What is "required reading" in training that describe mechanisms behind learning?

The questions you list are incredibly broad and diverse. You will find basic textbooks that may touch on aspects of all of these, but otherwise will not find answers to them all in one book. Some may not be answerable at all at the textbook level; others like "How does myelination affect how babies learn?" I feel are not really well-posed questions but some background will help you understand why.
I'd recommend starting with a broad undergraduate-level neuroscience textbook. These will assume you have some prior knowledge of the basics of molecular and cell biology, as well as physics (electricity and magnetism in particular; at least enough to be comfortable with basic circuits: voltage and current, resistors and capacitors, etc).
The two I would recommend (pick just one or the other) are:
Neuroscience, by Purves et al
and
Principles of Neural Science, by Kandel et al


Relation between Nengo, SPA and NEF with respect to other Neural Models

I haven't read the book, just googled, so:

NEF is a mathematical model that simulates neural systems. It consists of formulae that you can use to (manually) compute the behavior of neurons.

NENGO is a software (version 1.0 in the programming language Java and is scriptable in Python, version 2.0 is pure python) that implements the NEF, so that it computes the behavior of neurons (according to the NEF) for you.

You can think of the relation between NEF and NENGO as similar to that between arithmetic (the rules for computation: addition, subtraction etc.) and a pocket calculator (which "knows" those rules and calculates for you).

SPA is another mathematical model. It uses the basic neural functionality modelled in the NEF to build a large scale cognitive model. In the book, NENGO is used to implement SPA/Spaun.

You can think of the relation between NEF and SPA as similar to that between arithmetic (the basic rules of calculation) and algebra (a more complex set of rules that uses the basic rules of arithmetics to solve more complex problems).

There are two websites explaining it all:

http://nengo.ca/
http://compneuro.uwaterloo.ca/research/spa.html

You will find the relevant pages explaining what I summarized above through Google.


Although depression comes in many forms and presents itself somewhat differently in different individuals, one of the key features of major depression, as opposed to merely feeling sad, is that it literally slows down the brain's processing and reaction speeds. A heavily depressed person is not only down, but sluggish; and this sluggishness cannot simply be removed using a joke or other short-term positive stimulation. On a related note, a normal person could without too much trouble learn how to act like he or she has schizophrenia, but a real schizophrenic (without medication) could not act like a normal person very effectively, regardless of how hard it were tried.

One of the problems with diagnosing based on reaction times and other measurable features is that these measurements differ quite a bit from individual to individual. You would need historic data from a particular person to use for comparison to present measurements. Some people, after all, were basically born depressed while others were basically born manic.

Personally, I absolutely agree that the industry (and society) could really benefit from having real testing methods involving objective measurements rather than subjective observations and hunches.

Edit: To answer your question more directly, yes a person could fake depression. However, the quality of this impersonation, if you will, would depend on the knowledge and experience of the performer; and the quality of recognising this faking would depend greatly on the observer. As for reasons for faking, there are many possibilities -- this all depends on the person's agenda.


Adept noticing of microexpressions by autistic people

Clark et al, 2008 show impairment in ASD individuals for detection of the emotional content of microexpressions.

In general, ASD individuals have trouble discriminating the nuance of facial expressions (though some argue otherwise: see for example Ozonoff et al 1990), for example the differences between genuine smiles and posed smiles (for example, Boraston et al 2008); ASD individuals can learn/train to improve recognition of these cues, however (for example, Solomon et al 2004).

Tardif et al 2007 suggests that slowing down a discrimination task improves performance for ASD individuals, again suggesting that impairments may be worse for briefer displays like microexpressions. This result is also consistent with the idea that, for some ASD individuals, detecting emotions is more about learned rules rather than the more "automatic" emotional detection process for typically developing people.

Overall, I don't see evidence for the claim in the linked article. That said, ASD individuals are each unique humans, and there could certainly be specific individuals who are sensitive to or have learned to recognize microexpressions, but the article doesn't cite any reference. A general caution to be aware of and sympathetic to difficulties with social cues for ASD folks applying for jobs makes sense to me; connecting this to enhanced microexpression detection does not.

(I'd add, also, that the existence, nature, and ubiquity of microexpressions is a bit controversial: see Porter & ten Brinke 2008)

Boraston, Z. L., Corden, B., Miles, L. K., Skuse, D. H., & Blakemore, S. J. (2008). Brief report: Perception of genuine and posed smiles by individuals with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 38(3), 574-580.

Clark, T. F., Winkielman, P., & McIntosh, D. N. (2008). Autism and the extraction of emotion from briefly presented facial expressions: stumbling at the first step of empathy. Emotion, 8(6), 803.

Porter, S., & ten Brinke, L. (2008). Reading between the lies: Identifying concealed and falsified emotions in universal facial expressions. Psychological science, 19(5), 508-514.

Ozonoff, S., Pennington, B. F., & Rogers, S. J. (1990). Are there emotion perception deficits in young autistic children?. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 31(3), 343-361.

Solomon, M., Goodlin-Jones, B. L., & Anders, T. F. (2004). A social adjustment enhancement intervention for high functioning autism, Asperger’s syndrome, and pervasive developmental disorder NOS. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 34(6), 649-668.

Tardif, C., Lainé, F., Rodriguez, M., & Gepner, B. (2007). Slowing down presentation of facial movements and vocal sounds enhances facial expression recognition and induces facial–vocal imitation in children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37(8), 1469-1484.

Winkielman, P., McIntosh, D. N., & Oberman, L. (2009). Embodied and disembodied emotion processing: Learning from and about typical and autistic individuals. Emotion Review, 1(2), 178-190.


Word for the opposite of “hypochondriasis”

It seems to depend on the reason for denying their illness...

Egosyntonic:

  ... a term referring to behaviors, values, feelings that are in
  harmony with or acceptable to the needs and goals of the ego, or
  consistent with one's ideal self-image. ... Many personality disorders
  are considered to be egosyntonic ... Anorexia ... is also considered
  egosyntonic because many of its sufferers deny that they have a
  problem.

People with personality disorders for example, may be fully aware and accepting of their behaviour, they simply don't see it as a problem.

Denial / abnegation:

  ... is used for a psychological defense mechanism ..., in which a
  person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and
  rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be
  overwhelming evidence. ... In denial, an individual does not see or is
  mostly unconscious of existence of the truth or fact. The choice to
  refuse reality, then, is unconscious as well.

Someone may deny their illness because it makes them uncomfortable in some way - eg, they are embarrassed about it or concerned about negative perceptions by others.

Anosognosia:

  ... a deficit of self-awareness, a condition in which a person who
  suffers a certain disability seems unaware of the existence of his or
  her disability. ... Anosognosia is relatively common following
  different etiologies of brain injury ..., but can appear to occur in
  conjunction with virtually any neurological impairment.

In Anton–Babinski syndrome (visual anosognosia) for example, a person is blind, but nonetheless claims to be able see, and this is due to brain damage in the visual cortex.

Hypochondria is undue alarm about any physical or psychological symptoms, no matter how minor they may be.  So I would argue that the best counterpart is minimisation - a cognitive distortion:

  ... is the opposite of exaggeration. ... downplaying the significance
  of an event or emotion ...

A medical condition that fits this description is anosodiaphoria:

  ... a condition in which a person who suffers disability due to brain
  injury seems indifferent to the existence of their handicap. ... a
  disorder of the body schema in which patients verbally acknowledge a
  clinical problem ... but fail to be concerned about it.

So while a hypochondriac makes a big deal out of a small problem, anosodiaphoria is making a small deal out of a big problem.

Also see hyperchondria.


What is the sleep study that showed that a percentage of humans have a biological clock that is ~28 hours or greater?

Free-running circadian periods were estimated to vary from 13 to 65 hours in normal subjects according to a 1979 study by R.A. Wever. This paper was referenced in a more recent article regarding the circadian pacemaker (Czeisler et al., 1999). I could not access the Wever article directly to assess quality. However, the Czeisler article takes issue with the methods of earlier work that purported to show circadian rhythms longer than about 24 hours:

  ...the generality of these
  findings has been limited by reports that activity (16, 17), knowledge of time of day (18), and
  exposure to ordinary indoor room light (19, 20)
  can shift circadian phase or alter the observed
  free-running circadian period in humans and
  thus may have influenced those observations
  (21)."

Czeisler et al. sought to control these confounds and estimate a rhythm with very little variance centered at 24.18 hours.

  Czeisler, C. A., Duffy, J. F., Shanahan, T. L., Brown, E. N.,
  Mitchell, J. F., Rimmer, D. W., … Kronauer, R. E. (1999). Stability,
  Precision, and Near-24-Hour Period of the Human Circadian Pacemaker.
  Science, 284(5423), 2177–2181. doi:10.1126/science.284.5423.2177 PDF

  R. A. Wever, The Circadian System of Man: Results of Experiments Under
  Temporal Isolation (Springer-Verlag, New York, 1979); Experientia 40,
  1226 (1984).


In Integrate-and-fire models, why can we assume spike arrivals to be random?

Assuming random spike arrivals is just a convention that is chosen, not an assumption of some natural system. It's not a property of integrate-and-fire models. Probably whoever chose this convention did so for some demonstration (teaching) purposes. It may also be chosen to model "neural noise" which is a shortcut for "all the other stuff going on in the brain besides that which we are studying". In that context, it's common to model the effect of a consistent incoming signal on a random background.

An equivalent might be to see how an electronic filter would respond to either an impulse or to white noise: you could learn something about the filter (such as its ability to attenuate certain frequencies, or a certain response pattern to an impulse) by looking at either of those responses.

Similarly, by feeding noisy/random input to a integrate-and-fire neuron, you can find how changing parameters of your model neuron changes its output properties.


How many different synapses can an axon form? How do they differ?

You're right - from the simple math in the numbers you've given, you can deduce that each average neuron makes thousands of connections (sending and receiving).

Of course, this varies a bit by cell type:

There is one special synapse called the Calyx of
Held which is a nearly
one-to-one connection between certain types of cells in the auditory
brainstem: one globular bushy cell makes only 1 or 2 calyx synapses with MNTB
neurons (though they also have collaterals to other targets) which themselves
receive 1 or at most 2 calyx synapses (though they also receive a small
fraction of input from other sources) (Smith et al 1991, Smith et al 1998,
Rodríguez‐Contreras et al 2006)
Napper and Harvey 1988 estimate about 175,000 synapses arrive at each Purkinje
cell in the cerebellum.
The ballpark number of "thousands of synapses per neuron" is
reasonable for most cells, however.

Neurons can and do make multiple synaptic connections with the same post-synaptic cell - that's one of the ways to regulate the strength of connection between two neurons - but most synapses will be from different neurons.

Synapses on different compartments of a cell can have different effects, because they tend to sum more with other local connections and less from far ones, and because synapses closer to the cell body are more likely to directly control firing than synapses far away.

Axons from many cell types in neocortex have a complex branching pattern, where axons often branch both locally as well as sending various collaterals to other areas of neocortex and even to subcortical structures (see some examples in Ojima et al. 1991 & 1992). They make synapses all along these branches except for the longest projection stretches.

Hawkins, J., & Ahmad, S. (2016). Why neurons have thousands of synapses, a theory of sequence memory in neocortex. Frontiers in neural circuits, 10, 23.

Napper, R. M. A., & Harvey, R. J. (1988). Number of parallel fiber synapses on an individual Purkinje cell in the cerebellum of the rat. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 274(2), 168-177.

Ojima, H., Honda, C. N., & Jones, E. (1991). Patterns of axon collateralization of identified supragranular pyramidal neurons in the cat auditory cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 1(1), 80-94.

Ojima, H., Honda, C. N., & Jones, E. G. (1992). Characteristics of intracellularly injected infragranular pyramidal neurons in cat primary auditory cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 2(3), 197-216.

Rodríguez‐Contreras, A., de Lange, R. P., Lucassen, P. J., & Borst, J. G. G. (2006). Branching of calyceal afferents during postnatal development in the rat auditory brainstem. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 496(2), 214-228.

Smith, P. H., Joris, P. X., Carney, L. H., & Yin, T. C. (1991). Projections of physiologically characterized globular bushy cell axons from the cochlear nucleus of the cat. Journal of comparative neurology, 304(3), 387-407.

Smith, P. H., Joris, P. X., & Yin, T. C. (1998). Anatomy and physiology of principal cells of the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body (MNTB) of the cat. Journal of neurophysiology, 79(6), 3127-3142.


To test self-awareness in animals there is the Mirror test. It involves painting something on the animal's head/face without their knowledge and observing what they do when they notice the paint in their own reflection in a mirror.

Additionally, robots have been tested for simple self-awareness by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.


How do people that can't perceive 3D view a stereoscopic 3D image or movie?

People who are unable to perceive stereoscopic depth typically only perceive information from the dominant eye.

Failure to perceive stereoscopic depth is usually caused by conditions where the eyes do not converge properly (e.g., strabismus). If left untreated, it is not possible to develop the necessary correspondance between the two signals from either eye, and one eye will dominate over the other. The result is that the majority of visual cortical neurons will respond to stimuli presented to the dominant eye, whereas there will be far fewer binocular neurons (i.e., neurons that respond to stimuli from either eye) and monocular neurons that respond to stimuli from the weaker eye.


Is the depletion effect of self-control reliable?

Short answer: We don't really know yet, but we should know soon.

Long answer:

There has been much research about the ego-depletion effect. The effect has been found in many published studies. As cited in APS Observer (2014):

  A recent meta-analysis revealed a medium effect size (d = 0.62) across 198 tests of the ego-depletion effect (Hagger, Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2010).

However, there have been some doubts whether these results reflect publication bias (only studies that found the effect may have been published, those that have found no effect or the reverse effect may have landed in the "file drawer") or weak methods (small samples).

APS Observer (2014):

  Despite these findings, some researchers have questioned the strength
  of the ego-depletion effect. A recent analysis conducted by Carter and
  McCullough (2013, 2014) suggested that the effect may be quite small
  or entirely an artifact of publication bias. The researchers cite
  evidence that many tests of the effect were substantially underpowered
  suggesting that the likelihood of finding such a large number of
  significant effects in the literature is improbable. Although the
  interpretation of these analyses have been questioned (Hagger &
  Chatzisarantis, 2014), it is possible that publication bias may have
  inflated the size of the effect evident from the literature.

That is why the APS journal Perspectives on Psychological Science has accepted the proposal for a large scale replication project led by Alex O. Holcombe and Martin S. Hagger.

APS Observer (2014):

  By using preregistered replications across multiple laboratories, this [project] will allow for a precise, objective estimate of the size of the ego depletion effect.

More details about the project can be accessed at its website on the Open Science Framework.

References

Carter, E. C., & McCullough, M. E. (2013). Is ego depletion too incredible? Evidence for the overestimation of the depletion effect. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36, 683-684. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000952

Carter, E. C., & McCullough, M. E. (2014). Publication bias and the limited strength model of self-control: Has the evidence for ego depletion been overestimated? Frontiers in Psychology, 5. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00823

Hagger, M. S., & Chatzisarantis, N. L. D. (2014). It is premature to regard the ego-depletion effect as ‘too incredible’. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 298. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00298

Hagger, M. S., Wood, C., Stiff, C., & Chatzisarantis, N. L. D. (2010). Ego depletion and the strength model of self-control: A meta-analysis, Psychological Bulletin, 136, 495-525.


How to structure affective picture stimuli for an EEG study?

Disclaimer: These are my preferences, biased by my own research experience.

In general, I am not a fan of block designs. Blocking introduces difficulty in comparing both neural and behavioural activity between blocks due to effects of practice, fatigue, adaptation, learning, boredom, muscle tension and possibly others. It is of course possible to counter-balance block order across participants, but then you have to hope that within participants these effects will be roughly of the same magnitude in order to properly cancel out. Since in neuroimaging research we often don't go for large numbers of participants, I tend to prefer event-related designs.

I also sometimes look at signals which are so low in intensity (such as gamma power) that I want to avoid anything that will saturate the signal, and previous trials of the same type do generally saturate it quite a lot, sometimes to the point that I can't see it any more.

However, I also have two reasons for avoiding purely event-related designs. One is that some effects might depend on previous trials. If, for example, people don't react as much to happy stimuli if they're still recovering from the previous angry stimulus, or if they're surprised by the trial change (there's another emotion for you) and you are interested in the happy reaction itself, then you do need blocks... and you also need to discard the first few trials when a block changes. Another reason is that I might be manipulating too many variables in the task and it gets difficult for the study participants. In that case I might decide to manipulate one variable in a block-wise fashion and another in a trial-by-trial fashion. Only you know whether these restrictions apply to your design.

But even if I do go for a block design, I would never* do all the trials in one trial type at once. Instead, I would create mini-blocks, consisting of a small number of trials, for example 10-20. Then I shuffle these mini-blocks randomly per participant, without repetitions. That way you can get all the positive effects from blocking with minimal negative effects.

.* never again, that is.


Why ADHD instead of ADD? / Why predominantly hyperactive-impulsive instead of predominantly-impulsive?

ADHD used to be called just ADD in DSM-III (released in 1980), with the subtypes ADD/H (ADD with hyperactivity) and ADD/WO (ADD without hyperactivity). However, by 1987 when DSM-III-R was published, it turned out there was not enough empirical evidence to support the multidimensional view of ADD from DSM-III, so DSM-III-R adopted a unidimensional view, which was reflected in the name change to ADHD. This change was not without criticism, and it turned out that the criticism was well founded, because by the time DSM-IV came about (it was published in 1994), enough empirical evidence had accumulated for the multidimensional view, however the dimension space was refined into inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity, and allowed for a combined type as well. From empirical research it turned out that the DSM-III diagnoses of ADD/WO and ADD/H correspond fairly closely with
the DSM-IV diagnoses of ADHD predominantly inattentive type and combined type, respectively (cf. Morgan et al.)

Now for the terminology, the proper name howadays is attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (i.e. with the slash), which correctly reflects the equal importance of the two dimensions (from DSM-IV and 5) in the name. If you want to be really nitpicky, the proper, unambiguous abbreviation of this name should be something like {AD/H/AD+H}D or ADD/HD/AD+HD, though of course nobody writes it like that for reasons of parsimony.

If you propose to say that "ADD has 3 types: predominantly inattentive [...]" you're still semantically repeating inattentive which means attention deficit, so I don't get the parsimony you propose at 1 as it asymmetrical, i.e. you're still repeating something in the first subtype from the title name even though you avoid it for the 2nd subtype.

As for proposal 2 "ADHD has 3 types: predominantly inattentive, predominantly impulsive", you're now calling the hyperactive-impulsive just impulsive. This is more a matter of how do you want to call the hyperactivity-impulsivity subtype. There is probably not enough empirical evidence to to have 3 dimensions (inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity) for ADHD, nevertheless DSM-IV distinguished between the latter two for reasons not entirely clear to me, but which I suspect are a matter of calling a spade a spade:

  Hyperactivity: (a) often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat
  (b) often leaves seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is expected
  (c) often runs about or climbs excessively in situations in which it is inappropriate (in adolescents or adults, may be limited to subjective feelings of restlessness)
  (d) often has difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly
  (e) is often “on the go” or often acts as if “driven by a motor”
  (f) often talks excessively

  Impulsivity: (g) often blurts out answers before questions have been completed
  (h) often has difficulty awaiting turn
  (i) often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversations or games)

For diagnostic purposes these two are combined, i.e you need 6 of any of these for hyperactive-impulsive diagnosis. Nevertheless it seems somewhat awkward to say that someone who has difficulty awaiting his/her turn is hyperactive rather than impulsive. There may be more history behind this sub-subheading split without diagnostic consequences; the DSM is designed by a committee so there may have been more to it, but I wasn't able to find out. What seems obvious is that lifting hyperactive rather than impulsive to the disorder name is appropriate given that most criteria for the subtype are of the hyperactive kind. Calling it "attention-deficit/hyperactive-impulsive disorder" seems really a mouthful.

It turns out there's at least one 2005 paper that partially agrees with your criticism though:

  Not only is “ADHD without hyperactivity” (ADHD of the predominantly inattentive type) an awkward locution, but it also tries to squeeze ADD into a box in which it does not belong. The term ADHD should be reserved for when hyperactivity is present (as the term implies), regardless of whether inattention is also present.

As it's evident in the above, abbreviations don't capture alternatives. So ADHD is hard to read as {AD|H}D. Nevertheless the DSM-5 committees were not convinced and the name remained what it is. Although some changes were made to the ADHD diagnosis the DSM-5:

  The retention of the ADHD symptom domains and 18 core symptoms likely reflects a judgment that the DSM-IV definition of ADHD has largely withstood the test of time.

However

  The change in nomenclature from “subtypes” in DSM-IV to “presentations” in DSM-5 reflects increasing evidence that symptoms are often fluid within individuals across their lifespan rather than stable traits. DSM-IV ADHD subtypes change across development due to the heterotypic continuity of symptom trajectories over time. For example, since inattention is relatively stable across development while hyperactivity/impulsivity often wane with age, many children diagnosed with ADHD, Combined eventually transition to ADHD, Predominantly Inattentive [...]. The “presentation” terminology better reflects that the symptom profile represents the person’s current symptomatology, which may change over time. The “type” terminology implied more stable, trait-like characteristics.


Do many people have an "Accompanying Voice" - an equal they converse with?

From a quick search online I see no reason why you distantiate what you describe from auditory hallucinations:

  a form of hallucination that involves perceiving sounds without
  auditory stimulus.

Given the article you link to, which arguably does address your question (yes, some people report experiencing this), you mainly seem to be concerned that this would unequivocally be considered a mental illness. Your actual question thus seems to be "Is hearing multiple voices always considered a mental illness?".

Judging from the Wikipedia article (and its subheading 'Non-disease associated causes') this is seemingly not the case.

  However, individuals may hear voices without suffering from
  diagnosable mental illness. (Thompson, 2006)

The article by Thompson mentions a study for which unfortunately no source is provided, thus I would take the following with a grain of salt:

  But studies by Dutch researchers that began in the 1990s found that
  some healthy people also regularly hear voices. ... Many of the people
  who contacted them did not find the voices disruptive and had never
  felt the need to consult mental health services. ... The resulting
  studies found that more people might hear voices than psychologists
  had thought, perhaps around 4 percent of the population.

It might, however, set you on the right path to finding the actual studies, or more recent work in regards to how many people report hearing voices not attributed to the self without considering them a mental illness.

Thompson, Andrea (September 15, 2006). "Hearing Voices: Some People Like It". LiveScience.com.


Can people fake mental illness to gain sympathy?

Yes,many celebrities have talked about mental illness they have ,or have recovered.
Most common is depression,bulimia,anorexia,OCD and sometimes bipolar,PTSD.
[Not shocking since showbiz is majorly concerned about perfection and beauty to the the narrow standards prevalent].
Sometimes these claims are met with skepticism and then there's a word for it:
Sadfishing
The possible reasons could include, obviously is publicity and marketing.
Bad publicity is still publicity, and looking vulnerable and expressing such feelings helps other common people to sympathise, and the star studded life becomes more believable.
And the main point of concern ,regarding whether they are genuine or not, is the fact that the behave ,speak and go on in their lives in a perfectly healthy manner.
People expect someone with such a complex list of problems to behave differently ,be "weird" in some way. But from personal experience,people who are suffering have shaped themselves to society's expectations to live up to "I'm fine".
This is also to lack of in depth knowledge of such mental illness or hyperbolic generalizations which most of us will hear or even say ourselves from time to time:
"She's a psycho"
or
"he cleans his room so much he must have OCD"
But ,we don't know them personally, and everyone has a set of behaviors when behave a kind of people- friends, teachers, parents which is slightly different from our true self.
As for checking if their claims are true ,we would have to look at their medical records etc ,which for obvious reasons is confidential.
Edit: As suggested by Chris Rogers I have added some information about insanity pleas
And here in Wikipedia ,is a short explanation of what conditions can pass an insanity plea.


Is living with constant mindfulness necessarily good? or does it limit one's potential?

Mindfulness by definition is bringing awareness to present moment non
judgmentally and I agree it may relax you. I believe it happens
because you shrink your attention to such a short span, in a moment by
moment fashion that complex thoughts can't be formed and thus you
relieve yourself from any unpleasant (or pleasant) feeling that may
arise from complex thoughts. In simple words, you reduce your
suffering, if any, to at it's minimum by limiting input to senses.

For me it is the opposite. In order to stay mindful and present you need a very stable and extended attention span. Philosophy, or just thoughts in general, are just mind wandering, it requires no effort, and no stable attention. And it changes nothing in reality. It actually limits your senses, mindfulness heightens your senses, because you are actually observing more input then when you are mindless.

However, is avoiding complex unpleasant thought always desirable?
aren't these thoughts and their uncomfortable feelings motivates and
inspire us introspect and change?

What thoughts are you talking about? The content of the thought does not really matter, what matters is how you react to it. You could have thoughts about strawberries, but if you are allergic you may react in a negative way to them (resistance), if you love fruit you may react positive, and else just neutral. You can live on basic hedonistic principle if you want.

If every time I
felt uncomfortable and practiced mindfulness to avoid them, I might
passively be supporting such system till date.

Mindfulness is not about avoiding anything, it is the opposite, observe the present with as much attention as possible, but without reacting to it. That means to observe thoughts as well, but not react to them.

You may say some thoughts are useful and worth attention & others not.
Like worrying about upcoming college exam won't do any good, you may
just use best of the time left. However can we say that with 100%
certainty? The worry is something bringing your attention and focus to
a problem at hand, may be you could be one in a million who will get a
brilliant idea to handle such situation or device a undetectable way
to cheat, or it may just help to focus and put 100% to prep for exam
or it could keep you panicking, unproductive and prove itself a
useless thought pattern. Similarly if you fail on an exam, there is no
good in being sad about it or is there? may be the sadness is useful
in making a neural pattern in brain to put more effort and time next
semester.

Worrying is not a single thought. Worrying is when you react to fear with fear. It creates a cycle, a loop of fear. Just observe the thought and the sensation you label fear, but don't react to it. Worrying doesn't help you focus, it is a distraction. It does the opposite. Yes it might get you so fearful and anxious and nervous that it makes you do something, but the result will not be of the same quality as when you do something calm and with full focus.

To summarize, wouldn't being too much mindful may make you too
adaptive to be mal-adaptive? wouldn't it may stop your thought
processes which might have produced some good for society? and
wouldn't it limit your potential.

If you get to that state of awareness of a zen monk where you have no thoughts at all, you would realize that society is just an illusion. How would you even be able to help someone if you are not mindful? If all you are aware of is your thoughts, how are you supposed to notice someone who needs help. What does it even mean to 'produce some good'?
Thoughts limit potential. Thoughts are limited and limiting by nature. For example if you believe that a snake will kill you, you will stay away from snakes, and potentially never find out that their venom cures cancer (just an example). Or if you believe that slavery is something barbaric and could never happen in the modern world, you could become a slave and never realize it. In yoga and buddhism this is called karma. Thoughts that skew your perspective and make you only see reality from a specific relative perspective. If you want to learn more, I recommend this talk from david bohm, a theoretical physicists


As per the comments to the question, human research observing this distinction does exist. CHCH possibly alludes to an article by Gläscher, Daw, Dayan and O'Doherty (2010) which concisely defines the difference between model-free learning and model-based learning:

  Reinforcement learning (RL) uses sequential experience with situations (“states”) and outcomes to assess actions. Whereas model-free RL uses this experience directly, in the form of a reward prediction error (RPE), model-based RL uses it indirectly, building a model of the state transition and outcome structure of the environment, and evaluating actions by searching this model.

Gläscher et al. (2010) report fMRI evidence for neural activity consistent with model-based learning in the human intraparietal sulcus and lateral prefrontal cortex, and for model-free learning in the ventral striatum. They conclude:

  This finding supports the existence of two unique forms of learning signal in humans, which may form the basis of distinct computational strategies for guiding behavior.

References

Gläscher, J., Daw, N., Dayan, P., & O'Doherty, J. P. (2010). States versus rewards: dissociable neural prediction error signals underlying model-based and model-free reinforcement learning. Neuron, 66(4), 585-595.


Why do our brains act in such a evil way sometimes that hurts other people?

MVR there are many hormones within us that motivate behaviours that served a purpose in previous (phylogenetic) environments that in our modern society may appear to be evil.

Oxytocin for example (the so called love hormone) spikes before conflict, and one of the biggest dopamine hits we can ever experience is by punishing someone.

Sapolsky 2017 - Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst


Why is storytelling an effective way to transmit information between people?

Narrative psychology is probably the go-to domain of research and theory for questions about the power and popularity of stories. Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia page (with added emphasis):

Narrative psychology is...concerned with the "storied nature of human conduct" [(Sarbin, 1986)] or...how human[s]...deal with experience by constructing stories and listening to the stories of others. Operating under the assumption that human activity and experience are filled with "meaning" and stories, rather than logical arguments or lawful formulations...[this] dichotomy...[appears (Bruner, 1990)] as a distinction between "paradigmatic" and "narrative" forms of thought, in his understanding they are both fundamental but irreducible one to the another.
According to Sarbin (1986) "narrative" is a root metaphor for psychology that should replace the mechanistic and organic metaphors which shaped so much theory and research in the discipline over the past century. The indisputable physical events of a personal occurrence are different from a story that results from the storied cause and effect relationships. (McKinnon) [citation unavailable]
...Independent of any fiction in the actual physical matter told, are physical events that are as unequivocal as quantum mechanics and human chemistry.

I'm unfamiliar with examples of narrative psychological research of the sort you're looking for specifically, but the above seems to argue from psychological theory at least that narratives gain appeal and influence from their apparent factuality. Narratives may not claim to apply their principles generally, let alone acknowledge any limits to their generality, but maybe people naturally infer generality anyway, and are less likely to recognize limits on their own when they aren't mentioned...This is just speculation though.
One other idea that's at least equally worth mentioning (which may not be saying much) is that narratives are particularly influential in the study of identity. Tying negative events in one's life into a redemptive life narrative relates to well-being, though causality isn't clear in this relationship (McAdams & McLean, 2013). Maybe a similar principle applies from an observer's perspective: maybe consumers of stories "create meaning" vicariously by putting both good and bad events in the shared context of others' lives. Maybe advertisers' messages are more subtly appealing (and less overbearing) when embedded in the narratives of relatable, likable characters that seem to have more to say than just what their favorite shampoo is. Again, this is speculation; I'm no advertiser. I mostly hope I've given you some ideas to follow up on in study of the areas of psychological research with which I am somewhat familiar: narrative identity, and narrative psychology in general.

References
· Bruner, J. S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Harvard University Press.
· McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 233–238.
· Sarbin, T. R. (1986). Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct. Praeger Publishers / Greenwood Publishing Group.


How is the Stanford Prison Experiment connected to Conformity?

Zimbardo himself states that both informative and normative conformity played an important role in the Stanford Prison Experiment.

  Source: http://www.lucifereffect.com/guide_conform.htm

  [...] Informative conformity often occurs in situations in which there is high uncertainty and ambiguity. In an unfamiliar situation, we are likely to shape our behavior to match that of others. The actions of others inform us of the customs and accepted practices in a situation. Others inform us of what is right to do, how to behave in new situations.

  In addition to conforming to the group norms due to lack of knowledge, we also conform when we want to be liked by the group. This type of conformity, called normative conformity, is the dominant form of social conformity when we are concerned about making a good impression in front of a group. Though we may disagree secretly with the group opinion, we may verbally adopt the group stance so that we seem like a team player rather than a deviant.

  Both of these pressures impact us everyday, for good or for worse. [...]
  Similarly, in the Stanford Prison Experiment, the subjects who were randomly assigned as guards gradually adopted the behavior of cruel and demanding prison guards because that became the behavioral norm in an alien situation.


Are inhibitory synapses governed by different chemicals than excitatory synapses?

Short answer
I cannot give an exclusive answer, but if you are talking about a schoolbook neuron with different neurons synapsing onto it, then excitation is indeed generally mediated by another neurotransmitter than inhibition. Why?...

Background

First and foremost. While recognizing that neurotransmitters in themselves are not excitatory or inhibitory, it is the receptors that govern their workings, it is a fact that in the central nervous system the principal excitatory neurotransmitter is glutamate, and the principal inhibitory neurotransmitter is GABA. In fact, none of the Glu receptors (ionotropic or metabotropic) afaik is inhibitory, and none of the GABA receptors is excitatory.
Secondly, from a postsynaptic point of view, synapses with different input cells are separate. In other words, a glutamatergic neuron never secretes GABA in the same synapse or vice versa. In effect, neurotransmitter systems are separated. Often, a principal neurotransmitter may be accompanied by neuromodulators, but never will one neuron release opposite effector molecules. Instead, opposing inputs are imposed by separate cells, each with their own neurotransmitter system.
The neurotransmitter acetylcholine can be excitatory at the neuromuscular junction in skeletal muscle, causing the muscle to contract. In contrast, it is inhibitory in the heart, where it slows heart rate. So Ach can have dualistic and even opposing actions, but the respective receptors are different and geographically segregated in different neurons;
But, this is schoolbook, anthropocentric knowledge, and if you ask any creature, anywhere in the multiverse, then yeah... I don't know.


Finally!

I found a news article explaining the Echoborg.
The research was done in 2015 by Kevin Corti and Alex Gillespi at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Published at Frontiers of Psychology: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00634


How does a person who wears prism glasses through which the world is perceived upside-down experience the transition back to normal?

Short answer
Based on the papers I've found I conclude that visual perceptions are not grossly altered after wearing prism glasses for extended periods. Instead, adaptation to prism glasses is mainly brought about by the adjustment of motor behavior to compensate for the shifted visual input.

Background
In a review on the topic of adaptation effects in response to wearing prism glasses, Harris concludes that it is the 'position sense' that adapts, and not the visual system (Harris, 1965). In the more recent literature the adaptation to the shifts, or reversals in vision brought about by prism glasses is indeed ascribed to the adaptation of the proprioceptive system, i.e., subjects adapt their motor behavior to compensate for the visual field shift (e.g., Richter et al. (2002), Hatada & Rosetti (2006)), or through shifts in their egocentric reference frame although subtle, short-lasting after-effects do seem to occur in the visual domain too (Hatada et al., 2006).
Note that the experiments described above, human subjects were used and due to practical and ethical reasons, subjects did not wear the prism glasses longer than a few hours up to 1 week at max.

In animal studies, much longer prism-wearing times have been applied. In a study where monkeys wore left-right shifting prism goggles for 90 days, the ipsilateral visual cortex was found to be activated (Sugita et al., 1996). Normally, only the contralateral cortex is activated by ipsilateral stimuli.  Hence, here in these experiments a definite neurophysiological correlate of visual adaptation was found. In four human subjects that wore similar goggles for about 36 days it was subsequently shown that also their ipsilateral cortices were activated, but only after 1 to 2 weeks (Miyauchi et al., 2004). However, the authors of this study don't report the after-effects, but they do conclude that:

  [The] changes observed [in] adaptation to left–right reversing may be associated with the process of [...] strategic perceptual-motor control. One of the most crucial actions for a subject with left–right reversed vision is controlling the hands [...]. For example, when the subjects wearing left–right reversing goggles pick up an object located in the left visual field, they have to use their right hand which is normally located in the right visual field and whose visual information is normally projected to left V1 (ipsilateral to the visual field in which the object appears). To perform such actions, the subjects [...] must change their strategic (top-down) perceptual-motor control. It is well-known that top-down visual imagery alone can activate primary visual cortex with a topographical representation [...]. In addition, there are several pieces of evidence which suggest that tactile and proprioceptive perception involve visual imagery and activate visual cortices [...]

Hence, even when neural adaptation occurs in the visual cortex, it is mainly motor, tactile and proprioceptive adaptations playing a role in adjusting to visual shifts and not so much gross changes in the visual field of view.

References
- Harris, Psychological Review (1965); 72(6): 419-44
- Hatada et al., Exp Brain Res (2006); 173(3): 415–24
- Hatada et al., Exp Brain Res (2006); 174(1): 189–98
- Hatada & Rosetti, Exp Brain Res (2006); 169(3): 417–26
- Miyauchi et al., J Physiol - Paris (2004); 98: 207–19
- Richter et al., Exp Brain Res (2002); 144(4): 445–57
- Sugita et al., Nature (1996); 380: 523–6


What is the closest scientific branch to cognitive science?

As @Lucianopaz said in his answer, this question is very broad and depends on what area of Cognitive Science you are interested in.

Cognitive Science is an "umbrella term" or a "collective term" for many different sciences.

As the link I provided says, there are 6 main sciences within the collection;

Philosophy
Linguistics
Anthropology
Neuroscience
AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Psychology

but within those sciences there are branches.

Take Psychology for example, and you could specialise in Social Psychology, Behavioural Psychology, Criminal Psychology... the list goes on.

You need to work out what interests you within this collection of sciences to work out what you want to study in college and university.


What is the standard error of measurement for teacher made multiple choice tests?

Harvill mentions an estimate by Lord (1959). Lord (1959) presents some data for the standard error of measurement for some moderately difficult cognitive measures. While there are many caveats (e.g., the estimate of the standard error is most accurate for scores around 50% and the estimates are based on tests that are neither particularly easy or particularly difficult with means in the .35 to .75 range), Lord provides a simple formula that can be used as a rule of thumb for predicting standard error of measurement in his sample of cognitive measures which performed quite well.

$$\hat{s}_e = .432 \sqrt{k}$$

where $k$ is the number of items.
Alternatively, if you are interested in the mean correct on a 0 to 100 scale rather than the total correct, you can divide by $k$ and multiply by 100.

$$\hat{s}_e = \frac{.432 \sqrt{k}}{k} \times 100$$

When I plugged this into R for some sample values I obtained:

> lord_approximation <- function(k) 0.432 * sqrt(k) /k * 100
> k <- c(10, 20, 50, 80, 100, 120, 150, 200)
> cbind(k, sem=round(lord_approximation(k), 2))
       k   sem
[1,]  10 13.66
[2,]  20  9.66
[3,]  50  6.11
[4,]  80  4.83
[5,] 100  4.32
[6,] 120  3.94
[7,] 150  3.53
[8,] 200  3.05

Of course, not all of this reduction in standard error of measurement is due to greater accuracy. Some of it comes from the smaller standard deviation in true scores that occurs when you take the mean of more items. Furthermore, these estimates are based on relatively well designed cognitive measures. Teacher designed tests may have slightly lower reliability and thus larger SEM.

References

Harvill, L. M. (1991). Standard error of measurement. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 10(2), 33-41. PDF
Lord, F. M. (1959). Tests of the same length do have the same standard
error of measurement. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 19, 233-239.


If you sleep during the day, do you need less sleep at night?

Short answer: Yes, if you sleep 2--3 hours during the day, you generally need less sleep at night.

Important considerations: However, the short answer is not the full story. In particular, in answer to your question about whether or not sleep hours can be accumulated in a linear fashion, the answer is strictly no, but approximately yes.

To understand the problem with assuming linearity of sleep, consider the extreme example of "sleeping" for one minute, and then being awake the next, and keep doing this for the entire day. In theory, you would have spent 12 hours awake, and 12 hours asleep. But of course, you'll feel exhausted, and would be in desperate need of some good sleep.

What's important to keep in mind, is the different stages of sleep. See http://www.helpguide.org/articles/sleep/how-much-sleep-do-you-need.htm for a good overview.

The Stages of Sleep:

  Non-REM sleep

  Stage N1 (Transition to sleep) – This stage lasts about five minutes.
  Your eyes move slowly under the eyelids, muscle activity slows down,
  and you are easily awakened.

  Stage N2 (Light sleep) – This is the first stage of true sleep,
  lasting from 10 to 25 minutes. Your eye movement stops, heart rate
  slows, and body temperature decreases.

  Stage N3 (Deep sleep) – You’re difficult to awaken, and if you are
  awakened, you do not adjust immediately and often feel groggy and
  disoriented for several minutes. In this deepest stage of sleep, your
  brain waves are extremely slow. Blood flow is directed away from your
  brain and towards your muscles, restoring physical energy.

  REM sleep

  REM sleep (Dream sleep) – About 70 to 90 minutes after falling asleep,
  you enter REM sleep, where dreaming occurs. Your eyes move rapidly,
  your breathing shallows, and your heart rate and blood pressure
  increase. Also during this stage, your arm and leg muscles are
  paralyzed.

In Conclusion: Sleep hours can be thought of as accumulating linearly in blocks of sleep cycles. That is, as long as you hit the right sleep stages during your nap, it counts! Generally, a complete sleep cycle lasts about 90 minutes, so sleep in multiples of 90 minutes would be ideal...


How to efficiently get a sense of the meaning of a score on a non-aptitude test that you encounter in a journal article?

Tough question.

I'm going to assume that the question pertains to measures which lack all the information you've outlined: test manual, validity studies, website and key articles, item content and normative comparisons. If these assumptions are correct, then what you are a describing is an insufficiently explained measure. I will argue that we necessarily cannot know what such a scale means in any scientific sense.

A scale is a measure. A scientific measure is a process which generates evidence, i.e., observations that discriminate between different possible answers to a specific question. (Data may constitute evidence with respect to one question and not another.) The outcome of this discrimination, or analysis, is what the scale "means", i.e., the logically sound interpretation we may make on the basis of analyzing the evidence.

To determine whether a method does, in fact, generate evidence, we need to be able to replicate it independently. But the premises imply that we don't have enough information to do so. Because we cannot independently verify which hypotheses the evidence generated by the method discriminates between, if any, there is no way to know what it means.


What is the relationship between identity and personality?

I think the relation is more or less subjective.

Identity is something that you give yourself. It has to do with what you stand for, morals, values, etc.

It is who your are physically and legally, but that's just a basic "you already know that" statement.

Personality is the way in which you portray or "live in" your identity.

For example, you can identify parts of someone's personality: humorous, attractive, intelligent, funny.

Both adapt and change over time, but your identity changes less often, I believe. Together, they are what makes a whole person.

It's really difficult to give a concrete answer because a lot of this can be subjective, debatable and complex.

It's also important to remember that while in some cases your personality and identity may be the same, in the end, they serve different "roles." If someone says "you're unique", it's true. Both your identity and personality are what makes you unique. They help each other in that way.

Let's take a look at this from a different angle: Let's say that we know this guy named Tom is a murderer. That is his identity. His personality, however, may not portray that and can come off as fun or charming. Personality is how someone behaves. They both go really well together but that doesn't mean that they are always similar. In most cases, you will find that they are similar, though.

Sources

Personality vs. Identity | Authentic Systems - Motivation Research & Development
Discover Your Personality | Truity
The Difference Between Personality & Identity | HiNative


Reading material for graduate neuroscience program

It's a rapidly developing field, so that some areas are incredibly well represented in the books to the point of being standard - like the neuronal dynamics (e.g. by Paninski, Naud, Kistner, Gerstner or e.g. by Izhikevich), some less, like neural coding (e.g. by Doia, Ishii, Pouget, Rao) and vision (e.g. by Rolls, Deco), some almost aren't, like motor control(?) or neuroanatomy(?), and some has yet to generate sufficient volume of theoretical work explaining  experimental data (before it can start condensating in textbooks), like. Maybe try

Trappenberg - Fundamentals of Computational Neuroscience 2ed

It's pedagogically sound, yet not exhaustive nor particularly long to get through. This will help to have an initial overview of some topics, and build some taste for further reading interest (as the book really tries hard to give you a primer on a variety of topics and methods, and gives references). It has some code examples that you may rewrite in you favorite language. In addition, you may benefit from free browsing of Scholarpedia for reviews written by active researchers, and form your own idea of what "Computational Neuroscience" is.


Can LSD connect sensory regions in the brain?

The phenomenon you are referring to is called synesthesia, which can be defined as (Sinke et al., 2012):

Synesthesia (Greek: syn = together; aesthesis = perception) is [...] a crossing of sensory perceptions, where stimulation within one sensory modality/stream leads to an internally generated perceptual experience of another sensory modality/stream.

Synesthesia does not have to be drug-induced; there are people that experience it always (synesthetes). Their perceptions are often quite subtle, for example, specific written characters assume specific colors (Sinke et al., 2012).
There are no explicit models for drug-induced synesthesia (Luke & Turhune, 2013). Nevertheless, the neurophysiological changes brought about by them can provide models for why hallucinogens can induce a synesthetic state.
The two major classes of psychedelic hallucinogens, the indoleamines (e.g., LSD) and the phenethylamines (e.g., mescaline), have a common site of action, namely activation of serotine (5-HT) receptors. Specifically, they are partial agonists of the 5-HT2A and other 5-HT2 receptors in the central nervous system. The noradrenergic locus coeruleus and the cerebral cortex are among the regions where hallucinogens have prominent effects through their actions upon a 5-HT2A receptors.
In general, hallucinogens like LSD are thought to inhibit serotonergic neuron transduction, referred to as the disinhibited feedback model. Serotonin (5-HT) is mainly produced in the raphne nuclei (RN) of the midbrain. The RN extends its projections into the brainstem and up into the higher cortex. It has been suggested that neurons of the RN may inhibit sensation, thus protecting the brain from sensory overload. Thus, 5-HT may be labeled to be primarily an inhibitory neurotransmitter. A decrease in 5-HT activity hence leads to disinhibition of the next neuron in the chain (e.g., neurons in the cortex) and becomes more active (Sinke et al., 2012). This increased activity of the cortex may in turn explain the hallucinogenic activity of LSD and related drugs (Sinke et al., 2012).
However, a few 5-HT receptors are excitatory ion channels (5-HT3), and some 5-HT receptor subtypes may have excitatory effects (Sinke et al., 2012). Specifically, 5-HT2A receptor activation has been shown to directly mediate an enhancement of nonsynchronous, late components of glutamatergic excitatory postsynaptic potentials at apical dendrites of layer V cortical pyramidal cells. Hallucinogens indeed increase cortical excitability and activate large areas of the cortex. It has been proposed that this effect of hallucinogens on cerebral glutamatergic transmission may in fact be responsible for the higher-level cognitive, perceptual, and affective distortions produced by these drugs (Aghajanian & Marek, 1999). Along the lines of these observations, the effect is quite similar to the disinhibited feedback model, in that the effects of drug intoxication are due to enhanced activation of brain regions. With regard to synesthetic effects, it is proposed that this abnormal activity spreads to neighboring sensory areas that, in turn, lead to cross-modal sensory activations and hence synesthesia (Sinke et al., 2012).
Since serotonergic systems appear to be intimately involved in the control of sensation, sleep, attention, and mood, it may be possible to explain the actions of LSD and other hallucinogens by their disinhibition of these critical systems (Sinke et al., 2012).
References
- Aghajanian & Marek, Neuropsychopharmacology (1999) 21: 16S–23S
- Luke & Turhune. Frontiers in Psychology (2013); 4: 753
- Sinke et al., Consciousness and Cognition (2012); 21: 1419–34


There are many issues packed into this question. I am pretty sure the answers will lead to many more questions.

People diagnosed with autism tend to perform worse than the average population on standard IQ tests, but there is evidence that alternative measures of "intelligence" (whatever that is) are more accurate and demonstrate that autistic persons, as a group, are not cognitively impaired. The high IQ of the book author is almost certainly unrelated to his autism.
For your friend, my perception is that many of the details that he shares with the book author are coincidental and distracting from the real problem. (The previous statement is harsh because it strongly implies that your friend has a disorder, but he might not have a disorder.) I believe your friend's IQ and occupation are irrelevant.
Let's take a break from your friend and directly address the question, "Does a condition exist that resembles autism, but featuring much instead of little empathy?" In short, no. However, Williams syndrome is often called "the opposite of autism" specifically because people with Williams syndrome are exceptionally sociable, friendly, talkative, have relatively low inhibitions in social situations, more willing than a normal-developing person to interact with strangers, are aware of negative social actions of others but have reduced negative reactions to other people's actions (such as criticism), and many other remarkable traits related to sociability and empathy. Unlike autism, however, people with Williams syndrome, as a group, have significant cognitive impairment and important differences in physical development that affect their lives in multiple and significant ways. Williams syndrome is not the true opposite of autism.
Your description of your friend's social interaction are clearly not Williams syndrome. Based on your description, I would be surprised if he were diagnosed with hyper-empathy disorder, which is a personality disorder (not otherwise specified), because people with hyper-empathy disorder are hyper social and tend to prioritize the needs of others so highly that their own life is damaged.
In your description of your friend, some phrases jumped out at me: "life now somewhat in shambles", "irritates people", "not ... able to trust ... what he sees", "constantly on the guard" modeling (evaluating?) the actions of other people, and "never arriving at safe conclusions [about the intentions or actions of other people]".
If your friend has a disorder (please start with the assumption that he does not have a disorder), I feel your description most strongly points towards borderline personality disorder. I feel this because I sense a lack of stability and predictability and relatively poor ability to form typical relationships with most people. You mention he has some good relationships, but I am speaking to my impression that the majority of his relationships and interactions are disordered in some way.
On the other hand, many of the things you mention suggest some type of paranoia, most especially paranoid personality disorder. If he is constantly evaluating other people for potential threats and regularly perceives threats then that is well outside of normal emotional reactions. But paranoia is most often accompanied by schizoid or schizophrenia symptoms and you did not describe anything that suggests either issue to me. Still, it is possible to have PPD without schizoid disorder and PPD and BPD are common bedfellows, so it is possible that your friend is struggling with both disorders.
Finally, if you don't mind, I want to suggest a small shift in perspective. A "disorder" is anything that interferes with normal life functioning. Hoarding of mustard could be a disorder if it interfered with normal life functioning. The specific label, such as autism, BPD, or PPD, is most useful to professionals creating a treatment plan. For the rest of us, one of the best ways to help our friends is to pay little attention to the label and to pay a lot of attention to anything that is interfering with normal life functioning. Let a professional therapist try to figure out if the disorder was triggered by daddy issues or a car accident. As the person's friend, and as a non-professional, it is much easier for you to help gently steer your friend away from actions and situations that will interfere with normal life functioning and towards habits and actions that will allow your friend to have a healthier life.

In any event, whether or not your friend has a disorder, he is lucky to have people in his life who notice that his life is in shambles and want to help him improve things. Kudos to you.


Is there a correlation or cause-effect relationship between attractiveness and feet?

This is a weird one! Looks like your professor's on to something. Holmes' (2010) New Scientist article, "Why men are attracted to women with small feet" gives an interesting intro based on Atkinson and Rowe (2010), which was a rather hard-to-track-down poster (not that I've retrieved the original). They produced facial composites of eight women each based on longest and shortest foot length, and other composites based on other measurements, and had men rate their attractiveness. Composites look something like:

(source: newscientist.com)   (Not sure which measurement was the criterion used for these two.)

As a dude myself, I guess I'd rank the left composite as more attractive, but opinions vary, and it's worth noting that both benefit from a basic effect of facial composites: they reduce asymmetries and increase normativity, which are attractiveness enhancements, speaking basically, objectively, and generally. In any case, hopefully this demonstrates the research method clearly enough.

Atkinson and Rowe found that about 7 out of 9 men preferred the composite formed from the faces (i.e., not displaying the feet!) of the eight women with the shortest feet over the composite of the eight with the longest feet. This isn't support for the "best indicator" status though. Composites based on thigh length demonstrated favor for women with long thighs in 8 out of 9 men, and 11 out of 12 men prefer a composite of narrow-hipped women! That one surprised me a bit. Better indicators out there, it seems.
Holmes doesn't mention any results from Atkinson and Rowe regarding male foot length, but long torsos and small wrists seem more noteworthy, at least in terms of their relationships with attractive male faces.

For an original article on foot length and attractiveness, check out Voracek, Fisher, Rupp, Lucas, and Fessler (2007). There's quite a story to tell here, it seems to have everything you're looking for, and Fessler is hosting the article for free access, so I'll just hook you with an excerpt of the abstract:

  Relative foot length was smaller in young, nulliparous, and slim women...A vast majority of both men and women favored small feet in women, but large feet in men. One's own foot  size appeared to correspond to evaluations of attractiveness; particularly, women with small feet preferred small feet in women in general. The preference for small feet in women
  was convergent across different methods of evaluating attractiveness.

References
- Atkinson, J., & Rowe, M. (2010, June 17). Pretty women have petite feet: An EP analysis of the homo sapiens skeleton. Poster presented at the 22nd annual meeting of The Human Behavior and Evolution Society. Eugene, OR, USA: University of Oregon.
- Voracek, M., Fisher, M. L., Rupp, B., Lucas, D., & Fessler, D. M. (2007). Sex differences in relative foot length and perceived attractiveness of female feet: Relationships among anthropometry, physique, and preference ratings. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 104(3), 1123–1138. Retrieved from http://www.danielmtfessler.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Voracek-et-al-2007-foot-length.pdf.


Where can I find decent descriptions for each Big5 facet?

This might help:
Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1995). Domains and facets: Hierarchical personality assessment using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 64, 21–50.
It is available on the web at:
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul_Costa3/publication/7402610_Domains_and_facets_hierarchical_personality_assessment_using_the_revised_NEO_personality_inventory/links/00b49515b9ad9348b8000000.pdf

Also, the test manual:
Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.


Hearing Loss and Potentially hearing more

Short answer
People with above-normal hearing exist.

Background
Normal hearing was defined as the average of a group of young healthy individuals. These normal hearing levels are currently used to express acoustic sensitivities. One commonly used way is to use decibels relative to this normal hearing level (dB NH). This scale is used in audiograms (Schnupp et al., 2012). When hearing senstivities are reduced by 20 dB or more it is regarded as diagnostic for hearing impairment (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Audiogram. Source: (Schnupp et al., 2012)

Statistical outliers always exist. In Fig. 2 is an audiogram showing above-normal hearing sensitivities in the low frequencies in the left ear and in the high frequencies in the right ear (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Audiograms showing normal hearing (solid lines) and noise-induced hearing loss (dotted lines) Source: Fraser University, CA.

Reference
Schnupp et al., Auditory Neuroscience, MIT Press 2012


Research on properties of effective feedback

Here are a few theories and sources I happen to know that relate to your questions:

Contextual cues aid recall of context-dependent memories. Plenty of research exists on these topics. An easily digestible example may be found through PsychCentral (Nauert, 2009).
We have another great question about context-switching here already that you might want to check out: https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/q/4993/4086
Haven't got much to offer in response to this question beyond the suggestion that you see what they have to say about it over at the User Experience Stack Exchange.
Theories to support your theses 4.1 and 4.2:

This idea seems to relate to the primacy and recency effects in memory, which promote recall of first and last items in a list, respectively. Here's a graph from Wikipedia that combines these ideas into the serial position effect:

(source: wikimedia.org)
Haven't got more to add here beyond the link to the other question I mentioned in response 2. I hope you get some other, helpful responses here!

Reference

Nauert, R. (2009, December 14). How cues and context help memory. PsychCentral: Psychotherapy News. Retrieved from http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/12/14/how-cues-and-context-help-memory/10159.html.


Questions of the type "What do you think he/she would think?"

As an active participant in Cross Validated/SE, I know the importance of a question having an answer -- even an answer that kicks the can down the road -- so that visitors to the site can see that a question is not as hopeless as a message in a bottle, but rather aspires to be a shout from a tenement window, where you know that someone, somewhere will shout back.

Call it an echo, but I'm shouting back at myself. In topical area, my question regards organizational behavior, but the spirit of my question is game theoretic, and I think the body of literature I am searching for is in game theory in organziations -- every over-achiever's favorite sport! To that end, Zhu and Weynant (2003), looks promising . . . ?

And while it is only tangentially relevant, I think I might prime the pump of other responders by citing the most famous what-do-you-think-he-thinks? problem of all time: The Room with Two Doors.

[OK, that was a spoiler, but really you should seek your chuckles elsewhere. We're doing research here! ;)  ]

Zhu, K., & Weyant, J. P. (2003). Strategic decisions of new technology adoption under asymmetric information: a game‐theoretic model. Decision sciences, 34(4), 643-675.


What is the purpose of hemispheric specialisation in the brain?

First, biological features do not always arise from some intrinsic benefit.  They can also be byproducts of other adaptations, or spandrels.

That being said, one example of a possible benefit is specialization.  For instance, birds will develop asymmetries in their visual system based on light inputs to their outward-facing eye (one eye faces the eggshell, the other is obscured within the egg).  Distinct asymmetries in the brain allow birds to use one eye or brain region for finding and tracking prey (a very robust detail-oriented object identifier), and the other will be turned towards the sky, looking out for predators (and isn't as detail-oriented).

From Encoding asymmetry within neural circuits:


Binaural Beats Meditation EEG versus Non-aided mediation EEG

Theta and Alpha are the waves associated with meditation (KaKasamatsu & Hirai, 1966; Khare & Nigam, 2000).

Owen and Atwater found that:

  binaural auditory beats in the EEG alpha frequency range may increase
  alpha EEG production and subjective relaxation

Furthermore On et al (2013) found that binaural beats could increase Theta activity:

  Binaural beat is the rhythmic stimulus which is generated to produce
  the desired audio frequency with the intention to make brainwave to
  follow that frequency. In the end of our research, the result shows
  that Theta brainwave increases after listening to binaural beat.
  Although the Delta brainwave is not really affected in this
  experiment, there is still an increment of delta brainwave after
  listening to binaural beat. The result shows that binaural beat
  affected on delta and theta brainwaves.

I also found one from Lavallee (2011) that found the experienced meditators couldn't be hindered by binaural beats:

  Based on the results of this study, novice meditators were not able
  to maintain certain levels of θ power in the occipital regions when
  hindering binaural beats were presented, whereas when the facilitative
  binaural beats were presented, the experienced meditators displayed
  increased θ power in the left temporal lobe

Suggesting that the effect of binaural beats may not be as strong as long term meditative practise.

Lavallee, C. F., Koren, S. A., & Persinger, M. A. (2011). A quantitative electroencephalographic study of meditation and binaural beat entrainment. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 17(4), 351-355.

On, F. R., Jailani, R., Norhazman, H., & Zaini, N. M. (2013, March). Binaural beat effect on brainwaves based on EEG. In Signal Processing and its Applications (CSPA), 2013 IEEE 9th International Colloquium on (pp. 339-343). IEEE.

Kasamatsu, A., & Hirai, T. (1966). An electroencephalographic study on the Zen meditation (Zazen). Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 20(4), 315-336.

Khare, K. C., & Nigam, S. K. (2000). A Study of Electroencephalogram in Mediators. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 44(2), 173-178.

Owens, J. E., & Atwater, F. H. (1995). EEG correleates of an induced altered state of consciousness: mind awake/body asleep. Submitted for publication.


The explanation behind the taboo behind rape/sexual assault versus acceptance of violence

Depiction of violence towards women triggers sadism in us much more effortlessly than other kinds of violence or torture. A recent study on correlation between violent videogames and violent attitude found no link between the two. But there are plenty of studies that show direct link between consumption of violent pornography and aggression towards women. Here is a meta study with tons of citations: http://aurora.umn.edu/pdf/ResearchOnPornography.pdf

Sadism is different from psychopathy. Psychopaths are apathetic, sadists are not. A recent study on sadism shows that sadists rated the pain experienced by the victim as more intense than the non-sadists did.

Inability to form emotional disconnection and higher awareness of the victim's suffering together can explain why we people triggered by sexual violence way more easily than non-sexual violence. From the famous Milgram experiment to very recent studies like this one:http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797613490749 clearly show us that everyday sadism is very common. However, I don't know why sexual violence triggers sadism in us more easily than non-sexual torture.


Does the brain possess mechanisms to spot a feedback loop of self-induced negative sensation and relief?

Professor Sweeney has expressed the hypothesis that counterfactual thoughts that follow a relief are an example of a such mechanism on the Hidden Brain podcast although it's not something she discussed in the paper which finds counterfactual thoughts to be a common aftermath of a relief. The podcast discussed an experience of a guy attacked by lions in a group and how such extreme sitations tend to be followed by euphoria and laughing that later feels chilling to the people who undergo them, making the euphoria feel like not worth the experience.


Why are the Big Five factors of personality correlated?

There are no personality models in which the factors are orthogonal in the strict sense of being at 90 degrees from one another, unless an orthogonal rotation method is used to extract them. I think you meant to say that the Big Five factors are less independent (or more strongly inter-correlated) relative to the factors in other models.

Whether or not one wants to obtain orthogonal factors depends on what one is trying to achieve. In most cases, you want an orthogonal solution if you want simple structure, i.e. you want to figure out which factor indicators unambiguously cluster together to form a relatively independent factor. But in general, factors are allowed to correlate because that just happens to be the "reality" and there is no theory suggesting that they should be completely independent. There are of course plenty of reasons why relatively independent factors might correlate and it doesn't mean that biological bases cannot be found; it could mean that there are biological bases that are shared among traits and there are those that are unique to each trait. For example, the relationship between Openness and Extraversion could in part be due to shared genes related to exploration (I forget the source for this).


How do responses to Likert type response scales vary across countries and cultures?

Culture reference effects

Heine et al (2002) discuss how people in different cultures often answer questions relative to a reference group in their own culture. Thus, for example, if a culture is  more collectivistic in general, measured cultural differences may less when people within a culture answer test items  relative to their own cultural reference group.

To quote the abstract:

  Social comparison theory maintains that people think about themselves
  compared with similar others. Those in one culture, then, compare
  themselves with different others and standards than do those in
  another culture, thus potentially confounding cross-cultural
  comparisons. A pilot study and Study 1 demonstrated the problematic
  nature of this reference-group effect: Whereas cultural experts agreed
  that East Asians are more collectivistic than North Americans,
  cross-cultural comparisons of trait and attitude measures failed to
  reveal such a pattern. Study 2 found that manipulating reference
  groups enhanced the expected cultural differences, and Study 3
  revealed that people from different cultural backgrounds within the
  same country exhibited larger differences than did people from
  different countries. Crosscultural comparisons using subjective Likert
  scales are compromised because of different reference groups. Possible
  solutions are discussed.

Cultural differences in response tendencies

Lee et al (2002) summarised some of the empirical literature on cross-cultural differences in use of response scales:

  Only a few researchers have addressed the issue of cultural
  differences in rating scales empiri- cally. Wong, Tam, Fung, and Wan
  (1993) found no difference in the way Chinese participants in Hong
  Kong responded to an odd versus an even number of response choices.
  Johnson (1981) found no difference in how readers of Horizons USA who
  resided in Great Britain, Italy, the Philippines, and Venezuela
  responded to bipolar scales. Stening and Everett (1984) found that
  Japanese managers responding in Japanese were more likely to choose
  the midpoint than were American or British managers responding in
  English. Chen, Lee, and Stevenson (1995) found the same effect for
  Japanese and to a lesser extent for Taiwanese in a sample comparing
  11th-grade students in Japan, Taiwan, Canada, and, in the United
  States, Minneapolis. Iwata, Saito, and Roberts (1994) and Iwata,
  Roberts, and Kawa- kami (1995) reported that junior high school
  students in Japan and the United States responded similarly on
  negative items but that Japanese were less likely to endorse positive
  items.

When reviewing the literature on cross-cultural differences in response style Hamamura et al (2008) stated that:

  Compared to North Americans of European-heritage, higher levels of
  extreme responding have been observed in African–Americans (Bachman &
  O’Malley, 1984) and Latino Americans (Hui & Triandis, 1989). In
  contrast, East Asians seem to show more moderacy than samples of
  European-heritage (Chen, Lee, & Stevenson, 1995)

References

Bachman, J. G., & O’Malley, P. M. (1984). Yea-saying, nay-saying, and going to extremes: Black–white diﬀerences in
response styles. Public Opinion Quarterly, 48, 491–509.
Chen, C., Lee, S. Y., & Stevenson, H. W. (1995). Response style and cross-cultural comparisons of rating scales among
East Asian and North American students. Psychological Science, 6, 170–175.
Hamamura, T., Heine, S.J. & Paulhus, D.L. (2008). Cultural differences in response styles: The role of dialectical thinking. Personality and Individual Differences, 44, 932-942.
Heine, S.J. and Lehman, D.R. and Peng, K. and Greenholtz, J. (2002). What's wrong with cross-cultural comparisons of subjective Likert scales?: The reference-group effect. Journal of personality and social psychology, 82, 903, PDF
Hui, C. H., & Triandis, H. C. (1989). Eﬀects of culture and response format on extreme response style. Journal of CrossCultural Psychology, 20, 296–309.
Iwata, N., Roberts, C.R., & Kawakami, N. (1995).
Japan–U.S. comparison of responses to depression
scale items among adult workers. Psychiatry Research, 58, 237–245.
Iwata, N., Saito, K., & Roberts, R.E. (1994). Responses
to a self-administered depression scale among
younger adolescents in Japan. Psychiatry Research,
53, 275–287.
Johnson, J.D. (1981). Effects of the order of presentation of evaluative dimensions for bipolar scales in
four societies. Journal of Social Psychology, 113,
21–27.
Lee, J.W. and Jones, P.S. and Mineyama, Y. and Zhang, X.E. (2002). Cultural differences in responses to a Likert scale. Research in nursing & health, 25, 295-306.
Stening, B.W., & Everett, J.E. (1984). Response styles
in a cross-cultural managerial study. Journal of
Social Psychology, 122, 151–156.
Wong, C.S., Tam, K.C., Fung, M.Y., & Wan, K. (1993).
Differences between odd and even number of
response scale: Some empirical evidence. Chinese
Journal of Psychology, 35, 75–86.


Is there a better way to describe brain activity than EEG "brain waves"

There is no better way to describe brain activity than brain waves! :)

There are newer ways to analyze and think about brain waves, though. Usually you will find these under literature on neuronal oscillations.

Good aspects of thinking about brain activity using brain waves:

Brain waves are directly related to neural activity. They are an electric or magnetic measure of current passing through neurons. It doesn't get closer than this (unless you use an invasive technique). In comparison, fMRI measures changes in blood flow over one or two seconds after neurons have fired.
Brain waves are measured essentially at the speed of light, i.e. with no perceptible delay between the onset of neural activity and the moment that the electrode or MEG sensor picks them up. This allows for measuring brain activity as it unfolds, as the brain processes information on the order of milliseconds.

Bad aspects include:

Seriously compromised spatial resolution. With EEG, the electrical signal gets smeared by passing through the skull. With MEG the measure is more direct, but still, all sensors pick up activity in any part of the brain (at least in EEG; I'm not so sure about MEG), so it is very difficult to say with certainty where precisely something is localized. Methods do exist, but (in my experience) it doesn't come close to MRI precision. It also gets very complicated very quickly.
Activity is picked up only from the neocortex. You can't say much about deep brain activity.
Brain waves are utterly unintuitive. It is very hard to see how a wavy line on a screen can tell us something about the most interesting thing in the world: ourselves. It is supposed to be related to our consciousness, to our thoughts and feelings, to our personality, state of mind, actions, intentions, everything - yet it's just a wavy line. This is where some hard training in neuroscience comes in.

In the past, brain waves were identified by eyeballing. Nowadays we can do much better. We can imagine that each of these lines is actually composed of many different types of neural activity, happening at different speeds. Neurons firing together quickly will lead to small, brief amplitude changes, whereas neurons firing together at a slower pace will lead to slow waves. The more neurons are firing together, the higher the amplitude of the wave. The faster they are firing together, the lower the wavelength.

The fast and slow wavelengths will be summed up into the single wavy line on the screen, but we can decompose it, e.g. by using a Fourier transform or a wavelet transform. By decomposing, we gain insight into the fact that neurons fire together at different rates when they do different things. For example, if you ignore a visual stimulus, then your visual brain begins to fire at about 10 times per second. This is called the alpha rhythm. If you are actively observing a stimulus, the activity will change to 40-70 times per second. This is the gamma rhythm. Thus, you can say something about what the brain is doing when you see the pattern of neural activity based on a wavy line.

Also, you might notice that two distant parts of the brain have neurons firing together... but that they are in phase with each other. This might mean that they are both processing different aspects of the same information, so it tells us something about functional neuronal connectivity even though we don't see the underlying white matter firing.

In any case, brain waves should not really be seen as better or worse than other measures of neural activity. They simply add their bit of information, that is part the larger puzzle of how the brain works. See here for a really nice comparison of M/EEG with fMRI, and a discussion of all the big issues behind noninvasive electrophysiological measures.


Neural Mechanisms of Accumulation and Triggering

There is a model of neural mechanisms of accumulation and triggering in the domain of perceptual choice called the leaky competing accumulator (Usher and McClelland, 2001) model. It uses decision units that fire when sufficient evidence has accumulated. Ratcliff and McKoon (2008) pointed out that LCA associated with their Diffusion model accurately modeled the neural firing rates observed in monkeys before a decision was made (see section 10 of the article, a monkey moving his eyes to a target that competed with a non-target stimulus).

The processes described in LCA are also found in different theoretical account of decision making. You may find some models in this wikipedia page summarizing the decision field theory of Busemeyer & Townsend (1993).

Your question mentioned a longer time scale than the one addressed by the above references. I don't know a model of accumulation/decisions that span over hours/days/years. For example, the one here, despite its promising title ('From perception to action: an economic model of brain processes'), is not interested in the temporal aspect of the decision (i.e. accumulation phase).


How can I use gamification to encourage people to complete workplace training?

For applied purposes, gamification can be captured within a self-determination theoretical framework. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is an influential theory of motivation which grew out of research on intrinsic/extrinsic rewards in the 1970's, and which has been applied to virtually every learning setting. The main proponents of SDT include Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, who in and of themselves have a lot of publications you may want to sift through.
Self-Determination Theory
SDT holds that people become motivated to engage in work based on three properties: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomy refers to a desire to experience feelings of individual freedom in how and when to perform the task; Competence refers to a desire to experience feelings of control and mastery from performing a task; Relatedness refers to a desire to experience feelings of connection to others from performing the task.
Further, SDT also makes a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Ryan and Deci, 2000). In more complex settings, this distinction becomes extremely important. However, for the purpose of encouraging participation in "mundane, required workplace training," it is likely not necessary to consider intrinsic motivation. An analysis of the degree to which any external rewards employed in implemented gamification techniques may reduce intrinsic motivation to engage in mundane workplace training seems to me like shooting birds with cannonballs.
Evaluating Gamification
Following Aparacio et al. (2000), gamification techniques can be evaluated in terms of their motivational autonomy, competence and relatedness properties. A brief summary of their recommendations for evaluating gamification techniques follows.

Identify the main objective.
Identify one or more underlying objectives that are interesting to people.
Select game mechanics that match the objectives and support autonomy, competence and relation.
Analysis of the effectiveness gamification based on fun, quality indicators, satisfaction, and service quality.

References

Aparicio, A. F., Vela, F. L. G., Sánchez, J. L. G., & Montes, J. L. I. (2012, October). Analysis and application of gamification. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Interacción Persona-Ordenador (p. 17). ACM.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 54-67.


Does a loser prefer the winner to subsequently lose or win?

First, it is worth addressing what kind of tournament this is. If this is something like the Super Bowl, where the teams are generally widely-known year after year, then the answer will surely vary depending on the context.

Most long-time sports fans have a subjective preference for the other teams, ranging from 'second-favorite' to 'most hated', and these preferences are built up over time and are determined by the individual as well as the team. After having lost the Super Bowl XLV, a Seahawks fan may hold resentment towards the Steelers for years to come, and thus may root against them on all accounts.

On a more individual basis, fans may view another team favorably for a variety of personal reasons (e.g. a parent or close friend rooting for that team), and thus choose to root for them even if it came down to them beating their team. One writer even analyzed this idea in a FiveThirtyEight blog post.

However, if we were to remove these factors entirely -- say, we have a tournament where there is no prior opinion towards the teams that had advanced -- then the answer may shed light on both individual differences and group dynamics.

Studies have shown that the more a fan identifies with their team, the more loyalty they show to their team in the face of a loss:

  When presented with any sort of negative information regarding the group,
  highly identified group members react differently than those with lower levels of
  identification (Cohen & Garcia, 2005; Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 2002). Highly
  identified members typically reaffirm their group membership, while those with
  lower levels of identification tend to distance themselves (Cohen & Garcia, 2005).
  Such behaviors are apparent in sport fans. Wann and Branscombe (1990) found
  that highly identified fans are less likely to distance themselves from the team
  when the team lost than those who were less identified. Further, highly identified
  fans exhibit biased attribution processing favoring their team (Wann & Dolan,
  1994). That is, facing a win, highly identified fans ascribe the victory to internal
  factors such as the skill of the team, or the coaching, and sometimes even fan support.
  However, upon a loss, rather than conceding another team’s superiority, they
  blame the loss on more external factors such as fate or poor refereeing. Thus,
  highly identified sports fans seem to undergo some sort of biased attributional
  processes when dealing with a loss.

And another study showed that the stronger the allegiance to the team, the more likely the fan was to perceive the win as a personal victory, thereby influencing their own self-efficacy. By contrast, the likelihood increased that a loss would be perceived as a personal offense.

  Ss watched a live basketball game; then, in the context of a 2nd, unrelated experiment, Ss estimated their own performance at several tasks. Results indicated that fans' mood and self-esteem were affected by game outcome. More important, fans' estimates of both the team's and their own future performance were significantly better in the win than in the loss condition.

Whereas on the other hand, fans who identify less with their team tend to distance themselves from the team in the face of a loss.

So it could be the case that personal allegiance to a team determines how a fan responds to a loss. If the fan identifies strongly with the losing team, they may be less likely to view the winning team (opponent) positively, and thus they may demonstrate a greater tendency to root against that team in the next round. On the other hand, less team allegiance may implicate a desire to identify with the winning team, in which case the "we lost to the best" mindset may occur.


Can hallucinogens treat depressive states?

Most of the 'true' hallucinogens are classified as 5HT2A agonists. 5HT2A is a postsynaptic serotonin receptor. Serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on the other hand act by increasing serotonin (5HT) levels in the brain, which in turn activates presynaptic 5HT1A receptors. Due to a continuous stimulation of these 5HT1A receptors they become downregulated (Hjorth et al., 2000).

5HT1A receptors are crucial for the negative feedback loop that controls 5HT release from the raphe nucleus neurons. When they release 5HT, they will postsynaptically activate a myriad of targets, but also presynaptically activate 5HT1A receptors, which inhibit 5HT release. Continuous 5HT1A receptor stimulation through SSRIs downregulates the 5HT1A receptors, thereby disrupting the negative feedback and resulting in a continuous, disinhibited flutter of 5HT release, in turn leading to overall elevated 5HT in the brain and suppression of depressive symptoms (Hjorth et al., 2000).

Among the most well-known 'true' hallucinogens we have LSD, mescaline, psylocibin and dimethyltryptamine (DMT). All of these are thought to act as 5HT2A antagonists (Nichols & Sanders-Bush, 2001) and do not elevate mood. Although they may induce euphoria, they may well induce a state of terror as well, dependent on the nature of the 'trip', which heavily depends on the acute mental state of the person ingesting the drug.

The one class of hallucinogenic drugs that may act as an antidepressant from a neuropharmacologic point of view is MDMA (ecstacy) and related compounds (MDA, MDEA etc). These drugs can, arguably, be classified as a hallucinogenic, although their hallucinogenic properties are far less pronounced as compared to mescalin and LSD. MDMA and related compounds evoke massive 5HT release, among other effects and induce acute euphoria, and virtually never dysphoria seen with the 'true' hallucinogens. However, after the effects wear off, a backlash typical for these drugs may be experienced, reminiscent of a dysphoric state associated with a burning out of the 5HT in the brain. Therefore, its effects are too transient to be classified as antidepressant. Long-term MDMA use is associated with brain damage (Fisher et al., 1995). Short-term euphoria is also seen with dopamine-agonists like amphetamine, meth and cocaine, drugs associated with even more severe comedown ('crash') after the effects wear off.

To wrap up, and answer your questions:

1) Are hallucinogens anti-depressive agents? - No.

2) Which are their advantages and problems in comparison with modern antidepressants? - They act too shortly by inducing a few hours of euphoria, after which a period of dysphoria follows. Long-term use of MDMA and related compounds will lead to insomnia,  addiction, and brain damage which are unwanted side-effects. Hence, these illicit compounds are not suitable for replacement of regular antidepressants.


A study that used the field setting you describe is done by Bateson et al. (2006).

As for the mechanism, they write:

  we believe that images of eyes motivate cooperative behaviour because they induce a perception in participants of being watched. Although participants were not actually observed in either of our experimental conditions, the human perceptual system contains neurons that respond selectively to stimuli involving faces and eyes (Emery 2000; Haxby et al. 2000), and it is therefore possible that the images exerted an automatic and unconscious effect on the participants’ perception that they were being watched. Our results therefore support the hypothesis that reputational concerns may be extremely powerful
  in motivating cooperative behaviour.

Similar findings have been found in a lab setting by Haley and Fessler (2005). They also compared the effect to other cues (such as auditory cues) of presence of others and found similar effect. So I don't have a direct answer to the surveillance camera scenario, but these results suggest the effect would be similar.

However, it is clear that this effect depends on many variables. For example, it has been shown not exist in darkness (Tane and Takezawa, 2011), and to depend on culture (Raihani and Bshary, 2012).

References

Bateson, M., Nettle, D., & Roberts, G. (2006). Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting. Biology letters, 2(3), 412-414.
Haley, K. J., & Fessler, D. M. (2005). Nobody's watching?: Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game. Evolution and Human behavior, 26(3), 245-256.
Tane, K., & Takezawa, M. (2011). Perception of human face does not induce cooperation in darkness. Letters on Evolutionary Behavioral Science, 2(2), 24-27.
Raihani, N. J., & Bshary, R. (2012). A positive effect of flowers rather than eye images in a large-scale, cross-cultural dictator game. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279(1742), 3556-3564.