Is general intelligence meant to underlie all intelligence?

I don't know what you are trying to ask.  Are you trying to ask if general intelligence is the basis of all other intelligence?  If this is what you are indeed asking, the answer is no.  Long ago, scientists thought of g, general intelligence to be a number that encapsulates the sum of all of one's different intellectual abilities.  (I know.  It sounds vague and doesn't sound very scientific.)  I don't think they intended to mean that g was like some precursor to each type of intellectual process and thus, the best indicator of a person's intelligence.

  Is g, measured by IQ, the basis of a person's intellectual abilities
  or does a person's overall intelligence lead to a number, g?  Who
  claims the former and why?

I reworded this person's question because it wasn't very clear as written.  I also think the question is almost exactly the same as the first question, except the person also asks who believes in g as the basis of intelligence.

There was once a time that most scientists and other experts in the field of intelligence believed in the concept of g, a number that encapsulates all the intellectual abilities of that person into one simple score.

As it still happens frequently today, in the early 1990's, there was a remarkable discrepancy in what most scientists believed intelligence was and what popular news articles and media such as movies believed.  (This is a topic for a different question but it amazes me sometimes the huge difference between what scientists believe and what the public believes.  I personally don't think this vast difference just happens by accident.  The information conveyed to the public is usually distorted intentionally.)

Anyway, going back.  In 1994, scientists in the field of intelligence were shocked by the public's completely backward notions of what intelligence was.  The media was apparently butchering what scientists were saying.  As a result, some 50 leading scientists and experts in the intelligence community signed a list of statements that was published in the Wall Street Journal, expressing dismay at the media's incorrect depiction of intelligence.  This public statement was titled "Mainstream Science on Intelligence".  It stated facts that were widely accepted by scientists and experts in the study of intelligence.  Some of these statements were:

IQ can be measured well and IQ tests are very accurate.
There are different types of intelligence tests but there is only one type of intelligence.
Intelligence tests are not culturally biased.

Such outrage by the scientific community!  What a shock!  Why would the media intentionally distort what the real science was?

Well, all these questions became moot because something really ironic occurred.
 It was determined that most of the claims made by Mainstream Science on Intelligence were wrong!  It's ironic but no reputable scientist or expert in intelligence today would ever sign that statement that they had once so confidently signed and published in the Wall Street Journal.  Studies made during and after the 1990's, actually disproved most of the statements in Mainstream Science on Intelligence.  Scientists did a complete 180-degree turn.  The lying media turned out to be right!

What's more ironic is that there are now laypeople who believe in the statements made by Mainstream Science on Intelligence.  Not scientists but laypeople who haven't been keeping up with the science.  They are accepting the statements made in the Mainstream Science on Intelligence as true.  They believe things like IQ is an accurate and precise measure of general intelligence, g.  Or, g actually is a great indicator of how smart a person generally is.  Funny, no?

Anyway, the original question had asked who claims that general intelligence underlies all intelligence.  I don't think anyone believes this.  I never heard of anyone who believes that there are some group of genes (aka g) that has an effect on all our intellectual abilities and is the factor that mainly accounts for a person's intelligence.  Next question...

  I think the question matters a little, because, if it doesn't, then IQ
  scores are a product of learning and teaching successes, rather than
  vice versa -- given that ability in any sphere [mathematics e.g.] is
  not innate.

I didn't understand this question.  How did you logically conclude "IQ scores [are] a product of learning and teaching successes" since "IQ scores [are] incorrect representation of intelligence"?  It happens to be true but how did you conclude that from anything you said before or after?  And, what do you mean by vice-versa?  It doesn't make sense.

To set the record straight, there is no such thing as a g that represents the general intelligence of a person.  Just because you are good at one thing, it's been determined that you might not be necessarily good at other intellectual pursuits.  I strongly believe this to be true.  Research has proven it.  And, you personally see instances of this in real life.

Let me also state that an IQ test is also a very inaccurate method to measure intelligence, especially at the tail-end of the distribution on the right side.  Furthermore, please keep in mind that the scientific field of intelligence is actually still in its infancy.  Many basic concepts are still unproven to be true or not.  We are still learning about ourselves.  Current studies include determining what types of events appear in what part of the brain.  It's all so very new.


Why are most people not persuaded by rational arguments?

You may be thinking of the Backfire Effect. When presented with logical and rational evidence disputing a strongly-held belief, most people's natural tendency is to hold on even tighter to those beliefs rather than to reassess their position.

As for why it happens... that's a matter of some debate (surprise, surprise), but the general thinking seems to be that it's a mental reaction to avoid cognitive dissonance. The page I linked contains references to several studies on the subject, though as you might expect, the results vary.


Is Freuds theory of negation testable and does it survive testing?

The correct translation of Verneinung in English is denial. Roy Baumeister, Karen Dale, and Kristin Sommer (2002) have reviewed empirical evidence for (or against) seven of Freud's defense mechanisms and have found that "denial [has] been amply shown in studies". You can read about the findings in detail in the article itself, which is currently avialable online here.

Source:

Baumeister, R. F., Dale, K., & Sommer, K. L. (1998). Freudian defense mechanisms and empirical findings in modern social psychology: Reaction formation, projection, displacement, undoing, isolation, sublimation, and denial. Journal of Personality, 66(6), 1081-1124. doi:10.1111/1467-6494.00043


Also see Brainwave audio recordings and beta waves: how do they affect positivity and Is there evidence to suggest that music can trigger release of a particular kind of neurotransmitter??

In short, yes. All forms of stimulation result perceptions based on psychology and culture. It is, however, difficult to predict the way in which even the most simple tones like binaural beats will affect emotions and behaviour, because of past associations and cultural biases.

A recent study not posted on Wikipedia (sorry for lack of citation) shows that binaural beats have no effects on the tested traits of visual attention and task switching by the Color Trails Tests or an ADHD test called "test of variables of attention" when compared with placebo.

  Repeated measures analysis of variance was used to analyze pre- and postintervention scores on the Color Trails Tests, Homework Problem Checklist, and the TOVA. The effect of time was significant on the Color Trails Test. However, there were no significant group differences on the Color Trails Test or the TOVA scores postintervention. Parents reported that the study participants had fewer homework problems postintervention.

-Pilot Feasibility Study of Binaural Auditory Beats for Reducing Symptoms of Inattention in Children and Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

This does not exactly answer your question, as binaural beats may have an effect on the brain which does not have to do with attention or task switching. In that case, further study would need to be done under controls of placebo, multinational and multiculturalism.


What are the minimal requirements for successful gamification?

In short, I'd say the minimum requirement is to understand which behaviours you are influencing and why.

Before you consider which game techniques to use, consider the 'story' of the product/service.

Each story includes:

Actor/s. Who are your targets?
These actors are motivated by something. This is what your game should leverage.
There is a goal. What are you/the actor trying to achieve. Help them progress towards the goal. Motivational factors / game techniques should encourage behaviours that move towards this goal and discourage behaviours that move away from it.
The actor begins in a context. Understanding the context gives you clues to opportunities and constraints.
The actor progresses through a journey (or arc). Mapping this journey helps you know when to employ certain techniques.
An outcome is achieved. This is the most critical part of course.

Draw this out in a path. Include the diversions, obstacles etc. Identify the main path as well as the little loops of activity that contribute.

Tip: If this isn't clear consider well known kid's stories. They are all shaped by this familiar pattern.

The techniques you list above and ones you will see elsewhere are valid. However by considering the story you will understand when to use certain techniques and how they should be approached.


First, I want to clarify a few things. Deep Learning simply refers to any learning on a deep (more than one hidden layer) neural network, where the learning happens (i.e. parameters are adjusted) at all layers in the network. Therefore, deep learning algorithms can span the gamut between quite biologically plausible to very biologically implausible, and can include supervised and unsupervised (and maybe even reinforcement-driven) algorithms. That said, the algorithms that are currently very successful in deep learning (e.g. backprop on a convnet), are not very bio-plausible.

As pointed out in the comments, bio-plausibility is difficult to quantify. What is helpful is pointing out what aspects of an algorithm are or are not bio-plausible, so that's what I'll try to do here.

One mark in favour of RBMs is that the error signals are local. The objective function for an RBM is completely defined by the two layers of the RBM, and this holds even when the RBM is embedded in a larger network.

However, I am reluctant to say that the weight update of an RBM is completely local, at least in their typical formulation. RBMs are typically trained using Contrastive Divergence (CD) [1]. After the forward pass (computing the hidden node activations from the inputs), CD requires recomputing the input node activations from the hiddens, and then recomputing the hidden node activations from these new input node activations. (This can happen many more times depending on the particular variant of CD, but has to happen at least once.) This is called Gibbs sampling, and it is unclear to me how this could happen in biology.

Another mark against RBMs is that they have tied weights: the feedback weights are the transpose of the feedforward weights. Some autoencoders avoid this problem by having untied weights, though this can also make them more difficult to train (the increased flexibility leads to more local minima).

A Deep Belief Network (DBN) is initialized by stacking a bunch of RBMs together. One can think of the first RBM as encoding the inputs (i.e. finding a probability distribution over the inputs), the second RBM as encoding the encoding created by the first, the third RBM encoding this second encoding, and so on. Creating the DBN sometimes involves "untying" the weights, so that there are now separate feedforward and feedback weights.

Once constructed, DBNs can be fine-tuned using a number of algorithms, some more bio-plausible than others. Here, fine tuning simply refers to adjusting all the parameters of the DBN together to minimize some global objective function, rather than using the local objective functions for each RBM (as was done when creating the network). One fine-tuning algorithm is the wake-sleep algorithm [1], an unsupervised learning algorithm that has two distinct phases [2]: A "wake" phase, where the network is run forward, and the feedback weights are adjusted based on these feedforward activations; A sleep phase, where the network is run in reverse (generatively), and the feedforward weights are adjusted based on these feedback activations. This algorithm is reasonably bio-plausible, since the weight updates can be determined locally, and feedforward and feedback weights are separate and are adjusted separately. Some of the papers on the wake-sleep algorithm suggest that it might map onto and explain the wake-sleep cycles of animals, however I do not know of any studies that provide evidence of this.

DBNs can also be fine-tuned using supervised learning algorithms, namely backprop. This of course brings all the bio-plausibility concerns associated with backprop.

So to summarize, and address your overall question, which I interpret as "Are RBMs and DBNs more bio-plausible than deep networks trained with backprop?": It's going to depend on how exactly they're trained. RBMs run synapses backwards just like backprop does, but propagating things backwards through unidirectional synapses is only one of the bio-plausibility concerns associated with backprop. Others include that backprop requires the derivatives of the hidden units at their activation points, and that backprop uses continuous values, not spikes (for a fuller list, see [3]). RBMs avoid these two concerns, however they add additional concerns, like how Gibbs sampling might happen in biology. Which one is "more" or "less" biologically plausible depends on which of these problems might be more easily solved in the brain. With regards to DBNs, I would say that the wake-sleep algorithm is more biologically plausible than backprop, in that the mechanisms in the brain seem more tailored to implement the wake-sleep algorithm than backprop.

That said, could a DBN trained with wake-sleep and a shallow classifier on top achieve the same results as a convnet trained with backprop, on a task like ILSVRC-2012 (ImageNet)? Certainly not with our current computational power and the current machine learning knowledge and tricks. And even though I don't expect a good bio-plausible learning algorithm to scale to large datasets right out of the box, it is important to keep in mind that whatever algorithms we want to attribute to the brain, they're going to have to scale.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16764513
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-sleep_algorithm
[3] https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.04156v3


What do chimpanzees do with fire in the wild, and can they be trained to manipulate burning objects?

Primatologist Jill Pruetz at Iowa State University in Ames was observing savanna chimpanzees in Senegal and found that chimps there have mastered the first step in controlling fire.

However there is this article from worldnewsdailyreport.com, which talks about a group of chimps in the Congo mastering the use of fire through experimentation and observation.

The BBC also had a documentary called Monkey Planet which showed a bonobo chimpanzee in a zoo in Illinois building a fire, lighting it using matches, and toasting marshmallows on it.


For a learning rule to be biologically plausible, it has to only depend on knowledge/information local to the neuron (no global information about the neuron population) and has to match experimental neuroscience data.

Only Neuron-Local Information

As discussed in "Simultaneous unsupervised and supervised learning of cognitive functions in biologically plausible spiking neural networks" by Bekolay et al., the effect of the PES learning rule on the decoders $\Delta \mathbf{d}_i$ is formulated as:

$$\Delta \mathbf{d}_i=\kappa \mathbf{E}a_i$$

$\mathbf{E}$ is the error vector is mapped onto individual neurons which also represent vectors of the same dimension. Biologically, the error vector is theorized to be dopamine levels.
$a_i$ is each neuron activity level, which in the NEF is defined as a combination of the neuron's encoder and it's activation function. See Principle 1 of the NEF for more detail.
$\mathbf{\kappa}$ is the error scaling factor

All of these variables only require information local to the neuron. From the paper:

  The key difference between this rule and backpropagation is that the
  global-to- local mapping is done by imposing the portion of the error
  vector space each neuron is sensitive to via its encoder. This limits
  flexibility, but removes the dependency on global information, making
  the rule biologically plausible.

Matching Neuroscience Experiments

To actually match experimental STDP spiking data, PES must be combined with the Bienenstock, Cooper, Munro (BCM) learning rule to enforce sparsity on the encoders. This creates the homeostatic PES rule (hPES).

This matches the following experiments from "Synaptic modification by
correlated activity: Hebb’s postulate revisited" by Bi and Poo.

Other Replications

In addition to these experiments, there are various papers that use the PES learning rule to replicate things such as a model of Fear Conditioning and a model N-Armed Bandit Task, however this evidence isn't necessarily unique to the PES learning rule.


First, adrenalin reduces hand steadiness and increases anxiety (Basowitz, Korchin, Oken, Goldstein, & Gussack, 1956), so other causes of anxiety seem likely to reduce steadiness by promoting the release of adrenalin. Next, here's an odd reference for a more voluntary psychopharmacological cause of hand-arm unsteadiness: drug abuse (including alcohol; Kaur, Sandhu, & Sandhu, 2007). Caffeine and nicotine both impair hand steadiness, apparently without interacting (Smith, Tong,  & Leigh, 1977; Heatherley, Hayward, Seers, & Rogers, 2005; Rogers et al., 2005; Richardson, Rogers, Elliman, & O'Dell, 1995; Bovim, Næss, Helle, & Sand, 1995; see also for a review of caffeine effects and original evidence of a lack of interactions with alcohol  Franks, Hagedorn, Hensley, Hensley,  & Starmer, 1975). Daily consumption of caffeine does not appear related though, and the effect of active caffeine can be blocked medically (Arnold, Springer, Engel, & Helveston, 1993). A small dose of propranolol may also reduce hand tremors regardless of caffeine use (Humayun, Rader, Pieramici, Awh, & de Juan, 1997), though interested readers should consider precautions and contraindications regarding propranolol, including hypoglycaemia or diabetes, asthma, and abnormal blood pressure, among several others (Rossi, 2006).

Physical exertion (Mürbe et al., 2001; Simon & Dare, 1965; Halliday & Redfearn, 1956), skill in manual labor, and sex (Gray, Sustare, & Thompson, 1953) appear relevant as well. Gray and colleagues found greater hand steadiness in men, but a more recent study found the opposite, except in women during premenstrual phases and women using oral contraceptives (Hudgens, Fatkin, Billingsley, & Mazurczak, 1988). A loosely related sex difference emerged in a study of marksmanship, suggesting men's accuracy endures longer than women's (Johnson & Merullo, 1996); incidentally, this study found no effect of caffeine on marksmanship. Also, another study found lesser effects of caffeine on motor performance in women who use caffeine regularly (Jacobson & Thurman-Lacey, 1992). A particularly old study seems to have found a weakly negative (and quite possibly spurious) correlation between performance on a mental multiplication test and hand steadiness, as well as a positive experimental effect of humidity (Stecher, 1916).

An early electroencephalographic (EEG) study emphasized the distinction between low-frequency, high-amplitude tremors, and the opposite kind, suggesting that the latter is less affected by cortical activity (Lindqvist, 1941). Two relatively recent studies produced apparently conflicting evidence about the relationship between hand and finger tremors and EEG activity: one succeeded (Isokawa & Komisaruk, 1983) and another failed to influence hand tremors with rhythmic flashes of light, even though this induced changes in EEG activity (Lakie & Combes, 1999). Other articles on hand steadiness research have been published in psychological journals to which I don't have access; the first of these even considers personality factors such as extraversion (Treadwell, 1960; Fleishman, 1956; Lovell, 1941).

Last (for this edition of this answer), some evidence supports the effectiveness of yoga for hand steadiness (Telles, Hanumanthaiah, Nagarathna, & Nagendra, 1994), finger flexibility, grip strength and endurance (Garfinkel, Schumacher, Husain, Levy, & Reshetar, 1994; Madanmohan, Jatiya, Udupa, & Bhavanani, 2003; Dash & Telles, 2001; Madanmohan et al., 1992; Raghuraj, Nagarathna, Nagendra, & Telles, 1997; Raghuraj & Telles, 1997), and stability of knee extensors (Bukowski, Conway, Glentz, Kurland, & Galantino, 2006). These references were cited in a recent review that deserves mention itself (Donahoe-Fillmore, Brahler, Fisher, & Beasley, 2010).

References

- Arnold, R. W., Springer, D. T., Engel, W. K., & Helveston, E. M. (1993). The effect of wrist rest, caffeine, and oral timolol on the hand steadiness of ophthalmologists. Annals of Ophthalmology, 25(7), 250–253.
- Basowitz, H., Korchin, S. J., Oken, D., Goldstein, M. S., & Gussack, H. (1956). Anxiety and performance changes with minimal dose of epinephrine. AMA Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry, 76(1), 98–105.
- Bovim, G., Næss, P., Helle, J., & Sand, T. (1995). Caffeine influence on the motor steadiness battery in neuropsychological tests. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 17(3), 472–476.
- Bukowski, E. L., Conway, A., Glentz, L. A., Kurland, K., & Galantino, M. L. (2006). The effect of iyengar yoga and strengthening exercises for people living with osteoarthritis of the knee: A case series. International Quarterly of Community Health Education, 26(3), 287–305.
- Dash, M., & Telles, S. (2001). Improvement in hand grip strength in normal volunteers and rheumatoid arthritis patients following yoga training. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 45(3), 355–360. Retrieved from http://yoga4arthritis.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20010101_ihgsnvrapfyt.pdf.
- Donahoe-Fillmore, B., Brahler, C. J., Fisher, M. I., & Beasley, K. (2010). The effect of yoga postures on balance, flexibility, and strength in healthy high school females. Journal of Women’s Health Physical Therapy, 34(1), 10–17. Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/publication/232207909_The_Effect_of_Yoga_Postures_on_Balance_Flexibility_and_Strength_in_Healthy_High_School_Females/file/72e7e515448e1c52be.pdf.
- Franks, H. M., Hagedorn, H., Hensley, V. R., Hensley, W. J., & Starmer, G. A. (1975). The effect of caffeine on human performance, alone and in combination with ethanol. Psychopharmacologia, 45(2), 177–181.
- Fleishman, E. A. (1956). Psychomotor selection tests: Research and application in the United States Air Force. Personnel Psychology, 9(4), 449–467.
- Garfinkel, M. S., Schumacher Jr., H. R., Husain, A. B. I. D., Levy, M., & Reshetar, R. A. (1994). Evaluation of a yoga based regimen for treatment of osteoarthritis of the hands. The Journal of Rheumatology, 21(12), 2341–2343.
- Gray, J. S., Sustare, G., & Thompson, A. (1953). An apparatus for measuring operational hand steadiness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 37(1), 57–58.
- Halliday, A. M., & Redfearn, J. W. T. (1956). An analysis of the frequencies of finger tremor in healthy subjects. The Journal of Physiology, 134(3), 600–611. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1359164/pdf/jphysiol01371-0105.pdf.
- Heatherley, S. V., Hayward, R. C., Seers, H. E., & Rogers, P. J. (2005). Cognitive and psychomotor performance, mood, and pressor effects of caffeine after 4, 6 and 8 h caffeine abstinence. Psychopharmacology, 178(4), 461–470.
- Hudgens, G. A., Fatkin, L. T., Billingsley, P. A., & Mazurczak, J. (1988). Hand steadiness: effects of sex, menstrual phase, oral contraceptives, practice, and handgun weight. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 30(1), 51–60.
- Humayun, M. U., Rader, R. S., Pieramici, D. J., Awh, C. C., & de Juan, E. (1997). Quantitative measurement of the effects of caffeine and propranolol on surgeon hand tremor. Archives of Ophthalmology, 115(3), 371–374.
- Isokawa, M., & Komisaruk, B. R. (1983). Convergence of finger tremor and EEG rhythm at the alpha frequency induced by rhythmical photic stimulation. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 55(5), 580–585.
- Jacobson, B. H., & Thurman-Lacey, S. R. (1992). Effect of caffeine on motor performance by caffeine-naïve and familiar subjects. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 74(1), 151–157.
- Johnson, R. F., & Merullo, D. J. (1996). Effects of caffeine and gender on vigilance and marksmanship. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 40(23), 1217–1221.
- Kaur, G., Sandhu, S. S., & Sandhu, J. S. (2007). Comparison of arm-hand steadiness for shooting perfection in armed forces and Punjab police. Anthropologist, 9(4), 299–304. Retrieved from http://www.krepublishers.com/02-Journals/T-Anth/Anth-09-0-000-000-2007-Web/Anth-09-4-000-07-Abst-PDF/Anth-09-4-299-07-393-Kaur-Gaganpreet/Anth-09-4-299-07-393-Kaur-G-Tt.pdf.
- Lakie, M., & Combes, N. (1999). The phase of postural hand tremor is not influenced by repetitive photic brain stimulation. Clinical Neurophysiology, 110(12), 2020–2025.
- Lindqvist, T. (1941). Finger tremor and the α‐waves of the electro‐encephalogram. Acta Medica Scandinavica, 108(6), 580–585.
- Lovell, C. (1941). A study of personal variation in hand-arm steadiness. The American Journal of Psychology, 54(2), 230–236.
- Madanmohan, Jatiya, L., Udupa, K., & Bhavanani, A. B. (2003). Effect of yoga training on handgrip, respiratory pressures and pulmonary function. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 47(4), 387–392. Retrieved from http://icyer.com/documents/18.pdf.
- Madanmohan, Thombre, D. P., Bharathi, B., Nambinarayan, T. K., Thakur, S., Krishnamurthy, N., & Chandrabose, A. (1992). Effect of yoga training on reaction time, respiratory endurance and muscle strength. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 36, 229–233. Retrieved from http://www.ijpp.com/IJPP%20archives/1992_36_4/229-233.pdf.
- Mürbe, D., Hüttenbrink, K. B., Zahnert, T., Vogel, U., Tassabehji, M., Kuhlisch, E., & Hofmann, G. (2001). Tremor in otosurgery: Influence of physical strain on hand steadiness. Otology & Neurotology, 22(5), 672–677.
- Raghuraj, P., Nagarathna, R., Nagendra, H. R., & Telles, S. (1997). Pranayama increases grip strength without lateralized effects. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 41(2), 129–133. Retrieved from http://ow.ly/tL6NG.
- Raghuraj, P., & Telles, S. (1997). Muscle power, dexterity skill and visual perception in community home girls trained yoga or sports and in regular school girls. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 41(4), 409–415. Retrieved from http://www.libraryofyoga.com:8080/bitstream/handle/123456789/57/II.1997.25.doc?sequence=1.
- Richardson, N. J., Rogers, P. J., Elliman, N. A., & O'Dell, R. J. (1995). Mood and performance effects of caffeine in relation to acute and chronic caffeine deprivation. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 52(2), 313–320.
- Rogers, P. J., Heatherley, S. V., Hayward, R. C., Seers, H. E., Hill, J., & Kane, M. (2005). Effects of caffeine and caffeine withdrawal on mood and cognitive performance degraded by sleep restriction. Psychopharmacology, 179(4), 742–752.
- Rossi, S. (Ed., 2006). Australian Medicines Handbook. Adelaide.
- Simon, J. R., & Dare, C. E. (1965). Effects of physical exercise on hand steadiness. The Laryngoscope, 75(11), 1737–1740.
- Smith, D. L., Tong, J. E., & Leigh, G. (1977). Combined effects of tobacco and caffeine on the components of choice reaction-time, heart rate, and hand steadiness. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 45(2), 635–639.
- Stecher, L. I. (1916). The effect of humidity on nervousness and on general efficiency. In R. S. Woodworth (Ed.), Archives of Psychology, No. 38, pp. 40–65. New York: The Science Press / Columbia University. Retrieved from Google Books.
- Telles, S., Hanumanthaiah, B. H., Nagarathna, R., & Nagendra, H. R. (1994). Plasticity of motor control systems demonstrated by yoga training. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 38(2), 143–144. Retrieved from http://www.libraryofyoga.com:8080/bitstream/handle/123456789/60/II.1994.15.pdf?sequence=1.
- Treadwell, E. (1960). The effects of depressant drugs on vigilance and psychomotor performance. Experiments in Personality, 1, 159–196. An alternate publication can be previewed through Google Books.


What causes gender differences in responses to farting?

I was shocked at how difficult it was to find systematic scientific research on the psychology of flatulence. The main empirical paper appears to be one by Lippman (1980). It seems to be hard to get a copy of the original. However, the author of the Neurotic Physiology blog discusses the paper at length.

Lippman study

Lippman asked participants to rank various hypothetical farters based on various factors. With regards to sex differences the blogger writes:

  The sex differences were a little surprising. It turns out that women
  are more forgiving of loud, accidental farts (girls, we've all been
  there I'm sure), and don't ding the farter so much on "politeness"

However, when you think about the problem there are different kinds of sex differences in fart ratings: Men rating male farters; men rating female farters; women rating male farters; and women rating female farters.  This question really only addresses how women rate others in general.

Toilet psychology

Recently, a book was released by Professor Nick Haslam called "Psychology in the Bathroom". There's a good summary in The Psychologist (2012, PDF).
The book specifically aims to redress the lack of psychological research devoted to excretion and related matters.

One particular passage from the book summary in The Psychologist may provide a potential explanation for gender differences in perceptions of farting:

  A common thread running through these differences is that women’s
  excretion is more hidden, emotionally fraught and suppressed than
  men’s. The incompatibility of femininity and excretion is nicely
  expressed in Jonathan Swift’s poem ‘The lady’s dressing room’, in
  which a suitor sneaks into his beloved’s room only to  find evidence
  of her dirty corporeality, including sweaty garments, beslimed towels
  and encrusted combs. Upon discovering her chamber-pot he slinks away
  in horror, lamenting ‘Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!’ The same
  sentiment is expressed less poetically by an American undergraduate:
  ‘women are supposed to  be non-poopers’ (Weinberg & Williams, 2005,
  p.327). Despite our enlightened modern attitudes to gender equality,
  women are still judged more severely for violations of this ideal of
  untaintedness than men.  In one study (Goldenberg & Roberts, 2004), a
  female experimenter who excused herself to use the bathroom was
  evaluated more negatively than one who excused herself to get some
  paperwork: no such difference was found for a male experimenter.

General thoughts

So in summary, research on farting has generally been neglected by the psychological literature.

There is some evidence to suggest that women who fart are judged more negatively than men who fart. However, presumably this would vary a lot with context, who is farting, and who is recognising the farting.
It would also presumably be a cultural phenomena.

One theory to explain gender differences is that a lack of purity is often associated with activities related to excreting, such as farting. Farting loudly or openly may symbolise a lack of control over excretion or remind others that a person is an excreting being. Purity is sometimes  associated with a feminine ideal. Thus, farting may be socially more detrimental for a female than a male. Anyway, the preceding statements are largely based on theory; I'd like to see a lot more empirical evidence before I take them too seriously.

References

Lippman, LG. "Toward a social psychology of flatulence: The interpersonal regulation of natural gas". Psychology: a Quarterly Journal of Human Behavior, 1980.
Goldenberg, J.L. & Roberts, T. (2004). The beast within the beauty: An
existential perspective on the objectification and condemnation of women. In J. Greenberg, S.L. Koole & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.) Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp.71–85). New York: Guilford.
Haslam, N. (2012). Psychology in the Bathroom. Palgrave Macmillan.
Haslam, N. (2012), Toilet psychology. The Psychologist. 25, 6, 430-433. PDF


Neural networks with biologically plausible accounts of neurogenesis

I don't know of any NN algorithms that match your definition entirely, and I have looked for them (previously and recently). Here are some papers that I think are close or in the direction that you are exploring.

Using theoretical models to analyze neural development (review)

An Instruction Language for Self-Construction in the Context of Neural Networks

Evolved neurogenesis and synaptogenesis for robotic control: the L-brain model

Modeling new neuron function: a history of using computational neuroscience to study adult neurogenesis (review)

The first two links are computational neuroscience papers that discuss relatively complex models of neurogenesis as it relates to neurodevelopment (rather than adult neurogenesis). Some of these models (inlcuding the second paper) do not even involve network activity, and, in their current form, likely none of them are capable or suited for solving practical problems. The third paper is probably closest to what you are looking for (but I don't have access), and the fourth is as its title suggests.

Many network models of neurogenesis focus on neurodevelopment. A fairly obvious conclusion seems to be that the reason for that is that neurogenesis' most important biological role is in neurodevelopment. I have thought alot about using neuroscience to derive NN algorithms that are both biologically plausible and functional, and have considered neurogenesis within that context. My present conclusion is that, outside of neuroevolution, neurogenesis is not currently an ideal focus for NN modeling, because its role in learning and computation seems to be mostly limited to a special case (the hippocampus) that is not well understood (despite its obvious importance).

In regards to cascade correlation, I suspect that a similar effect may be achieved in some biological NNs using only synaptogenesis and synaptic plasticity. Basically, if you have very many neurons and new learning is confined to a minimal number of synapses that are subsequently protected from future modification, then the effect might be the same as always confining new learning to newly-added neurons (as in CC-NN). Such a case would be consistent with these findings, for example. In such a model, it would not be biologically plausible, and perhaps not desirable, for each neuron to be connected with each neuron in the preceding and following layer, and thus a system for determining the pattern of exploratory connections would be required. To do that, one could draw from neurodevelopment models such as the above (in order to bias the targets of synaptogenesis, to seed initial connections of the network, or both) or, alternatively, try to derive algorithms that approximate observed connectivity patterns of biological networks.


Calculate threshold from 'binary' yes/no data

The biggest drawback of your procedure, also point of discussion previously here is the limited number of trials. Apparently, you obtained binary data, namely one answer (yes/no) per trial, basically leaving you with a sparsely sampled, binary data set. Binary data will not allow a curve fitting, which is the conventional way to determine a threshold.

To make matters worse, there is a certain bias in the catch trials. But values anywhere below 25% false positive are, imo fine. So let's forget that issue, as it is likely the least of your problems.

Now, single-stimulus per trial data are referred to as the Method of Limits. Basically what you would normally do to obtain a threshold with MoL is increase the level to see where the subjects starts perceiving the stimulus (YES/NO reversal) and then flip the sequence and see where the person stops answering YES and hits NO. Generally, such a procedure is experimentally used to get a quick handle of a good starting point for the 'real deal' experiments. Or, it is useful in clinical environments. For example, clinical audiometric thresholds are often determined this way - quick and dirty, but accurate by about 5 dB or so.

The response you get in this case is a so-called type 2 response, since you never can tell whether the subject was right or not. You just evaluate when the subject reports to perceive the stimulus. The problem with the method described here is that the S may become habituated (I didn't perceive it now, likely I won't in the next trial) or the S makes the error of expectation (It will probably become apparent now).

The only way in which I can see to analyze your data is determine the flipping point and take that as a measure. You can then, perhaps take the average between the two intensities where the response flips to get an estimate of the 50% level, the gold standard of the threshold in yes/no tasks.
Likely you will not have an unambiguous flipping point in your data, but I'm sure you can think of something. Perhaps just take the lowest intensity where a flip occurred, or something along those lines.
Alternatively, you may group your intensities into approximate levels and average out the responses to get values including rates between 0 and 100%. This procedure, however, is likely pretty much doomed to be shot to pieces by any referee or peer in your field, the more since your step sizes are unequal.

Reference
- Kingdom & Prins. Psychophysics. Elsevier 2010


Short Answer

The Brief Anxiety Scale is one of many Pychometric Rating Scales (Tyrer, et al. 1984) used to assess necessary Routine Outcome Measures (BACP, 2016; Harmon et al., 2007; Lambert and Shimokawa, 2011; Simon et al., 2012).

The scale which is recommended for your research will depend on your reseach requirements.  Some scales are quick to complete as they are shorter than others, but longer ones can provide more detail where you feel they are needed.  You need to assess for yourself which scale suits the requirements and then use the one most appropriate.

More Detailed Answer

Routine Outcome Measures

After gaining informed consent from the client, it is a good idea to obtain routine outcome information and devise outcome measures:

before any therapy begins,
after each session, and
after therapy ends

because Routine outcome measures support the therapeutic process by enabling the therapist and the client to monitor progress (BACP, 2016; Harmon et al., 2007; Lambert and Shimokawa, 2011; Simon et al., 2012), and can play an important role in measuring service quality and lead to improvements.

You especially need to implement Routine Outcome Measures when dealing with severe anxiety as your duty of care to your client extends outside the therapy room as far as reasonably practicable. Post-therapy measures may need to include post therapy talks to calm the client at the end of the session if they are particularly anxious due to something which they have brought forward towards the end of the session.

Pychometric Rating Scales for Anxiety

The rating of anxiety is a long-established psychometric exercise and there are more than 20 instruments available (Tyrer, et al. 1984).  There are subject completed scales and observer completed scales. The authors of these scales emphasise that they are not diagnostic instruments and should only be used with patients who are diagnosed as having anxiety states. However, in clinical practice anxiety is often mixed with other emotions and it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate the anxiety element (Tyrer, 1984).

Subject Completed Rating Scales

These rating scales take the form of questionnaires which the client in therapy would fill in.  The Brief Anxiety Scale (Tyrer, et al. 1984) is one of these rating scales suitable for recording anxious symptoms.

Patient Health Questionnaires (Spitzer, et al., n.d.) can also be used for rating scales in order to form a basis for devising outcome measures.  All of the questionnaires can be used but the GAD-7 questionnaire — a 7 question sheet — is designed specifically for anxiety.  These come with an instruction manual on how to interpret the results.

Observer Completed Rating Scales

These rating scales take the form of questionnaires which the therapist would fill in as a record for future reference.  One observer scale for anxiety is the Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety (Hamilton, 1959). However, Hamilton did not consider the scale to be in its final state and Snaith, et al. (1982) modified the scale, which afterwards only contains six items.  Other observer scales for anxiety include the Buss Rating Scale (Buss, et al. 1955) and the Anxiety Status Inventory (Zung, 1971) but they have never achieved the popularity of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety (Tyrer, et al. 1984).

Which scale might be recommended for your purposes?

The scale which is recommended for your purposes will depend on your requirements.  Some scales are quick to complete as they are shorter than others and may be more beneficial due to the short time needed to complete them.  Would it seem to be too laborious to the client? But on the other hand longer ones can provide more detail where you feel they are needed.  You need to assess for yourself which scale suits the requirements and then use the one most appropriate.

References

BACP (2016). Children and Young People Practice Research Network (CYP PRN): A toolkit for collecting routine outcome measures [PDF] Available at: https://www.bacp.co.uk/media/2355/bacp-cyp-prn-toolkit-for-collecting-routine-outcome-measures.pdf

Buss, A. H., Wiener, M., Durkee, A., & Baer, M. (1955). The measurement of anxiety in clinical situations. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 19(2), 125-129. DOI: 10.1037/h0048964

Hamilton, M. A. X. (1959). The assessment of anxiety states by rating. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 32(1), 50-55. DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8341.1959.tb00467.x

Harmon, S. C., Lambert, M. J., Smart, D. M., Hawkins, E., Nielsen, S. L., Slade, K., & Lutz, W. (2007). Enhancing outcome for potential treatment failures: Therapist–client feedback and clinical support tools. Psychotherapy research, 17(4), 379-392. DOI: 10.1080/10503300600702331

Lambert, M. J., & Shimokawa, K. (2011). Collecting client feedback. Psychotherapy, 48(1), 72. DOI: 10.1037/a0022238 PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jose_Garrido13/post/the_cooperation_between_empathy_and_congruence_in_the_therapeutic_relationship/attachment/59d6365fc49f478072ea42e3/AS:273673120878601@1442260164528/download/Norcross_evidence-based_therapy_relationships.pdf#page=23

Simon, W., Lambert, M. J., Harris, M. W., Busath, G., & Vazquez, A. (2012). Providing patient progress information and clinical support tools to therapists: Effects on patients at risk of treatment failure. Psychotherapy research, 22(6), 638-647. DOI: 10.1080/10503307.2012.698918 PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lambert_Michael/publication/236664707_Effects_of_providing_patient_progress_feedback_and_clinical_support_tools_to_psychotherapists_in_an_inpatient_eating_disorders_treatment_program_A_randomized_controlled_study/links/0c96051969ab0c091b000000.pdf

Snaith, R. P., Baugh, S. J., Clayden, A. D., Husain, A., & Sipple, M. A. (1982). The clinical anxiety scale: an instrument derived from the Hamilton anxiety scale. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 141(5), 518-523. DOI: 10.1192/bjp.141.5.518

Spitzer, MD, R. L., Williams, J. B. & Kroenke, MD, K. (n.d.) Patient Heath Questionnaire (PHQ) Screeners. [Online] Available at: http://www.phqscreeners.com/

Tyrer, P. (1984). Classification of anxiety. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 144(1), 78-83. DOI: 10.1192/bjp.144.1.78 PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Tyrer/publication/16504411_Classification_of_anxiety/links/54a52c1b0cf267bdb906ff78/Classification-of-anxiety.pdf

Tyrer, P., Owen, R. T., & Cicchetti, D. V. (1984). The brief scale for anxiety: a subdivision of the comprehensive psychopathological rating scale. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 47(9), 970–975. PMCID: PMC1028000 PDF: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1028000/pdf/jnnpsyc00125-0082.pdf

Zung, W. W. (1971). A rating instrument for anxiety disorders. Psychosomatics, 12(6), 371-379. DOI: 10.1016/S0033-3182(71)71479-0


Visual field testing: Choose between Yes/No, 2AFC, and 2IFC task?

I am unsure as to the exact purpose of your experiment; the title seems to point toward a visual field test, whereas the question body seems to point to a visual acuity (VA) test? Are you interested in testing grating VA across the visual field? In the latter case, a subject needs to focus on a particular point and visual scanning is absolutely forbidden. The VA will be determined according to the last visible grating across a number of visual angles.

On way or the other, I think you answered your question yourself.

A yes/no task is prone to bias, as the threshold to say 'yes' may change over time. It's also prone to investigator influence, as the % false-positive rate (which you should keep track of online) may exceed a certain threshold (often set at 25%). At that point the researcher should intervene and tell the subject to elevate their threshold, after which the data are likely substantially different from previous trials. However, it's fast, as only one stimulus per trial is needed.

I have personally always used serial 2AFC tests. A subject definitely needs time to do the test. As you say yourself, 400 ms inter-stimulus time is simply too short. I think I would opt for a presentation time of a few seconds, a downtime of at least a second, and then the second stimulus.

The problem with the simultaneous 2AFC task is one of definition - if one stimulus is the target, then the other one is the no-stimulus. If they are up simultaneously, then isn't this identical to the yes/no task? The subject either perceives a grating, or not (yes/no). As wikipedia states:

  Two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) is a method [where] the subject is presented with two alternative options, only one of which contains the target stimulus, and is forced to choose which one was the correct option.

A true 2AFC task is thus when they need to choose between A or B. That's only possible when doing it serially in your case as far as I can see, as a simultaneous task can basically be reduced to a yes/no task (they see the grating, or they don't).


Does Wim Hof really consciously control his autonomic nervous system?

Disclaimer: just an opinion of someone on the web, it's not health advice. And I might be wrong.

With that said...

In my opinion it's wrong. He can't control his ANS just by using his mind. He uses: breathing techniques, exposure to cold and having the right mindset in order to withstand the cold. There's also a Dutch article on the site that says this. The way he handles the cold is also the same way he handles his ANS in general.

I think the wikipedia page is wrong about it. Also, the researchers that did studies on him at the Radboud University of Nijmegen are not specialized in understanding meditation. In most cases I'd disagree that what Wim does is meditation at all. While I respect the knowledge of the researchers, I think they were dead wrong in understanding what meditation is back then. It's really more of a behavioural thing with your breath. The meditation I know is more about mentally focusing on your breath or body, not physically altering it. Their expertise is in all sorts of: viruses, bacteria and the human body in general -- including combining the 3 for experiments.

Here is a better source about the science of Wim Hof: http://www.icemanwimhof.com/science

In my opinion that source is a lot better. Then again, it is a very wise to be sceptic (hint: also with my post). I think a lot of people made wrong claims about his method. I think almost everyone involved made at least a wrong claim about something of it. People are enthusiastic and lack expertise in some area and that's when claims might be overstated or misinterpreted by the one reading about them.

You don't have to be too sceptic though, it definitely works and improved my life. I love all weather now with regards to temperature. I sometimes use his method as a natural painkiller as it releases adrenaline, though I'm still on the experimental side with that.

The reason I believe to know all this is because:

I participated in one of the experiment and trained for 4 days with Wim and other participants
I asked a ton of questions to the researchers who were there from the Radboud University.
I have 400 hours of meditation experience and read about 100 articles on them from Science Daily, and about 30 real papers and 1 book about meditation that uses science as its way of justification (Search Inside Yourself by Chade Meng-Tan).


Do all types of synapses in the brain change based on spike-timing-dependent plasticity?

Probably not. STDP has mostly been demonstrated in excitatory glutamatergic neurons in the hippocampus. Considering all the other types of cells in the brain (dopaminergic, serotonergic, inhibitory, those located in cortical areas with closed plasticity windows those in the brain stem), it's erroneous to assume they all implement STDP like rules. That said, I can't think of any examples off the top of my head...


This is related to, but not exactly, the concept of the tragedy of the commons.  The eponymous scenario deals with a village's common land, where farmers can bring their cows to graze for free. Every individual farmer can rationally act in their own self interest to take advantage of the free grass. But when every farmer in the village does this, the grass is over-grazed and the common is destroyed for everyone. Although every individual acts to improve their own situation, everybody is worse off in the end.
This is related to the "theater effect" in that each individual is rationally acting in their own best interest, but the end result is a worse outcome for everyone. It's somewhat distinct in that it doesn't exactly deal with the over-exploitation of common resources quite so explicitly, but there are a number of parallels.
This is also somewhat related to the prisoner's dilemma, in which two criminals are asked to testify against one another. If neither testify, both go to jail for 1 year; if one testifies and the other doesn't, one goes to jail for 5 years and the other does not go to jail; if both testify, both go to jail for 3 years. Both individuals can improve their situation by testifying, but only if the other one does not. This is similar to one individual in the theater standing up - they will get an advantage, but only if no one else does the same. Every individual has a personal incentive to stand up, but if everybody does so, they wind up in a worse situation than they started with, where everyone had the same view but was seated.


Are there studies on international differences on sexualization?

Anthropologists have shown that all cultures have the same "amount" and "intensity" of modesty, shame and sexual excitability. What differs are clothing and behavioral habits, and therefore what is considered modest, what causes shame, and what causes sexual arousal.

The most extensive meta-analytic study on this topic is Hans-Peter Duerr's five volume Der Mythos vom Zivilisationsprozeß [The Myth of the Civilizing Process] (1988-2002), in which he collects and interprets ethnological, archaelogical and sociological research from all cultures and times regarding nudity and shame, intimity, obscenity and violence, eroticism, and defecation, in a reply to Norbert Elias' famous The Civilizing Process (1939).

You can think of the variation in modesty and sexualization over cultures as a border of the public display of the body that can be moved along a continuum from the eyes (burqa)

via the extremities (Victorians had to cover their legs)

more and more towards the center of the body (swimsuit)

narrowing down to the secondary sex characteristics (bikini)

the genitals (penis sheath or female modesty girdle [pictured below])

and finally the male glans (kynodesme) and the inside of the female labia

That peoples that live totally nude are not without shame and modesty can be seen from their social rules and the reactions to their transgression that Duerr reports. A telling example is how the girls of one naked tribe are not allowed to sit with their legs spread (so the insides of the labia don't become visible to the men), how the men attempt to catch a glimpse while the girls and women go about their day and react with excitement when they manage to see something forbidden, and how girls are being ridiculed if this happens. This is much the same as how we act with short skirts, the blowing wind and candid street photography.

Duerr lists page after page after page of research showing examples similar to this and to the one you gave in your comment (desexualized breasts). Unfortunately I don't know of a good English language overview so I can only recommend that you follow Nick's links and research tipps, if you want to get more deeply into this hotly debated area.


Time passing faster now as compared to 50 years (or 1000yrs) back ?

This is really not physics at all, but I think it can most readily be explained by the fact that people generally experience time as moving faster as they get older.

This is because as we age, things that happened a year ago don't seem so distance, because we can also remember things that happened 10 years ago. If you were only 5 years old, something that happened a year ago happened a 5th of your life ago - a huge amount of time compared with your current lifespan.

As far as I know, there is no law that says time passes any slower or faster depending on the age of the (universe) earth.

Edit: I have just seen this, a much better answer to the question than mine. Perception of time as a function of age (thanks jinawee)


Is there cognizance or meta-awareness of classical conditioning?

I'm not sure what you're asking.  If it's found that there's awareness of the relationships in the experiment then typically it's argued that's not conditioning and the behaviour is modified through insight.  It's been a bone of contention with respect to classical conditioning and humans in the past.  You might want to look at Lovibond and Shanks (2002).  I think some of the thinking there is wrongheaded (how you assess awareness).  Nevertheless, it's a start for looking into the topic.

If you're asking if there's an awareness of the effects of being conditioned separate from those of stimulus and response correlations, I don't think anyone has ever tested that.

Lovibond, P. F. and Shanks, D. R. (2002). The role of awareness in Pavlovian conditioning: Empirical evidence and theoretical implications. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 28(1):3–26.


Is all learning a subconscious activity?

We should not confuse the psychological terminology of consciousness, the subconscious and the unconscious with the lay meaning of activities being performed consciously or subconsciously.
The distinction between "conscious" learning and "subconscious" acquisition of linguistic knowledge goes back to the Monitor Model that linguist Stephen Krashen developed in the 1970s and 1980s. According to this theory, human beings develop linguistic skills in two ways: either we

"subconsciously" acquire knowledge, without realizing that we do so (e.g. by growing up in a certain linguistic environment), or we
"consciously" learn (e.g. by memorizing lists of words in a foreign language).

Krashen's theory has been both praised and criticized, but this is not the place to go into that debate. It should be enough to note that the hypothesis has as yet not been empirically proven.
From a psychological point of view, learning – of which acquisition is a part, namely that a response to a stimulus has been established – is always not conscious. A conscious activity is one that we are aware of (like intentionally putting a book on a shelf), but learning, that is: the storing of information in the brain, takes place through processes of which we are unaware and in parts of our anatomy over which we have no control.
For example, when you try to memorize a foreign word and its meaning, you cannot consciously put that knowledge in your memory like you can place a book on a shelf. What you must do, for example, is repeat the information until you no longer forget it. But you have no awareness of wether or not the storage was successful. You can only deduce that success from your ability to retrieve the information (i.e. correctly remember). A conscious storage would give you a direct (sensory) feedback of the storage process, similar to how your eyes show you wether or not the book is now on the shelf. If the placing of a book on a shelf worked subconsciously like storing knowledge in your brain, you'd have to retrieve the book from the shelf again to know that it had been put there. Until you took it off the shelf, you couldn't know if it was actually there.
So to answer your question:
For a psychologist, all learning is "subconscious" (but he would not use that word).


Why we are more optimistic about ourselves and our peers and pessimistic about others?

I'm going to take the evolutionary standpoint. Many of these reasons and explanations Tali Sharot already gave in her talk. You could also check out her books. I'm going to try to make the point I see in it clear.
First the basics of evolutionary advantages - traits in a species are favored by evolution if they make it likelier for us to survive and procreate. (those with unfavorable characteristics are less likely to survive in order to procreate!)
The genes we have are more likely to be passed on if we reach a mature age, find a partner and successfully rear our offspring.
This is the basic idea behind an evolutionary explanation.
As she says, optimism makes it more likely for us to reach for higher goals - and also for achieving them.
Hope and our happiness leads to better health, reduces stress and a longer life span and thus, it's more likely that we're going to pass on our genes.
Why not for others? We know that bad things happen and that the world is dangerous, but if we can convince ourselves that it happens to others, rather than us, we'll be happier.
Well, that's very basic evolutionary explanation.
Here's an article that goes into this:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/12/12/science-of-optimism-sharot/
Her full-length book: https://www.amazon.de/Optimism-Bias-wired-bright-English-ebook/dp/B005RZB6VU/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8


Short answer
The dreaded it depends.

Background
This question was discussed behind the scenes in chat and we concluded with the consensus on explaining why this question is hard to answer.

Basically, you are asking on the suppressive effects of oxytocin on the brain.

First, it depends highly on the brain area under investigation. Many, and perhaps all imaging studies focus on a few promising structures in the brain. Those promising structures (regions of interest) need to be identified by prior research. The effect on amygdala and other fear centers has already been answered in the question (suppression). So to answer this question, one has to review all the existing  literature to find any brain structure that is suppressed. This community is not here to conduct literature reviews, or write review papers. We're here to concisely answer focused questions, as outlined in the help center. As written there, the why and how questions are great. The what, where and how much questions like this are questionable questions.

Second, suppression is relative. If you investigate a subject in a certain state (e.g., terrified, when experiencing feelings of love or hatred) and test a drug such as the love hormone oxytocin, it may, or may  not have totally different effects. The physiological state is very important. Suppressive actions can become evident in  a hyperactive system, but have the opposite effect on a neural system that is relative inactive. It is all not so black-and-white. Hence - again - questions need focus and be outlined such that borders exist that emphasize, and most importantly limit the scope of the question.

In all, my answer is that it depends on the brain area under investigation and on the physiological state of that brain area.

Note. We do appreciate all your background research, your efforts in improving the question and I seriously do love neuroscience. It's my job, it's my passion, it's my hobby. Please feel more than free to further refine your interesting question and please also feel more than encouraged to continue to enrich this site with your contributions.


What is the relationship between post-traumatic stress disorder and fugue states?

Dissociative Disorders are really fascinating to me as well. Fugue states/episodes as well as dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) in particular.

PTSD must be differentiated from disorders that can exhibit phenomenological similarities, such as borderline personality disorder and dissociative disorders (including dissociative amnesia). I include borderline personality disorder because it is [particularly] difficult to distinguish from PTSD, and the two can coexist or even be causally related!

A stressor or traumatic event is the causative factor in the development of PTSD, by definition. As people respond to events as being traumatic differently, the stressor alone is not sufficient enough to cause the disorder. In this case, the presence of intense fear or horror is necessary. The clinical features of PTSD include avoidance and emotional numbing, among other things, and patients may present dissociative states, which is the focus of this topic.

  "Patients with dissociative disorders do not usually have the degree
  of avoidance behavior, autonomic hyperarousal, or history of trauma
  that patients with PTSD report."

An essential feature of dissociative amnesia is "an inability to recall important personal information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature". As in this (as well as borderline personality disorder and PTSD) disorder, many patients have histories of prior abuse or trauma.

Symptoms found only in dissociative amnesia include features of recurrent blackouts, fugue states/episodes, fluctuations in skills, habits, and knowledge. Patients presenting PTSD and/or with borderline personality disorder usually don't present these symptoms. The common factor/symptom is the possible presence of dissociative episodes/states, though they may be precipitated by differing presentation of stressors.

Patients with borderline personality disorder can present transient or short-lived dissociative (or even psychotic) episodes that are almost "circumscribed, fleeting, or doubtful".

Sorry, now I worry I may not have properly answered your question(s). Liken to how different stressors or traumatic events can be experienced in varying degrees in different people, different people can cope or respond differently to them as well. PTSD (like hypervigilance), borderline personality disorder (intense black-and-white thinking, emotional lability), and dissociative disorders (amnesia, blackouts, etc.).

References

DSM-V Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
DSM-V Dissociative Amnesia
Kaplan and Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry


To what degree do fetishes differ from conventional sexual orientation?

By Wikipedia's definition a fetish is "a sexual fixation on a nonliving object or nongenital body part."

So, no, it is not 'possible' for anyone to develop a 'fetish' towards a living object.


Why is surprise, sudden loud sound or movement an element of fear?

Its an autonomic (something you cannot control) survival reaction commonly called fight or flight. The fear you would be describing would be a flight reaction. Both fighting and fleeing are designed to help you survive life threatening confrontation.

  An evolutionary psychology explanation is that early animals had to react to threatening stimuli quickly and did not have time to psychologically and physically prepare themselves. The fight or flight response provided them with the mechanisms to rapidly respond to threats against survival.

-wikipedia


Do depressed people think that they always thought in such a negative way?

Not always.

If depression sets in because of repeated failure at a task (i.e. exams) or a sudden life-changing incident, it is possible to perceive the past (before the dark times) as being a lot more flowery and beautiful than it may have been in reality. This has the effect of reinforcing the feeling of having 'fallen' from a happy place in life.

This also happens when someone tries to make their way out of depression and uses the 'happy past' as reference to recreate habits and thoughts as they remember, in a bid to feel better again. Whether or not it works is another story.


How have mean raw IQ scores changed over time (e.g., over the last 100 years)?

Until recently, when people took older tests, they tended to score higher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in
both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were
measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century.[1] When
intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are initially standardized using a
sample of test-takers, by convention the average of the test results
is set to 100 and their standard deviation is set to 15 or 16 IQ
points. When IQ tests are revised, they are again standardized using a
new sample of test-takers, usually born more recently than the first.
Again, the average result is set to 100. However, when the new test
subjects take the older tests, in almost every case their average
scores are significantly above 100.

The recent years saw a reversal of the Flynn effect.


does getting top marks and ranks in school or college make one intelligent?

I think you have three core questions:

What is true intelligence and how can it be measured?
To what extent does school performance correlate with true intelligence?
To what extent does school performance cause  true intelligence to change?

Intelligence tests provide the best known means to measure general cognitive ability. There is a huge literature on intelligence tests. Good intelligence tests will generally sample from a wide range of cognitive domains (e.g., verbal, spatial, numerical, etc.). The literature on intelligence tests shows them to be a strong predictor of a wide range of important life outcomes.

So in essence, I reject your assumption that seems to dismiss the validity of intelligence tests. Over a hundred years of research and thousands of studies tell a rich story about the inter-correlation of different ability tests and their correlations with variables like educational performance, work performance, and many other variables. The review by Neisser et al (1996) is an excellent introduction to this literature.

I think this existing question on the correlation between GPA and IQ provides a reasonable answer to your question about the association between school performance and intelligence. In short, there is a very strong correlation between the two variables.

The final question is actually very interesting. I.e., what is the causal effect of education on intelligence? and what is the effect of a student applying additional effort to their education on intelligence?

I'm not as familiar with literature evaluating the causal question. The default assumption given the stability of intelligence and the plausible causal mechanisms is that intelligence causes school performance.

That said, education must on some level cause forms of intelligence to develop. My sense is that interventions targeted at increasing intelligence have generally not had sustained success. Also, twin studies generally show a negligible correlation between adopting parent intelligence and child intelligence, which also reinforces the strong role of genetics. There may also be differences between education increasing domain specific knowledge as opposed to increasing general intelligence.

References

Neisser, Ulrich; Boodoo, Gwyneth; Bouchard, Thomas J.; Boykin, A. Wade; Brody, Nathan; Ceci, Stephen J.; Halpern, Diane F.; Loehlin, John C.; Perloff, Robert; Sternberg, Robert J.; Urbina, Susana (1996). "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns". American Psychologist. 51:77–101.


How is the term "physiological measurement" defined?

Physiology is a very broad term that includes neuroscience:

  Physiology is the scientific study of the functions and mechanisms
  which work within a living system.

Within the cognitive sciences, physiology typically refers to non-behavioral inputs and outputs of the nervous system (including parts of the brain), but physiological measures may include behavior:

  Physiological responses also can be measured via instruments that read
  bodily events such as heart rate change, electrodermal activity (EDA),
  muscle tension, and cardiac output. Many indices are part of modern
  psychophysiology, including brain waves (electroencephalography, EEG),
  fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), electrodermal activity
  (a standardized term encompassing skin conductance response, SCR, and
  galvanic skin response, GSR), cardiovascular measures (heart rate, HR;
  beats per minute, BPM; heart rate variability, HRV; vasomotor
  activity), muscle activity (electromyography, EMG), electrogastrogram
  (EGG) changes in pupil diameter with thought and emotion
  (pupillometry), eye movements, recorded via the electro-oculogram
  (EOG) and direction-of-gaze methods, and cardiodynamics, recorded via
  impedance cardiography.


What's the difference between perseveration and hyperfocus?

I myself have never found evidence to suggest a difference between perseveration and hyperfocus when referring to ADHD. However, while 'hyperfocus' can be a psychiatric or non-psychiatric condition, perseveration is typically considered a psychiatric condition in all instances.
The wikipedia page for hyperfocus has an entire section dedicated to the confusion between hyperfocus and perseveration, particularly as it pertains to ADHD.

Hyperfocus may in some cases also be symptomatic of a psychiatric condition. In these cases it is more commonly and accurately referred to as perseveration (or perseverance) - the inability to, or impairment in, switching tasks or activities ("set shifting"), or desisting from mental or physical response repetition (gestures, words, thoughts) despite absence or cessation of a stimulus, and which is not excessive in terms of quantity but are apparently both functionless and involve a narrow range of behaviours, and are not better described as stereotypy (a highly repetitive idiosyncratic behaviour).
It is typical for individuals with ADHD to say they 1), can not focus on boring things and 2), can only focus on stimulating things, and that focus is often extreme. Thus it is both a concentration deficit and over-concentration, or generically: "hyperfocus.


What's a simple definition for reactive attachment disorder?

The beginnings of theories based on attachment regarding long and short term interpersonal relationships is Attachment Theory which was started by John Bowlby.  Attachment Theory is primarily applied to studies in relationships concerning children, even though it was expanded in the 80's to include adults.

In attachment theory, as highlighted in the link you provided, attachment is not just "the act of bonding or connecting with another human or object".
 It is the deep connection established between a child and caregiver (parent, grandparent, foster parent...).  When there are problems because attachments have not been made, it is called an attachment disorder.

Reactive Attachment Disorder is an Attachment Disorder resulting from a reaction to past experiences which were not ideal for the child.  Some examples given amongst others on the link you provided are:

A baby cries and no one responds or offers comfort.
A baby is hungry or wet, and they aren’t attended to for hours.
No one looks at, talks to, or smiles at the baby, so the baby feels alone.

The main thing is that no matter how detached or insecure a child seems, or how frustrated or exhausted a caregiver may feel at trying to connect, attachment disorders can be repaired. With patience and perseverance, caregivers can help the affected child feel safe and secure and able to develop healthy, meaningful, and loving relationships.  It just takes time with the right comfort and support provided to the child.

A good book I can recommend on the subject of attachment disorders is:

Shemmings, D. & Shemmings, Y. (2011). Understanding Disorganized Attachment: Theory and Practice for Working with Children and Adults. London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

  Synopsis

  Disorganized attachment, the most extreme form of insecure attachment, can develop in a child when the person who is normally meant to protect them is a source of danger. This usually leads to 'fear without solution' and the effects can be lasting and damaging.

  This book is a comprehensive and accessible text on disorganized attachment. It outlines what it is, how it can be identified and the key causes, including neurological, biochemical and genetic explanations. Factors that contribute to disorganized attachment are covered including unresolved loss and trauma, and the behaviour of caregivers. The authors also discuss evidence-based interventions to help families and carers as well as how to work with adults to prevent or minimize its occurrence. To root the theory in practice and to illustrate real-life examples of disorganized attachment case vignettes are included.

  With an authoritative research base, this accessible text will be invaluable to practitioners and academics in the fields of social care, psychology, counselling and allied health professions as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students.


Self-fulfilling stereotypes: Have researchers tried inventing new group stereotypes?

The "blue eyes brown eyes exercise" involves a completely arbitrary and invented stereotype.

During part of the exercise, Jane Elliott treated the blue-eyed children as the superior group.
The following day, Elliott reversed the exercise, treating the brown-eyed children as the superior group.
She treated people with the superior-eye-color-of-the-day as highly intelligent and able to learn,
and people with the "inferior" eye color as inherently lazy and stupid.

I hear that, during the exercise, the new stereotype does have a significant effect on the subjects.

Perhaps this exercise by a schoolteacher doesn't really qualify as a "well controlled experiment" performed by a "scientist", but it sounds pretty close to what you were looking for.


What's the difference between repetition suppression and habituation?

The two concepts are analogous and mutually illustrative, but empirically refer to different levels of analysis: behavioral and neural.
Habituation
Habituation is a form of non-associative learning, specifically, learning that a stimulus is behaviorally unimportant. If I loudly and repeatedly bang on a metal pot immediately behind your head, you will probably be shocked, then uncomfortable, then annoyed, until you eventually learn to mostly ignore the unimportant sound. It is an effect detected in behavioral measures, rather than neural measures, and which, as any Google search will confirm, is well-established across many species. An example of the term's general usage from Wikipedia (which I hope is sufficient for illustration), noting the emphasis on the behavioral rather than neural scale:

The habituation process is a form of adaptive behavior (or neuroplasticity) that is classified as nonassociative learning. Nonassociative learning is a change in a response to a stimulus that does not involve associating the presented stimulus with another stimulus or event such as reward or punishment.

Repetition Suppression
Repetition suppression is a neural mechanism which attenuates (i.e., gradually decreases the intensity of) signals in the brain when a stimulus is detected repeatedly. Presenting the same visual stimulus repeatedly will therefore cause decreased response in some of the involved groups of visual neurons, which is also a useful effect in a number of behavioral research fields like memory and attention research. Two illustrative examples of the term's usage follow:

Memory
Furthermore, single-cell recordings show experience-based changes in perirhinal neuronal firing patterns broadly consistent with item recognition, wherein firing rates decrease in response to previously encountered relative to novel stimuli (Xiang and Brown, 1998). Such firing rate decreases, termed “repetition suppression” ...
Gonsalves, B. D., Kahn, I., Curran, T., Norman, K. A., & Wagner, A. D. (2005). Memory strength and repetition suppression: multimodal imaging of medial temporal cortical contributions to recognition. Neuron, 47(5), 751-761.
Face recognition
Repetition suppression, as manifested by the difference in response amplitude between the first and third repetitions of a target, was stronger for fearful than neutral faces.
Ishai, A., Pessoa, L., Bikle, P. C., & Ungerleider, L. G. (2004). Repetition suppression of faces is modulated by emotion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101(26), 9827-9832.

Clearly, habituation and repetition suppression share a lot of conceptual similarities, but it's important to remember that they are ultimately models of entirely different, if closely related physical phenomena which occur at completely different scales. Behavioral habituation relies to some extent on neural repetition suppression, but it does so through memory, attention and other cognitive systems. Repetition suppression alone is therefore not sufficient to explain behavioral habituation, or vice versa.


Can we be both agreeable and disagreeable at the same time?

There are two main theories of behaviour, trait theory and situationism.
What you are referring to is known as situationism. A doyen of trait theory was Raymond Cattell who was the father of modern personality testing (his 16PF test was a forerunner of the Big Five).  An assumption of trait theory is that individuals have inherent personality traits and will therefore behave consistently irrespective of the situation. Conversely, situationists suggest that the situation an individual finds themselves in has a significant impact on the individual's behaviour.  The extremity of the situationist argument is that individual's do not have personality traits at all and that the situation is sufficient to predict and individual's behaviour. Both trait theorists and the situationists have evidence to support their positions and I think it is generally accepted that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. To resolve the trait theory versus situationism argument are the emerging computational approaches such as cybernetics and system dynamics. Unfortunately, these emerging fields are in their infancy and nothing to report at this time.
All of the above was a long-winded and round-about way of saying that the Big Five is not perfect, but probably the best you can do just at the moment.


Research software for conducting a task between card sorting and sketch map drawing

I think a good option would be to use a general purpose language. For example, I once used Visual Basic to program a task that allowed for dragging elements around a display. The IDE for Visual Studio makes it easier to create GUIs. You could readily include a background image and so forth. You could also record location of visual elements and each action that a user takes.


What are some books about the effect of childhood experiences on adult life?

This question is open to opinion, however, I cannot see how you can go wrong with buying the book Life-Span Human Development by Sigelman & Rider (now in its 8th edition) mentioned in @Chris' answer to What happens to someone missing teenage years of development?


Is there a standardised test about emotion perception?

Your question is pretty broad at the moment. But a few starting points:

The PANAS is a commonly used measure of mood or well-being that asks respondents to rate how frequently they have experienced a set of positive and negative emotions.

Many broad-based personality measures such as those based on the Big 5 will have  have factors or facets that relate to emotional experience.

There are also a range of common emotional intelligence measures.

The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) is a popular ability based measure of emotional intelligence.
There are also several self report (personality-style) measures of emotional intelligence: e.g., EQ-i, the Swinburne University Emotional Intelligence Test (SUEIT), and the Schutte EI model


Mind uploading & its constituents: Theoretically possible?

To upload information stored in the mind is to upload information stored in the brain because the brain is the physical part of the mind. To do this is not an easy task because the brain has neither output port nor functional modules for this purpose (to upload its information), and the information in the brain is not stored in one definite place like a hard drive or a series of memory banks in a computer but is stored scatteredly in neural circuits all over many areas of the brain, with 100 billion neurons and about 100 to 1,000 trillion synapses making up those neural circuits [1,2]. So, it certainly won’t be easy like uploading information from our computers to elsewhere.

Another problem is that current technologies that can gather information from the brain, such as EEG, MEG,  and electrocorticography, are very crude (they cannot single out a specific neural circuit that contains the specific information) and cannot access information in all parts of the brain, especially that in the deep structures. Single-unit neural recordings are much finer and can record deeper, but we have to do such recordings possibly millions of time to get all the information from all information-containing neural circuits in the brain, which will certainly do some damage to the brain (and its mind). So, this seems to be quite a harmful way to upload information from the brain.

Another significant problem is that the information in the brain are in various forms: declarative memory (which also has many types: immediate memory, working memory, and long-term memory) and non-declarative memory (skills, habits, predilections,etc.) [3]. They are are stored in different types of neural substrates: neural signaling patterns, facilitation/inhibition of corresponding neural synapses' strength, modifications of neural circuits' formation, etc. The information that is stored in the form of neural synapse or neural circuit modification is not free to read directly but has to be converted into neural signals before it can be read by other neural circuits and by our instruments. So, the problem is we have to activate all those neural circuits/synapses before we can read their information. But how do we know which ones of those multitude neural circuits/synapses in the brain store information, and how we do that to all several millions of them?

What’s more, current technologies still cannot decipher accurately what exactly the signals that are  gathered from the brain mean, e.g, what do those EEG/MEG signals mean – a vision of the red color?, a house?, or a man? So, without knowing what the information we’ve got represents, it is difficult to store and archive it correctly and retrieve it later effectively.

Edited part:

Because all the above problems are technical problems, I think it is theoretically possible to overcome them although it certainly requires much more advanced technology than we currently have. And it seems very likely that we will not have that technology in the near future, certainly not within a few decades from now.

The biology problem and the hard problem of consciousness and qualia.

It is important to note that the above discussion is about the possibility of uploading information of the mind to a computer, which is arguably theoretically possible. But to upload or relocate the mind itself to function or live in a computer is another matter because it will face additional 2 formidable problems: the biology problem and the hard problem of consciousness.

The biology problem:

The mind and its physical brain are alive; they change their structures to some degree overtime by neural circuit and synapse modifications to store new information or modify its skills, habits, predilections, etc. On the contrary, the computer is not biologically alive and cannot change or modify its structure (hardware) by itself. So, even if we can upload all the mind’s information to the computer successfully and try to set it function there, the mind can never really live in the computer the way it lives in the brain, where it can modify its self bit by bit overtime.

The hard problem of consciousness and qualia:

This is the problem of having phenomenal perceptions (the red color, the sound of music, the smell of the rose, etc. that appear phenomenally red, phenomenally music, phenomenally rose, phenomenal etc. in our mind) and phenomenal consciousness (the awareness of what it is like to see the red color, to hear the sound of music, to smell the rose, etc., and what it is like to be ourselves)[4] Although we have learnt a lot about neural correlates of consciousness [5], we still do not know how these non-material phenomenal manifestations occur from the material neural circuits. Some new theory explains that they are special kinds of information, which is non-material, that occur inherently in the material neural circuits [6], but this has to be verified by experiments.

Because both the biology problem and the hard problem are fundamental problems, if we cannot solve these problems first, we will never be able to upload or relocate the mind itself to function and live in a computer like the way it lives naturally in our brains.

References.

Byrne JH. Introduction to neurons and neuronal networks. Neuroscience Online. The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).
Sporns O, Tononi G, Kötter R. The human connectome: A structural description of the human brain. PLoS Comput Biol. 2005 Sep;1(4):e42.
Purves D. Chapter 30. Memory. In: Purves D, Augustine GJ, David Fitzpatrick D, Hall WC, Lamantia AS, McNamara JO, Williams SM, editors. Neuroscience. 3rd ed. Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates Inc; 2004. ISBN-13: 9780878937257 ISBN-10: 0878937250.
Chalmers DJ. Facing up to the problem of consciousness. J Conscious Stud. 1995;2(3):200-219.
Koch C, Massimini M, Boly M, Tononi G. Neural correlates of consciousness: progress and problems. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2016;17: 307-321. The full pdf file can be downloaded from here.
Ukachoke C. The Basic Theory of the Mind1st ed, 2018. p 8-18. Charansanitwong Printing Co. Bangkok, Thailand.


Why do some memories stick out more than others?

First, whenever talking about memory, it helps to be specific. Memory is, somewhat controversially, categorized in a number of different ways.

I'll take the liberty of assuming that you are specifically referring to episodic memory. Given your examples, we might even call it autobiographical episodic memory.

Episodic memory is special in that it is a highly multimodal kind of memory. It's the kind of memory involved in "mental time travel", or the ability to retrieve a memory over many sensory domains and "relive" it.

As such, there's a lot we don't know about why some of these memories are encoded more strongly than others. This is especially the case for events that we don't remember paying particular attention to, like walking to your babysitter's house.

It could be, as you mentioned, that the emotional state associated with that event is strong.  Or, it could be that there's some combination of sensory inputs (sight, smell, taste, etc) that affect our bottom-up attention and are involved with being able to remember the event (Cabeza, 2008). It could also be that particular dynamic brain states are simply more "friendly" to encoding these memories (Watrous 2014), and your brain may have been in such a state at the time.

It's a very open question. If interested in this kind of memory, I would recommend reading Elements of Episodic Memory (Tulving 1983).

References:

Cabeza, R. Role of posterior parietal regions in episodic memory retrieval: the dual attentional processes hypothesis. Neuropsychologia 46, 1813–1827 (2008).

Watrous, A.J., Ekstrom, A.D. The spectro-contextual encoding and retrieval theory of episodic memory. Front Hum Neurosci, 8 (2014)


Models relating neuron firing to oscillatory dynamics

The oscillations measured by EEG, ECoG, and MEG are thought to originate in the apical dendrites' fluctuating potentials. Try looking into the forward problem of EEG. Like the inverse problem but in reverse. Given a known source potential (apparently it's very common to model cortical neurons' LFP as a distribution of current dipoles?) you solve the Poisson equation to get the potential at the recording electrode.
I'm reading through this review right now and it's very interesting: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2234413/.

Other avenues which seem interesting are neural mass/neural field models, especially Walter Freeman's work on neurodynamics. See: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Freeman_K-set.

Abstracted away from the biology a bit there's Jack Cowan's field models and stochastic neural networks. But they're both absolutely prolific and the math is dense and I'm not quite sure where to even really begin.


People certainly express a dislike for drama for different reasons, and I'm going to hazard explaining a few of them that I think are potentially useful:

Expressing an opinion on 'drama', especially on social media, is
usually a response to a critical incident. Just as one
generally does not go around complaining about dishonest auto
mechanics (or car salesmen, or insurance salesmen, or crazy
psychologists...) just to make conversation, one hopefully does not
go around complaining about 'drama' unless one is responding to an
event or set of events in-particular.

What's different about interpersonal conflict is that, unless one is
a shut-in, there are limitless opportunities to experience it, and
thus there's always a potential cue handy if one wishes to opine.
And oh, how some people love to opine!

This critical incident hypothesis, if you will, is most likely to
explain things like updating a profile or making a particular
comment, etc. It isn't a sufficient explanation for a pattern of
behavior, however - if it seems to be their favorite topic of
discussion, it's probably not a simple critical incident.
If it's a person's favorite complaint, or perhaps with a
dating-style site if it appears as a litmus test or chief complaint,
it could be due to an on-going or past trauma. In other words,
someone has experienced interpersonal conflict they find so
unreasonable, and so deeply hurtful, that it's their most obvious
non-negotiable list item when they go to think about what they don't
want.
The reason the op eludes to is, in my favorite way to explain it, the louder he talked of his honor the faster we counted the spoons. This is something we may refer to as an evaluation
heuristic: when people proclaim how much they are X, the most likely
they are not-X; or the louder they state they hate Y, the more
likely they are to exhibit the traits of Y.

In general, this can be an invaluably useful heuristic. As a woman
if you encounter a man who often favors expressing how much he hates
wife-beaters, for instance, you would likely do best to stay the
hell away from him (as personal anecdote, one of the most vile human
beings I've ever met often expressed his violent disgust for
domestic violence); child-molesters are often witnessed as offering,
unprompted, opinions about treating children well, etc. These sorts
of things are red flags.

And what is a red flag, really? It's something out of the ordinary,
not generally experienced, that we perceive as being "statistically
correlated" with the experience of something bad. Sometimes these
gut feelings are good, sometimes they are mistaken, and they can
often be easily manipulated one way or the other - but one is
generally wise to never simply ignore such intuitions.

Now, to be clear, this is only a heuristic - by definition it can be
wrong, and it doesn't really 'explain' the behavior itself. It's
just a good aid in decision-making.

So while this is often true and valid, I do not offer this as a real
explanation for the behavior. For that I simply continue to...
Selective attentiveness. If a person is dishonest, they surely
know the value of honesty - it gives people the benefit of doubts,
and "confidence" is the resource they most require to be successful
in their manipulations. As such, they are very much aware of honesty
and dishonesty, and actively try to cultivate such opinions. If
someone seems over-eager to gain your trust, there aren't many ways
for that to end well - maybe trying to get you to buy a $20 bottle
of fruit juice, at best.

However, as a criteria this one doesn't have total discriminatory
power - people commonly victimized (the ill and disabled, for
instance, people of low socio-economic class, etc), with PTSD, and
certain personalities might be more focused on honesty and
dishonesty. This is also made harder by context - if there is fear
of being disbelieved or a lack of personal confidence in the self,
this can be thrown way off and a person can be seen as dishonest
falsely. Sadly, this same effect causes con-men to be believed
because they learn to extort this heuristic and direct attention
where they want it.
It's code for something else. What does "drama" even mean? As you
point out, who the heck expresses a preference for interpersonal
conflict and irrational attention seeking?

To them, it may have a specific meaning in their mind: a certain set
of related behaviors, probably mimicking soap-opera like "blow
simple, common experiences out of proportion".

Sometimes, I totally agree - it's important to have perspective, and
if people always have a rain cloud over their head it can be
fatiguing to be around them. However, all too often I've found this
to be a flag for people who express no particular concern, empathy,
or understanding of other people - they just don't care and don't
want to be bothered with "other people's problems".

This all too often reflects a character of selfishness and unconcern
with others feelings, emotions, and experiences; someone might be
reaching out for a little understanding, or a kind word, or asking
for help, or even suffering from a severe mental or physical
illness, or just venting. Casually dismissing such things as "drama"
is...well, a red flag for me. But again, that's just a heuristic
I've found to be useful.
Critical mass, or "everyone else says it". I'm fun-loving, too!
From a user-experience view (wearing a different hat), requiring
that someone say 'something' without guidance or proper
understanding of what someone should or should not say tends to get
people to just put what they think is appropriate based upon what
other people say or what you tell them they should put.

Depending on where you are, you can find a whole lot of people
saying "no drama". I don't know if they even know what it means, any
more than they know whether or not they are fun-loving or positive
or outgoing or upbeat.
Boorishness. Some people just don't make good conversation, and
maybe they just like to tilt at windmills.
They are middle-school or high-school aged girls. As a father of
two of said human beings, it appears to be in the genetic or
cultural makeup or realities of modern society that generate actual,
imagined, or commentary on, drama.

TLDR;

They might just be, or are in close-contact with, high-school girls. For deeper thinking, see above.