Can normal brain activity arise from no (or random) brain activity?

There is no such thing as "zero" activity in regards to brain circuits. Even when you record neurons from a brain slice in vitro, you have spontaneous network activity. There is a few studies that suggest that brain circuits are chaotic, where infinitesimal difference in the initial state will lead to exponentially diverging patterns of activity:

Banerjee, A., Seriès, P., & Pouget, A. (2008). Dynamical constraints
on using precise spike timing to compute in recurrent cortical
networks. Neural Computation, 20(4), 974–993.
London, M., Roth, A., Beeren, L., Häusser, M., & Latham, P. E.
(2010). Sensitivity to perturbations in vivo implies high noise and
suggests rate coding in cortex. Nature, 466(7302), 123–127.

To answer your question, the interaction between the internal state of a system and external stimuli is an important topic in neuroscience, and it is not clear how internally and externally generated dynamics interact. Here is a paper that discuss it under the term of "state-dependent computing":

Buonomano, D. V., & Maass, W. (2009). State-dependent computations:
spatiotemporal processing in cortical networks. Nature Reviews
Neuroscience, 10(2), 113–125.

And there are multiple studies investigating spontaneous brain activity:

Foster, B. L., He, B. J., Honey, C. J., Jerbi, K., Maier, A., &
Saalmann, Y. B. (2016). Spontaneous Neural Dynamics and Multi-scale
Network Organization. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 10.

Hope it helps answer your question.


What research has modelled the difficulty of mental mathematical calculation?

There is a huge amount of research on this topic, particularly in developmental psychology.

Siegler: As @Joel has noted, Robert S. Siegler provides a great entry point into this literature (see his list of selected publications with PDFs). He has done a lot of research on the strategies that children use to solve mathematical problems. His research includes both empirical and computational modelling approaches. He also has a number of studies that compare performance across features of arithmetic problems. For example, you could look at Siegler and Lemaire (1997) which shows in an adult sample the differences in speed and accuracy for different kinds of multiplication problems (e.g., multiples of 10 or not, single versus double digits). As another example, Siegler and Shrager (1984) show empirical error rates and strategy use in children for all possible combinations of single digit addition.

Act-R: There are also a number of publications using the ACT-R framework on mathematical problem solving (see this list from the ACT-R website). Perhaps check out Ritter et al (2007) for a review.

Defining difficulty: In general, there are questions about how you would define difficulty.
Typical indicators would include task completion time and accuracy.
Also, when talking about the difficulty of a mathematical operation, you need to consider the strategy that an individual is using. In particular, there is general shift with practice from using an algorithmic strategy to using a retrieval strategy (for a review, see Delaney et al, 1998). Thus, at first children use strategies like repeated addition to solve multiplication problems whereas with practice, they typically learn to retrieve the answer from memory. The ability to retrieve is broadly related to the number of times the specific problem has been encountered with the correct answer available, along with forgetting effects related to periods where there is no exposure.

References

Delaney, P.F., Reder, L.M., Staszewski, J.J. & Ritter, F.E. (1998). The strategy-specific nature of improvement: The power law applies by strategy within task. Psychological Science, 9, 1-7. PDF
Siegler, R. S., & Lemaire, P. (1997). Older and younger adults' strategy choices in multiplication: Testing predictions of ASCM via the choice/no choice method. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 126, 71-92. PDF
Siegler, R. S., & Shrager, J. (1984). Strategy choices in addition and subtraction: How do children know what to do? In C. Sophian (Ed.), The origins of cognitive skills (pp. 229-293). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
PDF1
PDF2
Ritter, S., Anderson, J.R., Koedinger, K.R. & Corbett, A. (2007). Cognitive Tutor: Applied research in mathematics education. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 14, 249-255. PDF


What is the name of a test presenting words in different colors?

This is an experiment testing the Stroop effect, named after John Ridley Stroop who studied it in 1935, and often called a Stroop experiment. It is a classic and well understood experiment and has now become a neuropsychological test for use in clinical settings, usually called the Stroop test.


What kind of journal 'The Journal of Neuroscience Methods' is?

This is not a complete answer, but more based on surface observations.

At time of posting, Journal of Neuroscience Methods has an impact factor of 2.0. This is quite a respectable impact factor.
The scimagojr puts in the second quartile of "neuroscience (miscellaneous)" journals http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=16765&tip=sid&clean=0
It is published by Elsevier. While Elsevier has its detractors, particularly around its open access policy, it is a respectable academic publisher.


Body Language: Why do we act differently around someone we're attracted to?

Generally speaking, romantic love can be considered an emotional process. From an embodied perspective, emotions are to a large extent interactions with sensorimotor processes (connected to the body). http://www.iep.utm.edu/emotion/ provides a good overview of the various emotional theories, of which the feedback theories are my favorite. The feedback theories essentially state that body states cause valenced (positive or negative) feelings in a bottom-up manner, and that cognitions (higher-order thought on a 'symbolic' level, such as appreciating someone's qualities) cause embodied reactions in a top-down manner (these are the quirky love-induced reactions you speak of). This goes on in a feedback loop. In this process, neurotransmitter systems are highly important. One of the most popular theorists out there in this area is neuroscientist Antonio Damasio - his somatic marker hypothesis is a really interesting theory: http://www.iee.unibe.ch/unibe/philnat/biology/zoologie/content/e7493/e7854/e8920/e8926/DamasioPhilTransRSocB96.pdf. (He applies it to decision making in the end, but the basic principles are all there) If you're interested, you could also read his book "The Feeling of What Happens".

I would say that these quirky little habits we have when we are nervous around someone we care about in that special way are mostly unintended side effects of a significant release of neurotransmitters (like dopamine, serotonin, etc.). These neurotransmitter systems are connected to several brain areas, but especially also to our action systems, causing us to fidget, smile, shiver, or otherwise display exceptional behavior. Of course, some of these behaviors are socially adaptive - smiling is useful to communicate that you appreciate the other person, for instance, whereas fidgeting is probably not socially useful. The reason there is such a strong release of these is that romantic attraction is a mixture of a emotions/desires which are very important to reproduction. For a light (not too academic) read about the biological basis of love, I recommend http://www.amazon.de/Why-We-Love-Chemistry-Romantic/dp/0805077960. For a condensed version in a TED talk, see http://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_studies_the_brain_in_love.


Can time be perceived differently depending on a user's feeling?

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

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

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

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


When is higher confidence predictive of less accuracy?

This may not answer your question directly, but is related:

Kruger and Dunning (1999) conducted a study in which people performed a variety of 'tests' in different domains, such as logical reasoning, grammar, and humor. After taking a test, participants were asked to judge their performance relative to other test-takers, and to estimate their objective score on the test (how many questions were answered correctly).

What they found was that the subjects who performed the worst actually overestimated their performance the most. If you take their performance estimate as a proxy for confidence, then  it supports your hypothesis-- but only to a relative degree. That is to say, participants who performed poorly did not estimate their ability to be better than good performers and vice versa; however, those who performed the worst were more confident in their ability. It's a bit confusing, and D&K can explain it better-- there's actually a paragraph in their article (second to last) which relates their findings to work on overconfidence.

The explanation that Kruger and Dunning give for this effect is that the metacognitive ability to assess one's performance is a correlated with actual performance on the same task. Thus, somewhat paradoxically, those who perform poorly may be unaware of their poor performance, due to their inability to predict how well they did.

  Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How
  difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated
  self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77,
  1121-1134.


How common are visual hallucinations in Schizophrenics?

Mueser and colleagues (1990) examined 117 DSM-III-R schizophrenic or schizoaffective disorder patients and reported a prevalence of 16% for visual hallucinations. Interestingly, they found that the global severity of illness was higher in patients with schizophrenia and visual hallucinations. Teeple and colleagues (2009) observe that this finding makes sense of the widely varying estimates of prevalence of visual hallucinations in schizophrenic patients, since patients with more severe illness might be expected to experience more visual hallucinations than those with less severe illness.


In experiments conducted in the 1950's, William C. Dement, a pioneer sleep researcher, asked subjects to write down their dream content.  What he found was that the number of words in the subjects' dream diaries correlated strongly with REM time, suggesting that perceived dream time matches actual dream time.

Although REM time is no longer considered a reliable measure of dream time, this paradigm of using Total Word Count (TWC) or sometimes Total Recall Count (TRC) from dream diaries (referred to as sleep mentation reports) to measure dream length, is in common use today.

Further validation of this method was found in subjects with RBD, a disorder that features twitching and movements during sleep, and other parasomnias such as sleep talking.  Here, timings in dream reports match recorded timings of muscle movements and sleep talking.  In other experiments, external stimuli delivered during dreaming - such as sounds, smells, or touch - are incorporated into dream content, again with timings matching reports.

More recent research by Matthew Wilson focusing on memory consolidation in dreams adds an important detail to this however.  Dream sequences are often disjointed, on a faster time-scale, and sometimes in reverse order with respect to the events they reflect.  Think of it this way: If you watch a video in fast-forward (ie, skipping frames), then the time in the video is faster than real-time, but you are nonetheless aware that you have been watching for a shorter period of time.  The same appears to be true of dreaming: Dreams may play in fast-forward (also skipping frames), but dreamers are nonetheless aware of the actual passage of time.

In the experiments with rats traversing a maze for example, dream imagery reflected important points in the maze, such as major intersections, areas with unique smells, obstacles, etc, rather than long boring monotonous hallways.  Think of it like a tourist taking photos of a hiking trail: The photos are not evenly spaced out in time - there are fewer photos from boring parts of the trail, and more photos from the interesting parts.  That is, dream content does not necessarily play at a constant speed relative to real-time - it may be faster (skip frames) or slower (add frames), and change over the course of each dream.

Note: Dreams are typically 30 minutes or less in length.


How do you interpret the MSe and partial eta squared reported with an F-statistic?

The outputs of statistical analyses are not "good" or "bad", except that they are definitely bad no matter what numbers you get if you've done your analyses incorrectly, and good if you've chosen an appropriate model, gathered enough data, and avoided statistical pitfalls like p-hacking.

Always report actual p-values, rather than "p<0.05". The only exception is for very small p-values (e.g., p<0.0001).

MSE, the mean squared error, is not easy to interpret by itself. Its range of values completely depends on your measurement scale. For models fit to the same data, a smaller MSE is "better", but it's more complicated than that and there are better methods for model selection (but also problems with model selection generally).

Effect sizes like the partial eta squared depend entirely on the field and type of data being analyzed. Effect sizes that are large in one context may be considered small in another. Partial eta squared measures how much variance is explained by your predictor divided by how much variance is unexplained (plus the numerator), so values closer to 1 mean a bigger effect. 0.78 is usually quite a large effect in psychology, since many measures in psychology depend on individual factors that are hard to capture. Again, however, that isn't necessarily true in every single case.


How is "mislabeling" cognitive distortion different from "labeling"?

It seems that in this case David Burns describes Labeling as an overgeneralization, not necessarily a misattribution. As in his example, a breather does breathe, it is just not the only aspect of the breather.

Mislabeling in this example is an inaccurate label, not an overgeneralization but qualitatively false, and "emotionally heavily loaded".

This explanation would fit with regular English semantics for the words, so it seems to make sense. I would not qualify the terms Labeling and Mislabeling as rigidly defined per this text though.


Problems with parameterizing neuronal simulation on a limited number of datasets

Because of variation between organisms, cells in the same organism, or even the same cell separated by a few days, can have different parameter set. However, I think this is where parameter fitting becomes useful. As suggested in the comments knowing how parameters change between cells or over time can be very insightful. Parameter Estimation is very important because it allows us gather more information about the parameter set from less experimental data and thus allowing more complex experiments.

Philosophy aside, here are some tips for getting into the field. I'd suggest reading this open access article by Van Giet et al. here and I'll give a brief review of their article.

General Model
First one needs a general framework to work within,

What is your type of neuron model going to be?  a integrate and fire neuron(discontinuous reset) or is electrophysilogical model (continuous).
What are the currents/channels/gates in it (Sodium, Potassium, Chlorine, Calcium)?
what form do the differential equations take?
What are the known/unknown parameters?

The  more  you can answer these questions the easier the parameter fitting process will be, but beware, a one size fits all approach rarely works in biology because of cell to cell variation.

Error Function
Next one needs what is called an error function, or a way to tell if the model output voltage trace is similar to the actual voltage trace. The most classical (but in my honest opinion the worst one)  is the $\mathcal{L}_2$ norm on the voltages. The  $\mathcal{L}_2$ is simply

$$\sqrt{\sum^{N}_i (V_{model}(i)-V_{data}(i))^2}$$

To see why this is so bad I attached a sample (simulated trace from the Hodgkin-Huxley model).

The Blue Trace is from a Neuron with slightly less injected current then the yellow Trace one. As you can see yellow has a faster frequency than blue, and as a result the  $\mathcal{L}_2$ norm is massive  for each misaligned spike. However the spike trains are intuitively very close as seen not only in where the spikes line up but where the spikes so one would like a measure that defines misaligned phase and frequency.

Van Geit et al's. insight is that the  $\mathcal{L}_2$ is the wrong norm to compare voltage distance in. What they do is make a parametric plot of voltage verses voltage's derivative. The then compare distance between the curves like in the below plot.

.

We see that the voltage traces are indeed very similar, but to calculate distance between these curves, we must disregard time data. We can imagine subdividing phase space into a grid of equally sized boxes. Then count up the number of data points and model points in the boxes. In math notation this amounts to

$$
\sqrt{\sum^{N_x,N_y}_{i,j} (V_{model}(i,j)-V_{data}(i,j))}
$$

we have lost information about phase of the spike. It is also important to note that this is highly dependent on the size of the boxes, if they are too small the error will be high, too big the error will be to low.  While there method may not be the only proposed solution it does better than the $\mathcal{L}_2$

Here is both methods side by side for comparison. The black dot is the true solution. Blue is $\mathcal{L}_2$ and Yellow is Van Geit's method. You'll note that both are ``noisy" but there is a better trend in Van Geit's method than the $\mathcal{L}_2$ norm, thus optimization is easier. For the $\mathcal{L}_2$ method notice how the function is flat far away from a very steep and narrow valley. This is hard for optimization algorithms to hit. Van Geit's method is better because it has more of a downward slope that can be followed to a better global minima.

Also  Note that this noise is not from random variation (although that makes it worse) but rather from discretization of the data and model. (remember everything stored in a computer has a sample rate no matter how small).

Optimization Algorithm
Now Once has an appropriate error function one needs to use a optimization algorithm too find the local minimum of said error function. In my example here, I am using injected current as my parameter, but in every neuron model has many parameters that one needs to optimize over so direct visualization like is usually impossible.

Another caveat is the ``noise". these local valleys can make optimization algorithms get stuck in the local minima. Stochastic (random) optimization algorithms like simulated annealing  can help with getting stuck in these valleys, as they have a chance to jump past them.

Good Initial guesses
As far as not responding the "full space'' of solutions, the more of the possible inputs one has the better chance of being able to predict a different input. Also defining the computational behavior of your neuron is a good start.  Having a general model that acts qualitatively correctly but not quantitatively is often a good start to parameter fitting, This means one doesn't start with a neuron that doesn't respond to inputs, or something else physically unrealistic.

Anyway hope this gives a background to things to consider, this field is far from solved, and in need of creative solutions.


Psychology of disrespect and being proud of law breaking. How does it work and how to combat it?

This question can be unswered from the field of sociology.

  Sociology is the study of social behaviour or society, including its
  origins, development, organisation, networks, and institutions. It is
  a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation
  and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social
  order, disorder, and change.

Specifically what you describe here are the social norms formed by society.

  From a sociological perspective, social norms are informal
  understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society.
  Social psychology recognizes smaller group units, such as a team or an
  office, may also endorse norms separately or in addition to cultural
  or societal expectations. In other words, norms are regarded as
  collective representations of acceptable group conduct as well as
  individual perceptions of particular group conduct. They can be viewed
  as cultural products (including values, customs, and traditions) which
  represent individuals' basic knowledge of what others do and think
  that they should do.

The values and expectations that you experience are formed in the socio-economical environment of the specific nation througout many years of interactions among members of that society.

EDIT:
It is very very difficult to change deep rooted cultural habits and norms, and usually will take many years to do so. But I will give some practical advices that may help :

Lead by example. If a higly regarded individual of the society, consistently demonstrates a different behavior, this may have a long lasting effect on other members of the society and may gradually change their behavior.
Don’t push information, engage in active dialogue to change their goals and beliefs.
Changing the environment. The environment have subtle ways in which they reinforce our habits.
Create activities (like social gatherings, competitions etc) that indirectly falsify the bad sticky idea.

References of the EDIT:

Made to Stick

Smart Change

Switch


Does neurodynamics have any relation to psychodynamics?

I believe I can see where the confusion lies when comparing the interesting artwork with psychodynamic theory.  The artwork you linked uses Neurological data to form images, whereas you may be getting confused with the famous Rorschach test otherwise known as the Inkblot test, and how the inkblot images are interpreted by the viewer.

Many psychologists in the United Kingdom do not trust its efficacy and it is rarely used, however, it is used by some mental health organisations such as the Tavistock Clinic (BBC, 2012).

The artwork with the "emergence and dissipation of waves" is using neurodynamic data and the Rorschach test is a psychodynamic test.

Neurodynamics relates to, or involves the dynamics of communication between different parts of the nervous system (Source) and the earliest document I can find relating to it is an unclassified document held by the DTIC (US Defence Technical Information Center) (Rosenblatt, 1961).  Shacklock (1995) also talks about neurodynamics in the realm of physiotherapy.

Psychodynamics, as stated in the Wikipedia article you linked, is about the dynamic relations between conscious motivation and unconscious motivation that underlie human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experience.

So the two are not related, and in fact are very different.

A combination of the 2 sets of theories can be seen to be Neuropsychodynamics as in Miller (1990).

References

BBC (2012). Dr Inkblot BBC Radio 4Review available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01l0kch

Miller, L. (1990). Neuropsychodynamics of alcoholism and addiction: Personality, psychopathology, and cognitive style. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 7(1), 31-49.DOI: 10.1016/0740-5472(90)90034-N PMID: 2179572

Rosenblatt, F. (1961). Principles of neurodynamics. perceptrons and the theory of brain mechanisms (No. VG-1196-G-8) DTIC [Unclassified PDF]Available from: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/AD0256582

Shacklock, M. (1995). Neurodynamics. Physiotherapy, 81(1), 9-16.DOI: 10.1016/S0031-9406(05)67024-1


Multiple "levels" of association in classical conditioning?

Found answer to my own question. This is called "higher order conditioning":
https://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Higher+Order+Conditioning#:~:text=Higher%20Order%20Conditioning%20(also%20known,produce%20salivating)%20to%20produce%20the


Relation between disposition personality in emotional response

Those two personality factors can be considered as a component of disposition. Two publications established that extraversion and neuroticism as being the most correlated with emotional processing.

In "Adding Liebe und Arbeit: The Full Five-Factor Model and Well-Being" from McCrae et al (1991), the authors correlated three measure of weel-being with 429 adult men and women.

  Consistent with previous rescarch, neuroticism was negatively, and
  extraversion was positively, related to well-being. Both agreeableness
  and conscientiousness were also significant independent predictors

In "The happy personality: a meta-analysis of 137 personality traits and subjective well-being" by DeNeve et al (1998) examine 137 personality constructs across 9 literature search strategies to find determine the effect on positive and negative affect.

  The traits most closely associated with SWB were
  repressive-defensiveness, trust, emotional stability, locus of
  control-chance, desire for control, hardiness, positive affectivity,
  private collective self-esteem, and tension. When personality traits
  were grouped according to the Big Five factors, Neuroticism was the
  strongest predictor of life satisfaction, happiness, and negative
  affect. Positive affect was predicted equally well by Extraversion and
  Agreeableness.


Does having a sense of purpose increase longevity?

I did a little search and found an article by Moen (1996) which seems relevant.
Moen summarised the existing evidence as follows:

  Poor physical health is frequently a reason for retiring (Anderson &
  Burkhauser, 1985; Bound, 1991; Chirikos & Nestel, 1989; Palmore,
  Burchett, Filenbaum, George, & Wallman, 1985), leading to a view of a
  unidirectional link between health and retirement (see Figure 1). In
  support of this one-way model, most of the existing research
  literature has shown that retirement per se is not directly related to
  early mortality or health decline. However, there is some evidence
  that being retired affects psychological symptoms (Bosse, Aldwin,
  Levenson, Spiro, & Mroczek, 1993; Ekerdt, 1987). Other studies show
  that retired individuals sometimes report improvements in their
  (subjectively rated) health status following retirement (Ekerdt,
  Bosse, & Locastro, 1983). Most early research on retirement suggests
  that being retired has no deleterious effects on either physical or
  psychological health; most retirees say they are satisfied with their
  retirement and some even report better health (Atchley, 1976; Barfield
  & Morgan, 1968; McGoldrick & Cooper, 1989; Streib & Schneider, 1971).
  However, research on the effects of the loss of the work role through
  retirement often ignores the complexity of the retirement transition,
  including issues of timing, previous health, and quality of the
  employment experience (McGoldrick & Cooper, 1988). George (1993)
  pointed out that most research on stress and well-being fails to
  consider either the social contexts or the timing of potentially
  stressful life experiences, such as retirement.

References

Anderson, K. H., & Burkhauser, R. V. (1985). The
retirement-health nexus: A new measure of an old puzzle.
The Journal of Human Resources, 20, 315-330.
Atchley, R. (1976). The sociology of retirement. New York:
Schenkman.
Barfield, R., & Morgan, J. N. (1968). Early retirement: The
decision and the experiences. Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for
Social Research.
Bound, J. (1991). Self-reported objective measures of health
in retirement models. The Journal of Human Resources,
26, 108-137.
Bosse,  R., Aldwin, C. M., Levenson, M. R., Spiro, A., &
Mroczek, D. K. (1993). Change in social support after
retirement: Longitudinal findings from the normative
aging study. Journal of Gerontology, 48, 210-217.
Chirikos, T. N., & Nestel, G. (1989). Occupation, impaired
health, and the functional capacity of men to continue
working. Research on Aging, 11, 174-205.
Ekerdt, D. J. (1987). Why the notion persists that retirement
harms health. Gerontologist, 27, 454-^57.
Ekerdt, D. J., Bosse, R., & Locastro, J. S. (1983). Claims that
retirement improves health. Journal of Gerontology, 38,
231-236.
George, L. K. (1993). Sociological perspectives on life
transitions. Annual Review of Sociology, 19, 353-373.
McGoldrick, A., & Cooper, C. (1988). Early retirement.
Chichester, England: Gower
Moen, P. (1996). A Life Course Perspective on Retirement, Gender, and Well-Being. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 1, 131-144.
Palmore, E. B., Burchett, B. M., Filenbaum, G. G., George,
L. K., & Wallman, L. M. (1985). Retirement: Causes and
consequences. New York: Springer.
Streib, G. F, & Schneider, C. J. (1971). Retirement in
American society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.


What is the psychology behind the mass crying of the crowds at superstar music concerts?

From a study conducted by Salimpoor, Benovoy, et al.:

Music, an abstract stimulus, can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving, similar to tangible rewards that involve the striatal dopaminergic system.
(...)
These results indicate that intense pleasure in response to music can lead to dopamine release in the striatal system. Notably, the anticipation of an abstract reward can result in dopamine release in an anatomical pathway distinct from that associated with the peak pleasure itself.

This helps explain the basis for people crying when they're listening to music. As for why this tends to occur in a concert environment - this could be partly related to Salimpoor et al.'s suggestion that

composers and performers ... manipulate emotional arousal by violating expectations in certain ways or by delaying the predicted outcome (for example, by inserting unexpected notes or slowing tempo) before the resolution to heighten the motivation for completion.

One could argue that live performances tend to have more unexpected sequences like these (if you've been to a concert or listened to a live track, you notice that the live show might have a different, unexpected musical arrangement).
Additionally, a plausible explanation would be that when you have many people packed into the same space experiencing the music (as opposed to listening to it alone or in a small group), the emotional reactions discussed above could be amplified. There doesn't appear to be much research backing this up specifically, however.
Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. J. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience, 14(2), 257-262. doi:10.1038/nn.2726


What tools exist to measure work meaningfulness?

There are a bunch of them! For a great review of many definitions and measures of meaningfulness, see if you can get a copy of A Narrative Evidence Synthesis of Meaningful Work: Progress and Research Agenda. The authors are pretty responsive in my experience and will send you a copy.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that there are a bunch of different definitions of work meaningfulness. Everybody has their own approach, some are better than others (i.e., more likely to actually measure meaningfulness and not something related like engagement or intrinsic motivation), and there isn't really a consensus yet. The WAMI you mentioned is built by highly-regarded meaningfulness researchers, is very commonly used in studies of meaningfulness, and I think it's a great "safe bet" measure for getting overall work meaningfulness.

However, if you're looking to zoom-in a little and look at sources of meaning (is it the challenge of your work that you find meaningful, or bonding with coworkers?) like those described in On the meaning of work: A theoretical integration and review, then you might want to check out the Comprehensive Meaningful Work Scale.

Hope that helps!


What is the neurological basis for 'daredevil' behaviour?

Dopamine receptor agonists related to reckless driving and gambling

There are three case reports provided by Reactions Weekly (2010) demonstrating correlations between treatment with dopamine receptor agonists and reckless driving:

  Reckless driving occurred in three patients during treatment with
  dopamine receptor agonists (DA) ... DA are associated with impulse
  control disorders, and may alter how the brain perceives and avoids
  risk. DA-associated impulse control disorders include pathological
  gambling and hypersexuality. Reckless driving may be another
  manifestation of DA-associated impulse control disorders.

Some further evidence is provided to suggest neurological correlates between dopamine receptor agonist and risky choices in a gambling task (Riba et al., 2008):

  In summary, the present findings indicate that the dopamine D2/D3
  receptor agonist pramipexole is capable of blocking reward-related
  activations in the rostral basal ganglia and midbrain and may lead to
  a behavioral disinhibition characterized by increases in risky choices
  in a gambling task.

Neurological correlates between voluntary and involuntary risk taking in the brain

A study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and administered a modified BART with an active choice mode and a passive no-choice mode in order to examine the neural correlates of voluntary and involuntary risk taking in the human brain (Rao et al., 2008):

  In summary, the present study modiﬁed the BART in both active and
  passive modes for use during fMRI and the ﬁndings provide direct
  visualization of voluntary and involuntary risk processing in the
  human brain. Regardless of the involvement of voluntary decision
  making, risk in this task is processed in visual pathway regions in
  the occipital and parietal lobes. However, during active
  decision-making, risk is associated with additional robust activation
  in dopamine rich mesolimbic (VTA-striatum) and frontal regions
  (insula, ACC/MFC, and DLPFC). Voluntary decision making per se, is
  associated with activation in the right DLPFC, which is absent in the
  involuntary no-choice condition. These results contribute to
  understanding the neural basis of normal and high risk behavior.
  Extending this paradigm to pathological populations characterized by
  impaired decisionmaking, such as patients with drug addition and
  compulsive gambling, may allow the speciﬁc neural components of
  impaired risk behavior to be distinguished, and may ultimately inform
  more effective clinical treatment interventions.

References

Reactions Weekly. (2010). Dopamine receptor agonists: reckless
driving: 3 case reports.(Adverse Reaction Case Reports)(Case
study)(Brief article), 1300, 18(1)
Riba, J., Kramer, U.M., Heldmann, M., Richter, S. & Munte, T.F. (2008). Dopamine agonist increases risk taking but blunts reward-related brain activity. PLoS One, 3(6)
Rao, H. Korczykowski, M., Pluta, J., Hoang, A. & Detre, J.A. (2008). Neural correlates of voluntary and involuntary risk taking in the human brain: An fMRI study of the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART). Neuroimage, 42, 902-910


How to classify and understand emotions of people using chat and text messaging lingo and emoticons?

The field that is doing this work you describe is sentiment analysis.  From Wikipedia:

  A basic task in sentiment analysis is classifying the polarity of a given text at the document, sentence, or feature/aspect level — whether the expressed opinion in a document, a sentence or an entity feature/aspect is positive, negative, or neutral. Advanced, "beyond polarity" sentiment classification looks, for instance, at emotional states such as "angry," "sad," and "happy."

From an introductory course (lots of good references on this page)

  This work is in the general area of sentiment analysis, opinion extraction or opinion mining, and feature-based opinion summarization from the user-generated content or user-generated media on the Web, e.g., reviews, forum and group discussions, and blogs. In our KDD-2004 (Minqing Hu and Bing Liu. "Mining and summarizing customer reviews." Proceedings of the ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining, Seattle, Washington, USA, Aug 22-25, 2004.) paper, we proposed the Feature-Based Opinion Mining model, which is now also called Aspect-Based Opinion Mining (as the term feature here can confuse with the term feature used in machine learning). The output of such opinion mining is a feature-based opinion summary or aspect-based opinion summary. The area is also related to sentiment classification. Our current work is in two main areas, which reflect two kinds of opinions (or evaluations)

  Mining regular (or direct) opinions. Ex: (1). This camera is great. (2). After taking the drug, I got stomach pain.
  Mining comparative opinions. Ex: Coke tastes better than Pepsi.

In terms of your actual goals, scroll down to extra credit on this page, and you'll find an exercise that goes through a scenario close to what you describe with emoticons.

In terms of peer-reviewed, Chmiel A, Sienkiewicz J, et al (2011). Collective emotions online and their influence on community life, PLoS One, 6(7), e22207. PDF.  I'm sure there are others in mainstream NLP journals, but I'm for want of a database that lists them.


What are the neurological and psychological bases for chromophobia

Chromophobia has at least two distinct meanings in the sciences:

in cultural studies it denotes a (supposed) cultural deprecation of colors in general or of specific colors (e.g. http://www.academia.edu/1100717/Late_Antique_Aesthetics_Chromophobia_and_the_Red_Monastery_Sohag_Egypt);
in histology it denotes a tissue that does not stain when preparing samples (e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC503209/pdf/jnnpsyc00293-0005.pdf).

I was unable to locate any reliable source on a psychological fear of colors. I searched the most relevant digital databases: Web of Science, Academic Search Premier, PsychINFO, and Psyndex (the latter listing publications in German). And I went through all the handbooks on mental disorders that we have at our university library and the institute of psychology. There is not even anecdotal evidence. Chromophobia as a mental disorder appears only in lists of phobias on the internet that have been created by laypeople.

Or in a list of 273 phobias compiled by Jack D. Maser as an appendix to the handbook on Anxiety and Anxiety Disorders (Tuma & Maser, 1985):

But as you can see from this top part of page 807 of his list, his Latin is not the best. Probably he couldn't decipher his own (or someone else's) handwriting, mistaking "col" for "od". But the basic problem with this list, which might well be the grandmother of all the lists of phobias found on the internet today, is that Maser does not provide any sources for his phobias. And if you look at the fears of time, food, or defecation, listed in it, it seems quite unlikely that anyone might actually be able to suffer from these.

Eminent expert Richard J. McNally, a member of the specific phobia and posttraumatic stress disorder committees of the DSM-IV task force, thinks (1997, p. 183) that in Maser's list "terminological proliferation has been driven more by etymology than by etiology. ... In fact, suffer[er]s of hellenologophobia (i.e. fear of 'pseudoscientific terms') will surely tremble to contemplate many of [the] entities uncovered by Maser in his search through the literature."

In the DSM, phobias, or "specific phobias" as they are classified (to distinguish them from social phobias and other anxiety disorders) are subclassified by their trigger:

objects, sometimes called: blood-injection-injury (syringes, blood, medical procedures)
situations (being in an elevator)
animals (snakes, spiders)
environments (heights, water)
other

The category that would interest us here, is the "other" category. The standard examples given in the manual and expansively discussed in McNally's article on "Atypical Phobias" (McNally, 1997), are: "phobic avoidance of situations that may lead to choking, vomiting, or contracting an illness; in children, avoidance of loud sounds like balloons popping or costumed characters like clowns".

I'm not a specialist on phobias, but from my perusal of quite a volume of literature today, I have the impression that in adult phobias all triggers are either potentially harmful, or are related to similar objects that are harmful: all animals are either predators or poisonous or look like them (a cat might be essentially harmless to an adult human, but it is an animal that can cause pain; there is no lamb phobia); all "situations" involve technical appliances that might fail (airplanes, elevators) or harm you by their characteristics (getting stuck in a narrow tube); all environments can cause death (drowning, falling from a height, getting struck by lightning). Phobias are essentially reasonable in their choice of a trigger, they never choose triggers that are always and totally harmless. From this (non-specialist) result of my search, a fear of color appears impossible.

Of course this is only my personal, non-specialist impression, after a short research, and it will be falsified as soon as someone can come up with a reliable source.

But I admit that I was not truthful in my summary, and have lied to you when I wrote that I found no reference to chromophobia as a psychological disorder. PsycINFO turned up one result, an article published in Italian in a journal that unfortunately is not available online:

Gebhardt, E., & Giorgini, L. (2007). La ragione non ha colore: ipotesi sulla cromofobia [Reason has no colour: Hypotheses on cromophobia]. Il Sogno Della Farfalla: Rivista Di Psichiatria E Psicoterapia, 16(4), 35-57.

An English abstract is given:

  Stemming from an analysis of a case study this research proposes to study a symptomatology where the sight of colour provokes anguish, known in literature as chromophobia, in order to allow us to develop the correct nosography and to identify the underlying psychic dynamics. The immediacy with which an unaltered perception in itself can be given an abnormal meaning to the point of becoming a terrible anguish brings us to consider chromophobia as an example of delusional perception and as such falling within the psychotic syndromes. As far as the object perceived is concerned, that is colour, it is worth noting that Western thought views it as negative for a twofold reason. Religious dogma views colour as dangerous given that it is alien to man, belonging to the body of another who is different from oneself and as such it has been given female, infantile, primitive or pathological attributes. Rationalist thought has, on the other hand, underestimated the importance of colour viewing it as superficial, supplementary and not warranting serious study. Colour has always been subordinate to the drawn figure. Both these approaches have proposed a dichotomy between line and colour attributing the former to the world of rationality and the latter to the non-conscious world. This splitting, according to the authors, can be overcome only if we consider that in the theory of birth the ego is not split at its origin and as such neither is perception. Line and colour therefore are connected to birth and the first year of life.

I admit, that I don't consider this source reliable. The journal, Il sogno della farfalla, as described in a Wikipedia article, is focussed on the psychotherapeutic theory and practice of its founder, the famous but controversial Italian psychiatrist, screenwriter and movie director Massimo Fagioli. This is not the place to discuss Fagioli or the authors of the article (who are both members of the journal's editorial board), but we should note that the journal appears not to have a peer review process.

Sources:

Maser, J. D. (1985). List of phobias. In A. H. Tuma & J. D. Maser (eds.), Anxiety and the Anxiety Disorders (pp. 805-813). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
McNally, R. J. (1997). Atypical phobias. In G. C. I. Davey (ed.), Phobias: A handbook of Theory, Research and Treatment (pp. 183-199). Chichester: Wiley.

With this last edit my research is now complete.


Do people feel impotent when arguing with someone able to do Emotional detachment?

The answer to this question is in the link to passive-aggressive behaviour I provided in your question.

  In conflict theory, passive-aggressive behavior can resemble a behaviour better described as catty, as it consists of deliberate, active, but carefully veiled hostile acts which are distinctively different in character from the non-assertive style of passive resistance.

When faced with any hostility, most people would feel hurt

Examples given in the link to passive-aggressiveness in the workplace including

  [deliberately] 'forgetting' to do something, chronic lateness, and intentional inefficiency.

leads to others having to pick up the slack.  This not only hurts people - knowing that the passive-aggressor could have done it but didn't - but it also leads to resentment by those picking up the slack and can lead to low morale leading to more problems in the workplace.  And it can hurt anyone, not just those with obsessive/narcissistic traits.


What hormones stimulate non-sexual intimate behaviour?

But I'm wondering if any of these hormones are linked with physically intimate non-sexual behaviour, like hugs, kisses and cuddles.

Kissing is a little messy because it could be characterised as sexual behaviour.
However, oxytocin does has a far more broader role in pro-social and affiliative behaviour than just sexual activity.
Here's one reference. It also seems to suggest a stronger role of oxytocin in women than males:

Effects of Partner Support on Resting Oxytocin, Cortisol, Norepinephrine, and Blood Pressure Before and After Warm Partner Contact
Objective: We examined whether the magnitude of plasma oxytocin (OT), norepinephrine (NE), cortisol, and blood pressure (BP) responses before and after a brief episode of warm contact (WC) with the spouse/partner may be related to the strength of perceived partner support.
Methods: Subjects were 38 cohabiting couples (38 men, 38 women) aged 20 to 49 years. All underwent 10 minutes of resting baseline alone, 10 minutes of WC together with their partner, and 10 minutes of postcontact rest alone.
Results: Greater partner support (based on self-report) was related to higher plasma oxytocin in men and women across the protocol before and after WC. In women, higher partner support was correlated with lower systolic blood pressure (SBP) during solitary rest after WC but not before. Also, higher OT in women was linked to lower BP at baseline and to lower NE at all 4 measurements.
Conclusion: Greater partner support is linked to higher OT for both men and women; however, the importance of OT and its potentially cardioprotective effects on sympathetic activity and BP may be greater for women.
ABP = ambulatory blood pressure; BMI = body mass index; BP = blood pressure; CVD = cardiovascular disease; DBP = diastolic blood pressure; HPA = hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal; HR = heart rate; IV = intravenous; MI = myocardial infarction; NE = norepinephrine; OT = oxytocin; SBP = systolic blood pressure; SNS = sympathetic nervous system; SRI = Social Relationships Index; WC = warm contact.

And another:

More frequent partner hugs and higher oxytocin levels are linked to lower blood pressure and heart rate in premenopausal women
In animals, ventral stroking for >5 days increases oxytocin (OT) activity and decreases blood pressure (BP), but related human studies are few. Thus, relationships between self-reported frequency of partner hugs, plasma OT and BP levels were examined in 59 premenopausal women before and after warm contact with their husbands/partners ending with hugs. Higher baseline OT before partner contact was associated with lower BP and heart rate, and met criteria to be a partial mediator of the lower resting BP shown by women reporting more frequent hugs (P < 0.05). OT levels during post-contact stress were unrelated to hugs or BP. Menstrual cycle phase did not influence any OT measure. Thus, frequent hugs between spouses/partners are associated with lower BP and higher OT levels in premenopausal women; OT-mediated reduction in central adrenergic activity and peripheral effects of OT on the heart and vasculature are pathways to examine in future research.

Also, other transmitter systems are involved in what we might characterise as affectionate behaviour. the opioid system has a role in both humans and non-human primates:
In non-human primates:

Opioid receptor blockade reduces maternal affect and social grooming in rhesus monkeys
Seven lactating female rhesus macaques, housed in social groups, were administered with low doses (0.5 mg/kg) of the opioid antagonist naloxone when their infants were 4, 6, 8, and 10 weeks old. A control group received saline. Mothers receiving naloxone were involved in less grooming with other group members, and were less protective towards their infants. By infant-age week 8 they also groomed their infants less, while other monkeys groomed the infants more. Other behavioural measures of mother-infant interactions were not altered. With time, from infant-age week 6 onwards, some short-lived dysphoric conditioned drug responses to naloxone became apparent, although these were not correlated with the decline in social interaction. These results are interpreted in terms of possible interference of naloxone with maternal affect.

And humans:

Social touch modulates endogenous μ-opioid system activity in humans
In non-human primates, opioid-receptor blockade increases social
grooming, and the endogenous opioid system has therefore been
hypothesized to support maintenance of long-term relationships in
humans as well. Here we tested whether social touch modulates
opioidergic activation in humans using in vivo positron emission
tomography (PET). Eighteen male participants underwent two PET scans
with [11C]carfentanil, a ligand specific to μ-opioid receptors (MOR).
During the social touch scan, the participants lay in the scanner
while their partners caressed their bodies in a non-sexual fashion. In
the baseline scan, participants lay alone in the scanner. Social touch
triggered pleasurable sensations and increased MOR availability in the
thalamus, striatum, and frontal, cingulate, and insular cortices.
Modulation of activity of the opioid system by social touching might
provide a neurochemical mechanism reinforcing social bonds between
humans.


How is an emotion different from a thought or a sensation?

Right. No need to reinvent the wheel, so let me Google that for you...

Emotion

  a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.
  "she was attempting to control her emotions"
  synonyms: feeling, sentiment; reaction, response
  $\quad\quad\quad\quad$"she was good at hiding her emotions"
  $\quad\quad\quad\ $ · passion, strength of feeling, warmth of feeling
  $\quad\quad\quad\quad$"overcome by emotion, she turned away"

  · instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge.
  $\ \ $"responses have to be based on historical insight, not simply on emotion"
  $\ \ $synonyms:   instinct, intuition, gut feeling; sentiment, the heart
  $\quad\quad\quad\quad$"responses based purely on emotion"


How to help an adult that has grown up, but was unloved by their parents?

Past issues are hard to tackle.  They become wired in the brain and can manifest into feelings of helplessness, depression, fear, anger etc.  Feeling unloved as a child can also lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy where you believe that being 'unloved' is part of your identity.  And because you have to be consistent with this identity, you may never really accept love or praise from someone who is genuine.

But no amount of love from someone else is going to resolve this issue!  The solution is to love yourself and to be a parent to yourself.  Get in touch with that inner child and tell it you love him/her.  Make praising yourself and loving yourself familiar.

The most important relationship you should have is with yourself.  When you start to love yourself you become open to feeling loved.

So to solve this issue, I would do two things.  Firstly, I would get in touch with that feeling of feeling unloved and rejected, however painful it might be, and I would apply the Havening technique repeatedly until the pain has eased significantly.

Secondly, according to Marisa Peer, understand that feeling unloved or rejected as a child develops a belief, and therefore feeling of not being good enough.  So the next thing to do is to persevere with this:

repeat every day before you go to sleep, in the shower, brushing your teeth, before you wake up, put it on your phone alerts, phone screen saver, and even write it on your mirrors at home:

"I am enough.  I have always been enough, and I will always be enough."
"I like myself, I matter, I love myself."

Repeat these statements until you have deeply accepted them at a subconscious level.

You see you can't hold a feeling of being unloved and rejected and a feeling of being enough at the same time!  But by communicating with yourself in a different way, it will change the way you feel about yourself.

It will take time, but it will work.  You can't change the memories of the past but we can change how we feel.  In your case, we can use the past as a catalyst for change and learn to become your own parent and friend and learn to make praising yourself a habit.

Peace


Introduction or Tutorial on Continuous EEG Collection Procedures and Initial Processing?

There are plenty of books and courses about EEG. I personally can recommend the book from Mike Cohen "Analyzing Neural Time Series Data". It´s well written, simple and condense introduction into EEG, electrophysiology, experimental design, data acquisition and, mostly, basic-to-advance analytical techniques. Book comes with the demo data and code for the analysis in Matlab.

Alternatively, you can go directly to the website of any big EEG community that developing an analytical toolbox (like EEGLab, Fieldtrip, or Brainstorm). Each of them provides sufficient amount of the introductory materials and step-by-step tutorials, including video lectures.


What does "oddly related" mean in a mental status exam?

Chris' answer is very thorough and describes the theory of relatedness. However, in practice when psychiatrists use the term 'related' on the behavior section of the mental status exam, they are referring to the way a patient is relating to the physician or other provider in that conversation.
In this framework, a 'normally related' person would be having a conversation the way one would expect given cultural context. An 'oddly related' person would not. The term is extremely broad however and so needs specifics for clarification. For example, a person identified as oddly-related might be alternating between being engaged and totally disengaged from a conversation without obvious pattern. However any number of other 'oddities' in their engagement with the physician could also be classified this way.
It is a relatively small component of the behavior section of mental status exam and will ideally be clarified where necessary.


I want to find event1 in my EEG data, followed by event2 and then extract reaction time between them

I'm guessing you are using Matlab. Your code is mainly sound, but a few comments:

don't use "i" or "j" as they are function names in Matlab.
don't change the value of a for loop variable inside the loop.

Here is you code, corrected:

for sub=1:length(subjects)
    EEG = pop_loadset([sub_name{sub},'.set'],folder);
    trial = 0;
    for eve = 1:length(EEG.event)
        if strcmp(EEG.event(trial).type,con1)
            trial = trial+1;
            trialonset(trial) = EEG.event(trial).latency;
        elseif strcmp(EEG.event(trial).type,con2)
            trialoffset(trial) = EEG.event(trial).latency;
        end
    end
    rtlist{sub} = trialoffset-trialonset;
end


Cognitive Models of learning Working Memory usage

ACT-R is a complete cognitive model that incorporates Working Memory,  Declarative Memory and Procedural Memory, but also incorporates input (visual and auditory) and output (manual) buffers. It is a really interesting model about the human in its entirety but, it is at a high level of abstraction.

The paper about memory you want is "REFLECTIONS OF THE
ENVIRONMENT IN MEMORY" by Schooler and Anderson. It describes how and why memory is like Reïnforcement learning. In this paper you can read how memory is used for studying. About learning to leverage the working memory, I don't exactly know what you mean, but I think these papers give you a nice headstart.

If you want to learn more about ACT-R, I would recommend this book, or just read the many papers they have published over the years. They have great examples that explain multitasking and time perception among others.


What is a phobia against babies or kids called?

A rather cursory search brought me to the wikipedia page for fear of children:

Pedophobia:

  [The] fear of children, fear of infants or fear of childhood [..].

This as opposed to a pathological love for children, or pedophilia, which as an ongoing sexual attraction to pre-pubertal children.

In case it is a fear specifically for infants, there is a more narrowly scoped type of phobia defined, namely:

Brephophobia, or infantophobia :

  [T]he fear of infant. It is more commonly suffered by adults,
  especially fertilizable women. The fear is commonly triggered due to
  miscarriage, and pressures on caring for baby.


Correlation between anxiety disorders and PTSD

TLDR

The DSM-5 recognises the epidemiology of anxiety within PTSD, and the reason for the lack of genetic correlation is the fact that in PTSD, the anxiety is exogenous (environmental) rather than endogenous (biological via genes or other means).

The debate

The DSM-5, is the current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders written by the American Psychiatric Association (APA, 2013).

As highlighted by Fizz,

  surprisingly, it looks like [the classification of PTSD] is not just a naming issue. It looks like there was a big brouhaha about moving PTSD out of anxiety disorders in DSM-5 (Pai, Suris, & North 2017).

Changes to the diagnostic criteria from the DSM-IV to DSM-5 include:

the relocation of PTSD from the anxiety disorders category to a new diagnostic category named “Trauma and Stressor-related Disorders”,
the elimination of the subjective component to the definition of trauma,
the clarification and tightening of the definitions of trauma and exposure to it,
the increase and rearrangement of the symptoms criteria, and
changes in additional criteria and specifiers.

Some people even question the validity of such a diagnosis (Summerfield, 2001).

  Summary points

  A psychiatric diagnosis is not necessarily a disease
  Distress or suffering is not psychopathology
  Post-traumatic stress disorder is an entity constructed as much from sociopolitical ideas as from psychiatric ones
  The increase in the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder in society is linked to changes in the relation between individual “personhood” and modern life

An editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry commented that it was rare to find a psychiatric diagnosis that anyone liked to have but post-traumatic stress disorder was one (Andreasen, 1995).

The History

War Cowardice

In World War One, the executions of 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers took place (Trueman, 2015; Taylor-Whiffen, 2011). Such executions, for crimes such as desertion and cowardice, remain a source of controversy with some believing that many of those executed should be pardoned as they were suffering from what later called shell shock, even during World War 2.

  Between 1914 and 1918, the British Army identified 80,000 men with what would now be defined as the symptoms of shellshock. There were those who suffered from severe shell shock. They could not stand the thought of being on the front line any longer and deserted. Once caught, they received a court martial and, if sentenced to death, shot by a twelve man firing squad. (Trueman, 2015)

Shell Shock

  Shell shock - now called post-traumatic stress disorder - was first recognised in print by Dr Charles Myers of the British Psychological Society in 1915. By the end of the war the army had dealt with more than 80,000 cases. (Taylor-Whiffen, 2011)

Britain was not alone in executing its own soldiers. The French are thought to have killed about 600. The Germans, whose troops outnumbered the British by two to one, shot 48 of their own men, and the Belgians 13. In 2001, 23 executed Canadians were posthumously honoured by their government, and five troops killed by New Zealand's military command also recently won a pardon. Not one American or Australian soldier was executed, but the Americans often used humiliation as a punishment for desertion.

PTSD

The US National Center for PTSD covers the start of PTSD being a diagnosis within the DSM.

  The risk of exposure to trauma has been a part of the human condition since we evolved as a species. Attacks by saber tooth tigers or twenty-first century terrorists have probably produced similar psychological sequelae in the survivors of such violence. Shakespeare's Henry IV appears to meet many, if not all, of the diagnostic criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as have other heroes and heroines throughout the world's literature. The history of the development of the PTSD concept is described by Trimble (1985).

  In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) added PTSD to the third edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) nosologic classification scheme (APA, 1980). Although controversial when first introduced, the PTSD diagnosis has filled an important gap in psychiatric theory and practice. From an historical perspective, the significant change ushered in by the PTSD concept was the stipulation that the etiological agent was outside the individual (i.e., a traumatic event) rather than an inherent individual weakness (i.e., a traumatic neurosis). The key to understanding the scientific basis and clinical expression of PTSD is the concept of "trauma".

DSM-III

Page 236 states

  Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Chronic or Delayed
  The essential feature is the development of characteristic symptoms following a psychologically traumatic event that is generally outside the range of usual human experience.

  The characteristic symptoms involve reexperiencing the traumatic event; numbing of responsiveness to, or reduced involvement with, the external world; and a variety of autonomic, dysphoric, or cognitive symptoms.
  The stressor producing this syndrome would evoke significant symptoms of distress in most people, and is generally outside the range of such common experiences as simple bereavement, chronic illness, business losses, or marital conflict. The trauma may be experienced alone (rape or assault) or in the company of groups of people (military combat). Stressors producing this disorder include natural disasters (floods, earthquakes), accidental man-made disasters (car accidents with serious physical injury, airplane crashes, large fires), or deliberate man-made disasters (bombing, torture, death camps). Some stressors frequently produce the disorder (e.g., torture) and others produce it only occasionally (e.g., car accidents). Frequently there is a concomitant physical component to the trauma which may even involve direct damage to the central nervous system (e.g., malnutrition, head trauma). The disorder is apparently more severe and longer lasting when the stressor is of human design. The severity of the stressor should be recorded and the specific stressor may be noted on Axis IV (p. 26).

The current (DSM-5) definition of PTSD (under Specific Phobia: Differential Diagnosis within the Anxiety section of DSM-5)

  If the phobia develops following a traumatic event, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) should be considered as a diagnosis. However, traumatic events can precede the onset of PTSD and specific phobia. In this case, a diagnosis of specific phobia would be assigned only if all of the criteria for PTSD are not met (APA, 2013 p.202)

Trauma- and stressor-related disorders include

  disorders in which exposure to a traumatic or stressful event is listed explicitly as a diagnostic criterion. These include reactive attachment disorder, disinhibited social engagement disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), acute stress disorder, and adjustment disorders. Placement of this chapter reflects the close relationship between these diagnoses and disorders in the surrounding chapters on anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, and dissociative disorders. (APA, 2013 p.265)

Psychological distress following exposure to a traumatic or stressful event is quite variable.

  In some cases, symptoms can be well understood within an anxiety- or fear-based context. It is clear, however, that many individuals who have been exposed to a traumatic or stressful event exhibit a phenotype in which, rather than anxiety- or fear-based symptoms, the most prominent clinical characteristics are anhedonic and dysphoric symptoms, externalizing angry and aggressive symptoms, or dissociative symptoms. Because of these variable expressions of clinical distress following exposure to catastrophic or aversive events, the aforementioned disorders have been grouped under a separate category: trauma- and stressor-related disorders.

See also: DSM-5 info. sheet on PTSD (Free PDF)

So, to your question

Are the two (anxiety disorders and PTSD) correlated epidemiologically? If so, is there a good explanation for the lack of genetic correlation?

DSM-5 recognises the epidemiology of anxiety within PTSD, and the reason for the lack of genetic correlation is the fact that in PTSD, the anxiety is exogenous (environmental) rather than endogenous (biological via genes or other means).

References

Andreasen, N. C. (1995). Posttraumatic stress disorder: psychology, biology, and the manichaean warfare between false dichotomies. The American journal of psychiatry, 152(7), 963–965. https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.152.7.963

APA (1980). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing.

APA (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing.

Pai, A., Suris, A. M., & North, C. S. (2017). Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the DSM-5: Controversy, Change, and Conceptual Considerations. Behavioral Science, 7(1), 7. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs7010007

Summerfield, D. (2001). The invention of post-traumatic stress disorder and the social usefulness of a psychiatric category. BMJ : British Medical Journal, 322(7278), 95–98. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.322.7278.95

Taylor-Whiffen, P. (2011) Shot at Dawn: Cowards, Traitors or Victims? BBC History [Online] Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwone/shot_at_dawn_01.shtml

Trimble, M. D. (1985). Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: History of a concept. In C.R. Figley (Ed.), Trauma and its wake: The study and treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. New York: Brunner/Mazel.

Trueman, C. N. (2015). World War One executions. The History Learning Site [Online] Retrieved from: https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-one/the-western-front-in-world-war-one/world-war-one-executions/


If someone is familiar with repeating a task, it becomes a habit. Routines within a habit take less brain power. With less conscious effort needed to do it, someone would most likely underestimate or gloss over what the task consists of.

This is just one possible interpretation; there might be other reasons as well.

The evolutionary advantage would be that we need less mental resources to deal with things we are familiar with. We would say, struggle to learn to peel a potato at first, but after a few dozen/hundred times, we do it effortlessly. The brain will try to optimize these things into a habit loop to conserve resources needed to do things. Without habits, we would spend too much time on 'simple' things like recognizing a person's facial features.

Source: Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Random House, 2012.


No, inner speech does not follow the same neural pathway as speech coming in from outside.

Rather, inner speech uses the same neural mechanism as outer speech - that is, speech going out.  The neural mechanisms of inner speech can be studied using recently developed technologies such as fMRI imaging of subjects instructed to or prevented from engaging in self-reflection and internal monologue.  Such studies suggest that inner speech is primarily localized to Broca's area (LIFG, on the left side of the brain), just as is outer speech (McGuire, 1996; Morin & Hamper, 2012). These findings are consistent with other evidence that inner speech is a form of silent (simulated) outer speech, and thus uses the same physical mechanism.  This is based on private speech theories originating in the 1920s and 30s by Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, that inner speech is actually outer speech that children learn to internalize.

However, if inner speech uses the same mechanism as outer speech rather than the incoming auditory system, then how is it that we "hear" it?  One proposal is based on the attenuation mechanism involved in normal speech production.  This mechanism filters self-generated sounds from other sounds.  It is believed to work analogously to noise cancellation technologies - by predicting self-generated sound and modulating audio processing accordingly.  Experiments by Scott (2013) and Scott et al (2013) demonstrate that this attenuation is also active in inner speech, and suggests that perhaps what we "hear" is the prediction of our own voice by this system.

Another approach by Alderson-Day et al (2016) distinguishes between multiple kinds of inner speech - monologic inner speech of the type traditionally studied as above, and dialogic inner speech that adds a second voice (an interlocutor).  Brain scans of subjects engaging in dialogic inner speech show additional activity in areas associated with auditory hallucinations, and may therefore be "heard" in a similar way.  This is still a very active area of research, so stay tuned!


Batch converting .img files to .mgz in FreeSurfer

I couldn't find a way of doing that using the arguments in the mri_convert, so I decided to do it programatically in bash. This answer will only work in Linux (or in any bash). It's an one-line command to iterativelly run the convertion on all files in the same directory.

for f in *.img; do mri_convert $f $f.mgz; done

There is one aspect that I did not get right, that is FS actually handles img files, however these files do not have directionality information, thus using them is not recommended.

One can simply feed the recon-all command with the img file and the command will take care of the conversion.


Short answer We do think with 'both', and there is evidence to suggest that we need some sort of conscious representation of our thoughts in order to reason about our surroundings. Emotion itself is not enough.

Longer answer:

We do think with our emotional reactions, and we also think with words. When we think with emotions, these are our 'instincts' kicking in. We rely on our emotional ('gut') reactions to tell us when something or someone is dangerous, for example. The instinctual drive is certainly a very valuable thing, and it would be awfully hard to survive without it.

Is thinking 'with words' inefficient? Maybe if an emotional reaction was all you needed in that moment. There are situations -- certain social interactions, for example -- that don't necessitate thinking 'with words'.

However, you can't throw out language entirely. The field of artificial intelligence relies on the fact that the brain can think with words (and, thus, consciously reason its way through situations). The idea of Connectionism in artificial intelligence research relies on the idea that mental states are representational, and thus can be used computationally. In fact, 'neural networks' can be viewed as thinking machines, and most (if not all) research done with neural networks relies on the property that they can think with some sort of representation, language or otherwise.

Why would this be important? One idea is that you need language to make 'connections' (or associations) in your brain between abstract objects. This idea is obviously pretty central to connectionism, given its name. With a storehouse of existing connections, you can modify the 'weight' of these connections upon receiving new input (i.e. new information). In non-technical terms, this means that you can learn more advanced topics, change existing beliefs, and use existing definitions to create newer, more complex ones -- all through human reasoning with conscious representations in the form of language. Thus, language allows us to track the progression of a thought long enough to make a conclusion. If you rely on simply the feeling you get when you see, hear, or remember something, it doesn't do much to increase your ability to reason about that thing.

However, since artificial intelligence focuses almost exclusively on cognition and human reasoning, we could probably look at its shortcomings in order to see where non-representational (i.e. unconscious, perhaps 'emotional') reasoning is a more efficient approach. One obvious problem is that machines can't recognize facial expressions or social context. While you and I could probably recognize a crying face without putting much thought into it, a machine would have to reason through a storehouse of representations (in this case, images of faces instead of words) in order to find the one that represents 'crying'. It would then have to compare this face to the face before it to determine how to comfort it. Even then, it would have to reason through a storehouse of 'comforting' sentences...and you get the idea.

You mention that babies learn faster. This is largely due to the fact that babies are more sensitive to novelty in the environment (see: critical period). This has been demonstrated through studies that show that infants will look longer at a novel stimulus than a familiar stimulus [1]. Given that there is less 'familiarity' in the world of a baby, their attention is more easily captured. There is certainly more to it than that, but there isn't a lot of consensus. We do know, however, that a 'critical period' seems to exist. You might be interested in this paper, which spends some time discussing the progress of a young girl who had lived in isolation and thus had not developed a first language until age eleven. Though she made steady progress, the pace at which she acquired language was much, much slower than that of an infant.

Furthermore, you mention that word length may put a damper on the efficiency of your thought processes. Bear in mind that every language is different. If you were reasoning in Chinese, for instance, your words would be much shorter, and you could arguably think more 'thoughts' in less time (the Chinese language lacks inflection, for instance). However, longer words can also provide more room for specificity. Many modern day concepts (the concept of 'intuition', for example) came directly from German, a language notorious for its long words.

Sources used:

[1] Turk-Browne, Nicholas B., Brian J. Scholl, and Marvin M. Chun. “Babies and Brains: Habituation in Infant Cognition and Functional Neuroimaging.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2 (2008): 16. PMC. Web. 24 Aug. 2015.


What is a source of case studies of personality disorders?

Clinical Case Studies  is a journal devoted to the write up of case studies. To quote the site:

  It presents cases involving individual, couples, and family therapy.
  The easy-to-follow case presentation format allows you to learn how
  interesting and challenging cases were assessed and conceptualized,
  and how treatment followed such conceptualization. This practical
  format allows clinicians to replicate successful treatments in their
  own practices.

Articles follow a 12 step format:

  Theoretical and Research Basis for Treatment
  Case Introduction
  Presenting Complaints
  History
  Assessment
  Case Conceptualization (this is where the clinician’s thinking and treatment selection come to the forefront)
  Course of Treatment and Assessment of Progress
  Complicating Factors (including medical management)
  Access and Barriers to Care
  Follow-Up (how and how long)
  Treatment Implications of the Case
  Recommendations to Clinicians and Students.

You can search within the publication using Google Scholar (publication = clinical case studies).

If price per article is an issue, a few options include:

get access through a library or university.
Subscribe to the entire journal ( this is generally cheaper than per article costs).
examine the subset of articles where authors provide a copy of the PDF online. In Google scholar, see the articles with [PDF] in brackets.

Example article

E.g., See this example by Leedy, Jackson, and Callahan (2007):

  The following case study illustrates a client-centered,
  cognitive-behavioral approach to the psychological treatment of Mr. M,
  a 41-year-old male diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, a mood
  disorder from Lyme disease, and narcissistic personality disorder. Mr.
  M’s personality difficulties are conceptualized as representing
  compensatory narcissism, a strategic way of coping with feelings of
  insecurity. The goals of treatment included positively integrating Mr.
  M’s chronic illness into his identity, decreasing depressive symptoms,
  and improving his interpersonal skills. Treatment was successful in
  decreasing both Mr. M’s depressive symptoms and his narcissistic
  orientation to thinking and interacting with others.

References

Leedy, M.J., Jackson, M. & Callahan, J.L. (2007). Treating Depression and Compensatory Narcissistic Personality Style in a Man With Chronic Lyme Disease. Clinical Case Studies, 6, 430-442. PDF


How to describe research on the effect of expectations on memory?

The relevant concepts are set size and span. The set size is usually the amount of items to be remembered in a memory task, but technically only refers to the amount of information that must be held in (working) memory to complete the memory task at hand, while the span is the amount actually remembered. With this in mind, your topic can be stated as being about whether expectations for set size affect memory span.

I am not aware of any studies directly investigating this. Look into the executive function/control literature, because any effect from expectations for set size on memory span will almost by definition involve some form of executive control. I can think of a number of theoretical possibilities, so I would be very interested to read a follow-up question that you answered yourself.


Assuming a diet is not deficient; this is a brief overview of some of the dietary needs for optimal brain function.

Maintaining glucose levels is necessary to maintain healthy brain function.
There is substantial research on the positive effects of omega 3
fatty acids on brain function.
Vitamin and mineral  deficiencies can cause disruption to brain function (note so can excesses).

Glucose:

This article gives some good detail about how to maintain healthy glucose levels; with discussion of glycaemic index and maintaining a steady release of glucose from the breakdown of complex carbohydrates.

Nourish - Carbohydrates Fuel Your Brain

  Glucose, Learning and Memory - Study

  Psychology professor Paul E. Gold has researched the stability of glucose levels in the brain. Working with Ewan C. McNay , they found that as rats went through a maze, concentrations of glucose declined in the animals' hippocampus , a key brain area involved in learning and memory – even more dramatically so in older brains.

  Except under conditions of starvation, it was thought that the brain always had an ample supply of glucose. "While this is the case in terms of consciousness, the new findings suggest that glucose is not always present in ample amounts to optimally support learning and memory functions," said Gold, who is director of the Medical Scholars Program in the University of Illinois College of Medicine.

  "The brain runs on glucose. Young rats can do a pretty good job of supplying all the glucose that a particular area of the brain needs until the task becomes difficult," explained McNay, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at Yale University. "For an old rat given the same task, the brain glucose supply vanishes out the window. This correlates with a big deficit in performance. A lack of fuel affects the ability to think and remember."

Brain Energy Metabolism
An Integrated Cellular Perspective
Pierre J. Magistretti, Luc Pellerin, and Jean-Luc Martin

  Glucose is the obligatory energy substrate for brain and it is almost entirely oxidized to CO2 and H2O.

Role of glucose in regulating the brain and cognition.
P E Gold

  Extensive evidence indicates that relatively modest increases in circulating glucose concentrations enhance learning and memory processes in rodents and humans.\

Omega 3 fatty acids:

  Lipids (fats)- some fats are essential for proper brain function. Two lipids especially critical to the brain are the n-6 and n-3 fatty acids. Low levels of n-3 cause visual problems by badly affecting the retina. Studies in rats have shown that diets without n-3 fatty acids cause learning and motor disabilities and may damage systems that use the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin in the frontal cortex. The n-6 fatty acids affect neurotransmitter release and contribute to the ability of neurons to use glucose for energy.

Brain foods: the effects of nutrients on brain function
Fernando Gómez-Pinilla  doi:  10.1038/nrn2421

  ... a diet that is rich in omega-3 fatty acids is garnering appreciation for supporting cognitive processes in humans and upregulating genes that are important for maintaining synaptic function and plasticity in rodents. In turn, diets that are high in saturated fat are becoming notorious for reducing molecular substrates that support cognitive processing and increasing the risk of neurological dysfunction in both humans and animals.

Vitamins:

From:
B vitamins and the aging brain.
Selhub J, Troen A, Rosenberg IH.  doi: 10.1111/j.1753-4887.2010.00346.x.

  Deficiencies of the vitamins folate, B(12) , and B(6) are associated with neurological and psychological dysfunction and with congenital defects. In the elderly, cognitive impairment and incident dementia may be related to the high prevalence of inadequate B vitamin status and to elevations of plasma homocysteine

The Vitamin You Need for a Sharp Brain as You Age
Dr. Mercola

  Accordingto the latest research, people with high levels of markers for vitamin B12 deficiency were more likely to score lower on cognitive tests, as well as have a smaller total brain volume, which suggests a lack of the vitamin may lead to brain shrinkage

Vitamin B12, cognition, and brain MRI measures: a cross-sectional examination.
Tangney CC, et al  doi: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e3182315a33.

  Concentrations of all vitamin B12-related markers, but not serum vitamin B12 itself, were associated with global cognitive function and with total brain volume.

Vitamin D, effects on brain development, adult brain function and the links between low levels of vitamin D and neuropsychiatric disease.
Eyles DW, Burne TH, McGrath JJ.  doi: 10.1016/j.yfrne.2012.07.001

  Increasingly vitamin D deficiency is being associated with a number of psychiatric conditions. In particular for disorders with a developmental basis, such as autistic spectrum disorder and schizophrenia the neurobiological plausibility of this association is strengthened by the preclinical data indicating vitamin D deficiency in early life affects neuronal differentiation, axonal connectivity, dopamine ontogeny and brain structure and function. More recently epidemiological associations have been made between low vitamin D and psychiatric disorders not typically associated with abnormalities in brain development such as depression and Alzheimer's disease

The following link gives a good overview of vitamin deficiencies and toxicities.

Fat-Soluble Vitamins: A, D, E, and K
by L. Bellows and R. Moore

  Fat-soluble vitamins: A, D, E, and K — are stored in the body for long periods of time, and pose a greater risk for toxicity than water-soluble vitamins. Fat-soluble vitamins are only needed in small amounts.

Note: that, within all scientific research,there can be research that is "conclusive", but   it is also important to be mindful, that not all findings are conclusive.

Vitamin D and cognitive performance in adults: a systematic review.
Annweiler C, et al   doi: 10.1111/j.1468-1331.2009.02755.x.

  . Three studies showed four significant positive associations between serum 25OHD concentrations and global cognitive functions, whereas three other studies exploring specific aspects of cognition showed 11 non-significant associations. This systematic review shows that the association between serum 25OHD concentrations and cognitive performance is not yet clearly established. The inconclusive results of the reviewed studies could be due to methodology, types of the cognitive tasks used and/or the cellular mechanisms of vitamin D.


Short form of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory questionnaire

An open version of the PPI is available here: https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/LSRP.php


Hobbies / interests correlated with Big 5 scores?

Yes. One example is that people high in Openness to New Experiences are interested in aesthetic experiences including museums and being in nature, and novel experiences as you'd expect from the name. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1997-08808-031

Treatment is a bit misleading here to mean 'study', because in psychology it usually means 'intervention'.


Comparative functional neuroanatomy: humans & octopodes

You could start with Hochner's papers, like this one:

Hochner, B., Shomrat, T., & Fiorito, G. (2006). The octopus: a model for a comparative analysis of the evolution of learning and memory mechanisms. The Biological Bulletin, 210(3), 308-317. http://www.biolbull.org/content/210/3/308.full

As far as I know, he is a world expert.


Official term for the tendency to associate with like-minded people?

Self-selection bias is probably the best domain specific term. Generally, this is called assortativity, as in assortative mating.


There are quite a few stations between cochlea and the brain and I will focus on the auditory nerve. That said, your theories (a) and (b) are both correct, and therefore (d) applies as well.

(a) Neurons in the auditory nerve increase their firing rate when sound level is increased (Heil et al, 2011). This can be regarded as the primary mechanism for encoding sound level.

(b) Increased sound levels are accompanied by a larger area in the cochlea being activated due to the low-frequency tail (Kiang & Moxon, 1974). Hence, more neurons start firing at higher sound levels when the tone frequency is the same. Although this may add in the perceived sound level, it is likely of less importance than (a), as it is basically a reflection of the mechanical properties of the basilar membrane in the cochlea and primarily reduces frequency resolution.

(c) There are no neurons ever identified that are dedicated to sound level encoding. Instead, auditory nerve fibers encode sound frequency (according to the place-frequency map of the cochlea) and they encode sound intensity via their firing rate.

(d) Hence, since both (a) and (b) are correct, your hypothesis (d) holds, as it is a combination of the above.

One can safely assume these intensity-coding mechanisms hold up in the responses of neurons in the next station - the cochlear nucleus. However, the higher up you go in the auditory system, the less likely a 1:1 relationship as found in the far periphery applies.

References
 - Heil et al., J Neurosci 2011; 31(43): 15424-37
 - Kiang & Moxon, JASA 1954; 55(3): 620-30


How action potential is generated while dreaming

There's a lot to unpack here, but maybe a good place to start is looking at the difference between an action potential and a brainwave. An action potential is the abrupt change in voltage of a single neuron in response to a pre-synaptic stimulus. Brainwaves are measured by EEG. They represent the sum of many neurons' activity.
If I understand the gist of your question, you want to know where the brain activity "comes from" during sleep/dreaming since there are no sensory stimuli. It's a good question, and a topic of research. Check out this article or any of Gyorgy Buzsaki's work. Also, you may be interested in the Default mode network.


Opponent-process theory explains this.  Here's an excerpt from the opponent process page on Wikipedia (different page than the opponent-process theory for some reason):

  Besides the cones, which detect light entering the eye, the biological basis of the opponent theory involves two other types of cells: bipolar cells, and ganglion cells. Information from the cones is passed to the bipolar cells in the retina, which may be the cells in the opponent process that transform the information from cones. The information is then passed to ganglion cells, of which there are two major classes: magnocellular, or large-cell layers, and parvocellular[disambiguation needed], or small-cell layers. Parvocellular cells, or P cells, handle the majority of information about color, and fall into two groups: one that processes information about differences between firing of L and M cones, and one that processes differences between S cones and a combined signal from both L and M cones. The first subtype of cells are responsible for processing red–green differences, and the second process blue–yellow differences. P cells also transmit information about intensity of light (how much of it there is) due to their receptive fields.[citation needed]

This Wikipedia page needs a little work, but it already knows more than I do about the wiring. Basically, in effect, strong and prolonged stimulation of one kind of cone (e.g., the red cone) will gradually build a visual signal of the opposite color (blue in this example). When the (red) stimulus is removed, the opposing signal begins to fade, but remains long enough to produce an opposite-color (blue) illusion or afterimage. Lots of fun optical illusions are based on this principle. It works with all colors.

Here's my favorite example for intro psych classes...stare at the black dot in the center and enjoy!

Not sure what the original source for this is BTW. It comes up all over the place with a Google image search, but I haven't found a proper citation yet.


Do we negatively perceive people who wear glasses?

No, people wearing glasses are not generally perceived negatively. Glasses affect various dimensions of person perception differently. To name a few, a commonly reported effect you may want to read up on is the glasses stereotype: If you wear glasses, people will tend to think of you as smarter (e.g., Hellström & Tekle, 1994, Terry & Krantz, 1993), but less attractive compared to those not wearing glasses (Hasart & Hutchinson, 1993; Lundberg & Sheehan, 1994; Terry & Kroger, 1976). This effect has been found regardless of whether the judges wear glasses themselves, although, when they do, the effect on attractiveness appears to be less pronounced (Terry & Kroger, 1976).

It appears, this effect is also moderated by the type of glasses you wear:

  The results show that faces without glasses were seen more attractive and more likeable than faces with full-rim glasses. Faces with rimless glasses did not differ from faces without glasses in their attractiveness or likability rating. Regarding the ratings of successfulness, and intelligence, the results show that individuals wearing glasses (both rimless and full-rim) were rated as more successful and more intelligent than individuals not wearing glasses. Regarding trustworthiness, individuals with rimless glasses were rated as significantly more trustworthy than faces without glasses. Ratings of cooperativeness did not differ between the face versions.

(From this online summary of Leder, Forster & Gerger, 2011)

Hasart, J. K., & Hutchinson, K. L. (1993). The effects of eyeglasses on perceptions of interpersonal-attraction. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 8, 521-528.
Hellström, A., & Tekle, J. (1994). Person perception through facial photographs: Effects of glasses, hair, and beard on judgments of occupation and personal qualities. European Journal of Social Psychology, 24, 693-705. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420240606
Leder, H., Forster, M., & Gerger, G. (2011). The glasses stereotype revisited: Effects of glasses on perception, recognition and impressions of faces. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 70, 211-222. doi:10.1024/1421-0185/a000059
Lundberg, J. K., & Sheehan, E. P. (1994). The effects of glasses and weight on perceptions of attractiveness and intelligence. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 9, 753-760.
Terry, R. L. and Krantz, J. H. (1993), Dimensions of Trait Attributions Associated with Eyeglasses, Men's Facial Hair, and Women's Hair Length. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 23: 1757–1769. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1993.tb01064.x
Terry, R. L., & Kroger, D. L. (1976) Effects of eye correctives on ratings of attractiveness. Perceptual and Motor Skills: Volume 42, Issue , pp. 562-562.
doi: 10.2466/pms.1976.42.2.562


Does Transcranial Direct-Current Stimulation (tDCS) enhance cognitive function?

There is no consensus on this question. This technique is relatively new, and has not been widely used so far. I know of one paper (below) that used this technique alongside intra-cortical recordings and do report convincing effects on LFPs (the overall activity of a local area) and behavior of non-human primates, but not on individual neurons. So this technique does have the potential to modulate brain activity on behaving humans.

For the paper you cite specifically, I do not know whether it is true or not. But solving the 9-dots problem is a hard and unspecified problem that presumably involves the participation of millions of neurons all over the brain. That you could improve performance so much by applying such a simplistic pattern of stimulation is more than highly dubious (in my opinion even laughable). It may be true, but if you asked me to bet I would feel very comfortable betting a large sum of money that such a result would not be replicated in a rigorous, large-scale, double-blind study.

As for consensus, you'll find multiple meta-analyses and reviews (example below) arguing that tDCS has no effect whatsoever on behavior. It doesn't mean there aren't studies reporting real effects in the mix, but the vast majority of studies I have seen so far were very dubious.

Krause, M. R., Zanos, T. P., Csorba, B. A., Pilly, P. K., Choe, J., Phillips, M. E., ... & Pack, C. C. (2017). Transcranial direct current stimulation facilitates associative learning and alters functional connectivity in the primate brain. Current Biology, 27(20), 3086-3096.

Horvath, J. C., Forte, J. D., & Carter, O. (2015). Quantitative review finds no evidence of cognitive effects in healthy populations from single-session transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Brain stimulation, 8(3), 535-550.