How to generate ipsative scores from a test with normative Likert-type items?

Baron (1996) writes:

  Scores on a multi-scale measure are ipsative when raw scale scores sum to a constant for any individual.
  An ipsative score can be thought of as the normative equivalent controlled for overall total score across scales.

Meade (2004) describes perhaps the most common form of ipsatisation based on normative scores as "deviational ipsative" (Radcliffe, 1963):

  normative data (e.g., Likert scales) can be made to be ipsative by simply subtracting the grand mean of each individual’s scale scores (averaged across all scales) from each of his or her individual scale scores (i.e., ipsatized data, Cattell, 1944; additive ipsative data (AID), Chan & Bentler, 1993);

But it seems that there are range of other ways to create ipsative scores (i.e., that satisfy the formal requirement).

The above substraction method can also involve dividing by the within-person population standard deviation.
Save the residuals of a regression model predicting each scale from the mean of all scales

I ran quick comparison on some personality data and it seemed like the residual regression and the deviation approach achieved very similar results (see R code at the bottom of post. Thus, it makes sense that the simpler to calculate deviation approach is often applied.

References

Radcliffe, J. A. (1963). Some properties of ipsative score matrices and their relevance for some current interest tests. Australian Journal of Psychology, 15(1), 1-11.
Meade, A.W. (2004). Psychometric problems and issues involved with creating and using ipsative measures for selection. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (2004), 77, 531–552.
Baron, H. (1996). Strengths and limitations of ipsative measurement. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 69(1), 49-56.

R code

> # load some personality data
> library(psych)
> data(bfi)
> scales <- c("a1", "a2", "a3")
> names(bfi) <- tolower(names(bfi))
> bfi <- bfi[,scales]
> bfi <- na.omit(bfi)
> head(bfi)
      a1 a2 a3
61617  2  4  3
61618  2  4  5
61620  5  4  5
61621  4  4  6
61622  2  3  3
61623  6  6  5
> # calculate overall mean
> bfi$omean <- apply(bfi[,scales], 1, mean)
> # calculate ipsative scores based regression residuals
> bfi$res_a1 <- resid(lm(a1 ~ omean, bfi))
> bfi$res_a2 <- resid(lm(a2 ~ omean, bfi))
> bfi$res_a3 <- resid(lm(a3 ~ omean,bfi))
> # calculate devaiation ipsative scores
> bfi$dev_a1 <- bfi$a1 - bfi$omean
> bfi$dev_a2 <- bfi$a2 - bfi$omean
> bfi$dev_a3 <- bfi$a3 - bfi$omean
> # check that both satisfy ipsatisation requirement
> all(round(apply(bfi[,paste0("res_", scales)], 1, sum), 6) == 0)
[1] TRUE
> all(round(apply(bfi[,paste0("dev_", scales)], 1, sum), 6) == 0)
[1] TRUE
> # Examine similarities between approaches (see diagonal)
> round(cor(bfi[paste0("res_", scales)], bfi[paste0("dev_", scales)]), 3)
       dev_a1 dev_a2 dev_a3
res_a1  0.981 -0.729 -0.711
res_a2 -0.716  0.999  0.065
res_a3 -0.718  0.067  0.971


Erik Erikson: "We live in a continuous process of making the present 'former' "

You should have quoted a bit more, because he was getting to the punchline. It is a bit metaphorical, but I think he is basically saying that it is not possible to have a "pure experience". We always have some individual context for everything, including our own past thoughts.

Another wrinkle is that everything that we think about is already in the past. We can't walk and chew experiences at the same time, so to speak.

Take a good look at what Buddhism says about this sort of thing - it is a 2500 year old technology for dealing with and understanding psychological reality. You could just study nonduality (research term: Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience) and get there faster.


Welcome to Psychology.SE.
When you ask

if two childs from different parents from different regions are kept in a completely empty room, do they behave same or different

that is a question which is heavily debated in Psychology. It all boils down to the nature vs nurture or nature vs environment shaping behaviour.
Your question is definitely not silly and as it stands, the answer is very much open to opinion but you can get some information on the debate from the link provided above.
See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture
https://behavioralscientist.org/the-end-of-nature-versus-nurture/
https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/nature-versus-nurture
https://www.softschools.com/examples/science/nature_vs_nurture_examples/482/
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-nature-versus-nurture-2795392


The bouba/kiki effect is the phenomenon that about 95% of subjects assign the name bouba to a blobby form, and the name kiki to a pointy shape (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Kiki and bouba, at least in 95% of the people. source: Synesthesia Test

It is thought that the reason behind the strong preference is that the sharp changes in visual direction of the lines in the left-hand panel in Fig. 1 mimics the sharp phonemic inflections of the sound kiki, as well as the sharp inflection of the tongue on the palate. Ramachandran poses that the bouba/kiki effect provides a clue for understanding the origins of proto-language, for it suggests that there sounds are mapped on to objects. Ramachandran poses that the representation of certain lip and tongue movements in motor brain areas are mapped in non-arbitrary ways onto certain sound inflections and phonemic representations in auditory regions and the latter in turn may have links to an external object’s visual appearance. These factors may have co-evolved, forming
a possible origin of proto-language (Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001).

To get to your question: cats can't talk. Their vocalizations are relatively restricted, adding up to 16 different sounds. They include the familiar meows, hissing when angry and purring when happy. The purring comes from deep within the body and isn't related to speech at all. The hissing sounds a bit like an /h/ and the meows include more varieties. However, the variability in 'meows' is largely due to intonations (source: The Independent), and not so much the phonemes. Phonemes are: '[...] sound[s], or set of similar speech sounds, which are perceived as a single distinctive sound by speakers of the language or dialect in question. For example, the "c/k" sounds in cat and kitten represent the English phoneme /k/.

Human speech is extremely diverse and is produced by the interplay of various organs, includes lip, tongue and glottal movements that change the way the vocal cords produce sounds. There are 36 phonemes (speech sounds) recognized in English.

The bouba/kiki effect hinges strongly on the phonemes /b/ and /k/ and, perhaps, /i/ and /ou/. Both in Ramachandran & Hubbard's experiment (bouba/kiki) (Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001) and the original study by Kohler (baluba/takete) (reviewed shortly in Ozturk et al. (2013)).

Cats don't have that kind of repertoire of phonemes. So regardless the similarity in some brain areas, I dare to say a bouba/kiki or baluba/takete effect can never be found in cats. I realize this is a rather mechanistic approach to the question and I am indeed not saying that cats cannot experience synesthesia. But that's another question...

References
- Ozturk et al., J Exp Child Psychol (2013); 114: 173–86
- Ramachandran & Hubbard, J Consciousness Studies (2001); 8(12): 3–34


Is there a psychometric tool for measuring the difficulty of mental activities?

There is a workload measure called the NASA-TLX (Task Load Index), one component of which measures mental workload.  It is self-reported workload, however, and also requires interrupting most tasks, so it has some theoretical as well as practical weaknesses.

There is also decently good data that working memory load can be extracted from theta-band activity in the frontal regions, possibly due to the parieto-frontal circuits between the anterior cingulate, inferior frontal, and posterior parietal cortices.

(All of this, however, assumes that working memory load and "difficulty" are the same thing.)

Nasa-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX); 20 Years Later. Hart, S. (2006). Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting October 2006 vol. 50 no. 9 904-908 doi: 10.1177/154193120605000909

Evidence for effects of task difficulty but not learning on neurophysiological variables associated with effort. Brouwer, A. & al. (2014). International Journal of Psychophysiology Volume 93, Issue 2, August 2014, Pages 242–252.
doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2014.05.004

Working memory load modulation of parieto-frontal connections: Evidence from dynamic causal modeling. Ma, L.; Steinberg, J.; Hasan, K.; Narayana, P.; Kramer, L.; et al. Human Brain Mapping 33.8 (Aug 2012): 1850-1867.
doi: 10.1002/hbm.21329


Well for one, the first neurons to decode this symbol are orientation neurons, in V1 of the primary visual cortex. So some neurons have enhanced firing for say a 45 degree angle, and neighboring neurons for a 46 degree angle, and so on. Higher up the processing stream groups of neurons respond to shapes, that are a conglomerate of the orientation lines. Then higher order visual cortices will process the seen image, as well as feeding back to the original orientation neurons, fine tuning their processing.

Here's an example though of something our brains can encode, albeit taking a bit longer because it is out of the ordinary to see it this way. When we see faces, there is an area in the temporal lobe called the fusiform face area (a higher order visual processing area) that becomes particularly active. In EEG recordings, there is a negative component of the event related potential (ERP), the N1. When viewing faces compared to other objects, this N1 component (at 100ms) becomes enhanced in amplitude (more negative) as well as latency. So it has been termed the N170, for occurring later in time at 170ms. When viewing INVERTED faces, this effect becomes even stronger. It has been hypothesized that this is due to the fact that we process faces in a holistic manner, so that when it is inverted, there is a 'lag' in processing speed to figure out this is a face. This has been attributed to a delay in the fusiform face area.

I realize this is not reading, but I think it touches on the concept you're asking about. Our brains are incredibly good at pattern recognition, at filling in the blanks, and decoding reality presented to us from our senses. So I would say yes, there would be a bit of 'extra' work in deciphering the text at an angle. And mind you, we see slanted text all the time, we don't always have our heads and eyes straight ahead! But also, it is strongly context dependent. If other digits or numbers were in combination with this image, we would either see a 5 or S, respectively. It would be a terrible evolutionary adaptation if we couldn't read or process images that were not ideal. A certain amount of interpretation or assumption goes in to perception. That's what is referred to as top-down processing.


Is there literature support for the 'pop' claim that people "marry their parent"/choose a partner with traits similar to their parent(s)?

Yes, much literature supports this notion. Mary Ainsworth's attachment theory has a lot to say about parental attachments and how important they are for future growth; this journal article is directly related to your query. There is also related research in evolutionary psychology, see this and this.
As for why we get attracted to parental traits: the most popular explanation is sexual imprinting, which comes from evolutionary psychology: as the human species evolved, the humans who learned early on what humans looked like were more likely to mate with the same species and pass on their genes, leading to an evolutionary benefit for learning traits from your parents.


Accuracy of psychopy keystroke duration measurement

In the Psychopy forum I have received some advice:

One would be to change the code: take out the print command, no
redefining of variables
USB, USB device, the python and system
libraries should be the newest and fastest, if possible, because
these could have an influence on the accuracy.
And that Psychtoolbox forum could have the solution, but so far I haven't found it.


The simple answer to this question is "no". Dream state accesses state of consciousness where past/present/future are melted, which is why dreamer might be re-living experiences from the past, premonitions about the future -all intermixed, as well as an abundance of other experiences.

But there is a more complex answer which might hold much more value when approaching the issue of dreams in general - and in their particularities.

The Freudian or even Jungian approach to dreams is a passive one. That vastly diminishes the potential they hold. It is correct that dreams let us peek into the subconscious, which to a great extent influence and even drive the "conscious" behaviors and states.

The superior way to approach that phenomenon is however to take an active role in the dream - what is called lucid dreaming. By this, you will get now only be able to freely explore the content of your subconscious, but to fix issues existing there - being able to solve in one night, what the psychoanalysis would in years.

Familiarize yourself with works of Stephen LaBerge - he gives specific methods for achieving the capacity for lucid dreaming.

If you want to go even deeper (or higher) into understanding and accessing the subconscious, as well as supra-conscious, there is a handful of schools around the world, a bit challenging to recognize, teaching genuine techniques stemming from Kashmir Shaivism, which can enable you to truly see how deep the rabbit hole goes...


What is the brain power devoted to vision and haptics?

I'd argue that "brain power" is dangerously vague. Are you looking at weight, volume, area (including or excluding cortical folding), are you looking at just the cortex, or the whole brain?

At a lower level, are you counting just cell bodies, or do you count the processes that join them; do you just weigh the whole lot and try to figure out "power" that way? Do you count long axons projecting from the peripheral nervous system? Because touch would have a massive edge over vision if you counted the weight of those long, thick, myelinated axons in the spinal column.

None of those straight physical measures will give you an estimate of "power" because power implies other more cognitive factors; speed and capacity notably. Myelination gives speed of response to neurons, as does thickness. But a shorter neuron will be faster (more powerful?) than a longer one, and will also weigh less - clearly weight isn't a good estimator of speed, in fact the further information travels through axons the less "powerful" the whole system will be.

But that's just talking about speed - what about capacity? The overall number of indivudal points of input might relate to capacity, but the brain does plenty of post processing on visual input to allow it to process far more information than the eyes actually give it at any one time. Is capacity related to the number of synapses each neuron makes? This probably has something do to more with "depth" of processing than capacity, as it implies that each percept is sent to more places.

And beyond even speed, depth and capacity, what about learning? Which system has a greater ability to adaptively learn and pass learned information back into the decision making parts of the brain? How do you measure that? By the number of NMDA receptors in each system?

Also, what's this "touch" thing anyway? Are you talking about perception of heat, cold, pain (which sort, a$\delta$, perhaps C fibres)? Are you talking about sensations of pressure, like that felt when pushing a heavy object? Those sort of sensations are related more to proprioception than touch - they are all about sensing the environment's reaction to the body based on stretch receptors in the muscles, this is another type of input that makes up the heterogeneous sense labelled "touch".

Each of these types of pressure, superficial touch, pain, heat and cold have different afferent projections, and each has it's own substrate in the brain, with different architectures, different strengths and weaknesses - there is no straightforward "power" to compare any of those components of touch, much less to compare touch to something as remote as vision. This sort of question and attempts to answer it dangerously obscure the complex science behind both systems, giving a false sense of understanding where most of the above questions are unanswered, and possibly unanswerable.


How to foster an environment for appreciation

Firstly, this question sounds pretty clearly self-serving, like saying "I want people to like me more; how do I make them like me?". Secondly, school is a business, much like other businesses. When a company makes a product, of course the company hopes the market will "appreciate" the product. There are many marketing strategies used out there, but the long-term viability of a product requires that it provides clear value. Without that value, prospects cannot be expected to appreciate the product. In the case of high school, most students are probably aware that the product is not being sold to the students but instead to the parents. Hence, students are not the customer. Since students are not the customer, and since students had little to no say in the product's design, getting the students to appreciate the product is going to be very challenging.

One approach is to make the students believe they are the customer. You might, for example, use a bandwagon strategy wherein you explain that "There are many happy students from years prior who have attended this school and are now enjoying a life of success and freedom".

Another approach, which would be more honest, would be to actually make the students into the customer, such as by designing the curriculum around their needs and aspirations while providing a clear value that cannot easily be found elsewhere. If you are to be honest with yourself, this is the only noble approach. If a school cannot provide clear benefits that a student cannot find outside of school (such as on the Internet or in books alone), then that school is not doing its job. Sure, there are many types of rhetoric and trickery that can (and often are) employed by schools and governments, but these are nothing to be proud of.

In short: Provide a unique and worthwhile opportunity with a benefit that can be seen clearly. Engage the students in the curriculum -- make them the customer.

PS: While a bit off-topic, I just remembered a music video that critiques some of the curriculum focus in the recent if not current school system. This video had no bearing on my answer here as I only remembered the video afterward, but its topic is related enough to be worth mentioning here.


Apart from sleep, does the brain needs rest?

Margarita Tartakovski on PsychCentral says,

  Information is merely a click — or, more accurately, a Google search — away. Depending on your query, there’s likely at least a dozen, if not hundreds, of blogs on the topic, a similar number of books and many more articles.

  This is a good thing, but it also can overburden our brains.

  According to Lucy Jo Palladino, Ph.D, a psychologist and author of Find Your Focus Zone: An Effective New Plan to Defeat Distraction and Overload, “Information overload occurs when a person is exposed to more information than the brain can process at one time.”

  Alvin Toffler actually coined the term in 1970 in his book Future Shock. As more and more people started using the Web, “information overload” became a popular phrase to describe how we felt about going online, Palladino said.

  According to neuroscientists, the more accurate term is “cognitive overload,” she said. That’s “because the brain can process vast amounts of information depending on the form in which it’s presented,”

According to Professor Torkel Klingberg, MD, PhD (2009), the brain can suffer from information overload, and he gives some examples of what he is talking about.

  Our brains have limited capacity for processing information.  This book is an attempt to understand why this is so, what effect it has on our everyday lives, and how we can stretch these limits with mental exercise......In his article "Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform," psychiatrist Edward Hallowell coins the term "attention deficit trait" to characterize the situation.

From these articles, and articles linked within these articles, I would say that there are times that the brain needs rest at times in-between mental activities, in order to process things learnt, but the periods of rest needed can vary depending on how the activity taxes the brain, and how much it is used to dealing with the information.


What does it mean when we say that "a neuron connects to a certain cortical layer"?

Short answer
In complicated matters like neural connections in a layered cortex, it is all about semantics. One should carefully place statements in their context and deduce their meaning.

Background
In Fig. 1 a schematic of the layering of the cortex is shown. The layers can be separated based on their histological and neurophysiological features:

Layer I: the molecular layer, contains primarily axons running parallel (horizontal) to the cortical surface.
Layer II, the external granular layer, is composed of a mixture of small granule cells and pyramidal cells. The apical dendrites of the pyramidal cells extend into layer I and their axons descend into and through the deeper cortical layers.
Layer III, the external pyramidal layer, contains primarily pyramidal cells. Their apical dendrites ascend into layer I and their axons descend into and through the deeper layers.
Layer IV, the internal granular layer, consists almost exclusively of stellate neurons. It can be divided into subdivisions in many neocortical areas. Layer IV is the primary target for ascending sensory information from the thalamus.
Layer V, the internal pyramidal layer, consists predominantly of pyramidal cells. Apical dendrites may extend upward one or two layers, and the larger pyramidal cells may have dendrites extending into layer I.
Layer VI, the multiform layer, contains an assortment of neuron types. The dendrites of pyramidal cells may extend into layer I. (source: Clinical Gate)

As the text in bold above shows, the apical dendrites of pyramidal cells can extend many layers. Hence, it is a matter of reading the text carefully to know what they are talking about.

In your example...

  [A] neuron connects to Layer V of the cortex...

...it would depend on the context, but in this isolated instance it simply reads that a neuron's axon terminates in layer V. Especially in histological texts a line like this would most likely have identified the axon and the axon terminal and have identified the layer where it terminates.

However, as said above, dendrites of pyramids may extend all the way up to layer I, so if a text would say...

  [A] neuron synapses onto a layer V neuron...

it is left undetermined exactly where that connection is made (can be layers I, II, III, IV, or V in the case of pyramidal cells).

What can be of help is the fact that when a text talks about...

  ...a layer V neuron

...you can safely assume that its cell body is located in layer V, as a cell's location is determined by its cell body. Its dendrites can be in any layer (especially of the larger pyramid cells) and its axon may traverse all layers.

Fig. 1. Layers in the cortex. source: Clinical Gate


Is prior experience necessary to perceive the Kanizsa triangle illusion?

It's a difficult question to answer. My educated guess is that the appearance of the triangle, and illusionary contours in general, would persist, even in individuals who have never seen a triangle before in their lives. I think they would perceive the illusionary contours, but it might just not make sense to them, as the shapes may be unfamilair to them. In other words, they would not associate the form with something meaningful. The reason why I expect previous experience with geometrical shapes is unimportant for illusiuonary contours to be perceived is two-fold:

Illusionary contours are generated in the secondary visual cortex (V2), which is a low-level part of the visual system. It performs relatively simple processing such as the coding of orientations, contours and the perception of background and foreground (Anzai et al., 2007). Such low-level processing is, expectedly, largely innate.
The neural representations of illusionary contours have been shown in a variety of species. Admittedly, most electrophysiological evidence comes from primates (e.g., Heydt, 1984), but illusionary contours have even been shown to be recognized by cuttlefish (Zylinsk et al., 2012). Hence, given the fact that relatively uncomplicated species like cuttlefish are able to successfully perceive illusionary contours, I doubt that prior experience in the geometry of the illusionary contour is a critical factor in perceiving it.

References
- Anzal et al., Nature Neurosci (2007); 10: 1313 - 21
- Heydt, Science (1984); 224(4654): 1260-2
- Zylinsk et al., Proc Biol Sci (2012); 279(1737): 2386–90


How do graphic objects in data visualisation facilitate ease of interpretation?

As you mentioned, data visualization and visual stimulation in general, trigger a primitive brain response, which results in an easier comprehension and engagement/rejection process - a process more trivial than sensing and comprehending symbols. Thus, numerical information such as percentages, distributions, and relativistic data in general, immediately get infused into the cognitive realm, provided the visual field is not excessively cluttered. Too much visual stimulus in a presentation results in a more laborious attempt at comprehension, and hence may lose favor.

When it comes to non-numerical / non-quantitative data, visualizations serve as a promoter of cognitive engagement. Traffic lights to draw attention, smiley faces may be used to encourage the receiver, boxes and other demarcations to engrave specific items of information in memory, the list goes on.

I think the effectiveness of the visual presentation largely depends on the creativity and imagination of the presenter to resonate with the target audience, in terms of the mood, awareness, humor (mood?), social values and other variables which maybe of interest, of the target audience.

Again, if the visual field is excessively populated, the labor involved in the comprehension process may impede the effectiveness of the presentation.

Also, the ease at which visual information is processed also depends on how distinct the objects that are communicating information in the visual are.
In your example, smiley faces to depict percentages maybe less effective compared to, say a colored pie chart, or something to that effect, because smiley faces are not easy to distinguish by themselves - even if they are ordered into separate regions. And in the possible event of conveying grim news , grim graphics may not received in the highest of spirits :P.

Cheers!


What is the current "accepted" science behind dream interpretation?

As far as I know, there is no accepted science to dream interpretation. In fact, there's no science to it at all. Evidence has shown that indeed, dreaming draws material from people, places, and things in our lives, but there's absolutely no scientific data out there (that I'm familiar with) that links dreams to anything meaningful in our actual daily lives.

If anything, dreaming and sleep is an opportunity to "replay" patterns of neural activation that occurred during the day, leading to consolidation of long-term memories. I wouldn't take anything on that Wikipedia page seriously.

Other arguments for why we sleep and dream:

(1) We may sleep to repair our brain or maintain homeostasis within the system. This would suggest that there's a substance in our body which requires sleep that increases its need over time. This possibility is evidenced by the fact that you can die of sleep deprivation -- but evidence against is that some amount of deprivation doesn't set you back all too far. (Also, why does sleep feel restorative, if it's only maintaining homeostasis?) There's increasing amount of evidence to suggest that improved circulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain during sleep serves to clean the brain from toxic metabolic byproducts of daily activity.

(2) It's also possible that sleep and dreaming serves the body's overall safety. This argument stems from value long-ago in sleeping during the dangerous nighttime, when predators and other dangerous animals generally have the upper hand over man. This seems reasonably vestigial in humans, though...

(3) It also may be the case that sleep and dreaming is effective for conserving our neurak energy over the course of the day. Indeed, slow-wave sleep is associated with reduced cortical activity -- but then again, REM sleep features high activity.

(4) An even more powerful possibility is that neural reprogramming is dependent on sleep. This is evidenced by consolidation effects that occur while we rest, and the fact that less interference occurs during the sleeping hours (see Jenkins & Dallenbach, 1924, if you want to read a real classic). There are many minimal sleepers out there, though, that are high functioning, so what does that mean for this theory?


Is memory biased towards positive or negative memories?

The short answer is: it depends on age. For younger adults, negative memories last longer than positive memories. The opposite is true for older adults (above 60 years old).

This paper is a good review of some of the above effects: Choice-supportive bias, Mood congruent memory bias, Positivity effect, and Negativity bias. It suggests that negative bias only exists among younger adults, while positive memories last longer than negative memories among older adults. The paper also provided several explanations. One of them is that older adults tend to exhibit auto-activation of emotional regulation ability, thus cognitive control comes into play during the memory recall process.

Mather, M. (2006). Why memories may become more positive as people age. Memory and emotion: Interdisciplinary perspectives, 135-158.


Why do we sometimes(i often) go to trance while listening to music?

If you take a look at this quick article: The Neuroscience Of Trance or the full published study the article refers to: Brain Network Reconfiguration and Perceptual Decoupling During an Absorptive State of Consciousness scientists used fMRI to view what was going on in the brains of shamans as they either entered into a trance or purposefully stopped themselves from doing so while listening to drumming.

One of the things they noted was a dampening of the sensory pathways - there theory being that while the drumming beat was the most prominent external stimulus, it's repetitive and predictable patterns allowed it to be gated out/ignored while its ongoing presence prevented reorienting to the usual random environmental distractions.

I would expect the music your listening to is doing more or less what the drumming does for the shamans.


What is the name of the concept in psychology that makes requirements hard to articulate?

I think the concept you are looking for is Tacit Knowledge (aslo known as implicit knowledge).

The main reason that users cannot articulate what they want, is that they do not have any conscious access to the knowledge they have acquired over the many years of practice. That’s why an iterative process is needed to bring the tacit knowledge on users awareness, so that they can articulate it.

Definition from wikipedia :

  Tacit knowledge (as opposed to formal, codified or explicit knowledge)
  is the kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another
  person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. For example,
  stating to someone that London is in the United Kingdom is a piece of
  explicit knowledge that can be written down, transmitted, and
  understood by a recipient. However, the ability to speak a language,
  knead dough, use algebra, or design and use complex equipment
  requires all sorts of knowledge that is not always known explicitly,
  even by expert practitioners, and which is difficult or impossible to
  explicitly transfer to other users.


Are food rewards a good long term learning strategy?

Food rewards are effective and safe to use in principle.  But in practice...?
The non-caveman term for the process of using consequences to modify behavior is operant conditioning, and the specific use of rewards is called positive reinforcement:

Example: A father gives candy to his daughter when she tidies up her
toys. If the frequency of picking up the toys increases, the candy is
a positive reinforcer (to reinforce the behavior of cleaning up).

Notice the very specific phrasing of this example as an if, rather than an is - that is, food rewards are a reinforcer only if they work.  This means that in order to know if they work, you will have to try them out, it is not something that can easily be predicted in advance.
Positive reinforcement using a variety of different kinds of rewards (tangible rewards such as food, prizes, privileges, and intangible rewards, in particular social rewards such as praise, attention, and affection) are a mainstay of behavioral therapy (BT, including CBT).  If a parent consults a behavioral therapist for help with a child struggling with homework, then the therapist will likely start with an assessment that includes determining what reinforcers the child may respond well to, as well as possible obstacles to progress.
Behavioral therapy is commonly used with children, particularly children with learning difficulties such as autism.  Since autistic children may initially respond less favorably to certain kinds of social reward, other rewards such as food may be used in early sessions, though patients are ideally weaned off tangible rewards in favor of intangible ones before completing treatment.
Behavioral therapy using positive reinforcement is one of the most evidence-based and effective approaches in the field.  However, parents attempting to replicate this process outside the lab or clinic are recommended training, as they may run into a number of pitfalls.  As a starter on reinforcement training, I recommend the great, accessible, and very short book Don't Shoot the Dog!


.Do students learn better when challenged (specifically, in math education)?

Let me begin by saying that the answer is nowhere near as simple as you or I would like it to be. There are several reasons for this, but the main reason is that there are myriad ways that students can struggle through the material.

I became interested in this subject when I was a graduate teaching assistant in the Industrial Engineering program at Iowa State. One of the classes that I taught dealt with the concept of measurement variation, which inescapably includes several important statistical concepts, which to me (having had four advanced statistics/methods courses) were painfully obvious; however, my students had no hope whatsoever.  When lab report grading time came around, I was very disappointed to see that even my brightest students completely missed the point of the experiment, <sarcasm> despite my obviously brilliant instruction </sarcasm>.

So, I set out to do research and conduct experiments into exactly why my students had trouble with this material.  I've written two papers on the subject (with a third in-work).  Here are some of my general findings:

The learning process depends upon the learner (pre-existing knowledge and conceptions), the material (type and difficulty), and the teaching method. These three interact in a complex way, as several researchers have explored. The most comprehensive set of literature on this can be found by searching Cognitive Load Theory.
Problem-based learning (which is what @JohnYetter describes in his answer) has been proven to be a highly effective teaching method for science and math when executed properly.  Proper execution of PBL requires that students are familiar with the method, and my studies have shown that properly-designed scaffolding (things that help guide the process and point out key concepts) is a significant, essential component.
Lecture does not appear to have any effect on learning (at least for measurement variation and the related concepts), and may actually harm the learning process (this is what I am studying further right now).

The theories agree that the reason PBL is effective is that it forces students to make the necessary schematic connections to build their knowledge. The intent of the process is to take novices and begin to develop their knowledge base such that it functions more like an experts' knowledge base (there are proven differences between how novices and experts explore problems).  Along with this, I think that you need to have a particular type of student, one who has self-discipline and doesn't give up. Such students are well-suited for engineering and science; students who don't possess these abilities or who are not capable of rapidly adapting find themselves on the way over to a non-technical degree (so my studies of engineering students only automatically exclude this population of students, which is another piece I need to study further).


This should be rather easy to find on google scholar, especially with the recent replicability crisis in social psychology. In particular, Bargh and Cesario has a few things to say in 'defense' of priming.

You can start with Bargh's article, which is a response to this article by Bower.

Cesario's article is here, and for an overview of the whole issue surrounding priming and replicability, you can try Pashler and Wagenmaker's article.


Images on personal computers - Which aspect of size to keep constant?

I don't think that (2) works. The physical size of the screen is not available to you. You may be able to calculate the dimensions in pixels, but pixel density (dpi), pixel format and sampling pattern change from screen to screen. So you won't be able to calculate the centimeters from the pixels.

I would do what web designers have done for centuries: rely on the user to resize content to their needs.

I would provide images in high resolution, display them at an initial size* that works well on the most common screen resolutions (1366 x 768 and 1024 x 768), and provide a highly visible request to resize the image to make viewing comfortable. With Javascript you can offer fluid, continuous resizing options easily (e.g. TwinHelix or, what I prefer, YUI), allowing the users to resize web content in the same way they would resize the browser window. Or you can offer a number of preset sizes (+/- 10% etc.) and link these to different style sheets.

*A good measure for the initial size, in my opinion, is the em. You can rely on two factors with this: if the user uses the computer at its factory settings, then type size is adapted to the screen size; if the user changed the settings, then type size is adapted to his visual ability and preferences. If you give image size in em, i.e. in relation to type size, images will be scaled to the users needs.

This is, of course, no exact science, but that is what I do, when I design a website. It is the closest I manage to get to cross computer similarity in size. As soon as you read about cross browser web design, you'll lose all optimism that your goals at exactness can be achieved ;-)


How does the brain break down visual information for processing? What "channels" is visual input broken into?

The human visual processing system receives input from the eyes, and then passes it through a number of areas of the brain that break it down, process it in various different ways, recombine it, and break it down again several times.  I'm assuming this question is only about the visual cortex, general theories about how information might be broken down for processing there, and only concerning parallel-processing (channels), as opposed to sequential specialization (layers), otherwise the answer should fill up a textbook.

Main pathways through visual cortex:

The traditional understanding of the visual cortex divides it into 2 main pathways:

  Each V1 transmits information to two primary pathways, called the
  ventral stream and the dorsal stream.

  The ventral stream begins with V1, goes through visual area V2, then through visual area V4, and to the inferior temporal cortex (IP
  cortex). The ventral stream, sometimes called the "What Pathway", is
  associated with form recognition and object representation. It is also
  associated with storage of long-term memory.
  The dorsal stream begins with V1, goes through Visual area V2, then to the dorsomedial area (DM/ V6) and Visual area MT (middle
  temporal/ V5) and to the posterior parietal cortex. The dorsal stream,
  sometimes called the "Where Pathway" or "How Pathway", is associated
  with motion, representation of object locations, and control of the
  eyes and arms, especially when visual information is used to guide
  saccades or reaching.

The "what" and "where" pathways are also sometimes referred to as the "perception" and "action" pathways, respectively.

Another common theory about the visual cortex identifies at least 3 modules: Motion, colour, and form.  Evidence for these proposed modules comes largely from lesion studies and related disorders of the visual system.  In general, an impairment in one module doesn't seem to affect the others, suggesting that these specializations are processed independently and in parallel.  However, it is not clear if they form distinct pathways through the visual cortex.

There is also evidence for a long-term memory pathway (visual-perirhinal-hippocampal stream) that feeds memory information from and to the visual cortex.  Many other pathways have been postulated; this field of research is very active, consensus on further detail remains elusive for now.

Complications to such models:

Such "pathway" models of the visual cortex are limited by a number of factors:

There is evidence of significant interaction between the streams
There is evidence of feedback cycles within the streams
Evidence that different pathways are used in different situations
There is some evidence of asymmetric processing in the brain
There is also some evidence of inter-person differences

Furthermore, as mentioned, the visual cortex is only part of the visual system.  Significant processing happens earlier - you mentioned about edge detection, some of that appears to already be happening by the time signals reach the visual cortex.  And more processing happens later as well, in the parietal and temporal cortices for example, such as facial recognition.

Implications for artificial neural networks:

The visual cortex may not be ideal inspiration for ANNs, especially since it only handles a not-very-early part of the process, such that the signals it receives have already undergone significant modification from the raw stimuli.  Additionally, its pathway structure is fairly complex, and not fully understood.  There have nonetheless been attempts to simulate parts of the visual cortex and compare to non-biologically inspired networks.

The LGN - an area of the brain involved earlier in the process - may be more amenable to some inspiration and simulation, as it is a simpler structure with clearer functions and pathways.  It handles some of the functions you described at a more basic level, including some edge detection, colour processing, contrast, and various other aspects of perception such as depth, brightness, and movement, albeit with many of the same caveats as mentioned for the visual cortex.


Why do we say that some animals have consciousness and some don't?

This reminds me of a similar question I answered a few weeks ago. Not exactly the same situation, but the leading theory is that it comes down to complexity.

I'll start out by saying that we don't know for sure what animals are conscious or even what consciousness is, exactly. In fact, it's not even possible to prove without a doubt that you or I are conscious.

We do mostly seem to have a general intuition of what consciousness is, and which things are or are not conscious. Probably most people would say that an ant does not possess consciousness, and the complexity argument would back that up. While ants do have brains, the structure of their brains is very different from the brain of a mammal. Most people would say that a human has consciousness; from experience for one thing. How about a killer whale, a monkey, or even a human infant? There might be less of a consensus in these cases. In my opinion, we should err on the side of consciousness whenever possible.

Lastly, I get what you're saying with the computer analogy, but the human brain is so much more complex than a computer and it definitely works differently than any kind of man made computer. Even some of the new chips that are built to mimic networks of neurons are missing a lot of what is going on in vivo. There are interactions occurring between living neurons that aren't fully understood yet. A more accurate analogy would be that the human brain is like a high-end future computer-like object and an ant nervous system is like a very low-end future computer-like object. One difference between high-end and low-end future computer-like objects might be the ability to experience consciousness.


Compared efficiency of different spaced-repetition memorisation techniques

A quick Pubmed search shows a couple of potential useful papers. The more promising:

Karpicke, JD., & Bauernschmidt, A. (2011) Spaced retrieval: absolute spacing enhances learning regardless of relative spacing J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 37(5):1250-7
Toppino, TC., Kasserman, JE., & Mracek WA. (1991) The effect of spacing repetitions on the recognition memory of young children and adults J Exp Child Psychol. 51(1):123-38.


Name of cognitive bias where people try to use all given information regardless of quality?

It's probably related to information overload "the difficulty in understanding an issue and effectively making decisions when one has too much information about that issue". As for a more specific term...

In the full text of https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327663jcp1403_7 it's called the irrelevant attribute effect. I'm not sure how widespread this term is. Therein it's defined as the scenario when

  irrelevant information may influence choice even when there is an easily
  justified basis for choice other than the irrelevant attribute.

There are a lot papers out there on how irrelevant information affects choice, but most don't seem to use this precise term but some reasonably close expression.

There's even one paper which discussed a sub-form of this, namely the dilution effect, which

  occurs when a person’s consideration of irrelevant information leads to a less extreme judgment.

Even though it's narrower in meaning, this last term is more widespread.


What does "Convolutional" signify in "Convolutional Neural Network"?

Convolution is a technical term, and comes from the signal processing field. Unfortunately, it is easily confused with "convoluting". Effectively, "to convolve" means to pick a small "window", slide it across your signal, and compute the same function for each step.

In CNNs, when applied to classifying, for example images, it means taking a small window, of say 3x3 pixels, sliding it across the whole image, and feeding the small sections of the larger image under the window into a neural network. The outputs of the network are then combined into a new layer and can then be fed into another NN layer for classification.

In the example above, the window is 3x3 pixels wide, and the step size is 1. Depending on the application, it's possible to have larger/smaller windows and step sizes.

The resulting layer can be said to be the result of convolving the original image with a neural network.

When using convolution filters in, say Photoshop, it's using a similar method where it takes sliding windows of pixels and computes a function (for example to achieve blur, the average RGB values of the window pixels) and creates a new image out of those. You can then say that convolving an image with a pixel average function results in a blurred image.


What is understood about interactions between personality types or traits?

Do the Big Five traits interact?

I have given a general overview of the Big Five model in a previous answer. The Big Five model of personality is based on a statistical analysis of a person's tendency to agree or disagree with short descriptive statements. The principal object of this analysis is to identify independent factors that can explain variation in participants' responses to these statements. In some sense, they are designed not to interact.

Because of the descriptive nature of, and the methodology employed in, the construction of the Big Five, the factors do not have notion of interaction in the sense that Jungian types might, and do not "drive" behavior in the same sense. It's theoretically meaningful to talk about interactions between Jungian types, because types are associated with not only particular behavioral patterns, but particular manifestations of behavior.

Factor analytic theories such as the Big Five or 16PF, on the other hand, are not associated with particular manifestations of behavior. It isn't meaningful to talk about how a person A who is high on neuroticism might interact with a person B who is high on Agreeableness, because we can readily imagine an almost infinite number of ways in which those traits might manifest over persons, situations and time.

There may still be statistical interaction between Big Five traits with respect to some outcome variable (e.g., high conscientiousness and extraversion may predict higher income than the sum of both in isolation), but these notions of interaction should not be confused.

Are interactions between Jungian types scientifically supported?

This question has effectively been covered a number of posts here on Cognitive Sciences. The short version is that Jungian type theories such as the MBTI are not well supported by the empirical research literature, but we don't know if it is an example of the Forer effect. You may find the following questions interesting.

Are there any personality theories that use the scientific method?
Are woman more Judging than men in the MBTI?
Is the Myer Briggs Type indicator (MBTI) a reasonable scientific theory?
Intuitive explanation of MBTI test and it's gender bias
What is the consequence for the MBTI in not having a neuroticism factor?


How to measure group differences incorporating reaction time / accuracy trade-off?

The basic approach that you are describing sounds like inverse efficiency scores (e.g., see Townsend and Ashby, 1978,1983), which are measured as

$$\frac{r}{1-e} = \frac{r}{c}$$
where  $r$ is reaction time, $e$ is proportion error, and $c$ is proportion correct. John Christie provides a critique of inverse efficiency scores here or see the discussion in Bruyer and Brysbaert (2011).

This existing question on "How to analyze reaction times and accuracy together?" hopefully answers your question. The answers there generally advocate more sophisticated approaches for combining reaction time and accuracy such as the Linear Ballistic Accumulator Model and Ratcliff's diffusion model.

References

Bruyer, R. & Brysbaert, M. (2011). Combining Speed and Accuracy in Cognitive Psychology: Is the Inverse Efficiency Score (IES) a Better Dependent Variable than the Mean Reaction Time (RT) and the Percentage Of Errors (PE)?. Psychologica Belgica, 51, 5-13. PDF
Townsend, J.T., & Ashby,  F.G. (1978). Methods of modeling capacity in simple
processing systems. In J. Castellan & F. Restle (Eds.), Cognitive theory. Vol. 3.
(pp. 200-239). Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.
Townsend, J.T., & Ashby, F.G. (1983). Stochastic modeling of elementary psychological processes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Open-source software for analyzing Electrodermal activity

I have found a list of Python and Matlab packages. I'll summarize them over here. As soon as I have gone through the packages, I'll provide some additional details.
Online

edaExplorer: Also in Python.*
EdaExplorer is a tool that is able to detect noisy data from clean data. Five second epochs are made which will be categorized by a model that is the result of a supervised machine learning algorithm (a support vector machine). The data can be marked binary (clean vs noisy) or multiclass (clean, doubtfull or noisy). The noisy data can subsequently be removed. Moreover, edaExplorer is able to find peaks (GSRs) and you can label epochs by walking through the data.

Python

*edaExplorer:
cvxEDA: Also in Matlab.**
cvxEDA uses a convex optimization procedure to separate the data into three components: (1) a tonic component, (2) a phasic component and (3) a noise term. The noise term is simply a sequence of zero-averaged Gaussian random variables with variance $\sigma^{2}$. The phasic component is determined by the convolution of sudomotor nerve pulses. The tonic component is all that is left, slow varying changes in conductivity. The function is physiologically plausibly and has shown to outperform the continuous deconvolution analysis (CDA), as implemented in Ledalab.
PyPsy 0.1.1 or PyPsy 0.1.5:
...

R

...

Java

...

Matlab

**cvxEDA:

edaSleep:

EDA:

Ledalab

PsPM

Most packages came from http://affect.media.mit.edu/software.php. The website provides tools for analyzing several other stuff, such as facial recognition. Definitely worth taking a look.

References
edaExplorer: Taylor, S., Jaques, N., Chen, W., Fedor, S., Sano, A., & Picard, R. Automatic identification of artifacts in electrodermal activity data. In Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference. 2015.
cvxEDA: A Greco, G Valenza, A Lanata, EP Scilingo, and L Citi. cvxEDA: a Convex Optimization Approach to Electrodermal Activity Processing,
IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 2015. DOI: 10.1109/TBME.2015.2474131
edaSleep: Akane Sano, Rosalind W. Picard, Toward a Taxonomy of Autonomic Sleep Patterns with Electrodermal Activity, IEEE EMBC 2011, Boston, USA, August 2011


I love this question. While I don't have a definitive answer, I can help with some known factors of child development.

There are studies suggesting that the parents' voices and repeated music is heard in the womb by the fetus and responded to after birth.

Specific studies (see: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/08/babies-learn-recognize-words-womb) classify the third trimester (last three months) of development in the womb to be the key point at which sensory hearing and brain function/classification is active, thus suggesting the brain is "turned on" during or prior to the last trimester.

I would love to hear further studies from others that clarify this point.


The mathematics of dreams, or better, the dreaming of mathematics

Did you remember the mathematical proof after you woke up?

You did not.

We often dream that we achieve something without actually achieving it. For example, we often dream that we meet a specific person, but in out dream that person does not have any specific characteristics but rather a blurry face and only a general shape. We just attach the label of a certain name ("Bob") or characteristic ("beautiful") to that general shape and thus feel that we have dreamed of Bob or a beautiful stranger. This makes it possible for us to dream of persons that are both our mother and our daughter at the same time, by simply attaching multiple labels to the same indistinct shape.

Similarly, we see a blurry page with vague but indiscernible mathematical symbols on it and the label "mathematical proof", so we feel that we had the proof in our dreams, while in fact there was nothing but a blurry page with the feeling of "solution" attached to it.

How does this work?

We know what a mathematical proof feels like. We know what meeting Bob feels like. And in a dream we can attach these feelings to anything. For example, a female shape might somehow feel like Bob to us; or dreaming of a field of flowers might feel like the solution to a mathematical problem to us. The attachment of the lable to this image might mean something (e.g. you think that Bob's wife is ruling him, or mathematical solutions have the same beauty to you as flowers), but they certainly don't mean that whatever the label is attached to is what the label says.

Think of a dream of flying. You feel as if you fly, because you remember or extrapolate that feeling from similar feelings (falling, being carried as a child, riding a car, etc.), but you certainly don't fly, because of course you are lying in bed. You just attach the feeling to some imagery (that you remember from tv) and then the label that you "fly".
You did.

Your conscious mind is very limited and weak, compared to your unconscious mind. Many problems are so complex that you cannot solve them consciously. In the case of difficult decisions, it usually helps to "sleep over them". Einstein famously found the solution to a theoretical problem while he slept.

When you sleep, what you do is you let the problem be, consciously. You stop considering it. And by doing that, you allow your unconscious to work it out (if it can). You don't have to sleep to do that. Often it is enought to stop thinking about the problem once you have accumulated all the fact, and allow your mind to wander. Mediation helps, daydreaming helps, whatever you can do to let the problem go and not focus on something else will allow your unconscious to solve the problem for you.

In the case of decisions, this is called intuition. You just know, but you cannot explain.


Benefits of using more complicated neuron models in NEF models

As seen in "Neural Engineering" by Eliasmith et al. Chapter 4, complicated neuron models have greater computational abilities and match neural data more realistically.

Computational Capabilities

As seen in the following table (taken from Neural Engineering) Adaptive LIF neurons, by virtue of their temporally varying firing patterns (i.e. a constant input will cause different spike patterns over time) encode more information per spike:

As seen in this table, there's a trade-off between the complexity of the information represented by the neuron and it's computational cost. However, this cost is calculated on traditional Von-Neumann CPUs. It is possible to create neuromorphic hardware to minimize this cost while maximizing computational ability. For more information, see "Nonlinear synaptic interaction as a computational resource in the Neural Engineering Framework" which shows how non-linear dendrites can allow for powerful forms of computation with minimal additional neuromorphic hardware cost.

Matching Biological Data

The aforementioned temporal variance of the Adaptive LIF is also used to matching neural data as seen in this model of working memory, which would have not been possible with regular LIF neurons. Using even more complicated models can allow for matching the effects of drugs, as shown in "Effects of Guanfacine and Phenylephrine on a Spiking Neuron Model of Working Memory".


Are societies capable of sacrificing time and energy exclusively for the benefit of future generations?

Short answer
Yes

Background
Consider the following organizations solely acting for preservation:

WWF for example attempts to conserve Wildlife and Marine Parks
UNESCO protects cultural properties

One way they do this is by outreach to local communities and educate them on the value of stretches of land. For example see

How the local (poor) community fishermen are approached to save the vaquita (Nicholls, 2017)  (in an admittedly futile attempt, as there are about 14 left)
Sustainable coffee and cacao production by local farmers in the sensitive Amazone Bassin

So yes, I don't know if this is what you're after, but of course communities can be put to work for the greater cause.

Further, as others have pointed out, this is borderline ontopic here imo, but it is an interesting and hot issue nonetheless.

Reference
-  Nicholls, Sci Am, April 2017)


A measure of how personally people take critisism

I do not know whether such a test exist, and I also would be wondering how you could convince someone to take a "how offended do you get" - Test :P.

Anyway, this is a weird topic to quantify, because of your special "needs".
You have on the one hand the "Offendedness", the measurement of how a person is likely to respond negatively and get in a personal defense position when you give them criticism. This really depends a person's development, If someone as you said puts in 15 years of hard work to get a PhD they may be really defensive of criticism against their work. If you would criticise the same people maybe of their ability to play guitar which they have maximum 100 hours on, they may not react defensively. So you would need to determine special offendedness of criticism in some subject like Biology. Also the measurement is really hard. You may be able to diagnose people with emotional dysfunction by letting them look at eyes and guess the emotion (and even here, the error rate is probably high), but how are you assuring that people would honestly and self reflecting in a test of how offended they may get. People are biased against themselves and others, the human is not a objective living thing, if you would generalize it, in my experience even the most intelligent and even the most objective people I met are nearly the ones who are the most subjective / biased in the "right" direction. You often see such scientist debating against religious people and not finding arguments.

Then the second thing you touched on is the objectivity. Objectivity in itself is subjective, sounds weird but let me explain.
People who think they are objective most of the time are subjective thinking. And objective people are the ones who know that they are subjectively thinking because they know it is really hard to not be subject to the mind-boggling biases of the human mind and perception.
That being said, it is non-sense to ask the people about their own objectivity, and the only opportunity is to do it through an indirect test.

But there lies another Problem. People are going to act differently if they are in front of a test. You can not expect to get the same answers like to kill their family for the life of humanity in a real situation and on a computer test. On the online test they are way more likely to say yes, but in reality they are surely not objective enough to overcome their subjectivity, who can you expect to kill their family for the greater good?

The Complexness of the tests makes it really hard to do them without the people acting differently like in the second example or being biased against themselves in the first example. You always are able on your own empirical data to determine the tendency of people being offended or not but I believe because of the complications it is near impossible to find a objective scale to determine it.


Are ambidextrous people better at multitasking?

This might not answer the question well enough to count as a good answer, but if you're interested in handedness in general, I highly recommend Stanley Coren's well-written and well-researched "The Left-Hander Syndrome."

If I recall correctly, the book doesn't address multitasking specifically, but it does address many issues associated with handedness, including lateralization of language and identity, development of mood disorders, and behavioral differences (especially risk of injury) between left- and right-handers. You might get some good pointers by reading the references.


How are newly created neurons recruited into existing networks?

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

Here are some references:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Relationship between processing speed and IQ in twice exceptional children

This is not an answer to your question but you probably want lookup Howard Gardner and his theory of Multiple Intelligence (MI).

The basic proposition here is that the IQ test (origins in the work by Alfred Binet) is not a wholistic measure of intelligence and that it measures the ability of one to think in a certain expected way.  Gardner proposes that there are many ways to think (and thus how one learns) and he comes up with 7 distinctly different types of intelligence (his later work adds more).

I'm not familiar with your child subjects, but in comparison if you measure IQ of some Autistic children they may measure extremely high IQ, but may be perceived as slow or unresponsive to other tasks like social interaction (or low "EQ").  This does not mean that they are either intelligent or not intelligent, just that they think in a different way than the observer.

Speed (and age) is a factor of intelligence, but irrelevant if the underlying measure is fundamentally flawed.  For example, you can be quick at maths or slow at maths, this will just tell you if you are intelligent at mathematical thinking.  But it will not tell you is your are "intelligent" because you could be quick to learn music rhythms (thus musically intelligent) but this is not measured in IQ.


Way to influence readers subconscious to memorize technical data?

Priming involves the perception of similar elements between information. The similarity between information influences the memory as it has already been primed by previous memory traces.

I do know of a study that suggests that when simple contours of an image are primed before complex versions of those contours, those contours are rated more positively (Reber et al., 2004).

The study relates to the theory of processing fluency, which proposes that the visual information is more liked because the information is more compatible than it would be otherwise (if the complex contour was shown without the simple one) that's only one part of the theory. The article is called:

The most simple answer is to relate the information with previously memorized information as it may be more likely to be recalled because it is connected to other memories.

Reference
Reber et al., Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiver's processing experience? Personality and Social Psychology Review ( 2004); 8(4): 364–382


Are IQ tests "biased" against individuals with Asperger's Syndrome?

Depends which IQ test you use - individuals with ASDs show a typical "pattern" on the WAIS, which can cause it to appear like they have lower IQs. When tested with tests which aren't biased in this way, they appear to have the same IQ range as neurotypicals.

The assumption that those with an ASD are cognitively impaired pervades both popular and scientific literature - those who are minimally verbal or non-verbal (i.e. those who do not show fluency in their speech) are often labelled as ‘low-functioning’. The characteristic cognitive profile shown by the WAIS is commonly interpreted as a unified deficit known as ‘weak central coherence’, the tendency to focus on low-level details as opposed to the higher-level ‘whole’ (Happé, 1999). Much of the recent research regarding the neuroanatomical signature of autism relies on the untested assumption that cognitive strengths of autistic individuals as shown by the WAIS are nothing more than low-level by-products of high-level deficits. Dawson et al. (2007) have shown using Raven’s Progressive Matrices (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1998), a complex yet general test of intelligence, that the WAIS severely underestimates autistic intelligence (by an average of 30 percentile points). It is therefore recommended that though the WAIS has a number of useful psychometric properties which can be applied in the diagnosis of autism, it is not used as a measure of intelligence in such populations.

References

Dawson, M., Soulieres, I. Gernsbacher, M., Mottron, L. (2007). The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence. Psychological Science. PDF
Happe, F. (1999). Autism: Cognitive deﬁcit or cognitive style? Trends
in Cognitive Sciences, 3, 216–222.
Raven, J., Raven, J.C., & Court, J.H. (1998). Raven manual: Section 3.
Standard progressive matrices. Oxford, England: Oxford Psychologists Press.


Endorphins and flow experience I suppose. Seems adaptive enough to have some mechanism for overcoming short-term distress for the sake of long-term gains, but like most things, this can be taken to extremes. There's some debate regarding the status of masochism within the normal–abnormal spectrum. See also internalization, which includes self-harm among other forms of maladaptation.


What evidence is there that the adult brain can produce new neurons?

For a comprehensive review, see:

Berg, D.A., Belnoue, L.,Song,H., Simon A. (2013) Neurotransmitter-mediated control of neurogenesis in the adult vertebrate brain.  Development, 140(12), 2548-2561. [DOI].

Briefly,

  active adult neurogenesis is confined to two distinct
  locations: the subventricular zone (SVZ) of the lateral ventricles in
  the forebrain; and the subgranular zone (SGZ) of the dentate gyrus
  (DG) in the hippocampus

These areas contain radial glial-like cells, which act as neural stem cells, and the growth of which is modulated by the respective neurotransmitters.  For example, cells which are GABAnergic will be modulated (enhanced in the SVZ and inhibited in the DG) via GABA that has diffused out of the synapses of neighboring cells

  GABA is released from parvalbumin-expressing interneurons in the adult dentate gyrus
  (DG) and inhibits the activation of quiescent RGLs through activation of the γ 2-subunit-containing GABA A
  receptor.

  In the SVZ, GABA also signals to and depolarizes neural
  progenitor cells, but the mechanism of release is different from that
  in the DG (Wang et al., 2003; Liu et al., 2005). Migrating
  neuroblasts release GABA in a non-synaptic, non-vesicular fashion,
  which tonically activates signaling in progenitor cells.

There are mechanisms through which the progenitor cells are stimulated that rely on neurotransmitters, but are not specific to cell subtype:

  Neurotransmitters control neurogenesis without subtype specificity. If NSCs have restricted potential, transmitters could act on both NSCs and/or amplifying populations.

It's still a complicated story, but the long and short of it is, in specific regions of the brain, adult neurogenesis is known to be possible and some of the neurotransmitter-based growth factors are now being elucidated.


How to help relieve test-anxiety in others

Being a layman, you can only give advice to the students. When their test anxiety is serious, the best advice you can give them is - seek professional help.

There are, as you say, numerous ways to relieve 'normal' anxiety. A good web source is WebMD, that gives the following tips, which may aid your students too:

Learn your students to study efficiently; your institution may offer dedicated study-skill courses to the students;
You can learn them test-taking strategies;
Students feel more relaxed if they study systematically and practice the material that will be on a test. Establish a consistent pretest routine. That way they'll learn what works best for them, which eases stress levels;
Teach them relaxation techniques. There are a multitude of them, applicable to either right before the test, or during the test to help them stay calm, e.g., breathing techniques, muscle relaxing strategies, closing the eyes and imagining a positive outcome, or meditation techniques;
Remind them to eat and drink. Their brain needs fuel to function. They should eat a meal before the test and drink plenty of water. However, sugary drinks such as soda pops can cause the blood sugar to peak and then steeply drop. Also, caffeine may not be wise as it can increase anxiety;
Let them exercise. Regular aerobic exercise, and exercising on exam day, can release tension;
Urge them to get plenty of sleep. Sleep is directly related to academic performance. Preteens and teenagers especially need to get regular, solid sleep;
Make sure your students can openly discuss anxiety issues with you;
A student may have a learning disability that requires professional help. Test anxiety may improve by addressing the underlying condition that interferes with the ability to learn, focus or concentrate — for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or dyslexia. If a student has been diagnosed with a learning disability you can provide them with assistance with test taking, such as extra time to complete a test or having questions read aloud;
And again - urge them to seek professional help, if necessary. Talk therapy (psychotherapy) with a psychologist or other mental health provider can help them to work through their feelings, thoughts and behaviors that may cause or worsen anxiety. You can ask around at your institution if it has a counseling service in-house, otherwise you can advise your students to seek professional help outside the school's setting.


Are individuals who are generally jealous more likely to experience sexual jealousy?

As Parrot and Smith have said (1993), "envy and jealousy are confounded by laypersons and scholars alike (Schoeck, 1969)", while in psychology, philosophy, and the social sciences in general, a distinction is drawn between jealousy and envy:

  [E]nvy occurs when a person lacks another's superior quality,
  achievment, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the
  other lacked it. It occurs when this shortcoming exists in a domain
  that is self-definitional (Salovey & Rodin, 1984), and it intensifies
  with self-dissatisfaction and when superioority in alternative
  comparison domains is lacking (R. H. Smith, Diener, & Garonzik, 1990).
  ...
  Jealousy, by contrast, necessarily occurs in the context of relationships. It occurs when a person fears losing an important
  relationship with another person to a rival—in particular, losing a
  relationship that is formative to one's sense of self (Hupka, 1991;
  Rorty, 1988, chap. 7). (Parrot & Smith, 1993)

As studies have shown, envy appears to be characterized by feelings of inferiority, longing, resentment, and disapproval of the emotion. Jealousy appears to be characterized by fear of loss, distrust, anxiety, and anger. (Parrot & Smith, 1993).

So, if you write: "Some people are just jealous of many things they perceive others to possess. Materially or as part of that person.", then you are actually not talking about jealousy, but about envy, and your question must read:

Are envious individuals more likely to experience sexual jealousy?

As experiments and surveys show, both envy and jealousy are caused by threatened self-esteem (DeSteno, Valdesolo & Bartlett, 2006; Parrot, 1991), so it might be concluded that the propensity for both emotions would be equally high or low in one individual. But that is not necessarily so. Findings suggest that

  a distinction might be made between different types of self-esteem, or
  between different routes to lowering self-esteem. ... In envy one's
  own appraisal leads to dissatisfaction with oneself. In jealousy, the
  reflected appraisal of another leads to a lack of security and
  confidence. (Parrott, 1991)

Feelings of jealousy appear to be equally high in different individuals (and both sexes) if they face the same situations (Salovey & Rodin, 1985). Nevertheless there might be

  certain personality characteristics that might make some people
  particulaly prone to jealousy. ... The people whose responses
  indicated a high degree of jealousy were those who also reported these
  three personality characteristics: having a low opinion of themselves,
  seeing a large discrepancy between how they really are and what they
  would ideally like to be and valuing highly such visible achievements
  as becoming wealthy, famous, well-liked and, especially, physically
  attractive. (Salovey & Rodin, 1985)

Variance in self-esteem is attributable to genetics, parenting style, perceived appearance, and past experiences of success and failure (Emler, 2001). Nevertheless, in intensity of jealousy was mostly moderated by how secure and committed the current relationship felt (Salovey & Rodin, 1985). Thus it seems that environment factors play at least an equally strong role in promoting jealousy as personality traits or states. Because, of course, "close and loving relationships with others later in life do contribute positively to self-esteem. But" – and here the circle closes – "the likelihood of forming and sustaining successful relationships of these kinds is itself higher when self-esteem is higher in the first place." (Emler, 2001)

Sources:

DeSteno, D., Valdesolo, P., & Bartlett, M. Y. (2006). Jealousy and the threatened self: Getting to the heart of the green-eyed monster. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 626-641. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.91.4.626
Emler, N. (2001). Self-esteem: The costs and causes of low self-worth. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Parrott, W. G. (1991). The emotional experiences of envy and jealousy. In P. Salovey (Ed.), The Psychology of Jealousy and Envy (pp. 3-30). New York: Guilford Press.
Parrott, W. G., & Smith, R. H. (1993). Distinguishing the experiences of envy and jealousy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 906-920. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.64.6.906
Salovey, P., & Rodin, J. (1985). The heart of jealousy. Psychology Today, 19, 22-29.


Brain-computer interface with EEG: how to name imaginary movement of a non-self object?

As far as I know, brain-computer interfaces based on EEG use motor-cortex responses by asking the subject to imagine body movements. E.g., a left-arm movement imagination would translate to moving the robot to the left etc. In other words, imagining the robot going left will probably result in a diffuse, poor-defined brain response, while imagined motor movements are more useful. See a slide presentation here on this topic.


How effective is lying down with eyes closed as a substitute for sleep?

I believe the important⁽¹⁾ point is paradoxical sleep. If you cannot sleep, you should try to defocus your thought, in order to allow neurones to "run freely"⁽²⁾.

(1) It has be shown that rats deprived of paradoxical sleep died in 16-54 day.

(2) I don't know if this will work, but I've been taught at university that neurons can die from sub or over stimulation. For this reason I've come to the conclusion that one of the objectives of dreaming is to allow neurons to fire action potentials in regards with their own physiological needs, instead of coordinated thoughts needs of the brain.


What pro- or anti-environmental behaviors are feasible to measure objectively rather than with self-report?

This is barely on-topic here (as it's more of an economics question), but Kurisu (2016) says

  This chapter provides an overview of pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs). There is no catchall definition or way to categorize PEBs; therefore, I propose various definitions and ways to categorize PEBs. Two main definitions for PEBs are shown here: purpose oriented and fact oriented. [...] I summarize behaviors proposed by various environmental agencies and present a list of 200 PEBs. In the list, the main classification is based on the major targets for reduction, such as greenhouse gases, air pollutants, water pollutants, resource consumption, and disturbance of nature, with 12 categories under the main targets, which are standard in many places.

Since the whole list is obviously too long to give here, here's an examples table

Kurisu also notes at least two government lists, one by the UK in Annex A of "A Framework for Pro-Environmental Behaviours", which has something like 30 PEBs and one by the US' EPA, "At Home and in the Garden". (There's was also a Japanese one "Challenge 25", which is a dead link.)

Alas Kurisu doesn't have a chapter on objective measures (only has one on subjective surveys and one on [objective] life-cycle assessment).

But there's a (2014) meta-analysis comparing declared with actual PEBs:

  Do self-reports match objective behavior? We performed a meta-analysis to quantify the association
  between self-reported and objective measures of proenvironmental behavior, and to evaluate the
  moderating influence of two socio-demographic and seven methodological moderators. Data from 6260
  individuals or households, involving 19 measures of association in 15 studies, revealed a positive and
  nominally large (Cohen, 1988) effect size (r = .46). However, this means that 79% of the variance in the
  association between self-reported and objective behavior remains unexplained, which is especially
  troubling given the environmental context. We conclude that although this effect size is conventionally
  large, it is functionally small for testing theory and devising intervention campaigns, possibly leading
  researchers to draw misleading conclusions about the usefulness of theories that employ self-reports to
  predict objective behavior. These findings highlight a crucial need for research that strengthens the
  validity of self-reports for well-defined types of environmental behavior.

What could be useful from this paper is its list of studies that have performed actual PEB measurements (see their table 1). Alas this isn't too encouraging or creative; there are only two dozen studies or so in that table, and most measured stuff that's easy to measure: energy usage or recycling behavior. Of these, Kaiser (2001) probably has the most extensive list in a single study, with 14  PEBs.


Does intermittent fasting increase intelligence?

There is some scientific evidence that it does. And a physiological explanation as well.

During fasting, there are several things happening in the body, among other things hypoglycemia (low glucose level in the blood). All those changes that occur actually stress the brain. That stress has been shown to be compensated by the brain by creating brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).

"BDNF acts on certain neurons of the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system, helping to support the survival of existing neurons, and encourage the growth and differentiation of new neurons and synapses" - Acheson et al 1995

"BDNF itself is important for long-term memory" - Bekinschtein et al 2008

BDNF is also one of the most potent chemicals in the body to stimulate neurogenesis (the creation of new neurons), even in adults.

However, as far as I know, there have not been any experiments directly testing whether or not cognitive capacity increases with IF. I.e. only increased levels of BDNF have been found, and IQ and other direct measures are yet to be tested.


Unilateral vision in split brain subjects

Short answer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Alcoholic behavior at a bar without having any alcohol?

See the placebo effect, it's been known to work in situations right up to double blind studies on dogs. Very weird.

Also, I would guess you would consider yourself a people pleaser? I forget the name of it but there's a phenomenon whereby individuals begin to imitate their cohort (mirroring?, Stockholm effect?)


Do workers retain information from audio lectures when working in a physically demanding job?

First off, if you want to retain information, you have to actively listen to it. Simply putting it on like you would background music is not going to help that much. However, if you do want to learn by listening to a lecture, there are several strategies you can use. Here are some listening strategies you can try to employ. They are mostly targeted at being in lecture, but listening is listening either way.

Another useful fact is that the speed that the average brain thinks at is 400 words per minute. Find the speed of speaking at which your brain doesn't tune out at, but still has time to process everything coming its way. If you have a friend, have them speak at different speeds and observe the effect on your attention span. Then when you turn on your audio lecture, see what speed the lecturer speaks at and adjust the speed in an audio editing program to match your brain's attention span. Also, if you can't change the speed of the audio but it's slower than you want, then ask yourself small questions in between sentences so that you don't lose attention.

Obviously if you are trying to "multitask" you have to make the audio slow enough to where you can hear every word and work on your job, if that's what you wanted, but multitasking has been proven to be impossible.

There was a study done on audio-tutorials versus in-person lab-lecture and the people who used audio had better scores/retention.

A few questions you might want to ask about yourself are:

What sound intensity of music helps block out ambient noise but still allows me to hear myself think?
Where are the best places for me to listen to audio?
Which subject am I going to be listening to? (You answered this in your question but some of those subjects can't be simply listened to once through for retention. I would say Computer Science and Quantum Physics need a very quiet environment if you are going to be listening to them. Hopefully you have a pause button. Meanwhile, the others you mentioned might be possible if you are able to memorize quickly.)

Finally, if you have a car, I would highly recommend listening to your lecture in the car, and then when you are sitting down elsewhere, re-listen to that same lecture. Repetition really helps with retention! (You can find lots of articles on that online.)

Hope this helps! Let me know if you need clarification, etc...


Are there any negative effects from hypnotherapy for bipolar disorder?

Preamble

First of all, I would like to point out that hypnosis, and therefore hypnotherapy, is generally considered pseudo-scientific within the scientific community and therefore this question can be classed as off-topic here by some.  However, there are trained and licensed hypnotherapists who share the same question on whether or not to use hypnotherapy on patients diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder (Leach, 2013), so I will provide some background to my answer with some research available.

Is hypnotherapy suitable for Bipolar Disorder?

Switches into mania have been observed in unipolar and bipolar depressed patients following physical treatments as well as cognitive therapy. Such a phenomenon has not been observed with hypnotherapy (Suresh & Srinivasan, 1994 - Introduction)

Suresh & Srinivasan studied the possibility of hypnotherapy being used to help Bipolar Disorder with a patient suffering from Dysthymic Disorder (now called Persistent Depressive Disorder) which is less acute and severe than major depressive disorder.

  Three sessions of hypnotherapy were given over a period of one week. Ventilation of her negative self evaluations and use of positive suggestions to improve her self esteem and ego strength was done during each session under first stage of hypnosis. Neither deep level of hypnosis nor hypnoanalysis was attempted. After the initial sessions, the patient was instructed to practice self-hypnosis once a day using an audio cassette with a recording of the last session by the therapist.

A point to note with this study is that hypnotherapy was advised for the patient as she did not prefer drug therapy and there were major problems.

  At the end of one week she presented with a cheerful mood and improved self-esteem, confidence and energy with no depressive symptoms. Her child was concurrently treated and had by then returned to school. Self-hypnosis was continued and ten days later her spouse brought her with symptoms of sleeplessness, irritability with a tendency to be aggressive and disinhibited, excessive talk, ideomotor pressure and grandiose ideation. Clinical examination showed the presence of a Manic disorder.

  Following recovery from this episode in two weeks with antipsychotics, she was advised not to practice self-hypnosis. However, this was not heeded and a week later there was reemergence of manic symptoms requiring increase in the dose of antipsychotics. Subsequently, it was ensured that she did not practice self-hypnosis.

Suresh & Srinivasan noted that as deep hypnosis or hypnoanalysis was carefully avoided, the manic reaction could not be viewed as a manifestation of nonspecific psychotic disorganisation which is known to occur if hypnotherapy is too deep and uncontrolled (Auerbach, 1962); and the precipitation of mania by hypnotherapy supports the evidence that this therapy can be useful in depression.

Although Psychotherapy using hypnosis is known to be helpful in mild depression if light hypnosis and simple positive suggestions are applied (Ambrose & Newbold, 1980), I would contest this last statement by Suresh & Srinivasan, by pointing out that antipsychotics were prescribed at the time of mania being present, and therefore you cannot say that it was the hypnotherapy which precipitated mania.

The bottom line - Talk to your doctor

As a trained and accredited hypnotherapist myself, the bottom line is that hypnotherapists are told in accredited training that they must not provide hypnotherapy to those diagnosed with a psychosis or certain types of personality disorder, as it could make your condition worse. (See also, neurosis vs psychosis)  Another golden rule is that anyone who is looking to embark on hypnotherapy when they are diagnosed with any mental health condition should obtain doctor's permission first.

References

Ambrose, G. & Newbold, G.(1980). A Handbook of Medical Hypnosis, 4th edition. London: Bailliere Tindall.

Auerbach, A. (1962). Attitudes of Psychiatrist to the use of hypnosis. Journal of American Medical Association, 180(11), 917—921.DOI: 10.1001/jama.1962.03050240013003

Leach, H. (2013). My experience of mental health discrimination as a hypnotherapist [Online]Available at: https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/blog/hypnotherapist-mental-health-discrimination

Suresh, T. R., & Srinivasan, T. N. (1994). Mania following hypnotherapy. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 36(1), 34—35.PMCID: PMC2972454 [Free PDF]


Is a person with a psychopathic disorder aware of it?

Sometimes they are aware.

For example a manic-depressive is mostly aware of having a psychological problem during his depressive phases, but will usually perceive himself well while manic. Schizophrenics often understand that they have delusions, but many of them can only understand this while they are in a non-delusional phase.

Sadists are often aware of being deviant, but usually enjoy what they do. Manics don't suffer either, but feel grandiose.

Edit

Oops, I read "psychiatric disorder" instead of psychopathy. So obviously most of what I wrote is beside the point here. Read what I wrote about sadists and ignore the rest. Sorry.

Source: Working in a psychiatric ward.


What is the current consensus on if fMRI studies in blood flow actually match brain activity?

From Wikipedia's page on criticism and limitations of BOLD:

Although most fMRI research uses BOLD contrast imaging as a method to determine which parts of the brain is most active, because the signals are relative, and not individually quantitative, some question its rigor. Other methods which propose to measure neural activity directly have been attempted (for example, measurement of the Oxygen Extraction Fraction, or OEF, in regions of the brain, which measures how much of the oxyhemoglobin in the blood has been converted to deoxyhemoglobin[(Yablonskiy & Haacke, 1994)]), but because the electromagnetic fields created by an active or firing neuron are so weak, the signal-to-noise ratio is extremely low and statistical methods used to extract quantitative data have been largely unsuccessful so far.
The wisdom of discarding the low-frequency signals in BOLD-contrast imaging came into question in 1995, when it was observed that the “noise” in the area of the brain that controls right-hand movement fluctuated in unison with similar activity in the area on the opposite side of the brain associated with left-hand movement [(Raichle, 2006, 2010)]. BOLD-contrast imaging is only sensitive to differences between two brain states.

Reference
Raichle, M. E. (2006). The brain's dark energy. Science, 314, 1249–1250.
Raichle, M. E. (March 2010). The brain's dark energy. Scientific American: Mind & Brain. Retrieved from: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brains-dark-energy/.
Yablonskiy, D. A., & Haacke, E. M. (1994). Theory of NMR signal behavior in magnetically inhomogeneous tissues: The static dephasing regime. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 32(6), 749–763. Retrieved from: http://siba.unipv.it/fisica/articoli/M/MagneticResonanceInMedicine1994_32_6_749.pdf.


How to look for correlations between heart rate and eda

HRV measures

Measures of heart-rate variability (HRV) are primarily calculated with the Inter-beat interval (IBI), also referred to as RR-intervals or NN-intervals (see this question). Some variables in the time domain are :

SDNN/SDANN
NN50 / pNN50
SDSD
rMSSD

And many more (see also the rHRV tutorial, which also describes frequency-domain measures).

EDA measures

Electrodermal activity can be quantified by calculating the galvanic skin level (GSL) or the galvanic skin responses (GSR; see also this question; Bouscein (2012)).
GSL is a slow drifting tonic level of conductivity, whereas GSR are spikes in activity after some events. You can quantify these values by determining the average amplitude of the GSL/GSR’s within a specific time period, or calculating the amount of GSR’s.

Correlations

When you have acquired the variables you can start calculating correlations. You do have to ensure that the time intervals of these variables are the same. E.g. the average values of each variable are calculated over five-second windows. In turn, each five-second period can be considered as a data point.

Here are some results I found in a pilot-study I performed with two participants. Because of the little amount of data, not every correlation may be what you expect. pNN50, SDNN, LFHF, LF and HF are the HRV data. numGSR (amount of spikes), eda_p_filt (mean amplitude of GSR spikes) and eda_t (tonic skin activity) are the electrodermal-activity measures. The IWS is a subjective measure of workload (Kramer, Johnson and Zeilstra, 2016),

References

Bouscein, W., Roth, W. T., Dawson, M. E., & Filion, D. L. (2012). Publication recommendations for electrodermal measurements. Psychophysiology, 49, 1017-1034.

Garcıa, C. A., Otero, A., Vila, X., Méndez, A., Rodrıguez-Linares, L., & Lado, M. J. (2013). Getting started with RHRV.

Kramer, R., Johnson, A., & Zeilstra, M. P. (2016). The Integrated Workload Scale–Translation and validation of a subjective workload scale. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part F: Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit.

What is the difference between RR-intervals and NN-intervals in HRV-data?

Open-source software for analyzing Electrodermal activity