Fusiform Face Area (FFA) for within class recognition?

Yes. The idea that the fusiform face area (FFA) is domain-selective for faces is the dominant hypothesis, but a competing hypothesis is that the FFA is recruited for fine discrimination in visual stimuli of any type in which we are experts.

In a famous study, Gauthier et al. (1999) taught participants to categorize fictitious Greebles (see image below). Subjects were brought in for several sessions and, as their accuracy increased, activation in the FFA increased as well. The authors concluded that "expertise seems to be
one factor that leads to specialization in the face area."

In another study, Gauthier et al. (2000) tested bird and car experts on identifying birds, cars, faces, and objects. They found that bird experts elicited more FFA activation for birds compared to cars, while car experts showed the opposite pattern (see below, right).

References

Gauthier, I., Tarr, M. J., Anderson, A. W., Skudlarski, P., & Gore, J. C. (1999). Activation of the middle fusiform'face area'increases with expertise in recognizing novel objects. Nature neuroscience, 2(6), 568-573. PDF

Gauthier, I., Skudlarski, P., Gore, J. C., & Anderson, A. W. (2000). Expertise for cars and birds recruits brain areas involved in face recognition. Nature neuroscience, 3(2), 191-197. PDF


Do children show top-down processing as much as adults do?

Much evidence suggests children do not show as much top down processing as adults. This depends on your definition so I'll state that I generally mean that use of top-down processing appears to increase as a child develops.

Here is the abstract explaining the results of the study Developmental increase in top-down and bottom-up processing in a phonological task: an effective connectivity, fMRI study.

Emphasis mine:

  In older children, top-down control process may selectively enhance the sensitivity of the LTC to bottom-up information from the FG. This may be evident especially in situations that require selective enhancement of task-relevant versus task-irrelevant information. Altogether these results provide a direct evidence for a developmental increase in top-down control processes in language processing.

Why is this the case? Generally speaking children need to develop a greater understanding of the world around them before they can put Top-Down and Bottom-Up processing to good use. Piaget framed this in terms of Schemas.

Piaget's Stages of Development (which are contraversial mind you) suggest strongly that children start almost at a clean slate and build up schemas as they develop and learn. A younger child simply hasn't had the time to build up schemas for every situation, thus they won't always have a relevant schema to process information in a proper top-down fashion.

Note that other studies suggest that older children have an advantage in some tasks because they learn when to not apply top down processing. Younger children may simply not "know" the relevance of each processing method as well.

As stated in Visual search in children and adults: Top-down and bottom-up mechanisms:

  The authors argued that with increasing age, children became able to consider multiple dimensions when making relevant comparisons. One interpretation of these data is that the older (but not the younger) children were able to switch off the top-down system to allow salience to emerge via bottom-up processing.


Regarding "a human brain can hold enough information to fill 10 libraries", can we quantify the memory required for a given task?

First, consider that those questions can potentially be answered only in animals, like mice. There is no way to test such things in humans, because methods like fMRI give resolution of $\approx$1,000,000 neurons. In order to test your hypothesis, you need resolution below the neuronal level, because what your need to see is how the connections (synapses) between neurons are established. Theoretically, you can train mice to run a maze. Then, with a microscope, one can count how many synapses were created. I think, to date, you cannot do this without killing the mice. If so, then you will take other mice and teach them to play piano :) So, the difference between change of connections might be your estimate. But you cannot know whether two tasks are equivalent, so you may end up comparing apples and tomatoes. Overall, the term "memory" is not something that is precisely defined on a biological level, like RAM or hard-drive capacity on a PC. There are prominent hypotheses about how memories are created (connections between neurons), but those are still hypotheses.

You might be interested to read this book; hopefully it is not too complicated without much background: Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are (Seung, 2012)

Reference

Seung, S. (2012). Connectome: How the brain's wiring makes us who we are. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade.


Is it possible to erase problematic memories?

The notion of "selective memory loss" as erasing problematic memories presumes the existence of engrams, which is a theoretical localized, biological basis for memory. Despite exhaustive searching, we have not found any evidence of engrams in any animal with a nervous system, however. To the best of our knowledge, it's therefore impossible to erase memories, because there is nothing to erase―we have more or less concluded that engrams do not exist. Bruce (2001) aptly summarized Karl Lashley's seminal findings on the matter:

  In his well-known article “In Search of the Engram” published in 1950, Karl Spencer Lashley summarized his 33 years of research and theory on memory and the brain. He concluded that (1) memories are not localized but are instead distributed within functional areas of the cortex and (2) memory traces are not isolated cortical connections between inputs and outputs. Though not the first time he had expressed such convictions, their reiteration in this article was backed by Lashley's estimable reputation and expressive power and they have taken firm root in the collective knowledge of today's memory and neuropsychological research community.

We cannot have "selective memory loss", at least not in the sense of erasing individual memories, because there is no such thing as "a memory" in any tangible sense. In modern cognitive science, such as Baddeley's multi-modal model, memory is not so much considered a neural warehouse of remembrances as it is a distributed and generative process. It's not a question of technology.

References

Bruce, D. (2001). Fifty years since Lashley's In search of the Engram: refutations and conjectures. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 10(3), 308-318.


Have there been any studies into language development in the blind?

Yes, there have been a number of studies on language development in children with congenital profound visual impairment (PVI) over the years. Selma Fraiberg first described differences in early development, specifically later emergence of personal pronouns compared to typically sighted children [1].
More recent studies found that the vocabulary development of children with PVI follows a different trajectory. Vocabulary sizes is initially smaller compared to typically-sighted children, then develops rapidly and may surpass the vocabulary size of typically-sighted children of the same age [2]. Differences in the way that language is acquired in the early years, e.g. through shared gaze interaction with the caregiver, may part of the reason for the different developmental trajectories.

This is only a very superficial treatment of this question. There are entire books on this topic that offer a detailed discussion of the research:

Perez-Pereira, M., & Conti-Ramsden, G. (1999): Language development and social interaction in blind children. Hove, UK: Psychology Press/Taylor and Francis.

Pring (2004): Autism and blindness. Research and reflections. London: John Wiley & Sons.

[1] Fraiberg (1968): "Parallel and divergent patterns in blind and sighted infants" The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Vol 23, 1968, 264-300.
[2] McConachie & Moore (1994). "Early expressive language of severely visually impaired children" Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 36(3), 230–240.


Why do teenagers take the internet and cyberbullying so seriously?

I would like to begin by saying this answer is based on my opinion. All the statements I make are conclusions I have drawn and may or may not have merit.

Firstly, it is unlikely the cyber bullying would be the main cause of someone to suicide. The underlying reasons for suicide run deeper than this.  I believe their problems ran far deeper than recent external events. Of course, bullying will not help a person in deep depression, and could assist in pushing someone close to the edge, however, I think the whole process behind someone committing suicide takes more thought and a deep level of depression (endogenous or otherwise).

It seems social networking and certainly the internet, has involved many people, of a varying age range.  From the conflicts that ensue all over the internet, it is not limited to teenagers.

  The fastest growing segment of social media users is now adults aged 45-54%.

The problem with teenagers, is they have less experience at handling their emotions and reactions (just by the mere fact of years of experience due to age alone), coupled with soaring hormone changes. Most would agree puberty and the ensuing years of a person's development are challenging for both the person and those around them.

This leaves the teenager as likely to be:
More impulsive.
More affected by others behaviour.

People who are "content" and occupied in their "real lives" do not seek to "build" and find solace in a "virtual" life.

I think cyber relationships serve many purposes and the dynamic of human interaction has developed, so that the group mentality is magnified. The anonymity and perceived (and in many ways real) freedom of consequence of user expression online has enabled a level of what (at least was until recently) socially unacceptable behaviour. A bravado and propensity for abuse that may not be present when two people are face to face in a local car park or shopping centre.

Having said that, the school playground can be a tough one, for ostracising children and bullying. I believe that face to face confrontations have a greater impact than those online.

I believe much of our emotional reactions to our online experience are charged with the emotion of our "real life" experience. Let's face it, we are communicating with faceless people. Psychologically this would be a less powerful experience. Another way of saying "Art imitating life".

Having said that,   a young person at higher risk of suicide, may well turn to the internet to find friends and support.

  Factors that increase the risk of suicide among teens include:

  lack of a support network, poor relationships with parents or peers, and feelings of social isolation

So, in conclusion:
 I don't believe teenagers are destroying their lives, whilst building virtual lives. (this was the title of the question when I posted my answer)

I believe that :

with real life trials
with the propensity within a young person for depression and
potential suicide
with the mitigating factors that may increase the likelihood for a person
to commit suicide
and the loosened boundaries found over the internet.

Our teenagers are in danger of being badly affected by their virtual lives.


What is the difference between experience and knowledge and how could we make use of that in machine learning and AI applications?

If you can't see now why would you be able to see later if nothing has changed? It's not part of your capabilities.

So the statement "I will never know what is to see until i have a direct experience with that" isn't actually possible  because you can't have the experience without knowing what it is you're experiencing ... how would you be able to identify something if you have no knowledge of it?

Regardless...
Knowledge is objective - Mary had a little lamb.
Experience is subjective - It was a painful pregnancy.

So if you have no knowledge of baseball and I give you the rules book would you know how to play baseball?

Yep. Would you understand baseball? Nope.

The rules are the knowledge. The playing is the experience - giving context to the information.

Deep Blue beats the best chess players. It has no understanding of chess.


How to control subject's response bias in 2-interval force choice task

For the subject with large response bias, is it still valid to estimate d′ from proportion correct anymore?

No. Within the signal detection theory framework, a 2I-2AFC paradigm is identical to a 1I-2AFC paradigm except that the decision variable Y in the 2I-2AFC paradigm is X2-X1 (difference between the observations on the first and second intervals). The effects of bias are the same and d' needs to account for any bias.

  And is it still valid to estimate d′ directly from hit rate and false-alarm rate?

Maybe. If all of the assumptions from the 1I-2AFC paradigm still hold, then with appropriately defined hits and false alarms (e.g., a hit is when the subject responds "1" when the signal in the first interval) and you account for the $\sqrt(2)/2$ improvement from having two intervals, then yes you can still calculate d'. That said, with typical assumptions, the 2I-2AFC paradigm results in distributions that are symmetric about zero and therefore we don't expect a response bias. I would be worried that with a non-zero bias that the subject is not behaving as assumed. If that is the case, d' does not really mean anything.

  If I hope to let this subject to continue participating in this experiment, how should I let him/her to lower response bias? Directly telling him/her "You have pressed key #1 too often, press key #2 more when you are not sure"? Is it going to interfere the experiment?

Correct answer feedback sometimes works, but not always. The effect of influencing the preferred response bias of a subject depends on the subject and experiment.

  For future naïve participants, should I let them know do not bias toward one response too much before the start of experiment, or should I tell them only when they have made too much bias? If the latter case, how much bias is considered to be "too much"?

This comes down to the experimental design. If possible, I would exclude the subject from the analysis. If you are looking at population statistics, you need to include everyone. If instead, you are interested in the best subjects, a subject with an odd bias is probably not worth your time of dealing with.


How can machine possibly possess consciousness if computation is a human idea?

Introduction
Your thoughts seem to straddle panpsychism and computationalism.  It is also possible you are just raising a question about physicalism: "if mental thoughts are a result of physical interactions, then why would consciousness be limited to things with brains?".  Well, the short answer is that it's fundamentally not, but neither is a fusion reaction and you don't see them popping up all over the place.  They only appear (or "emerge", as it were) in specific places where the conditions are just right.  So, the physicalist presumes, does the mind.  I will also note that physicalism (a form of monism) is basically the mainstream scientific stance.
Computationalism
Note that your suggestion:

Would his computations somehow give rise to consciousness within a brain simulated on paper?

would be an extreme interpretation of computationalism.  At it's core, computationalism just says that mental states are grounded in mental representations (semantics) operating on context (syntax): they are part of the cognitive process.  Individual computationalists can interpret, to varying degree, how stringent the requirements are on the underlying hardware.
Chomskian linguistics and David Marr's theory of vision were two empirical studies that really influenced the perception of cognitive scientists in favor of computationalism in the 70's.  More recent neuroscience literature has favored the connectionist view (note the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive).
A more recent literature review of consciousness, Towards a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness: basic evidence and a workspace framework, summarizes its empirical findings:
Three fundamental empirical findings on consciousness:

Cognitive processing is possible without consciousness
Attention is a prerequisite of consciousness
Consciousness is required for specific mental operations

3. would seem to be consistent with computationalism (the union of computation and consciousness).  More support for the computationalist stance:
The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?

Agents can suppress free energy by changing the two things it depends on: they can change sensory input by acting on the world or they can change their recognition density by changing their internal states. This distinction maps nicely onto action and perception

Connectionism:
Yet another empirical perspective comes from another physicalist view called connectionism.  Connectionism has gained popularity among neuroscientists as we develop technology to better probe brains and model neural mechanisms computationally.
Consciousness as Integrated Information: a Provisional Manifesto

(i) the quantity of consciousness corresponds to the amount of integrated information generated by a complex of elements; (ii) the quality of experience is specified by the set of informational relationships generated within that complex.

Some literature that supports Tononi's idea:
Breakdown of cortical effective connectivity during sleep.
A Theoretically Based Index of Consciousness Independent of Sensory Processing and Behavior
More support for connectionism:
The brainweb: Phase synchronization and large-scale integration

The emergence of a unified cognitive moment relies on the coordination of scattered mosaics of functionally specialized brain regions.


What mental illnesses cause different performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task

The diseases and mental dysfunctions that have been studied are Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, ADHD, Substance Dependence, Autism, Multiple Sclerosis and Schizophrenia (with and without tardive dyskenisia). I'll add more specific statistics (such as trials required to acquire first rule) and better references later.

In the meantime, during my search I found this really quick table:
 from this paper showing the amount of completed categories and preservative errors (when a person is ignoring that the rule has changed).


Are there any online survey/questionnaire makers which allow use of sound clips?

Two such systems include Qualtrics and Inquisit. For example: https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/survey-module/editing-questions/rich-content-editor/insert-media/


What is the proper definition of psychopathy?

As the Wikipedia article on psychopathy makes clear, there are different definitions of psychpathy – and in fact there are different definitions of every scientific concept –, depending on which scholar you consult. This is not a problem, as every scientific publication will make clear which definition it uses.

The truth is that there is an ongoing discussion on what psychopathy is – and if it exists at all! It is no accident that both the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), which is the international standard diagnostic tool for medical and psychiatric conditions, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5), which is the international standard diagnostic tool for psychological disorders, do not contain the diagnosis psychopathy.


What are the psychological mechanisms for compulsive talkers?

Compulsive talking appears to be linked with the inability to manage social anxiety. Whether the anxiety is brought about from the uncomfortability of the interaction or from the avoidance of deep seated feelings within the individual.

  People who score beyond two standard deviations above the mean on the
  scale are labeled as “talkaholics,”

as cited by James C. McCroskey & Virginia P. Richmond

  The most common and basic cause of any compulsive behavior is anxiety.
  A person engages in compulsive behavior not because he particularly
  wants to, but because he’s so anxious that he has to do something to
  get his mind off that anxiety. Until the compulsive talker comes to
  grips with whatever he or she doesn’t want to think about, the talking
  will continue.

  The root of this anxiety varies from individual to individual. But it
  often stems from deep-seated emotions of insecurity and
  inadequacy.../...

  For the compulsive talker, silence and reflection are simply
  unacceptable. A pause in conversation is an emotional abyss into which
  they simply cannot help but throw themselves.

written by Dr Hurd

Compulsive talking could be confused with Pressure of Speech. Which can be associated with mania and attention deficit disorder. Pressured speech is marked by speaking rapidly, with a sense of urgency and, frequently, with no social awareness.

Logorrhea is another condition, which causes the person to talk endlessly, but, usually, in an incoherent, rambling fashion.

Identifying compulsive communicators: The talkaholic scale
James C. McCroskey & Virginia P. Richmond
Communication Research Reports
Volume 10, Issue 2, 1993

Talking too much can have deep-seated roots
Dr Hurd
Private Practice of Psychotherapy and Solution-Focused Consultation since 1988.
Multiple published works.


What is the difference between personality disorder and other types of mental illness?

There may not be one:

  it is impossible to conclude with confidence that personality disorders are, or are not, mental illnesses; there are ambiguities in the definitions and basic information about personality disorders is lacking.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11823318/

Mental illness in general isn’t about mood, either. Mood only covers mood disorders, but the DSM and ICD contain other conditions too: autism, schizophrenia, etc.

Mental illnesses also have biological components, they’re not solely disorders of thought patterns formed over time.


Are social intelligence and emotional intelligence the same thing?

These terms are defined by the underlying theory of Intelligence.  For example:

Social Intelligence (SI) comes from a definition by Edward Thorndike in 1920.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) (or EQ - Q=Quota) first appeared in a 1964 paper by Michael Beldoch, later by Goleman.
Then there is Interpersonal & Intrapersonal Intelligences from Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence theory.

Generally speaking, they pertain to similar concepts with some overlap from theory to theory.  When speaking of this type of intelligence it is often recommended to cite the theory the discussion is based on.


Is there a pictograms repository under an open-commercial license?

I found one! http://straight-street.org/

Those pictos have a Creative Commons BY-SA license.


Is stacking cans really a sign of Asperger's?

Symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome

difficulty recognizing social cues
awkward body language
social isolation
aloofness
fixation on certain objects

The picture (and idea) that “stacking cans” is in itself a sign of Asperger’s is misleading at best.
One could just as easily say this child is making “a tower”, a common activity amongst children.

Asperger at Psychotherapy Collective

Stacking objects can be a child development tool.

Childhood development tools


What is the difference between cognition and artificial intelligence in the context of robotics?

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

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


Phenomenon causing people to change their opinion when they are asked to hypothetically defend an opposing viewpoint?

Fazio et al (1977) provide a review of some of the literature on attitude change that can be induced by getting participants to take on another perspecive. To quote the opening paragraph.

  If an individual freely chooses to perform a behavior which is
  discrepant from his attitude, he tends later to realign his attitude
  toward that behavior. For example, a subject who complies with an
  experimenter’s request to write an attitude-discrepant essay against
  the legalization of marijuana is typically found to favor such
  legalization to a lesser degree than previously. This now classic
  attitude change effect is readily explained by both Festinger’s theory
  of cognitive dissonance (1957) and Bem’s self-perception theory
  (1972). Dissonance theory, in general, concerns the relationship
  between various cognitions. The theory posits the existence of a
  drive-like motivation to maintain consistency among relevant
  cognitions. Self-perception theory, on the other hand, concerns the
  passive inference of attitudinal dispositions from behavior. According
  to Bem (1972), “Individuals come to ‘know’ their own attitudes,
  emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from
  observations of their own overt behavior and/or the circumstances in
  which this behavior occurs” (p. 2). Social psychologists vary in which
  theory they endorse.

References

Fazio, R. H., Zanna, M. P., & Cooper, J. (1977). Dissonance and self-perception: An integrative view of each theory's proper domain of application. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13(5), 464-479. PDF


Why do I forget important things and remember things that I don't care about?

There could be several reasons, I'm sure. One particular explanation that sticks out to me is a concept called 'feature integration theory'. I mention this because the things you say you remember -- what the guy in a video looked like, a time when your spelling was auto-corrected, general mundane details or 'features' -- are in line with this theory. You might find this document helpful, but as it is rather long, I'll provide a shorter explanation.

Feature integration theory is a theory of attention developed in 1980 by Anne Treisman and Garry Gelade that suggests that when perceiving a stimulus, features are "registered early, automatically, and in parallel, while objects are identified separately" and at a later stage in processing.

In other words, our perception of features are quicker and more automatic, registered early on. The object itself is recognized later, and thus we do not always fully integrate it into our attention. We must provide ourselves enough time to integrate the features that we have perceived into one main object or idea, and if we shift our attention away during this mandatory time of attention, we will not recognize the object as one larger entity or idea, but rather a collection of the features that we noticed automatically. This also might explain why you retain less information while multi-tasking.

Treisman distinguishes between two kinds of visual search tasks, "feature search" and "conjunction search". Feature searches can be performed fast and pre-attentively for targets defined by only one feature, such as color, shape, perceived direction of lighting, movement, or orientation. Features should "pop out" during search and should be able to form illusory conjunctions. Conversely, conjunction searches occur with the combination of two or more features and are identified serially. Conjunction search is much slower than feature search and requires conscious attention and effort. In multiple experiments, some referenced in this article, Treisman concluded that color, orientation, and intensity are features for which feature searches may be performed.

Indeed, this theory is supported by the existence of Balint's syndrome [1], a not-quite-understood condition in which damage to the parietal lobe renders the patient with a variety of symptoms, including simultanagnosia, or the 'inability to perceive simultaneous events or objects in one's visual field.'

This spatial disorder of visual attention—the ability to identify local elements of a scene, but not the global whole—has been referred to as a constriction of the individual's global gestalt window—their visual "window" of attention. People fixate their eyes to specific images in social scenes because they are informative to the meaning of the scene. Any forthcoming recovery in simultanagnosia may be related to somehow expanding the restricted attentional window that characterizes this disorder.
Simultanagnosia is a profound visual deficit. It impairs the ability to perceive multiple items in a visual display, while preserving the ability to recognize single objects. One study suggests that simultanagnosia may result from an extreme form of competition between objects which makes it difficult for attention to be disengaged from an object once it has been selected. Patients with simultanagnosia have a restricted spatial window of visual attention and cannot see more than one object at a time. They see their world in a patchy, spotty manner. Therefore, they pick out a single object, or even components of an individual object, without being able to see the global "big picture."

Sources:
[1] Udesen H, Madsen AL (May 1992). "[Balint's syndrome--visual disorientation]". Ugeskr. Laeg. (in Danish) 154 (21): 1492–4.


Possible applications of the big five personality traits testing in human resource departments

Personality testing of (potential) employees is big business, according to the BBC:

  A 2014 survey of global HR professionals by CEB, one of the largest providers of online talent tests, indicated that 62% of respondents used some sort of personality test pre-hire. Thirty percent indicated that personality assessments would be used to identify high potential talent in the future. By contrast, a 2001 survey of managers from the American Management Association found that 29% of employers used a psychological measurement or assessment.

Supposedly up to 10 years ago, personality testing was mostly used to improve employee retention, rather than predict performance:

  The most prevalent reason given for using personality testing was their contribution to improving employee
  fit and reducing turnover by rates as much as 20% (Geller, 2004), 30% (Berta, 2005), 40% (Daniel, 2005), and even
  70% (Wagner, 2000). It is of considerable interest that evidence for the validity of personality tests for predicting job
  performance is rarely cited (see Hoel (2004) for a notable exception) by human resource professionals or recruiters.

The BBC cites some anecdotal evidence that personality testing is increasingly being used to predict performance as well.

And it does have some scientific basis. Restricting discussion to Big 5 main factors, from a 2017 review:

  Conscientiousness is the best personality predictor of job performance and
  counterproductive behaviors, and it has shown validity generalization across samples,
  occupations, and countries. Operational validity of conscientiousness was found to be .39
  when a quasi-ipsative forced-choice format was used (Salgado, Anderson, & Tauriz, 2015;
  Salgado & Tauriz, 2014);
  Emotional stability [the opposite of neuroticism] was the second most relevant personality
  predictor of job performance and counterproductive work behaviors,
  Conscientiousness, emotional stability, and agreeableness are the most valid predictors
  of overall counterproductive behaviors, interpersonally oriented counterproductive
  behaviors, and organizationally oriented counterproductive behaviors (Berry et al.,
  2007);
  Conscientiousness, emotional stability, and agreeableness showed incremental
  validity over GCA [general cognitive ability = IQ] for predicting overall job performance (Salgado & De Fruyt, 2006);
  The format of the personality inventory is an important moderator of the criterion-related
  validity of the Big Five dimensions, so that the validity increases dramatically when quasi-ipsative
  forced-choice formats are used (Salgado, Anderson, & Tauriz, 2015; Salgado &
  Tauriz, 2014);

  [...]

But sure there are plenty of management/HR fads out there as well in field of personality testing. A widely cited review of Hunter and Schmidt from two decades ago put the validity of personality testing (without much discrimination how it was done) to 0.22, in the context of hiring practices as predictors for job performance.


How to measure change in emotional responses when pre and post tests use different measures?

Normally, I'd recommend using the same mood measure pre and post manipulation. This allows you to assess the size and direction of change. It also likely removes more error variance from the post-test measure (which would increase statistical power), because using the same measure is likely to increase the correlation between pre and post.

That said, if you've used different measures pre and post, then you could perform an ANCOVA with group as independent variable, baseline mood as the covariate, and post-test mood as the dependent variable.

A slight possibility is that you could  map scores on both tests to a common scale. This might allow you to make qualified claims about whether emotions increased or decreased. That said, this would require that you have access to additional data on people who completed both tests in a non-experimental context. You could then use the means and correlations between the two tests to develop a mapping to a common scale.


Is talking to oneself loudly a very common sign of schizophrenia?

Before I answer this question, I would like to point out that at the bottom of Schizophrenia.com is a disclaimer, and part of it says

  No health information on Schizophrenia.com, including information about herbal therapies and other dietary supplements, is regulated or evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and therefore the information should not be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease without the supervision of a medical doctor.

If you look at their write-up on the DSM diagnostic criteria, it seems that they are taking about the diagnosis criterion of Disorganised Speech within the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual (DSM).

The bit after the brackets:

  these are also called "word salads". Ongoing disjointed or rambling monologues - in which a person seems to talking to himself/herself or imagined people or voices.

is their own annotation to what is in DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994)

The key point is the bit where they say that the talking is "ongoing disjointed or rambling monologues".  Just talking to yourself is not necessarily disorganised speech.

WebMD describes disorganised speech in their schizophrenia page.

  They may act silly and giggle for no apparent reason. They often make up words and sentences that make no sense to other people. And they often don't show facial expressions.

  Examples of disorganized speech include:

  Making up words (neologisms). For example: "I'm going to the park to ride the wallywhoop."
  Rhyming words (clang speech). For example: "Deck the halls with boughs of holly, folly, polly, dolly, hello Dolly, want a lollipop?"
  Saying sentences that make no sense to other people (word salad). For example: "Give paper floor me school hop bus."
  Repeating exactly what someone else has said (echolalia).

Another point of note is that whether following DSM-IV or the latest edition — DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) — disorganised speech on its own is not enough to diagnose schizophrenia.  It would have to accompany at least one more item from Criteria A, plus there are also Critera B through to F to meet.

References

American Psychiatric Association, 1994. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing.

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


Procrastination is deep and complex subject and its not "Hey you are just lazy man" thing.

People procrastinate for wide variety of reasons here are few ideas:

Procrastination can be a symptom of deeper inner meaning problems or mindset problems.
Procrastination can be due to fear of failure, fear of success (!)
Procrastination can be due to be overwhelmed by size and nature of task.
Procrastination can be due to uncertainty and analysis paralysis.
ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) creates brain that is myopic to time perception, which in turn creates procrastination behavior.
People with ADD/ADHD often heavily discount the importance of an event if it's sufficiently far away from the current time. Only thing that gets done is events screaming "Your house is on fire, do it NOW". They live in perpetual now discounting the future, everything far away in time is simply a blur until it comes too close within their range of time perception which is 'now'.
Procrastination can be due to inability to focus and distraction issues.

The list is only partial, you can google out following terms to learn more:

Growth verses fixed mindset,
Distraction and Continuous Partial Attention,
ADHD Russell Barkley


How many action potentials from presynaptic neurons would be required to make a postsynaptic neuron fire?

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

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

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

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


How do you randomize within a Qualtrics form without breaking timing?

I've since completed this survey, so I thought that I would update with what I ended up doing.

So, it turns out to not be possible to do randomization in an easy way when timing questions are involved, based on a review of online resources and talking to Qualtrics support. Timing questions simply don't support Qualtrics randomization, and there is not an advanced option to get around this.

In the end, I used the following solution:

1 - I divided each of my questions into a separate block which consisted of the timing question, the multiple choice question, and a feedback display.

2 - Instead of randomizing fully, I created 10 manual counterbalance conditions. I determined 10 different arrangements of my 8 questions that it seemed very unlikely that order effects would hurt my survey. For example, questions 1-8 in order, reverse order, and then shuffled randomly 8 additional times.

3- In my case, with 8 questions to randomize,  I used the web services to randomly generate a number from 1-10, and then used a series of "if" statements which would trigger a conditional branch based on the random number, and then display the questions in a set order.

For my use case this ended up being the best solution I could find. Manually and fully randomizing all blocks would have required 8! = 40,000+ different conditions. Even using a script to generate a .qsf file with this survey design would not work -- in my testing Qualtrics crashed whenever I tried to run a survey of this size.

For those with fewer questions, programmatically creating a text file (either qsf or advanced text) may be a viable option. I found this link describing how to read qsf files in R and this explanation of import and exporting surveys helpful.

(I'm going to accept this answer as I believe it's the most comprehensive response to my question possible, but if an editor disagrees and would prefer it remain open feel free to revert)


Green and Lynn (2000) conducted a meta analysis of 59 experiments investigating the efficacy of hypnosis on smoking cessation. Their conclusions were:

There is mixed, inconclusive evidence for whether hypnosis is any better than placebos.
Hypnosis treatments were generally confounded with educational interventions and cognitive/behavioral interventions, making it impossible to isolate hypnosis as the causal source of positive results.

In short, their conclusion is:

  Hypnosis cannot, as yet, be regarded as a well-established treatment for smoking cessation

Barnes et al. (2010) ran a meta analysis ten years later, and came to the same general conclusion. There is no evidence that hypnotherapy for smoking cessation works better than no treatment at all. They found that claims of success in the literature are generally uncontrolled studies, and that:

  The effects of hypnotherapy on smoking cessation claimed by uncontrolled studies were not confirmed by analysis of randomized controlled trials.

References

Barnes, J., Dong, C. Y., McRobbie, H., Walter, N., Mehta, M., & Stead, L. F. (2010). Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD001008.pub2

Green, J., & Lynn, S. J. (2000). Hypnosis and suggestion-based approaches to smoking cessation: An examination of the evidence. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 48(2), 195-224.


Long term effect of using noise generators

Short answer

Yes, continuous exposure to white noise affects neural responses in the auditory system. First, it can alter the tonotopic map in the auditory cortex. Second, it can lead to reduced responsiveness of the auditory thalamus.

Background

Note: this answer is based on animal experiments using extreme conditions, namely a continuous noise exposure for at least a month.

The most striking effect of continuous low-level white noise exposure (30 days) is a dramatic reorganization of the tonotopic map in the auditory cortex (Zheng, 2012). Basically, the normally regular distribution of low-to-high frequency representation in auditory cortex was grossly disorganized in noise-treated rats. The noise-treated rats performed better on a pitch-discrimination task in noise than non-treated rats. They performed worse in a quiet environment, though. Hence, their auditory system had adapted to the noise and was optimized for noisy environments.

In another study it was shown that adult rats exposed to noise (50 days) showed increased long-term-depression (LTD) in A1 neurons of the medial-geniculate nucleus (MGN) (Speechley et al., 2007). The MGN is the thalamic processing centre of the auditory pathway (Rees, 2009). Speechley et al. mention the following, and I quote:

  The facilitation of depression observed here [..] suggests that in the developed A1 continuous white noise produces general over-excitation of thalamocortical networks,
  resulting in greater LTD induced by low-frequency inputs to the network.

LTD can be interpreted as a long-term decrease in responsiveness of the auditory system to stimulation. Basically it reacts to the white noise by decreasing its activity. They explain these effects by the fact that white noise can act as a mild stressor, with accompanying changes in neuroendocrine activation and immune function. Stress and related hormonal changes may increase corticosteroid levels that facilitating LTD.

Interestingly, in newborn rats, the same treatment resulted in enhanced long-term potentiation (LTP) of the MGN. The authors raise the following explanation, and I quote:

  White noise reared animals showed greater levels of LTP relative to rats raised in
  unaltered auditory environments. Also, stimulation parameters (single 1-Hz pulses) that induced depression in control animals resulted in robust potentiation in white noise-reared rats, indicating that lack of patterned auditory stimulation during early post-natal life results in a preferential readiness of the auditory thalamocortical system for
  synaptic potentiation over depression.

References
Rees, Encyclopedia of Neurocience 2009:2275-9
Speechley et al. Eur J Neurosci 2007;26:2576–84
Zheng, Front Syst Neurosci 2012;6:1-14


Pathological distress caused by being discouraged to say "thanks" on online communities

DISCLAIMER: I do not have any official education in cognitive sciences.

Maybe problem is not in saying "thank you", for me upvoting is very close to saying thank you.
I think it is rather obvious what are benefits from discouraging "thank you", it would be hard to find real content in "thanks forest".

Perhaps people wish that receiver knows who said thank you

I Joe want Marc to know that 'I, Joe' am thankful.


What does Inter-Personal conflict means in clinical evaluation?

A common definition of "conflict" is readily retrievable and applicable in the context of clinical evaluation – i.e., conflict has no particularly unusual primary meaning in clinical psychology. "Interpersonal" also operates as an ordinary adjective with the usual meaning. Thus interpersonal conflict is conflict between persons, as might be distinguished from intrapersonal conflict (e.g., cognitive dissonance). In some cases, one might also distinguish interpersonal conflict from impersonal conflicts with people in general, such as alienation, aggression, or other antisocial impulses when these do not have a specific person or a small group of specific persons as the object of negativity or source of opposition.

Two important inferences that one might consider based on such an evaluation include the plausibility of problems with social skills and problems arising from the other person(s) involved. People who have not developed strong social skills like empathy, conflict resolution, tolerance, or politeness experience interpersonal conflicts more often, but even people with strong social skills and other essentials of psychological health may find themselves at conflict with others who are the primary source of distress or disagreement.


Is there a disorder that causes one to give inanimate objects human emotions?

Interesting question. I have thought about this a lot, and while I cannot offer a conclusive answer, I can offer some ideas that stem from scientific literature.

I should note that this question may technically be considered off-topic, as it seems to be looking for a diagnosis (and self-help questions are prohibited on this website). However, for the sake of my own curiosity and the curiosity of others, I'll provide my answer nonetheless.

To answer your specific question: No, there is no officially-recognized disorder that causes one to assume human emotions in objects. To be fair, the condition you have described does not constitute the definition of '[mental] disorder' because, by definition, a mental disorder is a mental or behavioral pattern that causes suffering or poor ability to function in life. On the contrary, it seems that this behavioral pattern of yours is helpful to you, for reasons that I will explain below.

There is a theory that the brain forms an image of the body's homeostatic sensations in the "primary interoceptive cortex" of the brain. This area is located in the insula, which is linked to emotion (the body's homeostasis), as well as empathy. [1] This theory is supported by fMRI imaging, which shows activity in the insular cortex when one is asked to feel one's own heartbeat, or empathize with the pain or emotional state of others. [2] Coincidentally, the insula is also involved in psychopathology, or the study of mental disorders. Specifically, it is linked to anxiety disorders [3] and emotional dysregulation. [4]

The spindle neurons found at a higher density in the right frontal insular cortex are also found in the anterior cingulate cortex, and it has been speculated that these neurons are involved in cognitive-emotional processes that are specific to primates, such as empathy and self-aware emotional feelings. While the mechanisms behind the insular cortex are not well known, it is thought that these functions arise as a consequence of the insula's ability to relay its internal 'homeostasis' (or its overall well-being) to the conscious observer. [2]

Given the evidence that empathy is associated with insular activity, and given the evidence that the insula regulates the body's internal sense of 'homeostasis', it can be inferred that those who are highly sensitive (i.e. highly attuned to their internal level of homeostasis) are automatically highly attuned to the others in their environment, as well. Thus, there may be a tendency to expect similar levels of sensitivity in other things, and (by proxy) there may be a tendency to 'tread lightly' around others due to an automatic assumption that they are similarly sensitive. This may extend to inanimate objects, if one recognizes that the 'environment' that the object is in is not maintained in the body's subjective view of homeostasis.

Another thing to consider is that young children often show attachment or subjective association of feelings to objects, and that this is considered normal in young age because of the positive effects it seems to have on children. One study found that children who attended day-care full-time were significantly more likely to develop attachments to inanimate objects than children who only attended day-care part-time. It is not certain why this is the case, though it can be speculated that increased exposure to the real world (and time away from the parent or guardian) increases the child's anxiety as they learn to become independent. A prior study found that there was no link between behavioral disturbances and object attachment; on the contrary, another study found that children used object attachment as a mechanism for arousal reduction (and, thus, anxiety-reduction) in the face of adversity or discomfort in the environment. [5] As I mentioned before, it is thought that children use these objects to transition from dependence to independence.

This is different from treating objects as if they were people, because this is essentially using the object as a token of security to replace the mother as the child advances in age, thus allowing the child to become independent. However, it may reveal insight into those who naturally associate objects with emotions, because it may represent an underlying anxiety in the individual. The attachment to the object may be a way for the individual to circumvent that -- though it could also be unrelated, as this is still in a speculative stage.

Overall, however, I would say that this behavior does not implicate disorder in an individual. To the contrary, it appears to be a soothing mechanism. If I had to make an informed guess based on the information above, I would theorize that those who continue to associate emotions with inanimate objects outside of childhood may simply have stronger natural insular activity, and thus a stronger tendency towards one's internal 'homeostasis', or emotional activity. Because the individual is naturally more sensitive to the environment / emotional affect of others due to heightened activity in the insular cortex, they naturally attempt to regulate the environment's 'homeostasis' based on the individual's own bodily concept of homeostasis. Thus, if you were to feel left out if you were a pen that was not being used, then you may very well treat every pen the way you wanted to be treated. :)

Sources used:

[1]  Emeran A. Mayer (August 2011). "Gut feelings: the emerging biology of gut–brain communication". Nature Reviews Neuroscience 12: 453–466.

[2] Benedetto De Martino, Dharshan Kumaran, Ben Seymour, and Raymond J. Dolan (August 2006). "Frames, Biases, and Rational Decision-Making in the Human Brain". Science 313 (6): 684–687.

[3] Paulus MP, Stein MB (August 2006). "An insular view of anxiety". Biol. Psychiatry 60 (4): 383–7.

[4] Thayer JF, Lane RD (December 2000). "A model of neurovisceral integration in emotion regulation and dysregulation". J Affect Disord 61 (3): 201–16

[5] Passman R. H. (1976). Arousal reducing properties of attachment objects: testing the functional limits of the security blanket relative to the mother. Dev. Psychol. 12 468–469 10.1037/0012-1649.12.5.468


Has there been any serious research on subliminal messaging?

First we need to define what "subliminal messaging" means. I take it you mean to send a subliminal command and make someone obey that command.
Based on that definition, here's some of what I find from googling:

  Effectiveness
  The effectiveness in subliminal messaging has been demonstrated to prime individual responses and stimulate mild emotional activity.[3][4] Applications, however, often base themselves on the persuasiveness of the message. Importantly, research on action priming has shown that subliminal stimuli can trigger only those actions that one plans to perform anyway: an action can be triggered subliminally only if the person already has the specific intention to perform this specific action.[5] The following sections have more information on specific studies in which the effectiveness of subliminal stimuli are investigated.[6][7]
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli

An article with several links to research on the topic:

  In 1979 that nearly 50 department stores in the U.S. and Canada had been using subliminal messages over their music systems which had resulted in a significant reduction in both customer based shoplifting and employee theft.
  One East Coast chain amounted savings of 600,000 over a nine-month period.
  Another story in the Wall Street Journal in 1980 stated that subliminal messaging a New Orleans supermarket resulted in an all time low within 6 months of use - from 50,000 per six month period to a figure of 13,000! Furthermore cashier shortages dropped from 125 per week to below 10 per week.
  http://www.realsubliminal.com/subliminal-messages-scientific-research

Subliminal advertising:

  University College London researchers have found the first physiological evidence that invisible subliminal images do attract the brain's attention on a subconscious level. The wider implication for the study, published in Current Biology, is that techniques such as subliminal advertising, now banned in the UK but still legal in the USA, certainly do leave their mark on the brain.
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070308121938.htm

More information on subliminal and supraliminal messages and the differences:

  Generally, there are three types of subliminal messages:
  1. Subvisual messages – visual cues that are flashed so quickly (generally a few milliseconds) that people don’t perceive them.
  2. Subaudible messages – low volume audio cues that are inserted into a louder audio source, such as music.
  3. Backmasking – an audio message that is recorded backwards, with the intention of playing it forward to disguise the reversed message.
  Does that mean subliminal messages don’t work? A few decades ago, researchers would have agreed that subliminal messages were BS. They found little, if any, support that they were effective (Vokey & Read, 1985).
  In recent decades, however, things have been changing. Emerging research has shown that subliminal messages can influence our thoughts and behavior (see Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980 for one of the first notable studies).
  For instance, new research has shown that subliminal messages in advertising can, in fact, influence our purchasing behavior. For example, participants in one study were significantly more likely to choose a Lipton Ice drink when they were subliminally primed with “Lipton Ice” (Karremans, Stroebe, & Claus, 2006). Pretty cool.
  http://www.nickkolenda.com/subliminal-messages/

..And lots more articles, if you were to ask a more specific question.


What is the difference between social anxiety disorder and shyness?

It's a matter of degree.

First of all, "shyness" is not a psychological or psychiatric term, but an everyday English word denoting a commonly observable personality characteristic on a par with courage, cheerfulness, or honesty. The meaning of "shyness" is not exactly defined, and people may use the word "shyness" to refer to different kinds of behaviors, from being introverted (and not interested in social interaction) to being afraid of social interaction.

"Social anxiety disorder", on the other hand, is a psychiatric and clinical psychological term, the meaning of which is clearly and exactly defined by the scientific community. That means that while there is of course some debate about what social anxiety disorder is, there is agreement about what the term currently means.

As for the relation between shyness and social anxiety disorder, shyness is generally conceived as a mild from of social anxiety, which leaves the person able and functioning in his or her life, while social anxiety disorder is such a strong anxiety that the person suffering from it cannot partake in a normal way, is disabled by this anxiety, and suffers from its effect.


The number of things we can focus on at once

You already seem to be making the difference between a point of focus, versus "things in the back of ones mind". I think that's quite apt.

Different authors have come up with different theories about this subject. I think it's a difficult question but I'll just give my hunch, supported by a (very) few papers that supports that view. Note, that there's a large body of literature on the topic, particularly on Working memory (Burmester, 2017). Working memory is:

  [T]he ability to hold and manipulate information in mind, over brief intervals.

In an overview article, Oberauer (2013) claims that working memory is, as you already exemplify, often explained in terms of physical metaphors such as information flow or information containers.

A popular scientific blog gives a nice list of problems with the computer versus brain metaphor, most notably:

  Brains are analogue; computers are digital
  The brain uses content-addressable memory (memories lead to recall of related memories, called association)
  The brain is a parallel machine; computers are modular and serial
  Short-term memory is not like RAM
  Unlike computers, processing and memory are performed by the same components in the brain

Having said that, in general, it is thought that focused attention can hold up to about four independent chunks, or as little as a single chunk, dependent on the theory as well as on the task at hand. You can imagine that more complex tasks 'consume' more 'processing power'. Indeed, a simple 2-digit recall task seems to rely on the two digits being reproduced in parallel (Oberauer, 2013).

In sentence reproduction during active listening, it seems that attention focus switching is necessary, as subjects need to switch their focus of attention momentarily away from ongoing language processing to memory retrieval. In other words, more complex tasks seem to be more serially controlled (Finney et al., 2014).

References
- Oberauer, Front Hum Neurosci (2013); 7: 673
- Burmester, Sci Am, June 2017 issue
- Finney et al., Child Developm Res (2014); 20734


Are ACT-R and Spaun the state of the art in cognitive science computational models?

There are TONS of other Cognitive Models being researched. Specifically, see this giant comprehensive list of Cognitive Models [1]. Given such a wide array of models, it might be more helpful to focus on which framework are still under active use, in addition to Spaun and ACT-R. In "How to Build a Brain" by Chris Eliasmith, he compares Spaun with some other architectures in active use, including:

LISA
Neural Blackboard Architecture (NBA)
ICS
Dynamic Field Theory (DFT)
Leabra
Soar

However, in my personal experience as a researcher, the only one in that list that I've still seen active publications from is Leabra.

In conclusion, the cognitive modelling community is still very heterogenous. You never know when an old framework is going to be revived or a new one started, but hopefully the references I gave you are a good starting point.

[1] "40 Years of Cognitive Architectures: Focus on Perception, Attention, Learning and Applications" Iuliia Kotseruba, Oscar J. Avella Gonzalez, John K. Tsotsos


Optimal number of dimensions in multidimensional scaling

I guess it depends on your purpose. If you are doing the MDS for more heuristic purposes, then often two dimensions (or possibly three) will provide the greatest visual insight.

Also, my sense from looking at your dimension by stress plot is that the greatest gains are attained when going from one to two dimensions, that the gain from two to three dimensions is still substantial, but after that there are minimal gains.


Is the Resting Potential and Action Potential Thresholds the same across all neurons in a network?

In short no. The speed at which and Action Potential (AP) occurs, resting membrane potential, and threshold to AP all vary across types of neutron. See the graph below (Bean, 2007)

The reasons for these differences are various, as you will see if you read the referenced article, which I highly recommend as everything I write from here is based upon it. The main factors influencing AP differences are firstly that the classical AP diagram is based on an isolate squid giant axon (not neuron) in a superficial environment.

When we investigate neurons in mammals we investigate them relative to surrounding neurons, which influences chemoelectric potentials and subsequently APs. Furthermore neurons aren't uniform in shape which also has an influence. Secondly voltage gating varies within and between ions gates in the neural membranes for instance "the kinetics of sodium currents differ in detail between different types of neurons62 and, remarkably, even between different regions of the same neuron, with sodium channels in hippocampal mossy fibre boutons (formed by the axons of granule cells of the dentate gyrus) inactivating twice as fast as the sodium channels in the granule cell sonata" Bean (2007). Potassium channels appear to lack uniformity as well. See below for difference in voltages across ion channels between neurons.

And there are other factors as well of course, such as frequency of activation influencing voltage required to depolarise. Depolarisation rates, and differences between fast spiking neurons, such as purkinji, and others.

Overall the brain is not uniform, despite what you may learn or have learnt in text books in classes. This is done to ease learning, can you imagine trying to learnt this without the basics? However this fundamental research has important implications for neural imaging, psychopharmatuics, and of course cognitive processes such as speed of processing etc.

In case you can't access the reference...
The referenced journal article is a brilliant review in nature about this exact topic, its called "The action potential in mammalian central neurons" By Bruce P Bean


what does “dominants” mean in psychology

I have just been doing some research on this piece of writing and I wonder if anyone really should take heed to what is written.  The reason is that the writing seems to be an attempt on a

  psychedelic version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead
  (source)

It is not something I personally would take any notice of, however, from my understanding after reading the above source, this writing is talking about "transcendence" and the "pre-mortem-death-rebirth experience" through the stages of ego-loss, hallucinations and "reentry" created by ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc.

  Of course, the drug dose does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key - it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures.

Where it says

  ...the terrifying dream evoked by karma and played out by the unconscious "dominants" begins.

it seems to be talking about the "second stage" called the Chonyid state (hallucination state) where you have "reached your goal" of ego-loss in the Fruedian sense and now you are allowing your thoughts to come to play as though they are reality as the preceding part of the sentence says

  The "thought-forms" appear as realities, fantasy takes on real form

This is the effect of taking these psychedelic drugs.  The ego is diminished and therefore you lose touch with reality, norms and rules.

I believe the "dominants" in this writing is referring to the dominant thoughts.

edit - for further info

I am in the middle of learning about analytical psychology and for the authors to refer to Carl Jung as someone who was interested in the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol) and that he would possibly advocate their "psychedelic version" interested me.

Carl Jung apparently suffered from a form of psychosis and as a result, he suffered with visions and hallucinations.

  Jung spent time in his study inducing the visions and hallucinations. He did this not through the use of any kind of drug, apparently, but instead through his own personal methods that allowed his unconscious mind to become totally open and flowing forth. (source)


How can prolonged stress lead to a sustained reduction in cognitive functioning?

This is only one possible pathway.  There are many potential ones.  Further the fact that this is possible does not mean that it is the case always.

Stress activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.  For example, a meta-analysis by Dickerson et al. (2004) demonstrated that an acute laboratory based stressor reliably increased cortisol levels, a hormone downstream of the HPA.  That stress results in activation of the HPA is also well-demonstrated in animal models, where both physical (e.g., restraint or shock) and social stress (e.g., Engelman, 2004).

When stress occurs, various systems (e.g., amygdala implicated in threat detection) can lead to activation in the hypothalamus, where the paraventricular nucleus (of the hypothalamus) secretes corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH).  The CRH acts on the pituitary gland resulting in a release of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH).  ACTH is released into the blood, which allows it to reach the adrenal glands, specifically the adrenal cortex.  This stimulates the adrenal cortex to produce and release glucocorticoids (GCs) into the blood (in humans primarily cortisol, in animals corticosterone).  GCs in turn have broad ranging influences on the body.  For example, they seem to play role in immune regulation and function (although whether they are anti-inflammatory or pro-inflammatory seems to depend on quantity and time (there was a lively debate about this at a Psychoneuroimmunology conference.  For utterly inadequate notes on some of the presentation see here).

GCs also act in a negative feedback loop to shut off the HPA axis.  Finally, relevant for cognitive functioning, specifically memory, GCs can regulate the hippocampus.  This is believed to be adaptive in the short term, but when the hippocampus is chronically exposed to elevated levels of GCs, it can endanger cell function (for a review of GCs and the hippocampus, see Joels, 2001).

For example, using a longitudinal design, Huang and colleagues (2009) demonstrated that in people with Alzheimer's Disease, basal plasma cortisol (cortisol levels in the blood, other major ways to measure cortisol are via saliva or urine) was predictive of a decline in cognitive function as well as atrophy in the hippocampus (specifically, the temporal horn).

Somewhere I have a slightly longer reference list on stress and aging, with an emphasis on stress effects in cognitive and physical function over time.  I do not have an answer for your final point, what can be done to minimize the effects.  The only clear suggestion would be to minimize stress.  I know there are some studies showing protective effects of physical activity for depression, physical function (that one's a no-brainer), and cognitive function.  One can speculate that if chronically elevated GCs released from the adrenal cortex are the cause, that administering an ACTH antagonist or the like may help, but to date, I know of no studies trying to block the effects of stress (in rodent models of cancer, stress effects on tumor progression and metastasis have been effectively blocked using beta blockers, but there the primary stress pathway was believed to be sympathetic nervous system activation rather than HPA).


What's the optimal way to space out rewards in order to maximise motivation?

To add gaming element to education, you have two options:

Look at currently successful examples of products that gamify learning
Check most successful mobile games (short engagement times)

Here are a couple examples of language learning products that gamify learning (Duolingo and ChineseSkill) They use:

Very short lessons which produce instant sense of gratification (3-5 minutes each)
Diverse word sets, so each lesson feels fresh
Score and timing concepts (for example Chinese Skill app lets you peek at a word meaning, but subtracts points from the final score for doing so)
Competition against "general public" - apps tell you how you are doing compared to other people
Use of pretty graphics and friendly imagery

For example chinese skill app starts with just a couple lessons per module, each focusing on a few words. Later on the app expands and starts to add more lessons.

Duolingo has similar approach, although they have a lot more reward systems - you can win points by doing good during lessons.

To specifically address your timing question, I can bring up personal experience - I tried both products, and hit a slump when the number of lessons per module exceeded 5. There was less motivation to progress. I quit duolingo completely once I hit a module with 13 courses. To avoid this, I've seen some apps break large word sets into stuff like "Clothing 1", "Clothing 2", etc.

ChineseSkill app

Duolingo App:


Is the approximation of the Medial Frontal Gyrus in the region of the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex?

No; the medial frontal gyrus is medial; it faces the sagittal midline of the brain. Medial is the opposite of lateral; the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is lateral, facing towards the outside of the brain.

Perhaps you are thinking of the middle frontal gyrus?


Is a more specific breathing technique better than just slow, deep breathing for calming oneself?

Any anxiety — and especially with Panic Attacks — can often but not always lead to Hyperventilation.  Steady, slow breathing will prevent it, whilst also helping to relieve the anxiety.

Whilst looking into the answer to your question, there are a few resources out there discussing the best techniques for dealing with hyperventilation.

MedlinePlus.gov mentions that hyperventilation creates a low level of carbon dioxide in your blood.

The low levels of Carbon Dioxide is the basis of the paper bag technique which you may have heard about.

It is the traditional practice to treat acute hyperventilation (thought to be due to anxiety) by having patients rebreathe the carbon dioxide using a brown paper bag.  However, there are reports that there are cases in which this treatment, incorrectly applied to patients who were hypoxemic or had myocardial ischemia, resulted in death. (Callaham, 1989)

This will be the reason why WebMD states, although the technique is useful, that you must not use a paper bag if:

  You have any heart or lung problems, such as coronary artery disease, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, emphysema), or a history of deep vein thrombosis, stroke, or pulmonary embolism.

or if you are at a high altitude [above 6000 ft (1829 m)].

Interestingly, MedlinePlus states in the same article linked above that the heart or lung problems mentioned by WebMD can be medical causes of hyperventilation and

  Emotional causes include:

  Anxiety and nervousness
  Panic attack
  Situations where there is a psychological advantage in having a sudden, dramatic illness (for example, somatization disorder)
  Stress

WebMD in another article states that breathing exercises help to deal with hyperventilation and suggests to

  Breathe through pursed lips, as if you are whistling, or pinch one nostril and breathe through your nose. It is harder to hyperventilate when you breathe through your nose or pursed lips, because you can't move as much air.
  Slow your breathing to 1 breath every 5 seconds, or slow enough that symptoms gradually go away.

MedlinePlus.gov also has a detailed explanation of Pursed Lip Breathing.

As for studies on effective long term treatments, Alicia Meuret of Southern Methodist University in Dallas led a study pitting Cognitive Therapy against CART (Capnometry-Assisted Respiratory Training).  After some searching, I found the Meuret's manuscript on the National Institutes of Health website (Meuret, et al. 2010)

Apparently, according to the LiveScience article linked above, Meuret said,

  Panicking people are often told to calm down and "take a deep breath," Meuret said. But for someone hyperventilating during a panic attack, deep breathing is a bad idea. That's because hyperventilation happens when people breathe so quickly and deeply that they expel an unusually high amount of carbon dioxide, which in turn causes symptoms like dizziness and numbness. Those symptoms tend to make people feel like they're suffocating, so they breathe quicker and deeper, further exacerbating the problem.

CART, was developed to systematically change hypocapnia in patients with Panic Disorder through a brief, tightly controlled 4-week training program that uses immediate feedback via a portable capnometer.  Here is a video showing the capnometer in use.

References

Callaham, M. (1989) Hypoxic hazards of traditional paper bag rebreathing in hyperventilating patients Annals of Emergency Medicine 18(6): pp. 622—628
PMID: 2499228 DOI: 10.1016/S0196-0644(89)80515-3

Meuret, A. E., Rosenfield, D., Seidel, A., Bhaskara, L. and Hofmann, S. G. (2010) Respiratory and Cognitive Mediators of Treatment Change in Panic Disorder: Evidence for Intervention Specificity Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(5): pp. 691—704
PMCID: PMC3327286 DOI: 10.1037/a0019552


Does stress impair your short term memory?

It really depends on the timing of the stressful event, as well as anticipation. From an evolutionary standpoint, "stress" developed for a reason in the context of heightened arousal, attention, preparation for action, etc. Say you encounter a lion in your backyard: Not only will your sympathetic nervous system be on full speed, but several cortices are also geared up to processing what's going on. The idea is that you want to make a quick behavioral response, so inducing stress short term actually facilitates many different processes, including encoding of memory. See the link below for some research on this, I grabbed one that should be open access.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22483973

Basically short term, acute stress may help encoding of memory, whereas long term, chronic stress not so much. Also consider whether or not you are learning something and then hear a loud human scream in your ear. This may disrupt encoding. So again, it's the timing that is important. And I would say it depends on the type of stress.


Searching for real biological neuron firing data [numeric]

The website crcns.org hosts open source data recorded from neurons in various brain areas.


Is it possible to increase the capacity of human brain like “Lucy”?

This may provide you with extra supplementary information regarding the notorious "10 Percent Myth".
To respond to your statement regarding increasing brain capacity through am increase in knowledge:

  Synaptic Consolidation is the process by which items are transferred from short-term to long-term memory. Within the first minutes or hours after acquisition, the engram (memory trace) is encoded within synapses, becoming resistant (though not immune) to interference from outside sources.

Knowledge has to do with "saving" the original memory traces followed when first learning the information. It does not necessarily have to do with active brain capacity. Thus, an increase in knowledge will not necessarily cause an increase in used brain capacity.

You see, the primary issue here is energy cost. Although the brain typically only constitutes 2 percent of the body's weight, it utilizes around 20 percent of the body's energy intake. As a species, we have been "designed" through the filtering of many "versions" our species to be most efficient. As we have not found a particular need to utilize such a large percentage of our brain at a time throughout the millennia, our brains have been simplified into a somewhat energy-efficient structure, utilizing a portion of the total capacity at a time. However, if Man had originally needed to use more of the brain capacity for a majority of his or her daily activities, it would be safe to expect that we would use a larger portion of our brains at any given instance. Assuming you are still in a state of heightened neuroplasticity, it is potentially possible to "increase the amount of brain capacity used at a time" by participating in activities requiring multiple parts of your brain.

But how many different activities can you think of that would require reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, emotions, problem solving, movement, orientation, recognition, perception of stimuli, visual processing, perception, recognition of auditory stimuli, memory, and speech?


Innate personality tests: do they exist? If not, why?

A useful model for topics like this comes from McCrae and Costa (1999):

There's quite a lot more going on here than is pertinent to your question, but note that influences originate from biological bases on the top left, and from external influences on the upper right. Everything else is modeled as an effect of mediated, dynamic processes between these two...except basic tendencies. McCrae and Costa's theory claims that "basic tendencies" such as the Big Five are in fact those aspects of innate personality you'd probably want to test: truly innate, and separable from external influences. However, McCrae and Costa (2003) themselves had to back off of this claim somewhat and present a more qualified model, so the goal remains elusive by practically all accounts.

Behavioral genetics is making a lot of progress in sorting out what's definitionally innate, but there's a lot of progress left to make. Half of the progress is in discovering the complexities that explain why simpler theories don't work as often as we'd like. Dealing with those complexities is another matter in itself. I agree that tests of genetic factors that influence behavior are very valuable, and far too few at present, but we're definitely working on it.

Another approach that's making a lot of progress on the experiential side is cross-cultural psychology. The story is much the same as with behavioral genetics: our access to the methods for investigating these influences is growing rapidly, hence so are our understandings of both the questions and answers. Ask again in another decade and we'll have much more to tell you than we do right now.

@Ana raises a great point that complicates matters quite a bit: gene-environment interaction. So much of who we're born as determines how we interact with our parents, and whether we choose to be like them or different. Choices of identity thus reflect both our genetic heritage and our environmental interactions. Genetic influences even affect whether we experience given stimuli as positive or negative, and then go on to influence how we choose to react. Over time, it becomes very difficult to separate environmental influences from innate influences, because our choices shape who we are, and our identities become innate in many ways too. Another useful term in this vein of theory is reciprocal determinism, which refers to this sort of bidirectional causality we see between innate and environmental factors in development.

In my limited experience teaching on these topics, I've found some particular examples of reciprocal determinism especially illustrative of both the complexity of the problem and the degree of progress we've made. Two worth offering here are as follows:

Monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) is sensitive to genetic variation that decreases its concentration in the body. MAO-A deficiency increases stress vulnerability (or diathesis: see another answer of mine for another example of the diathesis-stress model) in terms of the likelihood of aggressive maladaptation (Brunner, Nelen, Breakefield, Ropers, & van Oost, 1993). In children born with the gene that leads to MAO-A deficiency, a stressful environment such as one involving child abuse will be very likely to cause antisocial behavior in those children later in their lives, whereas children without MAO-A deficiencies tend to withstand such stressful environments better (Caspi et al., 2002). Furthermore, aggressive tendencies are much more similar regardless of MAO-A levels when childhood environments aren't so stressful. Thus one could test for the relevant gene to identify an innate vulnerability to aggressive maladaptation, but whether a person with genetic risk would see that risk realized would remain to be determined by the environment.
Genetic variation may also determine the environment at a cultural level to some extent. This is where the worlds of behavioral genetics and cross-cultural psychology play very well together. An example of why we really need tons of research in both and cross-pollination between their respective theories arises in the "A118G single nucleotide polymorphism of the mu-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1)," which, first of all, relates to pain sensitivity (Fillingim et al., 2005). The global cultural relevance emerges clearly in this figure (Way & Lieberman, 2010):

Bear in mind that this is correlational evidence though; hence it's also worth considering whether cultures in these areas could've selected certain alleles like A118G over the course of history. A great many factors powerfully influence cultures besides genes, after all (Diamond, 1998; see for a book review Venkatachalam, 2001).
The 5-HTTLPR gene may relate to innate tendencies toward anxiety, but doesn't seem to relate consistently (Ebstein, 2006). Culture may have something to do with this (Chiao & Blizinsky, 2009):

Top left: collectivism (vs. individualism), from low in yellow to high in red
Top right: frequency of the anxiety-prone allele of 5-HTTLPR
Bottom left and right: prevalence of anxiety and mood disorders, respectively

These maps demonstrate that despite the much higher genetic vulnerability to anxiety in China vs. USA (top right), anxiety and mood disorders appear to have much lower prevalences there than here (speaking as an American myself; see the bottom two maps). Chiao and Blizinsky argue that the higher genetic vulnerability to anxiety in China might've led to a collectivist culture there through a coevolutionary process of cultural adaptation to an ethnically linked genetic predisposition. It's an interesting argument that these innate factors could actually lead to such a strong compensatory shift in culture that the innate influence would be not only dwarfed, but reversed. As to whether that's a falsifiable theory, on the other hand...You'd probably want to read and judge for yourself; I get a little fuzzy on the details here. I suppose I make a decent example of how hard it is to keep up with theoretical advances like these though.

Aside from all that, understanding how personality develops is tricky enough already without trying to separate genetic from environmental factors. There's a rich history of debate on the degree to which stable personalities even exist, and the general consensus now is that they do, but reaching this conclusion took a lot of work (see the person–situation debate), much of which is far from settled in the details. Personality does change over time, but subtly, and with resistance – a useful simile is that personality sets like plaster over time (Srivastava, John, Gosling, & Potter, 2003).

References

- Brunner, H. G., Nelen, M., Breakefield, X. O., Ropers, H. H., & Van Oost, B. A. (1993). Abnormal behavior associated with a point mutation in the structural gene for monoamine oxidase A. Science, 262(5133), 578–580. Retrieved from http://www.bioforensics.com/conference07/DNA_and_behavior/Abnormal_behavior.pdf.
- Caspi, A., McClay, J., Moffitt, T. E., Mill, J., Martin, J., Craig, I. W., Taylor, A., & Poulton, R. (2002). Role of genotype in the cycle of violence in maltreated children. Science, 297(5582), 851–854. Retrieved from http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/uploads/documents/Caspi1.pdf.
- Chiao, J. Y., & Blizinsky, K. D. (2010). Culture–gene coevolution of individualism–collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277(1681), 529–537. Retrieved from http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1681/529.full.html.
- Diamond, J. M. (1998). Guns, germs and steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. Random House.
- Ebstein, R. P. (2006). The molecular genetic architecture of human personality: beyond self-report questionnaires. Molecular Psychiatry, 11(5): 427–445. Retrieved from www.nature.com/mp/journal/v11/n5/full/4001814a.html.
- Fillingim, R. B., Kaplan, L., Staud, R., Ness, T. J., Glover, T. L., Campbell, C. M., ... & Wallace, M. R. (2005). The A118G single nucleotide polymorphism of the μ-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1) is associated with pressure pain sensitivity in humans. The Journal of Pain, 6(3), 159–167.
- McCrae, R. R., & Costa Jr, P. T. (1999). A five-factor theory of personality. Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research, 2, 139–153.
- McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (2003). Personality in adulthood: A five-factor theory perspective. Guilford Press.
- Srivastava, S., John, O. P., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2003). Development of personality in early and middle adulthood: set like plaster or persistent change? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(5), 1041–1053. Retrieved from http://j.b5z.net/i/u/2043019/i/PersonalityDevelopmentInAdults.pdf.
- Venkatachalam, S. (2001). Guns, germs and steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. Resonance, 84–88. Retrieved from http://www.ias.ac.in/resonance/Volumes/06/01/0084-0088.pdf.
- Way, B. M., & Lieberman, M. D. (2010). Is there a genetic contribution to cultural differences? Collectivism, individualism and genetic markers of social sensitivity. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 5(2–3), 203–211. Retrieved from http://www.replicatedtypo.com/science/genetic-components-and-cultural-differences-the-social-sensitivity-hypothesis/1620/.


Bullis, at al. (2019) tackled this very question this month, and outlined criteria to determine what an emotional disorder is:

The disorder is characterised by the experience of frequent and intense negative emotions;
There is an aversive reaction to the emotional experience itself that is driven by the individual's diminished sense of control and negative appraisal of the emotion; and
The individual engages in efforts to dampen, escape, or avoid the emotional experience, either preemptively or in reaction to the onset of a negative emotional state.

The paper also expands on each of the criteria and pointed out in the summary that

these criteria would only be considered an emotional disorder if the associated distress and functional impairment were chronic and significant. [emphasis mine]

The term chronic is well defined within the fields of medicine and mental health, but the question now arises as to how significant is significant in order to say that the criteria can be considered?
References
Bullis, J. R., Boettcher, H., Sauer‐Zavala, S., & Barlow, D. H. (2019). What is an emotional disorder? A transdiagnostic mechanistic definition with implications for assessment, treatment, and prevention. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, e12278. doi: 10.1111/cpsp.12278


What is an explaination for the light-headed and slow-motion feeling after a long hard mental exam?

The brain fuel is glucose, the long hard mental exam consumes most glucose available, and the result is poor cognitive function.

  Glucose, a form of sugar, is the primary source of energy for every
  cell in the body. Because the brain is so rich in nerve cells, or
  neurons, it is the most energy-demanding organ, using one-half of all
  the sugar energy in the body.

  Brain functions such as thinking, memory, and learning are closely
  linked to glucose levels and how efficiently the brain uses this fuel
  source. If there isn’t enough glucose in the brain, for example,
  neurotransmitters, the brain’s chemical messengers, are not produced
  and communication between neurons breaks down. In addition,
  hypoglycemia, a common complication of diabetes caused by low glucose
  levels in the blood, can lead to loss of energy for brain function and
  is linked to poor attention and cognitive function.

Mental effort drops glucose levels as reported by the study Mental effort, blood glucose and performance, below an extract :

  Work from our group and elsewhere has explored the link between blood
  glucose and cognitive performance.Here data are presented showing that
  a high level of mental effort is associated with a measurable drop in
  blood glucose levels. ‘Mental effort’ describes situations where energy
  is mobilised to meet cognitive goals. Reduced blood glucose has been
  reported in a number of such circumstances, including where
  computational demands of a task are relatively high (e.g. Serial
  Subtractions), during high processing loads (e.g. the Bakan task) and
  during response inhibition (e.g. the Stroop word-colour task).


Type of Cognitive Bias where someone continues to justify their suffering

What you're talking about I believe is psychological rationalization.

In psychology and logic, rationalization or rationalization is a defense mechanism in which controversial behaviors or feelings are justified and explained in a seemingly rational or logical manner to avoid the true explanation, and are made consciously tolerable—or even admirable and superior—by plausible means.[1] It is also an informal fallacy of reasoning.[2]
Rationalization happens in two steps:
A decision, action, judgement is made for a given reason, or no (known) >reason at all.
A rationalization is performed, constructing a seemingly good or logical >reason, as an attempt to justify the act after the fact (for oneself or others).
Rationalization encourages irrational or unacceptable behavior, motives, or feelings and often involves ad hoc hypothesizing. This process ranges from fully conscious (e.g. to present an external defense against ridicule from others) to mostly unconscious (e.g. to create a block against internal feelings of guilt or shame). People rationalize for various reasons—sometimes when we think we know ourselves better than we do. Rationalization may differentiate the original deterministic explanation of the behavior or feeling in question.[3][4]
It is important to put emphasis on the notion that rationalization is >exclusively a defense mechanism; as such, it must be a denial of an >idea.[citation needed] Many conclusions individuals come to do not fall under the >definition of rationalization as the term is denoted above.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology)


How to advise a high school student about choosing a university to study psychology?

Psychology can be roughly summarised as the study of human behaviour. To figure out where your interest lies in the field, you have to figure what aspect of human behaviour you want to understand and how you want to understand it.

Do you want to know:

How people solve problems? That’s Cognitive Psychology.
How we can model how people solve problems with a computer? That’s Cognitive Modelling.
etc…

There are a lot of fields and they aren’t mutually exclusive. To get started, you may want to browse the tags of this site or look at the Wikipedia outline of the Psychology topic.

Side note: Wanting to help people isn't the best reason to want to study psychology. There a much more effective ways of reducing suffering in the world. See 80,000 Hours for further information.


How does a human classify or cluster data?

Here is an article written on a study on the measured effects of blood flow in the brain from "two hours of movie trailers that contained over 1,700 categories of actions and objects". A video (attached in the article) describes the methods used and the results of the study. They found that the brain tended to categorize things that shared similar functions or is-a relationships. This can be seen in the resulting chart, where the nodes representing "mammals", "people" and "communication verbs" are closely related. The brain also seemed to separate things that moved or were considered to be alive and inanimate objects.

This study was done using only 5 participants so it's fair to say that more research needs to be done before we can uncover more of the truth concerning this topic.

To answer your second question, regarding how information is stored in the brain, we need to understand a process called "encoding". I don't fully understand how this process works on a biological level, but as a gross explanation the brain stores sensory information it deems important and then goes through a secondary process called "consolidation". This process aims to stabilize the trace of a memory after it is initially encoded. The final process, "retrieval" is the act of remembering the information. During this stage the brain reconstructs the memory or information and thereby strengthens the neural pathway that makes up that memory.

So in short, the brain stores information through complex neural connections. These neural connections are tied to the sensory information that was initially perceived, which is reconstructed when you remember it.

Hope I was able to clear up some of your questions :)


The source of the image (which also appears here, here, and here) is the Walter Schneider lab at the University of Pittsburgh. They have a webpage about an episode of 60 Minutes that featured their research (including high density fiber tracking of Temple Grandin's brain) related to Grandin's book, The Autistic Brain. The images can be found under FAQ #5 ("You did an HDFT map of Temple Grandin’s brain – what did you see and what did you conclude?"): http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/schneiderlab/content/60-minutes-20120716.asp.

The webpage is also available in PDF form here, where page 4 is identical to the graphic you posted: http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/schneiderlab/documents/TBI_early_draft_HDFT_FAQ_April_30_2013_Schneider_Lab_U_Pittsburgh.pdf.

(Fyi, I just found the source by searching for the caption text in Google.)


Any research backing alpha waves and impact on subconscious mind

For anyone interested, I believe to have found one such published article: Hypnotic Susceptibility increased by EEG Alpha Training by DAVID R. ENGSTROM, PERRY LONDON & JOSEPH T. HART.

In the article, they describe the correlation between hypnotic susceptibility and alpha waves. Here is one of the relevant lines:

  Results were analysed by correlation techniques and by analysis of variance and covariance. They indicate that hypnotic susceptibility and operant alpha rhythm are positively related both before and after the subjects received alpha training.


Neuronal differences of linguistic statements

Your question reduces to "what are the neural mechanisms behind language?", which is very much a work in progress.

The only neural model of language that I currently know of is the Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA), which is largely theoretical and only has some super basic examples.

Basically, the SPA represents language as vector manipulation. The vectors are represented in neurons using the Neural Engineering Framework.

For more details on how this is done, check out "How to Build a Brain" by Chris Eliasmith and the work by Peter Blouw who is trying to solve part of this problem with his PhD thesis.


Which areas of the brain make up the brain stem?

The brain stem comprises the medulla, the pons and the midbrain, according to Kandel's extremely authoritative Principles of Neural Science. This is equivalent to the midbrain and the hindbrain minus the cerebellum, which is probably where the confusion stems from.

  Kandel, E. R., Schwartz, J. H., & Jessell, T. M. (Eds.). (2000). Principles of neural science (Vol. 4, pp. 1227-1246). New York: McGraw-Hill.