functions and generalizing and applying learnt information in novel tasks. I suspect that firing of dopamininergic neurons affects the dispersion of dopamine , but I'm not sure if my suspicion is the result of a misunderstanding.

Hypothetical context for an answer in case the question is too broad:
I'm imagining a group of dopaminergic neurons, some with axons extending to some brain region A and others with axons extending to brain region B. Say the neurons with axons extending to brain region A fire more than the others. This means they will produce more dopamine, and I suspect more dopamine will be present in A, but I'm having trouble finding supporting evidence.

I've mostly figured it out now, and I've a better idea of the words and phrases I need to search to get the information I was asking for.

The short answer comes from wikipedia: "The neurons' somata produce the enzymes that synthesize dopamine, and they are then transmitted via the projecting axons to their synaptic destinations, where most of the dopamine is produced." The transmission is a direct result of the firing of the neuron, so DA is dispersed, in the areas where dopaminergic axons end, proportional to the firing of the neurons.

A more complete answer would involve an understanding of the difference between tonic and phasic transmission, for which this has proved an informative and accessible source.

The above sources support the suspicion I mentioned in the hypothetical context provided in the question.


If light travels at c, and the human nervous system's speed/perception speed<c, why aren't we not seeing or blind at some times? If light travels at c, and the human nervous system is a lot slower than light speed, therefore it would take a lot of time for us to process what we see, why aren't we blind to what's going around us because everything we see is slowly processed at an inferior speed (let the inferior speed be defined as is less than c--the speed of light)?

I think you are confusing speed with rate.  The speed of light is how long it take to for light to get from one point to another, not how often light "events" arrive at the eye.

To give an analogy, imagine a highway.  There are 500 cars on that highway.  They are traveling at 70 mph.  Those cars then exit the highway onto a residential rode.  They are then travelling at 30 mph.  Does this require some of the cars disappear?  No, they are all there, just moving at a different speed.

So for vision, imagine a certain light source emits a burst of 500 photons.  The light source is 1 meter away from the eye, so it takes about 3 nanoseconds for the photons to arrive at the eye.  Then they are converted into electrical impulses by the eye, and processed by the brain.  Let's say this takes 100 milliseconds (I am just making that number up).  That is about 30 million times longer.  But it is still processing the same 500 photons, it just takes longer for them (or the electrical impulses they create) to get from one point to another.


Emotional Calculator; How can I mathematically show a decrease in anxiety using an emotional equation? Disclaimer- I had asked this question in the Math stack exchange, but was encouraged to ask it here.
I'm working on creating an emotional calculator of sorts, for personal use, wherein, whenever I am stressed, I can pretty much figure out what to do to feel better.
I'll be using the Emotional Equations book by Chip Conley (summary here: https://blas.com/emotional-equations/) as a point of reference.
here's my question:
Let's take the following equation as an example:
Let's say I interviewed for a job and now am anxious about whether or not I will get it.
Anxiety = Uncertainty $\times$ Powerlessness
To make myself feel better, if I focus on the Powerlessness variable, then I can do many things to make myself feel better. For example: I could apply for more jobs, go take a walk, go for a run, etc.
However, each of those things will not help me in the same way. They will each have different "proportions of powerlessness" to offer, so to speak. So, if I go get ice cream, sure I'll feel a little better, but I'm sure I'll be anxious an hour after eating that ice cream. So, on a scale of 1-10, it will probably reduce powerlessness by 0.5 or 1, whereas if I apply for more jobs, for example, it will reduce powerlessness by 7-8.
What math principle/logic/practice can I use to calculate how much something (eating ice cream) can affect powerlessness?
Thank you! Apologies for the long question.

Attempting to reduce emotional responses to mathematics is likely in the realm of chaos theory.
Here is a great Robert Sapolsky Stanford lecture on Chaos versus Reductionism.
https://youtu.be/_njf8jwEGRo


What is psychological basis of the great love parents have for their children? Why is it that the parents, specially the mother, generally have this unmatched love for their children?

What is the psychological reason behind it?

Is it more biological than psychological?

Attachment theory in adults is concerned with care giving ability toward ones  friends, family, lover and child. Oxytocin is the bonding hormone. If you have enough of it in theory you will be a monogamous, child loving adult. If you want to con someone by a grift you would secretly give them Oxytocin because it induces general trust.

However it is a misnomer to believe that the relationships formed between parent and child are always lifelong and strong. To examine the psychology as apposed to biology of what makes the feelings between a mother loving for a child lets look at what makes feelings for a child loving toward their mother.

To join this wonderful planet earth as a human being we have to spend around 9 months in the uterus of a woman. During this time she feeds us and her neurochemicals train our brain unconsciously. If she is stress there is a higher chance the we will be deformations. Our predominant auditory stimuli is her voice and the choice of company she keeps. After we survive maturation in the womb her breast sustain us through Colostrum and breast milk. They provide hormones like oxytocin which make us like her, advanced antibodies which keep us alive while our immune system develops and water, protein, sugar and fat which nurtures us and quenches our thirst. This is our first positive association.

Not all mothers want their children. The first psychological indicator of your abilities to easily form a loving relationship with your children is how your mother treated you the first three years. If your mother did not properly form an attachment to you then you will be at a high risk for an attachment disorder. A state where its very difficult to have social experience and behavior matching social norms. Therapies for attachment issues are controversial and in many cases flat out bad. However not all adults with attachment disorders are bad parents, being abused doesn't force you to be abusive. It does mean you may lack skills learned in childhood which others can inversely apply.

Even high functioning very ill nonviolent (or controlled violent) sociopaths (ASPD) can make fine parents if they work hard enough at it.


Is there a name for the idea that completing a simple task increases the likelihood of completing further tasks? In a graduation speech to the University of Texas, Naval Adm. William H. McRaven made the following statement:

"If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another."

In case further context is needed, the full transcript of this speech can been seen at the following link:  https://news.utexas.edu/2014/05/16/mcraven-urges-graduates-to-find-courage-to-change-the-world

I have also found that completing a simple task can "get you going", and imagine this quite a widespread observation.

As a result I wondered:  Does anyone know if a formal name for this general phenomenon exists?  Eg "The McCraven Effect"?  Or if it could be considered as an example of a broader principle, eg "Task motivation bias"?

It would be nice if more systematic sources were found on this topic, but since you mainly inquire about terminology here, I think the closest term is "small win":

Whether they are trying to solve a major scientific mystery or simply produce a high-quality product or service, everyday progress—even a small win—can make all the difference in how they feel and perform. [...]
Through exhaustive analysis of diaries kept by knowledge workers, we discovered the progress principle: Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work. And the more frequently people experience that sense of progress, the more likely they are to be creatively productive in the long run.

Whether making your bed in the morning counts or not as a "small win" depends however on what interests you in life, personality factors, and so forth, so while making your bed may be a motivating "small win" for the army types, I wouldn't bet it's like that for everyone (although other things may be). I suspect that many routine chores that can be "outsourced" if you have enough money (like cooking food, driving etc.) many not be that motivating for a number of people.
Amusingly enough I found a survey about bed making:

In a survey of 68,000 people by Hunch.com, 59 percent of people don’t make their beds. 27 percent do, while 12 percent pay a housekeeper to make it for them. Here’s what disturbed me: 71 percent of bed makers consider themselves happy; while 62 percent of non-bed-makers admit to being unhappy. Bed makers are also more likely to like their jobs, own a home, exercise regularly, and feel well rested, whereas non-bed-makers hate their jobs, rent apartments, avoid the gym, and wake up tired. All in all, bed makers are happier and more successful than their rumple-sheeted peers.
Since these factors show correlation but not causation, this does not mean that non-bed-makers can’t be happy and successful, but the odds are stacked against them. And it makes sense, since an organized environment can positively impact our mental state—and given it only takes 30 seconds, it could lend a small sense of accomplishment at the very start of the day.


Is EEG brain-computer interface reliable? I am a computer science student [assume I have very little knowledge of the biological part of EEG]. I recently came across the topic EEG and was pretty interested in it. As far as I know, we get an analog signal (measuring potential) from the brain, convert it to digital and feed to computer, and thus we are able identify different brain activities.

My question is how reliable this signal is. Will we be able to differentiate between different activities (like a thought to increase volume of television, not feeling well, etc.)?

This very much depends on what, exactly, you're trying to do.

EEG measurements tend to be extremely reliable, but the inferences one may draw on mental state are not necessarily so.

EEG-driven BCI overwhelmingly relies on machine learning to correctly classify signals into a finite number of categories and act upon them.  Typically, you'll do something like this:

Record EEG sessions where people are cued to think of any number of 'triggers' (e.g. turning up the volume of a television set).
Segment the recording into epochs by drawing a window around the time at which the subject was told to think of the trigger.
Extract time-insensitive features from the epochs and label them based on the trigger type.  (e.g.:  something as simple as a rolling-window mean over each sensor).
Train a supervised classifier (usually a support vector machine) on the feature vectors.
Use the classifier to decode future brain activity in real time.

Of course, there are many subtleties and machine learning is a vast topic in and of itself.  The point here is that your question is too ambiguous to be answered directly.

To reiterate, EEG is reliable, but as with most things, it comes with a number of caveats:

Scalp-level voltage topographies can vary massively across individuals because of anatomical differences
EEG is very sensitive to electromagnetic noise
Non research-grade EEGs (e.g.: EMOTIV EPOC) have few channels, tend to be noisy, and often lose contact
Cap placement is hard to do reliably outside of the laboratory


How is the biological accuracy of ANNs typically measured? I am referring to the computational neuroscience side of neural network research that focuses on biological accuracy.  I've read references to improving biological realism (using say spiking neurons or binding neurons of various types) by emulating known properties of real neurons (action potentials and what not).  However, I haven't been able to find any detail on how the effectiveness of such attempts is measured empirically.

For example, cultured neuronal networks (such as a neurochip) could be used as a benchmark: Create an ANN and a BNN with the same number and arrangement of neurons, give them the same inputs, and compare the results...  Has anything like that been attempted?  How is the biological accuracy of ANNs typically measured?

One way the biological plausibility of an artificial neural network could be assessed is to look at how much a neural network abstracts away from the behavior of real neurons.

For instance, it is common in psychology and machine learning to use a sigmoidal activation function to determine the output of a node. If biological plausibility is a concern, one might prefer to use the Hodgkin-Huxley model. (See also: other neuronal models).

To many practitioners, biological plausibility is not a primary concern. In most ANNs, each node is not really believed to be implemented by a single neuron in the brain, and thus using a more realistic activation function does not necessarily make the network more biologically realistic.

Personally, I don't think looking at the behavioral accuracy of a biological neural network (compared  to an artificial neural network) says anything about the network's biological plausibility. Using more abstractions might produce more similar behavior due to less overfitting. Another concern is that the ANN could produce the same behavior as a BNN even if the actual computations involved are quite different.


Are there any pain scales which measure how much of the body is in pain? Are there any pain scales which talk about the extent of pain, i.e. how much of the body is in pain?

I'm in the process of trying to work out whether several lesions, hurt with the same intensity as a single lesion of the same severity.

I can tell you this, in RA the addition of swollen joints in a flair up increases the pain until your number exceeds so many than the pain levels. In arthritis of the spine, spondylosis seams to stay the same as the gradual increase of more arthritic vertebra increases. But when spondyolithisis increased from one to two the pain was double. (The movement forward or sideways of the vertebra) That's all I know,10 years experience.


Record an eye blinking waveform signal from EEG signals I want to Record an eye blinking waveform signal from EEG signals , but it need to make a quiscent periods of recording , So how to make this quiescent periods(i.e the signal has a zero amplitude at all time in the quiescent recording except the eye blinking time)?

You can't.

Flatline EEG is how brain death is defined, and while it may be possible to induce an eye blink in a deceased human, I am sure ethics will not approve, and it won't be scientifically satisfactory.
even in the case of a real flatline EEG, there will always be some remaining residual activity (albeit very weak), such as line noise.

However,

the eye blink is a few orders of magnitude stronger than the ongoing EEG
you can isolate eye blink activity using techniques such as ICA


Are there any cognitive models for image interpretation? Are there any cognitive models which can be used for image interpretation. I have tried to find some specific models which can be used for image interpretation but have not been able to find any model.

I have tried to find some specific models which can be used for image
interpretation but have not been able to find any model.

This question is broad and as you have stated that you have failed to find models, I thought I would provide you with references where visual cognition is researched.
The UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience   has a visual cognition group.

The research in this group is concerned with detection, discrimination and short-term memory of visual stimuli. A key part of the approach to the work is to study interactions between different regions of visual cortex, and interactions between visual and non-visual areas by using transcranial magnetic stimulation, psychophysics, eye movements and electrophysiological recording methods. Human vision is a dominant force in our behaviour and the study of vision therefore takes research questions into many different areas of perception outside of our more obviously visual work on visual search, the functions of the parietal cortex, the frontal eye fields and how the brain changes with learning. These include the perception of time, visuomotor learning, music, and mathematics - apparently different functions which often draw upon the same brain resources. The group is engaged in extending the use of TMS in combination with other methodologies, in particular electrophysiological recording and work with neuropsychological patients.

This wikipedia entry on perception; discusses how perception between individuals has a wide variation, including the ability to interpret  visual cues.
The Duke Visual Cognition Laboratory has extensive research articles about this topic. I have provided some suitable excerpts.

The visual system has developed to transform an undifferentiated and continuous flow of information into discrete and manageable representations, and this ability rests primarily on the uninterrupted nature of the input. 1
Recent laboratory work has indicated that low target prevalence can lead to disturbingly high miss rates in visual search. 2
Change blindness, the failure to detect visual changes that occur during a disruption, has increasingly been used to infer the nature of internal representations. If every change were detected, detailed representations of the world would have to be stored and accessible. However, because many changes are not detected, visual representations might not be complete, and access to them might be limited. Using change detection to infer the completeness of visual representations requires an understanding of the reasons for change blindness. This article provides empirical support for one such reason: change blindness resulting from the failure to compare retained representations of both the pre- and postchange information. Even when unaware of changes, observers still retained information about both the pre- and postchange objects on the same trial. 3
The input to visual processing consists of an undifferentiated array of features which must be parsed into discrete units. Here we explore the degree to which conscious awareness is important for forming such object representations, and for updating them in the face of changing visual scenes. 4

There is a wealth of information here, it's quite fascinating. I hope you enjoy this, and feel free to come back with the questions you have about this.
1. Appelbaum, L. G., Cain, M. S., Schroeder, J. E., Darling, E. F., & Mitroff, S. R. (2012). Stroboscopic visual training improves information encoding in short-term memory. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.
2. Fleck, M. S., & Mitroff, S. R. (2007). Rare targets are rarely missed in correctable search. Psychological Science, 18, 943-947.
3. Mitroff, S. R., Simons, D. J., & Levin, D. T. (2004). Nothing compares 2 views: Change blindness can occur despite preserved access to the changed information. Perception & Psychophysics, 66, 1268-1281.
4. Mitroff, S. R. & Scholl, B. J. (2005). Forming and updating object representations without awareness: Evidence from motion-induced blindness. Vision Research, 45(8), 961-967.


How many action potentials from presynaptic neurons would be required to make a postsynaptic neuron fire? I am looking for a rough estimation of the number of action potentials from other neurons required to cause a neuron to fire?

I read here that a potential of ~ -55mv must be reached before an action potential is fired in a neuron, my thought is how many action potentials from other cells would (roughly) be required to reach this - and in what required time (if it matters)?

I am not a neuroscientist and suspect this question is unanswerable but though this was the place to ask!

It is very very important to note that in the brain, most neurons are receiving input from way more excitatory synapses than necessary to bring the neuron to threshold.  The thing is that they are also receiving input from a huge number of inhibitory synapses as well.  This means that it is not how many inputs that are active at a given time that determines whether a neuron fires or not, it is the balance between excitation and inhibition.

see:
attalah and scanziani 2009 (experiment) http://labs.biology.ucsd.edu/scanziani/documents/AtallahNeuron09.pdf

okun and lampl 2008 (experiment)
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/full/nn.2105.html

van vreeswijk and sompolinsky (theory)
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/274/5293/1724.short


Are there models of single neurons on slow timescales? From what I've come across on the web, most models of single neurons seem to focus on the "fast timescale", where electrical signals are transmitted from one neuron to another. However, neurons are also cells, with all the associated complexity that cells bring: from gene expression to biochemical reactions happening in response to these electrical signals, albeit on a slower timescale. Are there any single neuron models that attempt to integrate these various timescales?

I'm mainly interested in knowing about more realistic abstractions of neurons than those used in Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) and so on. A key assumption I'm making is that neurons, being a type of cell, would have biochemical processes going on on a slower timescale that would modulate their 'spiking' behavior over time. Please correct me if this assumption is wrong.

The search for a biologically realistic neural network is never ending. As Sydney mentioned there are many newer models of neurons that take into account activity over larger time-scales, such as the Adaptive Leaky-Intergrate-Fire neuron. The bleeding edge of this search is the Blue Brain Project, which is trying to create the most biologically detailed model of the brain possible. The project should be a good resource if you're interested in the more advanced models.

Since you're interested in Artificial Neural Networks (which implies you're also interested in computation power), I would like to point out that the Neural Engineering Framework allows you to use as detailed of a model of neuron as desired on a realistic time-scale, while still allowing you to compute and learn arbitrary functions as a typical ANN allows.


Is it possible to induce the processes that occur during sleep such as memory "garbage collection" without actually sleeping? Some time ago I opened a question comparing drug withdrawal and sleep deprivation symptoms.

In fact, my main objective for that question was to know if there was by any chance, a possibility to live without sleeping.

I got a good answer for the “Why we need sleep?” question, mentioning all the injuries that its deprivation causes.

So here are my current questions :

What really happens in our brain during sleep that makes us feel much more "light" when we wake up and that its deprivation kills us? Is it memory cleanup?
Is there any research done on the reproduction of those “cleanup” processes without sleeping?

The so-called glymphatic system, pump washing the brain with cerebrospinal fluid during sleep, has already been mentioned in answer to the SE question "Do you need to sleep every night?" It seems more than just a memory cleanup process as if on a computer, but "has significant implications for treating 'dirty brain diseases like Alzheimer's" and understanding it "is a critical first step in efforts to modulate this system and make it work more efficiently" (Maiken Nedergaard). That should go towards answering Q2, at least if such interventions take place in the waking state at the experimental stage.

Another recent report concerns brain cells known as microglia, which also play a role in mopping up neurotoxic brain waste such as beta-amyloids.  In addition they monitor the growth of synapses and prune connections between neurons so that the brain can refine its circuits and conserve resources, particularly during adolescence. Relevant maybe, as this is a period in life known for prolonged sleep. Some research on mice suggests a preference on the part of microglia for carrying out their work when the organism is in darkness. Hyperactive microglia however are conjectured to be implicated in Alzheimer's by stripping too many synapses when these are inadvertently tagged by the brain for destruction.

References:

"To Sleep, Perchance to Clean. Study* reveals brain takes out the trash while we sleep" University of Rochester News Room 17 Oct 2013

*Nedergaard M (corresponding author) et al "Sleep drives metabolite clearance from the adult brain" Science 18 Oct 2013

"The Mind Minders - a fertile, flexible brain couldn't live without its roving band of caretakers". New Scientist, 12 Oct 2013.


Do studies exist that can map specimens of neocortex to the functions they perform(ed) in vivo? Much brain research has proposed that the brain (the neocortex, esp.) is set up in areas - an area for faces, an area for language, etc..

The experiments typically go 1) damage an area 2) observe what function is lost. And this has produced a good deal of evidence that behavior ends up being localized. But for me, this information is incomplete, especially in the light of studies that show that every part of the cortex does essentially the same thing!

Has anybody ever done a study where, looking at tiny areas of neocortex, scientists can identify a) what information it contains b) what it does, or c) from what part it came?

...studies that show that every part of the cortex does essentially the same thing!

I would be much interested in seeing these studies - Although the brain is plastic and inter-individual differences can be substantial, it is generally accepted that functional regions are well defined in terms of their anatomical locations and brain mapping was, and still is, a field of research in its own right.

Studies where

  tiny areas of neocortex [were studied]

have been done, and showing

  what it does

Notable examples include singe-unit recordings (cellular level - as tiny as you can get) that mapped the primary visual cortex (V1) and auditory cortex (AI). Such studies have shown that V1 contains retinotopic maps, and AI contains tonotopic maps, i.e., these studies showed that each region in the retina projects to a well-defined and neatly organized region in V1 (e.g., Cowey, 1979), and well-defined anatomical locations in the cochlea project to well-defined and well organized regions in AI (e.g., Ozaki & Hashimoto, 2007).

  what information it contains

is hard to answer, as the brain is not a hard disk that can be read back. However, studies on Alzheimer patients do reveal that old memories are often relatively spared, while new ones fail to be stored properly, indicating indirectly what information the affected cortex contains.

References
- Cowey, Quarterly J Exp Psychol; 31(1): 1-17
- Ozaki & Hashimoto, Can J Neurol Sci (2007); 34(2): 146-53


Are thoughts transferred along with a brain during a brain transplantation? If I'm transplanted with, e.g., Stephen Hawking's brain, would I start to think like him, or would I remain to think like me? On which, "thinking" ability depends , is it the physical structure of brain or any non physical thing?

Short answer
Human brain transplants have never been performed, so any answers to what will happen are mere speculations.

Background
Whole-head transplants have been performed on animals, the first reports go back to the 1970's (Canavero, 2013). The practice is still pursued today (e.g.., Ren et al., 2015)). Up until now, however, it has not been done in humans, and likely it never will be (source: The Guardian). This, because of medical limitations (Canavero, 2013) as well as ethical considerations (Wolpe, 217)

The biggest problem medically is the re-connection of the thousands of spinal neurons linking the brain to the rest of the body (Canavero, 2013). Further, immune responses and immediate cell death due to oxygen depletion may all further hamper the process. Nonetheless, certain groups envision it will be at one time possible in humans (Canavero, 2013).

The same limitations as with head transplants discussed above apply for a brain transplant. The thing is that with a whole-head transplant the major arteries can be quickly connected to feed the brain. With a brain transplant this also becomes a major bottle neck, making it even more difficult. Transplanting a head can be done with relative ease by sacrificing the donor and straight away stitch it to the beheaded recipient. A brain transplant needs even more steps. The big advantage of a head transplant is also that  the brain, being within its own cephalon, still connects to the cranial nerves (White et al, 1975).

References
- Canavero, Surg Neurol Int (2013); 4(S1): S335–S42
- Ren et al., CNS Neurosci Therapeutics (2015); 21(8): 615-8
- White et al. Resuscitation 1975;4,197-210
- Wolpe, AJOB Neurosci (2017); 8(4)

Further reading
- Is brain transplantation possible?


Comparison of Aversion Therapy to other interventions for nail-biting A product Pavlock, which is essentially a shock bracelet for Aversion Therapy, markets itself as an intervention for a range of habits, including procrastination and nail-biting. Wikipedia cites the paper "A Pocket-Portable Shock Device With Application To Nailbiting" from 1968. Are there more modern comparison of Aversion Therapy to other interventions? Particularly to nail-biting, since there are many applications of Aversion Therapy across addictions.

One of the techniques used for nail-biting is the (training) habit-reversal: Developed by Nathan H. Azrin and R. Gregory Nunn (1987) focused on the treatment of nervous habits (although in general, other authors in the clinical field developed it under different variation). It is not usually as well known as it should be, since during that time many techniques conditions were experienced: reciprocal inhibition and counterconditioning (Joseph Wolpe), exposure, alternative response, incompatible response.

Key:

Given a habit that we could qualify as negative linked to nerves or anxiety, select a response that ideally is incompatible with the negative habit (in any case compete strongly). The incompatible response fulfills the objectives, goals, motivation or causes that satisfied the negative habit, precisely about nervous habits is not convenient an increase of the anxiety, the person has developed the negative habit for reasonable reasons, whatever they are, and that habit is somehow adaptive and positive, surely to reduce anxiety). As in the case of self-instruction, it is not the point of whether the psychologist or therapist, or the client, select one or the other response, but must be meaningful and optimal for both of them.

Therefore it would be advisable to master previously:

Background, causes and triggers of behavior (motive or motivation of activity).
Knowledge about anxiety (different anxiety profiles) and exposure.
Reciprocal inhibition and counterconditioning.
Therapy based on the alternative response.
Therapy based on incompatible response.

A very flexible and wide-ranging approach so that it can be integrated as a training and in conjunction with other techniques.


Does logical thinking or counting develop first in children? During the course of normal brain development, what comes first:

logical thinking or
counting?

Counting, easily.  It's a matter of rote and repetition, dominated by procedural learning.  Critical thinking requires more advanced circuitry and learning.  There is a lot of really rapid neural development still occurring in the first couple years and children are learning from society and parents and experience in the meantime.  During this time, they can easily count and say the alphabet.

Logical thinking isn't apparent until around 3 or 4, though I suppose a robust discussion would require a formal definition of what constitutes logic.


Why do hallucinations appear in depression? We all know the stories of people who saw a miracle in the deepist troubles like gangsters who turned to faith - or an older example could be the miracles in jail in the Bible (Acts: Peter and Paul).

How wide-spread is the phenomenon where people expierence hallucinations in a depressing situation? What is the neurological cause? And what hormones (neurotrasmitters) participate on this phenomenon?

Please concentrate on the neurological point of view, rather than on the psychological aspects.

Thank you.

Have a look at The God drug DMT. It causes people to see/talk to God and can be taken as an actual drug, but I believe it is also produced in the body during near death experiences. I am no expert in it but here's wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N,N-Dimethyltryptamine


Are there cognitive benefits to two hand typing versus one finger? I've been reading an old popular psychology book by russian psychiatrist Vladimir Levi. One of the things that he has his depressed patients try is learn to juggle. He insists that such activity brings both halves of the brain together and that the brain "likes to juggle". His book was written in the 1980s, and there's little science presented in the book to back the claim.

Juggling involves coordinating both hands and is automatic, if I understand correctly. Touch typing involves coordinating 10 fingers together and is also automatic once learned.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, computer keyboards were the dominant way of inputting data into a computer. If one was to type anything one used both hands together for extended periods of time (most likely touch typing with both hands). But as of 2013, more and more people report using tablet PCs to surf the web and interact with friends online. Such typing most likely involves one finger pressing the letters on a virtual keyboard. It's a much slower process, as the keyboard is too small for both hands.

Does touch-typing has any cognitive benefits? Is the effect lost if one reverts to typing with a single finger?

Benefits of touch typing on task performance:
I assume that when comparing skilled individuals, two handed touch typing on a traditional keyboard is faster, more reliable, and more automatic, than the other methods of text input that you mention (e.g., phone or tablet keyboards). These advantages are discussed here.

Faster input means that ideas can be expressed more quickly.
Visual attention does not need to be allocated to the keyboard which permits more attention to be placed on the content or the screen.
The greater reliability and automaticity mean that less attention needs to be allocated to the task of typing than to other methods.
A more consistent keyboard layout across devices further justifies the investment in learning touch typing.

For further discussion of the cognitive and performance benefits of skilled touch typing, check out Yechiam et al (2003). Discussing the benefits of touch typing over visual typing, they state:

  One main distinction of the touch-typing strategy appears to be the
  ability to look at the screen while typing and to devote a minimal
  level of visual search to the keyboard (Cooper, 1983). This ability is
  gained through the memorization of key positions and finger
  trajectories, which makes touch-typing a difficult skill to acquire.
  Other differences between touch-typing and visually guided typing
  include touch typists' (a) use of all fingers of both hands, as
  opposed to the use of one hand of only some of the fingers; (b) fixed
  assignment of fingers to keys; (c) reduced arm movements; and (d)
  fixed locations of the palms (Crooks, 1964).

Broader cognitive benefits of touch typing:
While I have not read any specific research testing the idea, I think the benefits of touch typing relate to its superiority as a text entry method and not as some broader tool for brain integration. A large body of research on psychomotor and cognitive performance suggests that transfer across disparate domains tends to be minimal. The domains would need to have some overlapping elements.

More broadly, there is a strong link between unemployment and depression (e.g., Frese & Mohr, 1987). Engaging in meaningful or enjoyable activity might help improve mood in some cases (e.g., juggling, mastering some other new skill). However, I don't think the mechanism of that mood improvement would be hemispheric brain balancing.

References

Cooper, W. E. (1983). Introduction. In W. E. Cooper (Ed.), Cognitive aspects of skilled typewriting (pp. 1-38). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Crooks, M. (1964). Touch typing for teachers. London: Pitman.
Frese, M., & Mohr, G. (1987). Prolonged unemployment and depression in older workers: A longitudinal study of intervening variables. Social Science & Medicine, 25(2), 173-178. PDF
Yechiam, E., Erev, I., Yehene, V., & Gopher, D. (2003). Melioration and the transition from touch-typing training to everyday use. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 45(4), 671-684.


Publicly Available NEURON models NEURON is a software package for simulating neurons and networks in great detail. Although it's quite easy to find papers that use NEURON with a simple Google Scholar search, is there some way to find which models are publicly available? For example, some repository of NEURON models and their associated publications?

If there is no standard, an answer with a few examples of recent (last 10 years) publications with a freely available NEURON model would be appreciated.

A repository of publicly available NEURON models can be found on ModelDB by filtering for Models that contain the Modeling Application: NEURON.


Are points still a relevant mechanic? When talking about gamification people's mind almost immediately go to points. It is probably the quintessential mechanic.

However, thinking of games, it's no longer heavily used. It's still in use but doesn't seem to be a main driver in most games. While people may have cared about high scores in Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, many modern games either don't use points at all or have them but players seem to not really pay too much attention to them.

Have their been any studies regarding the efficacy of using points in a gamified system or their performance against any alternatives?

Hmm. It's possibly I'm misunderstanding, in which case I will happily retract my answer. But does gamification really apply to, well, games? I thought the idea behind gamification was to take user engagement elements present in games and add them into non-gaming situations to increase user retention/satisfaction etc.

So I would say that if you're making a game, you're not using gamification. You're making a game, which inherently has some of these characteristics. After all it's called gamification because the concepts were borrowed from games, right?

That said, to answer your question, I think points are still valuable in games when they're used as currency. When you can use the points to get stuff, that adds a whole new level of value.


How well are neurotransmitters used in SPA? How much does the SPAUN and the Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA) that was used to build it take neurotransmitters into account? In the book How to Build a Brain, various inhibitory and excitatory connections are mentioned as supplying a biological foundation for implementing the Basal Ganglia. Additionally, it's mentioned that the learning rule that the SPA uses, hPES, uses dopamine to modulate learning. However, I'm still a bit confused on the details of all this. How do neurotransmitters fit into Nengo? How much detail does Nengo go into in regards to neurotransmitters? Does it take into account the neurotransmitter distribution and consumption as observed in the brain?

Note: For more information on the relation between Nengo, SPA and SPAUN, please see my previous question.

At this point in time, the difference in neurotransmitter types affect the synaptic time constant (i.e. the filter on the incoming spike train) between neurons in Nengo. See Neural Engineering p.112 and these notes (see the section called "Biologically plausible filter") from a course covering the book.

Neurotransmitters are also leveraged more theoretically. For example, in connection between neurons that involve learning, dopamine is often said to modulate this learning. For example, see Dan Rasmussen's neural hierarchical reinfrocement learning implementation (PHD link pending).

Hypothetically, it would be possible to implement a back-end to Nengo using a more biologically detailed software such as Neuron to take into account neurotransmitter generation, concentration and consumption. Although I can attest anecdotally that this has been attempted with mixed success, there has been no formal release or publication of this approach.


How long does it take to decide for an multiple choice option with increasing number of choices? I am trying to estimate the duration of an empirical experiment. In that experiment, the participant has to progress through as many trials as possible, and every trial is a simple multiple choice question like Which color do you like more? Red, Blue or Green. The experiment should last 30 minutes, and one goal is that the participant has given as much feedback as possible. Feedback is every choice that has been displayed, not only those choices the participant decided for in every particular trial.

Obviously, the participant should evaluate every choice available in a trial, and therefore time to answer should increase. However, I assume that this is not linearly correlated.

I.e. is there some heuristic available that enables me to extrapolate from time needed to answer a question with two choices to time needed to answer a question with 20 choices?

A starting point is Hick's Law:
As noted in the URL, the visual complexity of the choice space may be important independent of the informational complexity of the question options


What is the effect of scolding kids Is there any harmful effect of scolding kids. Also does that affect more to kids who are 1 year old or  to those who are much older like 5 years and so.

By the term scolding I mean: Shouting, yelling,  using intimidating gesture (staring with wide open eye), showing anger, using harsh words (irrespective of the fact the kids know the meaning of the word or not ), and like... and any of the combination of these. And even shouting and hitting with hands but very gently with anger

I have a feeling that many answers to your question will be influenced by anecdotes and personal parental style than actual research. A quick literature review suggests that there is evidence for both positive and negative influences of customary, nonabusive physical punishment, such as spanking.

A literature review by Larzelere (2000) found that nine studies indicated beneficial outcomes, such as reduced noncompliance and fighting.  In contrast, five studies that controlled for the level of child misbehavior did find detrimental outcomes. However, a further analysis found that alternative forms of discipline also showed detrimental outcomes when using a similar research method. The author concludes that "The outcomes differ by methodologic, child, and subcultural factors as well as by how the physical punishment was used".

A later meta-analysis by Larzelere and Kuhn (2005) found that conditional spanking was more effective in reducing child noncompliance and antisocial behavior in 10 of 13 studies. They added that overly severe or predominant use of physical punishment "compared unfavorably with alternative disciplinary tactics". In short, there seems to be a threshold whereas some amount of scolding (physical spanking in this case) can be a beneficial tool in a parent's disciplinary toolkit, while excessive amounts of scolding (such as relying on spanking exclusively) can be detrimental.

Larzelere RE. (2000). Child Outcomes of Nonabusive and Customary Physical Punishment by Parents: An Updated Literature Review. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 3(4), 199-221.
Larzelere RE and Kuhn BR. (2005). Comparing Child Outcomes of Physical Punishment and Alternative Disciplinary Tactics: A Meta-Analysis. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 8(1), 1-37.


Are ADHD and OCD under some type of mental illness? Related to question.

Mania, hypomania, depression and bipolar are mood disorders, from what I understand.

Are ADHD and OCD under some category as well? From what I understand, the are opposite ends of some impulsive-compulsive spectrum?

OCD is an anxiety disorder (same link as earlier), from what I understand, but what about ADHD? Is there another description of OCD that also applies to ADHD?

ADHD is considered a neurodevelopmental disorder.

  Neurodevelopmental disorders are impairments of the growth and development of the brain or central nervous system. A narrower use of the term refers to a disorder of brain function that affects emotion, learning ability, self-control and memory and that unfolds as the individual grows.

You are correct in that OCD is generally considered an anxiety disorder. They are not the same because ADHD is characterized by cognitive impairment, and OCD is characterized by anxiety (in the form of obsessions and compulsions). However, you can find both disorders in one person.


Neurological disorders affecting body language Are there neurological disorders which do not affect the emotions per se but affect how they are expressed by the body?
Say, normally positive emotions are associated with the tips of the lips facing upwards; do some people express positive emotions in different ways?
Alternatively, when an average person discovers something funny for some period of time they breathe abnormally (so-called laughter); could some people's reaction entail e.g. blinking instead of that?

This is usually referred to as emotional expression or affect display, which can be verbal as well as non-verbal, whereas body language is exclusively non-verbal, and not exclusive to emotion.
This function can certainly go wrong:

There are a few disorders that show deficiency in emotional expression
and response. These include alexithymia, autism, hypomimia and
involuntary expression disorder.

And also:

Disorders involving ... reduced affect displays most commonly include
schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder, depression, autism and
persons with traumatic brain injuries.

However, afflicted individuals do not typically substitute one expression for another - they usually either do not express some emotions (eg, Spock, who would have been diagnosed with alexithymia), or they express some emotions inappropriately (eg, the Joker, who presumably suffers from PBA).  It's unlikely that someone would express happiness by tapping their foot, or laughter by blinking their eyes.


What causes people to rapidly lose skill after becoming moderately good at something? I've noticed that people often manage to become moderately good at something, but seem to reach some sort of peak at that level and then rapidly start getting worse again.

I've seen this happen with videogames (most notably Starcraft 2), pool games, badminton, and even drawing/painting. People can get from complete beginner to a mediocre level in all these things, and then at some point they will start getting worse at them again. Not all the way back to a beginner level, but far enough to notice a serious difference in results.

If there are no physical changes that are causing this, is there any explanation for this problem with learning?

S-shaped learning curves

As per A Umar Mukthar's comment, the phenomenon is known as an S-shaped learning curve. They have been a known phenomenon in psychology for many decades, and were originally attributed to trial-and-error learning sets (Harlow, 1949). Harlow defined a learning set in the following manner:

  The monkeys learn how to learn individual problems with a minimum of errors. It is this learning how to learn a kind of problem that we designate by the term learning set.

Meta-cognition and intra-individual performance variability

Harlow's explanation has fundamentally not been changed too much, except perhaps that in modern cognitive research, we now call these meta-cognitive strategies rather than learning sets.

When first encountering a novel problem, participants will adopt one strategy and work to improve their performance on that, but eventually they will discover other strategies. When participants shift strategy thus to an unpracticed strategy, their performance declines, then improves again.

Because all strategies for the same problem tend to share at least some overlap, as participants explore an increasing proportion of the space of possible meta-cognitive strategies, shifting to a novel strategy requires decreasing amounts of new practice. The magnitude of the performance decline associated with strategy shifts is therefore gradually eliminated with prolonged practice (Murre, 2014).

References

Harlow, H. F. (1949). The formation of learning sets. Psychological review, 56(1), 51.
Murre, J. M. (2014). S-shaped learning curves. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 21(2), 344-356.


Is attraction between two people just physical, not neurological/psychological? In the Richard Morgan's sci-fi debut Altered Carbon, the technology exists to separate a person's consciousness and put it into another body or "sleeve". The protagonist Takeshi Kovacs, is downloaded into the sleeve of Elias Ryker, who was romantically involved with Kristin Ortega before his own consciousness was put in storage. Kovacs, through Ryker's body, is attracted to Ortega, and the two become a pair. Then, when Kovacs leaves Ryker's body, he no longer feels attracted to Ortega, and suggests that this is because the attraction was between Ryker and Ortega's bodies, not their minds.

The question is, is there anything to support this notion that attraction is purely physical? Is the brain involved at all in sexual/romantic attraction, and if we separated the mind from the body, do we think that we would still have the same feelings?

All attraction involves the brain. The brain is responsible for consciousness, perception, and motivation.

Not all attraction is physical. In two structural theories of love with which I'm familiar, physical attraction corresponds to a minority of what constitutes love. Love isn't exactly the same as attraction, but much of these theories' content implies attraction that is more than sexual and sometimes not sexual at all. In Sternberg's triangular theory of love, passion often entails physical attraction, but the theory frames intimacy and commitment as somewhat independent and based on other aspects of interpersonal relationships such as trust, closeness, benevolence, role identification, and cooperation.

People have many reasons to desire these relationships besides sex. Lee's love styles considers physical passion a defining aspect of only one of six styles. Other motives drive the other styles: power, affiliation, teamwork, emotional fusion and obsession, and altruism. However, one might argue that some of these are not clearly approach motives (mania in particular may be more fear-driven), or that the other person is more a means to an end than the object of desire (particularly pragma and ludus). Regardless, storge and agape are clearly more platonic (though not necessarily nonsexual) forms of attraction with a person as the primary object.

Separating the mind from the body is not possible at present within the scope of mainstream empirical science. Hence all questions that depend on this premise are very likely to be speculative and controversial, and probably off-topic for this site, which discourages opinion solicitation. Even so, the logic of these theories seems to indicate clearly enough that while many aspects of attraction do not depend on sexuality, some do, and that much might change if the physical object of sexual attraction changes. Furthermore, many physiological elements that influence the brain during attraction would have to be emulated in the alternate host to have unchanged consequences, such as adrenalin, which is produced in glands atop the kidneys. Dopamine and serotonin also play important roles in love style variation (see the reference below); their influence would require emulation as well if the mind were somehow separated from the physical sources of these neurotransmitters.

Reference
Emanuele, E., Brondino, N., Pesenti, S., Re, S., & Geroldi, D. (2007). Genetic loading on human loving styles. Neuro Endocrinology Letters, 28(6), 815–21. PMID 18063936.


What is the primary mechanism behind nationalism, sports-team-ism, product-ism etc.? I'm interested in doing research on the subject of nationalism, but I believe that what I'm looking for is more generic than that. I observe that nationalism looks similar to the way that people feel about their sports team or their favorite product or their religion or their race. People proselytize for these things, and people sometimes kill over them (e.g. -- soccer riots). I note also that this kind of devotion can also produce strong negative feelings towards the other teams, countries, etc.

In each case, a person exhibiting this behavior with respect to a country, sports team, or product has at least one of the following characteristics (maybe others?).

Person identifies personally with X.
Person feels a sense of belonging with others who also identify with X.
Person is inclined to convince others that they should also follow/admire/believe X.

Is there an underlying mechanism behind these symptoms or term that describes this behavior? What is the body of study that examines these types of behaviors (causes, definitions, and effects)? If there isn't a particular term for this as a generic subject of study, are there at least some studies that examine the common features of these behaviors?

What I have researched so far: This question helped a little bit in thinking about this issue, but I'm not sure it answers my question. Also, Maslow's hierarchy of needs points to "respect by others" and "belonging" as posibilities, but I don't know much beyond that or where to look.

Update

I'm stuck. I'm just not sure that ingroups and outgroups really characterize the fundamental mechanism behind why people hold some beliefs with evangelistic or violent fervor. That feature of human nature is not dependent on the existence of a group. If I try to convert someone to my way of thinking, I am not doing so because of a group to which I belong. Certainly group behaviors that @PEEJWEEJ mentioned can feed such sentiments, but like I mentioned to @Ana, I'm not convinced that the group itself is the cause. Perhaps I could be persuaded otherwise, but I think there's something else going on here.

The terms you are looking for are ingroups and outgroups. From wikipedia:

  In sociology and social psychology, an ingroup, is a social group to
  which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By
  contrast, an outgroup is a social group to which an individual does
  not identify. For example, people may find it psychologically
  meaningful to view themselves according to their race, culture, gender
  or religion. It has been found that the psychological membership of
  social groups and categories is associated with a wide variety of
  phenomena.

Googling got me to this book chapter on the topic, but there's plenty more information out there.


Are there physical techniques to relieve eye strain? I asked a question about eye strain Does looking into a mirror relieve eye strain in a similar way to looking at distant objects?.

Are there any physical exercises or techniques that can help to alleviate eye strain?

Is there any evidence to support this, if so please provide citations?

EYE RELAXATION

Sit comfortably, close your eyes and cover them with your palms. Be sure that both palms are cupped and do not press on the eyes. Imagine the blackness getting darker and darker. Rest in this manner for five minutes at a time, at least thrice a day.
Stand upright in front of an open window, preferably overlooking greenery. Keep your feet a foot apart, let your arms hang loosely at the sides and be as relaxed as possible. Gently oscillate your body from side to side like a pendulum.
Raise your heels alternately, keeping toes firmly on the ground. Gently swing the whole body to and fro without bending at the waist or hips. Start the exercise with eyes open. Swing like this for a minute and then close your eyes gently, while still swinging. Imagine the apparent movement of the window as clearly as possible.
Open the eyes after a minute and continue this exercise for 10 minutes, alternately closing and opening the eyes. Repeat this exercise at least thrice a day.
Close your eyes and, facing the sun, move your head slowly from side to side. Sun rays cause a rushing of blood to the eyes, relaxing optical muscles and nerves. Do this exercise for 10 minutes thrice a day.
Take a handful of cold water and, bending forward, splash your eyes rapidly, several times. Do not forget to hold water in your mouth while splashing eyes as this cools them down to their nerve ends and freshens them a great deal.

EXERCISES FOR EYE MUSCLES

Sit erect in a comfortable position. Keep your head and neck as relaxed as possible. Gently move your eyes up and down 10 times. The motion should be very slow, uniform and effortless, without moving the head or neck. Let your eyes see as far up and as far down as possible without causing strain. As the eye muscles relax, you will be able to look lower and higher. Repeat this exercise five to six times in a sitting. You can add to the relaxation by resting your eyes in your palms in-between.
Sitting in the same posture as before, move your eyes from side to side. Repeat 10 times. The motion should be very slow, uniform and effortless without moving the head or neck. As in the earlier exercise, you will able to move them farther and more easily with practice. Repeat this exercise five to six times.
Move your eyes gently and slowly around in a circle five times, alternating between clockwise and anti-clockwise motions. Rest for a second and repeat the process five times. Remember that it should be done slowly and effortlessly.
Sit on a terrace where you can see far off objects on the horizon. Look at a distant object and then look at the tip of your nose. Look from one to the other object 10 times. Close your eyes for a second and resume the exercise. Repeat five times and rest your eyes.

The following exercises may be used to alleviate eyes strain

Bhastrika Pranayam (Breath holding exercise)– 2 to 5 minutes.
Kapalbhati Pranayam (Skull shining breath exercise).
Bahya Pranayam (External breath exercise).
Anuloma – Viloma Pranayama (Alternate nostril breathing exercise).

All these can be found here

Yoga- The name popular in West is actually a derivation from the word YOG (which is a Sanskrit word with meaning 'to combine together'). Yog means to combine one's being with the Supreme Power. Sage Patanjali (Pronounced as Paa+ ta + n + ja + li) brought together postures and techniques of breathing together and created Yog Sutra. (The thread of Yog).

This actually transcended from the ideology that a healthy person can understand the meaning of God and compassion better. Therefore, it aims at relieving a man of the diseases so that a healthy body can provide shelter to a healthy soul.

But Yog is trying to handle a Lion. It should be practiced under the guidance of a learned Yog teacher...


What research has been done on brain-to-brain interfaces? Is there an existing research area focusing on brain to brain interfaces?  If so, what are some papers that have been published in this area?

Rao et al. 2014 claims to be the first demonstration of a brain-brain interface in humans, using EEG and TMS.

Abstract
We describe the first direct brain-to-brain interface in humans and present results from experiments involving six different subjects. Our non-invasive interface, demonstrated originally in August 2013, combines electroencephalography (EEG) for recording brain signals with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for delivering information to the brain. We illustrate our method using a visuomotor task in which two humans must cooperate through direct brain-to-brain communication to achieve a desired goal in a computer game. The brain-to-brain interface detects motor imagery in EEG signals recorded from one subject (the “sender”) and transmits this information over the internet to the motor cortex region of a second subject (the “receiver”). This allows the sender to cause a desired motor response in the receiver (a press on a touchpad) via TMS. We quantify the performance of the brain-to-brain interface in terms of the amount of information transmitted as well as the accuracies attained in (1) decoding the sender’s signals, (2) generating a motor response from the receiver upon stimulation, and (3) achieving the overall goal in the cooperative visuomotor task. Our results provide evidence for a rudimentary form of direct information transmission from one human brain to another using non-invasive means.


EEG analysis free software? I'm looking for free software for EEG data processing.
What free or opensource software packages are available for analyzing raw EEG data?

The eegkit package for R is a good and open source toolkit for data analysis. It is easy to use and you can get really cool plots.