How is brain processing different for situation-less vs. situated emotional faces?

Alright, it's high time I actually answer this question.  Beatrice de Gelder and crew published two papers that examined this with fMRI (here) and EEG (here).

fMRI study

In the fMRI study, they presented participants with emotional faces against threatening and neutral backgrounds, with various controls (a triangle, a scrambled background).

The results are kind of complex and lengthy, so I'll quote the authors' summary:

  [W]e found no evidence of brain areas responding more to faces in a threatening background than to faces in a neutral background […]. On the other hand, the sgACC and right anterior PPA responded more to neutral than to threatening backgrounds surrounding faces […]. Additionally, the results show that while similar background effects also obtain on bodies in the right anterior PPA, the effect in sgACC is face-specific and furthermore correlates with empathic ability: higher empathy scores are related to smaller background effects on faces.

They suggest that activation of the sgACC represents mentalizing processes. Faces in a neutral background might make participants attribute certain thoughts to the figures ("What is he thinking?").  On the other hand, faces against a threatening background might elicit "orienting responses" (e.g., "What is going on?").

The right anterior PPA is involved in topographic processing, which may be inhibited by the presence of a face. Inhibition may be greater for threatening vs. neutral scenes.

The left FG was also active, which may be involved in "processing the affective face-context congruency."

EEG study

The goal of the EEG study was to examine the temporal dynamics of perceiving discrete emotions against complex, affective scenes.

Again, the results are relatively complex, so I'll quote the abstract:

  Fear perception elicited significant activity at the earliest time segments, followed by disgust, happiness, and sadness.  Moreover, fear, disgust, and happiness were characterized by two time segments of significant activity, whereas sadness showed only one long-latency time segment of activity.

Above (the yellow part) you can see how emotions are not represented continuously in the brain across time and how the type of emotion being processed may be differentiable.

They also attempted to localize the temporal activity in the brain, and they found widely distributed activity for fear (mostly RH), disgust (mostly RH), and happiness (mostly LH), and more limited activation for sadness. For example, see the results for fear>neutral localization below:

However, no brain area was unique to the perception of a specific emotion. Instead, there was lots of overlapping brain activity (which supports a constructionist approach to emotions).

Overall, I'm not sure either of these studies satisfactorily elucidate how we perceive emotional faces in different scenes, but they're a great start.


What transient factors affect performance on IQ tests?

I had a course which was about IQ; I never read an article about it, so I can't quote studies (I can look up the references if you like).

There are indeed a lot of factors that can influence ones score on an IQ test. These are some transient factors that came to my mind:

The setting: was the test taken at home, at school, at a totally unfamiliar place? Test scores tend to be higher when a child can take it at home.
The part of the day: was the test taken in the morning, in the afternoon, or in the evening? I think (I should look this up) that scores tend to be lower if IQ tests are taken in the evening. Perhaps if you're a morning type, you're better in the morning than 'evening people', who are better in the afternoon than in the morning. But this is speculation (I know I've read something about it, but I can't seem to find it now).
Motivation/Attention: this really can play a big role in the results. That's why good tests (e.g. the WISC) have a zone for remarks. Children with ADHD score better when they are given more pauses during the examination.
Hormones: there is some evidence that there's a hormonal influence (testosteron, estrogen, congenital adrenal hyperplasia).
Test taking anxiety: this can indeed influence the score negatively. It's important that the test leader says 'good job' or something like that. Normally, this isn't according to the guidelines of the test, but it's acceptable here, since you would underestimate the ability.


What's the human behaviour called that often makes us warp realities to appease another?

This is called optimism bias:

  ... a tendency for people to overestimate their likelihood of
  experiencing a wide variety of pleasant events, such as enjoying their
  first job or having a gifted child, and somewhat underestimate their
  risk of succumbing to negative events, such as getting divorced or
  falling victim to a chronic disease.

Optimism bias is a type of self-enhancement:

  ... a preference for positive over negative self-views.

and positive illusions:

  ... unrealistically favorable attitudes that people have towards
  themselves or to people that are close to them.


Models of barriers to "Flow" (being in "the zone")

The model is mindfulness.

There are three options:

You can focus on the negative
You can focus on the positive
You can focus


Phenomenon that causes music to sound like it's being played at a different tempo than remembered?

Vitouch et. al (2006) observed that "visual tempo significantly influenced
the retrieved music tempo.".

  Music is known to potentially affect the perception of visual  scenes
  (e. g., Vitouch, 2001), as proficiently demonstrated  in the movies.
  But do films also influence the perception of  music? This study
  investigates cross-modal influences in  perception, taking influences
  of “visual tempo” on  perceived/retrieved music tempo as a model.

They conclude:

  Both studies demonstrate clear crossover effects: There is  not just
  “musical driving” of film scenes, but also “visual  driving” of music
  perception. Results hint to holistic memory representations of
  audio-visual material.

On the other hand, an older paper by Levitin and Cook (1996) observes that long term memory for music can preserve the absolute tempo, even by non-trained musicians. They do not investigate the influence of visual stimuli as in the previous paper.

  We report evidence that long term memory retains  absolute (accurate)
  features of perceptual events. Specifically, we  show that memory for
  music seems to preserve the absolute tempo  of the musical
  performance. In Experiment 1, 46 subjects sang  popular songs from
  memory, and their tempos were compared to  recorded versions of the
  songs. Seventy-two of the subjects came within  8% of the actual tempo
  on two consecutive trials (using different  songs), demonstrating
  accuracy near the perceptual threshold (JND)  for tempo. In Experiment
  2, a control experiment, we found that  folk songs lacking a tempo
  standard generally have a large variability in tempo; this counters
  arguments that memory for the  tempo of remembered songs is driven by
  articulatory constraints.  The relevance of the current findings to
  theories of perceptual  memory and memory for music are discussed.

Oliver Vitouch, Sandra Sovdat, Norman Höller (2006) Audio-vision: Visual input drives perceived music tempo. 9th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition
Levitin, D. J. & Cook, Perry R.(1996) Memory for musical tempo: Additional evidence that auditory memory is absolute. Perception & Psychophysics, 58, pp. 927-935.


What is the scientific term for unexpected, spontaneous dream recall?

This could be an example of what is termed "involuntary memory" or "involuntary autobiographical memory".  Mainly it is due to subtle and obvious prompts.


Do we learn to improve our working memory capacity without sitting WM tests?

I'm not a psychologist so be cautious about drawing conclusions from what I say.
Education can teach us to use our working memory more effectively by:

Learning how to do better chunking (which sometimes comes at a cost of time and effort spent on recall and on creating the chunk, but this can be improved with practice).

Using our strongest domain(s) when appropriate, taking into account our capacity and "chunking skills" in each domain.

According to this answer:

The evidence for domain-specific modalities is largely based on the (lack of otherwise expected) interference between them.

This means that maybe you could spread your items-to-remember across different domains to use otherwise untapped capacity, and (based on information from the linked answer) the usage order of domains matters.
However, since some (if not all) of these methods come at a cost and require conscious effort, the advantages of remembering more this way are limited and not equivalent to increasing your actual working memory capacity.
Examples:
Remembering a number by the pattern it draws on a phone's unlock screen.
Remembering a shopping list by imagining a set of (memorable, ridiculous) images where each image includes 2 items, one of which is also included in the next image (1st image: items 1 and 2, 2nd image: items 2 and 3, and so on). Then you can recall the first image, and recall each next image by asking what other image included an item from the current image. This is a good example of how verbal/auditory memory isn't always the best choice for remembering a list, unless your visual memory is much worse.
Remembering a number by recognizing (mathematical or other) patterns in it, so you can reconstruct the number (or part of it) from these patterns.

While you didn't ask for "brain training techniques", training is part of learning, if you want to become educated on how to use your working memory more effectively, you will need to practice the methods and see them in action, and they involve using skills that will improve with more practice.
For more information, read about methods of memory champions - people who manage to quickly memorize many things, such as card decks, long numbers and speeches. Their methods can be used by anyone, you don't have to be an exceptional person to be able to do impressive things with your memory, I tried it myself and was surprized at how well and how easily it worked for me.


Is Type A personality and being an alpha (male) the same thing?

There's a lot of overlap between the two's personality types but not quite the same.  Type A personality is genderless and refers to someone generally meticulous on details and likes to take charge.
Alpha male is a term that was misunderstood and later overturned based on pack behaviors of wolves.  The researcher who coined the term 'alpha' as a leader later came out and said his own research was misunderstood and somewhat debunked, in that alphas are not leaders all the time and doesn't mean to take charge of things all the time.


How effective is the  NLP Reverse Movie Technique in dealing with traumatic experiences?

The Reverse Movie Technique (RMT) is a particular form of what is sometimes called exposure therapy, or prolonged exposure therapy or imaginal exposure therapy. It seems like "Reverse Memory Technique" is a niche term that isn't used in the scientific literature (e.g., 0 hits on Google Scholar). So, if you are wanting to get a scientific answer to your question, I'd check out the literature on "imaginal exposure therapy" (195 hits at time of posting) or imaginal exposure therapy without quotations.

More generally, there are a few links in the Wikipedia PTSD article to evaluations of psychotherapeutic interventions.

To take one example of evaluation research, Taylor et al (2003) compared the efficacy of exposure therapy, EMDR and relaxation training on 60 participants with long term PTSD. They found all three techniques were effective when comparing pre- and post- intervention scores, although for some symptoms (i.e., reexperiencing and avoidance symptoms) exposure therapy was more effective.
You might also find the literature review in the article useful.

References

Taylor, S., Thordarson, D., Maxfield, L., Fedoroff, I., Lovell, K., and
Ogrodniczuk, J. (2003). Comparative efficacy, speed, and adverse effects
of three ptsd treatments: Exposure therapy, emdr, and relaxation
training. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 71(2):330.
FREE PDF

Note that this is not my area of expertise, so anyone reading this, don't see it as clinical advice.


Is there any disease that prevents a person from being angry?

Short answer
Brain damage is typically associated with increased expression of anger and aggressive behavior. I wasn't able to find any paper reporting lack of anger expression after brain damage. Great question!

Background
Assuming you are after symptoms associated with brain damage, I have put my efforts into writing up an answer on brain trauma and anger. To strat with your example of the amygdala - indeed, removal of the amygdala (amygdalectomy) has been used to treat extreme feelings fear. Damage to the amygdala reults in deficits in facial emotion recognition. Specifically they have impaired recognition of expressions of fear and guilt and trustworthiness. These findings suggest that the amygdala has a critical role in face emotion processing (Elliott et al., 2011).

Anger is thought to be mediated by the medial amygdaloidal areas that connect to the medial hypothalamus via the stria terminalis, and from there to the dorsal half of the periaqueductal gray. Aggression (the expression of anger) evoked by stimulation of the amygdala is dependent on the functional integrity of the medial hypothalamus and the periaqueductal gray. However, aggression evoked by stimulation of the periaqueductal gray is not dependent on the functional integrity of the amygdala. The amygdala-hypothalamus-periaqueductal gray is thought to mediate reactive aggression (Blair, 2013).

Hence, it seems that a likely candidate for the obliteration of feelings of anger is the periaqueductal gray. Does damage or removal of this structure reduces feelings of anger? Lesions in this area of the brain have been associated with loss of speech in humans (Esposito et al, 1999), reduced fear in rats (Lonstein & Stern, 1997), and upon complete destruction it resulted in a limp inertness in cats (Bailey & Davis, 1943). The Lonstein & Stern (1997) paper reports that

  [Periaqueductal gray] lesioned rats attacked a strange male twice as often as controls did, which is suggestive of reduced fearfulness. These results extend the known roles of the PAG [periaqueductal gray] in [] defensive behaviors.

Hence, removal of PAG actually increases aggressive behavior (reduces fear), rather than decreasing aggressive behavior!

In all, I wasn't able to find any study that reports on brain damage that results in a reduction of anger expression. Indeed, brain damage is often related to increased feelings of anger and there the track record is extensive

References
- Bailey & Davis, *Proc Soc Exp Biol Med (1942); 51: 305-6
- Blair, Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci (2012); 3(1): 65–74
- Elliott et al., Neuropsychopharmacology (2011); 36(1): 153–82
- Esposito et all., NeuroReport (1999); 10(4): 681–5
- Lonstein & Stern, J Neurosci (1997); 17(9): 3364-78


Where can I find recent research on the role of context effect in perception of similarity?

A classic reference in this space is Goodman (1972) "Problems and projects", which develops exactly this idea that similarity is poorly defined unless you specify in what respect. From your description, you might also enjoy Barsalou's (1983) "Ad-hoc categories", which emphasizes how much coherent groupings depend on context. These are not exactly recent, but you should turn up some relevant stuff by looking for recent papers that cite these.

There are a few different lines of work building on Tversky's results. The most prominent problem with that account is the combinatorial explosion you get out of conjunctive features. The relations between features are also important to people, but considering relations as just another kind of feature explodes the number of features you have to consider in an utterly horrifying way.

Probably the most direct solution is to consider structured representations that assign roles to features and judge similarity by the goodness-of-fit of a mapping between these structured representations. If you had to pick one entry-point to this literature, it'd probably be Gentner & Markman (1997). "Structure mapping in analogy and similarity", but again, if you look for work citing this you'll get stuff up to this year, it's an ongoing project. Goldstone has also done a bunch of work in this area, check out Goldstone & Son (2005). "Similarity" in the Oxford handbook of thinking and reasoning for a nice review.

That's probably the most popular/well known approach, but these folks are not the only game in town. There's a more or less independent angle of attack from people interested in Bayesian property induction. Try Tenenbaum, J. B., & Griffiths, T. L. (2001). "Generalization, similarity, and Bayesian inference." This is a BBS paper, so you'll see commentary from all kinds of positions there. Again, search-citing-articles is your friend for the most recent work in this line.

Getting more out into the fringes (where the really fun stuff happens) you could also consider things like transformational similarity (Hahn, U., Chater, N., & Richardson, L. B. (2003). "Similarity as transformation") or the quantum cognition account (Pothos, E. M., Busemeyer, J. R., & Trueblood, J. S. (2013). "A quantum geometric model of similarity"). Don't be turned off by the word 'quantum', the math is quantum but these folks have their feet firmly on the ground. I think you'll enjoy the intro section to this paper, it's the most recent and engages most directly with the idea of context and frames of reference.

Hope this is the kind of thing you were after!

Full refs:

Goodman, N. (1972). Problems and projects.

Barsalou, L. W. (1983). Ad hoc categories. Memory & cognition, 11(3), 211-227.

Gentner, D., & Markman, A. B. (1997). Structure mapping in analogy and similarity. American psychologist, 52(1), 45.

Goldstone, R. L., & Son, J. Y. (2005). Similarity. In The Oxford handbook of thinking and reasoning.

Tenenbaum, J. B., & Griffiths, T. L. (2001). Generalization, similarity, and Bayesian inference. Behavioral and brain sciences, 24(4), 629-640.

Hahn, U., Chater, N., & Richardson, L. B. (2003). Similarity as transformation. Cognition, 87(1), 1-32.

Pothos, E. M., Busemeyer, J. R., & Trueblood, J. S. (2013). A quantum geometric model of similarity. Psychological Review, 120(3), 679.


On what basis do professionals who recognize gender dysphoria support risky and permanent medical intervention for those seeking gender re-assignment?

I hope I am qualified to answer this question. I am not a psychologist but have worked with transgender persons in volunteering positions a number of times and am fairly well researched on the topic.

The biggest key point as I have studied simply is based on health outcomes as opposed to comparing this to mental illness.

This page talks about the practical health outcomes of the treatments. Individuals who identify as transgender already often suffer from a variety of issues that reduce both their quality of life and in some cases health. These can include developing mental disorders if they do not get treatment and even self harm or suicide. Overall most of the linked studies in that article showed that the benefits largely outweighed the risks in an overall health decision.

Now you imply that other treatments are used for most conditions which have effects on mental health, usually either "talking cures" or medications. The difference being in almost all cases these treatments are ineffective or even make the situation worse in transgender individuals.

I cannot find a study to link to this which is publicly available right now but in short, treating transgender individuals with treatments used for mental illness usually makes the condition worse. In many cases it causes additional depressive disorders to form as well as long term self image problems and self hatred, as well as increasing the risks of self harm or suicide.

So in summary, it is not to say the treatments used for transgender persons are risk free, but merely that they are better than the alternatives both of doing nothing and of trying to use a purely psychiatric method to treat. As both of those tend to make the condition gradually worse and no other treatments are known which produce a consistent improvement.


What are the correlations between HEXACO and NEO-PI factors?

Based on n = 290, I found this correlation matrix in Gaughan et al (2012) (I think the adjusted R-squareds are for regression models predicting domain scores from the domains of the other measure; e.g., 50% of variance in honesty-humility was predicted by the five NEO domain scores).

Summarising these correlations, focusing on the HEXACO:

Honesty-humility is most closely related to agreeableness but is not the same
Emotionality is related to neuroticism, but also quite distinct the correlation is much weaker than would be required to argue it is a similar construct.
Extraversion is mostly the same in both models, but hexaco extraversion seems to be more related to neuroticism (-) than NEO neuroticism.
Agreeableness (HEXACO) is moderately related to NEO agreeableness, but there are clearly differences. HEXACO  agreeableness also has a notable correlation with neuroticism (-).
Conscientiousness is mostly the same in both models.
Openness is similar in both models, but not massive.

Focusing on the NEO

Neuroticism is distributed across hexaco emotioanlity, extraversion, and agreeableness

So in summary

HEXACO Extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness can probably be related to a similar interpretative framework as the NEO/Big 5 literature.
Relating HEXACO to NEO agreeableness and neuroticism is difficult. Using emotionality as a proxy for neuroticism is definitely problematic.

Another empirical study

Here was another study I found in Ashton et al (2014) using Big 5 markers.

Correlations between honesty-humility and agreeableness were not as strong as above. Also, the negative correlation between neuroticism and extraversion was much smaller.

How it is discussed in a paper

I found this paragraph from Dunlop et al (2016) to be a good quick summary of the differences:

  Within the HEXACO model, the Openness, Extraversion, and
  Conscientiousness factors generally correspond to their Big Five
  counterparts. The Emotionality and Agreeableness factors of the HEXACO
  represent rotational variants of Neuroticism and Agreeableness in the
  Big Five. However, the most prominent difference between the HEXACO
  and Five Factor model is the addition of the HEXACO Honesty-Humility
  factor ... (Ashton & Lee, 2007; Ashton, Lee, & de Vries, 2014).

References

Gaughan, E. T., Miller, J. D., & Lynam, D. R. (2012). Examining the utility of general models of personality in the study of psychopathy: A comparison of the HEXACO-PI-R and NEO PI-R. Journal of personality disorders, 26(4), 513.
Dunlop, P. D., Bourdage, J. S., de Vries, R. E., Hilbig, B. E., Zettler, I., & Ludeke, S. G. (2016). Openness to (reporting) experiences that we never had: Overclaiming as an outcome of the knowledge accumulated through a proclivity for cognitive and aesthetic exploration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Ashton, M. C., Lee, K., & de Vries, R. E. (2014). The HEXACO honesty-humility, agreeableness, and emotionality factors a review of research and theory. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18(2), 139-152.


What is the meaningful difference between someone with a 145 IQ compared to a 100 IQ?

As a general note, precision in measurement of intelligence declines as you move to more extreme levels. There is greater uncertainty in measurement in the 145 range than there is at the 100 range. Norm samples get smaller, and most measures of intelligence are designed for the normal range.

Categories: You might find the article on IQ classification useful.
The article discusses a wide range of ways to give verbal labels to IQ scores.
For example, the following categories would put a 145 IQ person above "very superior" intelligence.

Statistical interpretations:
You correctly note that 145 represents 3 standard deviations above the mean.
If you assume a normal distribution and no measurement error, IQ 100 means you are more intelligent than 50% of the population, and an IQ of 145 means you are more intelligent than 99.9% of the population. Or to put another way, 1 in 2 people have an IQ greater than 100, and roughly 1 in 750 people have an IQ of greater than 145.

Intuition: If you went to a large representative high school (say with 500 to 1000 students), you might think of the typical student as your 100 IQ student, and the smartest kid in school as possibly being in the 145 ball park.

Another way to get some intuition is to think about the typical range IQs for various professions. As you see below, even for professions with the most intelligent people are still typically well below 145.

http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/occupations.aspx


How does this experiment prove a causal relation between coherence and good feelings?

This excerpt refers to an experiment described in Topolinski & Strack (2009) and Topolinski & Strack (2009), and is part of a series of experiments that used a variety of different methods to demonstrate the causal relation between affect and coherence, of which only 1 is described above, so even if it isn't convincing by itself, a lot of additional evidence would need to be questioned to thwart the conclusion.

This particular experiment uses a popular paradigm developed by Schwarz & Clore (1983) (which in turn is based on a previous experiment by Zanna & Cooper (1974); for reviews see Schwarz & Clore (1988), Schwarz & Clore (1996), Schwarz (2012), and Wikipedia), that has been used many times to demonstrate a causal relation between affective experience and intuition or metacognition.  The premise behind this experimental paradigm is that once an affective experience is attributed to a particular cause, it is no longer used as information for subsequent judgments.  This assumption has been demonstrated in many experiments, but contrast it with Payne et al (2005) and Allen et al (1989) who report that attempts to correct misattribution failed in their studies, suggesting that affective experience information can be reused in some circumstances.  Luckily, this latter possibility does not impact the experiment in question.

The authors of this experiment propose a detailed mechanism for how subjects make judgments of coherence: As the word triad is read, the processing fluency (cognitive ease, or the rate that the words are processed) causes an affective response (subtle smiling reaction), that subjects become aware of, and attribute to subsequent intuitive judgments (such as coherence).

This particular experiment tests the hypothesis by manipulating subjects to misattribute the affective response (to background music).  Thus, if affect does not inform coherence judgments, then misattributing it to another source should have no effect on results.  On the other hand, if affect does cause coherence judgments, then attributing affective response to another cause should eliminate it as a source of information for coherence judgments, resulting in poorer performance.  The control group listened to the same music, and was also directed to misattribute something to it, but it was fluency rather than affect.

The results of the experiment indeed demonstrated that once subjects reattribute positive affect to background music, they no longer use it for coherence judgments, and this results in a significant reduction of correct responses, leading to the conclusion that affect is an important indicator (cause) of coherence.


Regarding the mind and what it can affect

The question that you are referring to is worded in a way that I think is leading to the confusion. The question in the title is "Can the mind affect the brain?" but in the question body the final question posed is "Does [a thought producing a tear] not contradict the (physical) law of cause and effect?".

The answer is yes to the title question: the mind can affect the brain. The answer is no to the question posed in the body: it is not a contradiction of the law of cause and effect because the mind is a physical entity.

So you are exactly right, that the two are mutually interactive.


Teaching Problem Solving : Mastering bit by bit Vs Try it all by yourself?

There are two theoretical constructions that may be of use to you:

Scaffolding

  "...what the child is able to do in collaboration today he will be able to do independently tomorrow" -Vygotsky

You are right to graduate the level of difficulty of problems the students encounter. Intuitively, a student has before her a level of task which, although perhaps within her reach, nonetheless is difficult and, as such, allows students to develop their skills by doing tasks at this level.

Lev Vygotsky, a soviet psychologist who stressed the role of play in learning (a perspective which is particularly germane to problem solving skills, which rely on an organic schematisation of knowledge and approaches- relational understanding), codified this intuition in the formal notion of The Zone Of Proximal Development. In the ZPD, we have the tools to play with the problems we face, and will organically develop the skills to solve similar problems- and, as with our intuitive version, this is where the best learning takes place.

The crucial thing about the ZPD, however, as distinct from our intuitive construction, is that tasks in the learner's ZPD are tasks that the student requires assistance to solve. In this handy diagram from wikipedia, the ZPD is represented by the middle circle.

A psychologist named Jerome Bruner went on to analyse the kinds of "assistance" or scaffolding needed in the ZPD- support frameworks which aid the student in tackling the task on her own (not, it must be noted, merely doing half the work- cf. BenCole's remark).

Quoting from Wiki's Promoting better learning: scaffolding:

  Effective learning environments use instructional scaffolding to aid the student in his/her construction of new knowledge.
  Avoid telling the learner exactly how to accomplish the task; do not solve the problem for the learner. This may help the learner
  immediately, but it hinders the learning process.
  It is important to promote better learning by helping the learner achieve his/her learning goal through the use of instructional
  scaffolding. The use of scaffolding helps the learner to actively
  build and construct new knowledge.

To elucidate the whole Scaffolding theory in the abstract would take time, so I'll leave concrete recommendations for later and link the relevant wikipedia page, if you're curious.

Metacognition

  "Students can learn to think better if schools concentrate on teaching them how to do so"- Presseisen

Thinking about thinking has almost become a cliche in modern british education (and, I suspect, further afield!), but it is with good reason. The process of deliberating on strategies and approaches to to problems, including attitudes and emotional responses, called metacognition is invaluable both to problem solving and to learning in general.

It is what separates a boy who makes a mental list of all of his 'tools' and selects the best for the job, and the boy with the hammer ready to hand, to whom everything looks like a nail. It is what separates the girl for whom failure is a miasma to sulk in, and the girl who sees her own misery and changes tack. Incorporating metacognitive elements into pedagogy essential to develop students independent enough to solve problems.

Again, the theory in the abstract is enormous, so here's another wiki page:Metacognition.

Now for some concrete recommendations (these are just what springs to mind right now, I may add to it later):

Incorporate metacognitive maxims into your pedagogy "You're stuck! Excellent- that means you're learning" "If you don't know what to do- make a list" "I like to take a while to plan my mode of attack!" and so on...
Model your internal dialogue in approaching a problem- do this often, and heavily exaggerate every aspect of it
The most effective model for scaffolding is interpersonal- find some TAs!
If not TAs- getting them to work in groups or pairs can mimic this
Getting students to make a list of the tools and equations at their disposal at the start of a given problem
Forcing students to draw a neat, clear diagram
Resources, such as mini whiteboards (students hold up their answers at the end of an allotted time) allow you to tailor your problems to their ZPDs
Make problems manifest in different ways so they can incorporate their intuitions, approaches and playfulness from other spheres
A flow chart or worksheet for approaches to general problems incorporating the above as well as socratic questions (make toolkit, draw picture, is there a general equation? what can we sub into it? etc) can be a real boon
Most importantly, be creative (or at least appear to be so), and your students will show their own creativity- Vygotsky says learning is about play (and, as I've said, this model is certainly apposite to problem solving), you must put them in a playful place any way you can!


How can I fit a psychometric function such that the minimum is 50% (chance level)?

Add 0.5 to the intercept and multiply the sigmoid by 0.5 since it now only spans a y-range half of before:

y = 0.5 + 0.5 / (1 + np.exp(-k*(x-x0)))

Generally, for any chance level:

chance = 0.5  # between 0 and 1
y = chance + (1-chance) / (1 + np.exp(-k*(x-x0)))


Are people able to accurately judge body shape and size from images of the face?

Yes, barring weird instances of swelling that is localised to the face, for example. Evolutionary psychologists argue that facial cues, including adiposity and skin pigmentation, to name but two, serves as a cue for general health. If this argument holds true, it means that humans developed a fine-tuned ability to make quick judgments about someone's fitness to mate based on various factors related to health, of which facial features happens to be a big one. This might also explain why we find highly symmetrical faces more attractive, as facial symmetry is positively correlated with genetic health markers.

Another example is the seemingly robust correlation between testosterone levels and the square jaw that you mentioned. In turn, testosterone and muscle mass are linked. Ao seeing someone with a square jaw, you automatically infer their testosterone levels as well.

Apart from that, there is an obvious correlation between facial adiposity and BMI, which heavily influences judgments about general health and mating preference.

Short answer: You have this ability because it's highly advantageous when it comes to making judgments about choosing good mates.


Any research on brain's processes involved in evil actions?

I too have been studying Zimbardo's work and this area of research is still in its infancy at the moment, so, although those here who are more knowledgeable on neuroscience may be able to correct me if I am wrong, I believe from the lack of information I have seen that it is too early for any conclusive neurological basis to the formation of evil.

Whilst Dr. Philip Zimbardo's work, on the subject is in his book you mentioned — The Lucifer Effect — (Zimbardo, 2007) [See also: lucifereffect.com] there is also has an accompanying video at TED Talks (Zimbardo, 2008).  In this video he highlights the basis of his book.  There are also other similar works by other people.

The whole area of research on evil and heroism started, although not originally to study origins of evil, around 1950 with Solomon Asch and his Conformity experiment known as the Asch Experiment, which led to a further experiment by Stanley Milgram known as the Milgram Experiment.

Asch’s experiment was essentially benign in nature but Stanley Milgram’s experiment had a macabre nature to it.  This made Milgram’s experiment particularly famous after he published his results as it made newspaper headlines and caused many people to sit up and really examine human nature, and the social requirement to conform to peers and authority figures.

  [Stanley Milgram] asked the question, "Could the Holocaust happen here, now?" People say, "No, that's Nazi Germany, Hitler, you know, that's 1939." He said, "Yeah, but suppose Hitler asked you, 'Would you electrocute a stranger?' 'No way, I'm a good person.'" He said, "Why don't we put you in a situation and give you a chance to see what you would do?" (Zimbardo, 2008)

The movie The Wave (2008) was based on teacher Ron Jones's "Third Wave" experiment, which took place at a Californian school in 1967 to explain how the German population could accept the actions of the Nazi regime during the Second World War. Because his students did not understand how something like national socialism could even happen, he founded a totalitarian, strictly-organized "movement" with harsh punishments that was led by him autocratically. The intricate sense of community led to a wave of enthusiasm not only from his own students, but also from students from other classes who joined the program later. Jones later admitted to having enjoyed having his students as followers. To eliminate the upcoming momentum, Jones aborted the project on the fifth day and showed the students the parallels towards the Nazi youth movements.

What is interesting with the Milgram Experiment is that it doesn't seem that the root of evil is always related to the parts of the brain related to empathy.  You cannot just put those who "failed" the test into the category of those who lack empathy because when you watch the 1962 documentary about the experiment on YouTube (PSU, 1962) which showed the experiment in action, an example is at 22 minutes into the documentary, where the "teacher" was showing signs of distress and wanted to check that the "learner" was okay before continuing.  When the "teacher" was told he must continue he reluctantly did so, but he grew more agitated.

Stanley Milgram’s experiment seemed to inspire Dr. Philip Zimbardo with his studies into evil and heroism.  Philip Zimbardo conducted the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 and was an expert witness at Abu Grahib

  I became an expert witness for one of the guards, Sergeant Chip Frederick, and in that position, I had access to the dozen investigative reports. I had access to him. I could study him, have him come to my home, get to know him, do psychological analysis to see, was he a good apple or bad apple.

  ...

  Milgram's study is all about individual authority to control people. Most of the time, we are in institutions, so the Stanford Prison Study is a study of the power of institutions to influence individual behavior. Interestingly, Stanley Milgram and I were in the same high school class in James Monroe in the Bronx, 1954. (Zimbardo, 2008)

With his work, Dr. Philip Zimbardo came to the following psychological definition of evil:

  Evil is the exercise of power. And that's the key: it's about power. To intentionally harm people psychologically, to hurt people physically, to destroy people mortally, or ideas, and to commit crimes against humanity.

  ...

  The power is in the system. The system creates the situation that corrupts the individuals, and the system is the legal, political, economic, cultural background. And this is where the power is of the bad [apple] barrel makers. (Zimbardo, 2008)

References

PSU, 1962. Obedience - Films in the Behavioral Sciences [Video] University Park, PA:Pennsylvania State Universityhttp://www.worldcat.org/title/obedience/oclc/498479796
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek4pWJ0_XNo
Online Stream at: https://cas.byu.edu/cas

Zimbardo, P. G., 2007. The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil New York:The Random House Publishing Group

Zimbardo, P. G., 2008. The Psychology of Evil. [Online]
Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil


Are there parts of the brain which don't change over a lifetime?

First off, 'neuroplasticity'is a broad term. Although structural changes are the most visible form of neuroplasticity, for example neurogenesis and axon outgrowth, generally subcellular changes are also taken into the definition of plasticity as well, for example the strengthening of synapses that occurs at the molecular level:

  Neuroplasticity occurs at different levels: structural plasticity (new neurons born, growth and shrinkage of neurons), functional synaptic plasticity (enhancing/diminishing the functional connection between neurons) and all the molecular and cellular mechanisms that accompany these changes

Secondly, the 'is there an exception to the rule' questions are notoriously hard to answer, as most scientific research reports pertain to the publishing of positive data (descriptions of neuroplastic changes in areas of the brain).

To cite Aguire:

  ...[A]s long as there are neurons, there is a potential for neuronal plasticity...

Hence, given the broad definition of neuroplasticity, I dare to state that it basically occurs in every brain region. In some more than others, however. The hot spots in the brain where neurogenesis takes place even in the adult brain, e.g. the hippocampus, are obviously the prime examples of high potential for gross plastic changes to occur.


What is it called when you imagine what other people would say or do in a certain situation?

Humans have a natural ability to predict the behavior of others called folk psychology:

  ... folk psychology, or commonsense psychology, is a human capacity to
  explain and predict the behavior and mental state of other people. ...
  Traditionally, the study of folk psychology has focused on how
  everyday people—those without formal training in the various academic
  fields of science—go about attributing mental states.

That is, folk psychology relies on first determining other people's mental state, and then using that information to predict their behavior.  This underlying ability to predict mental state is often referred to in the literature as "mind-reading" (not to be confused with telepathy), or more formally, theory of mind or mentalization.

It seems that humans have some mental model of how other people's minds work, and they use this model to predict their behavior.  Note however, that lay people use a model that is not (scientifically) valid - that is, it is not an accurate representation of how minds actually work - and hence predictions often fail.  Such mental models are presumably sufficiently accurate in everyday situations to be useful nonetheless.

How humans do this is subject to some debate.  The leading mechanism is called theory-theory:

  This theory asserts that individuals hold a basic or 'naïve' theory of
  psychology ("folk psychology") to infer the mental states of others,
  such as their beliefs, desires or emotions. This information is used
  to understand the intentions behind that person's actions or predict
  future behavior.

That is, according to theory-theory, people have an explicit model - one that they learn through experience, and can articulate and apply explicitly - of other people's minds.

One challenge to theory-theory is that humans are far too adept at mind-reading for an explicit model.  A competing implicit mechanism is proposed by simulation theory:

  ... a theory that holds that humans anticipate and make sense of the
  behavior of others by activating mental processes that, if carried
  into action, would produce similar behavior. This includes intentional
  behavior as well as the expression of emotions. The theory states that
  children use their own emotions to predict what others will do.
  Therefore, we project our own mental states onto others.

In other words, simulation theory suggests that humans have a way to simulate their own mental state - that is, pretend to be in someone else's shoes - and use that to predict the behavior of others.

As there is much evidence both for and against each theory, a hybrid 2-systems account has also been proposed by eg, Frith & Frith (2008), Apperly & Butterfill (2009).


What defines the easiest time to get out of bed in the morning for humans?

Human sleep has an (approximate) 90 minute rhythm: about every ninety minutes you are in light REM sleep. When you wake up while in REM, you wake up refreshed. If your alarm clock is set 30 minutes after your last REM phase, then you are in deep sleep again, and, although you slept longer, you will awake groggy and tired. The solution is to get up a bit earlier and feel a lot better.

As the comments suggest, there are some appliances to wake you up during an REM phase. From my experience, all you need is an alarm clock and go to bed early enough to catch enough sleep: after getting up at the same time for a couple of weeks, you'll start waking up in an REM phase before your alarm clock goes off. Just get up and don't go to sleep again, if your clock shows you are within 45 minutes of your alarm time, and keep doing so for as long as you want to keep this rhythm. Keep to the rhythm on weekends, too, for at least a month. If you feel you have fixed it, you can sleep in on free days – or rather, wake up at your usual time but stay in bed and go to sleep again.

Regular sleep (same get-up times each day) are the solution for most sleep related problems. Only when you get up regularly, can your body find and signal the ideal length of nightly total sleep. There is a huge difference between seven days of regular sleep, and six days of too little and one day of too much sleep, even when both add up to the same total length. And yes, I did not write "go to sleep regularly". What you need to do is get up regularly. Your body will tell you when you need to go to sleep, and this will vary, depending on the day you had. All you have to do is listen to it, instead of finishing that movie. Healthy sleep needs discipline, or the absence of electricity.

Sources:

No research on this, just personal experience and lots of similar anecdotes on the web. For the 90 minute sleep pattern, pick up any textbook on biological psychology, e.g. Pinel, J. P. J. (2011). Biopsychology (6th ed.). Pearson, and read the chapter on sleep.


Why are religious people seemingly unable to hypothesise about a universe without God?

To quote the great Aldous Huxley :

How shall we define a god? Expressed in psychological terms (which are
primary-there is no getting behind them) a god is something that gives
us the peculiar kind of feeling which Professor Otto has called
“numinous”. Numinous feelings are the original god-stuff from which
the theory-making mind extracts the individualised gods of the
pantheon.
— Aldous Huxley

Even "the Hitch" acknowledged the Numinous :

I’m a materialist…yet there is something beyond the material, or not
entirely consistent with it, what you could call the Numinous, the
Transcendent, or at its best the Ecstatic. […] It’s in certain music,
landscape, certain creative work, without this we really would merely
be primates. It’s important to appreciate the finesse of that, and
religion has done a very good job of enshrining it in music and
architecture.
— Christopher Hitchens

However, he also pointed out this :

I think everybody has had the experience at some point when they feel
that there’s more to life than just matter. But I think it’s very
important to keep that under control and not to hand it over to be
exploited by […] those who think that God has given them instructions.
— Christopher Hitchens

This is the cause of the divide between Theists and Atheists. Both experience the Numinous more or less the same way, but Atheists look for explanations in science whereas Theists look for ancient texts they believe to be divine revelations.
So why do some look for explanations in science whereas others look for explanations in ancient texts? It's a matter of cognitive style. More in particular, in depends on your empathy and systemizing quotients.
Extreme systemizers are not very likely to follow "their gut" (they may even be incapable of experiencing intuition). Because of that, they're also less likely to follow any kind of external authority. Their systemizing nature requires a rigidly consistent logical framework to make sense of things, which they often find only in science.
In contrast, extreme empathizers are more likely to follow "their gut", and also more likely to follow any kind of authority (including ancient religious texts). They tend to feel a lot more comfortable with experiencing cognitive dissonance and logical frameworks lacking consistence, which is common for religion.
Still, I believe the gap between Theism and Atheism largely relies on purely semantic differences with respect to how both approach the Numinous. I address this in greater detail in my article The Atheistic approach to God… or how to bridge the gap between Atheists and Theists.

Edit :
With respect to extreme empathizers being more comfortable experiencing cognitive dissonance, I'm refering to cognitive dissonance at the level of belief. It's more important to them that their emotions correspond with their beliefs than that their set of beliefs as a whole is a consistent set.
In contrast, extreme systemizers care mostly about their set of beliefs forming a consistent framework.


What are ways to assess employability of workers?

Measures of person-job fit and/or person-organization fit. The following rather randomly assembled references are intended as links to some questionnaires.

References

Chang, H.-T., Chi, N.-W., & Chuang, A. (2010). Exploring the moderating roles of perceived person-Job fit and person-organisation fit on the relationship between training investment and knowledge workers’ turnover intentions. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 59(4), 566–593.

Kooij, D. T. A. M., van Woerkom, M., Wilkenloh, J., Dorenbosch, L., & Denissen, J. J. A. (2017). Job crafting towards strengths and interests: The effects of a job crafting intervention on person–job fit and the role of age. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(6), 971–981. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000194

Piasentin, K. A., & Chapman, D. S. (2007). Perceived similarity and complementarity as predictors of subjective person-organization fit. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 80(2), 341–354. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317906X115453

Saks, A. M., & Ashforth, B. E. (1997). A longitudinal investigation of the relationships between job information sources, applicant perceptions of fit, and work outcomes. Personnel Psychology, 50(2), 395–426. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1997.tb00913.x

Wheeler, A. R., Gallagher, V. C., Brouer, R. L., & Sablynski, C. J. (2007). When person-organization (mis)fit and (dis)satisfaction lead to turnover: The moderating role of perceived job mobility. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22(2), 203–219. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940710726447


Meaning of "projection" and "to project" in neuroscience

I think the definition you found from OED is fine. Dictionary definitions are often not really ideal for terms used in biology, you learn more from examples and usage, for example the quote you gave about upper motor neurons.

  can I say that a neuron projects to another neuron, to mean that the axon of the first connects to some dendrite of the second?

Typically yes, though as the OED definition implies, "from any given"/"to the receiving part", projection is typically used for longer-range connections, where the sending and receiving cells are in different nuclei or layers. You would be less likely to describe cells that synapse on each other within one nucleus as projecting, though I also wouldn't say that description is entirely wrong either, and the distance required to be "long-range" can sometimes be short.

You'll note if you go through the Purves' glossary that you linked, all the uses of "projection" refer to long-range connections.


Is the Flynn effect related to the discovery of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?

TL;DR

The story is not that clear cut. The hyposthesis is possible, however the incidence levels of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) has risen over the years.  Speculation might say that the higher IQ averages would indicate that the average severity of FAS has decreased, but I cannot find any study to back that up.

Full answer

I would say that in order to answer this question you need to look at the framework of your question and the whole question centres on IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and Fetal Alcohol Syndome.  So let's break this up into the 2 components.

IQ (Intelligence Quotient)

The Intelligence Quotient is a total score derived from several standardised tests designed to assess human intelligence, and human intelligence involves the cognitive abilities to learn, form concepts, understand, apply logic, and reason, including the capacities to recognize patterns, comprehend ideas, plan, solve problems, make decisions, retain information, and use language to communicate. Intelligence enables humans to experience and think.

Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

A baby exposed to alcohol in the womb may have learning difficulties such as problems with thinking, speech, maths or memory (NHS, 2017) — all needed for high intelligence — and foetal alcohol syndrome is a type of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), the name for all the various problems that can affect children if their mother drinks alcohol in pregnancy (CDC, 2018).

CDC (2018) also states that a person with an FASD might have:

Difficulty with attention
Poor memory
Difficulty in school (especially with math)
Learning disabilities
Speech and language delays
Poor reasoning and judgment skills, and
Intellectual disability or low IQ

With all this in mind, it is possible that with lower incidences of FAS due to lower numbers of drinking pregnant mothers, comes higher average IQ numbers.

The following studies looked at this hypothesis

FAS and corresponding IQ levels

  Riikonen, R., Salonen, I., Partanen, K., & Verho, S. (1999). Brain perfusion SPECT and MRI in foetal alcohol syndrome.

  Eleven  children  with  a  diagnosis  of  FAS  (six  boys  and  five
  girls), with a mean age of 8.6 (range 3 to 13) years, participated in the study. [...] Tests showed moderate learning disability in two children (IQ 40 and 46, respectively) (subjects 2 and 11) and mild learning disability (IQ 68 to 85) or normal intelligence (IQ >85) in the others.

  Streissguth, A. P., Herman, C. S., & Smith, D. W. (1978). Intelligence, behavior, and dysmorphogenesis in the fetal alcohol syndrome: A report on 20 patients.

  In a sample of 20 patients with the fetal alcohol syndrome, ages 9 months to 21 years, the average IQ was 65, with a range of 16 to 105; 60% of the patients had IQ's more than two standard deviations below the mean. The sample included patients who ranged in severity of dysmorphogenesis from mild to severe. The severity of the dysmorphic features was related to degree of mental deficiency; children with the most severe manifestations of FAS had an average IQ of 55, whereas children with lesser manifestations had an average IQ of 82. All children were growth deficient for height and/or head circumference, but in this study only height was significantly correlated with IQ.

Incidence levels of FAS

  Abel, E. L. (1995). An update on incidence of FAS: FAS is not an equal opportunity birth defect.

  In a previous survey (Abel & Sokol, 1991), the incidence of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) in the Western world was estimated at 0.33 cases per 1,000 live born, with a higher incidence among low SES/ African Americans than among middle-high SES/Caucasians. That eariier survey was based on 15 prospective studies of general obstetric populations appearing for prenatal care. Since that analysis, there has been almost a two-fold increase in such studies, allowing for a more up-to-date estimate of the incidence of this anomaly and a clearer perspective of at-risk populations.

  The incidence of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is now estimated at 0.97 cases per 1,000 live births in the general obstetric population and 4.3% among “heavy” drinkers. The general incidence is more than 20 times higher in the United States (1.95 per 1,000) compared to Europe and other countries (0.08 per 1,000). Within the United States, the incidence at sites characterized by low socioeconomic status, and African American or Native American background are about 10 times higher (2.29 cases per 1,000) compared to sites with a predominant middle/upper SES and Caucasian background (0.26 per 1,000). Based on racial background, the number of pregnant women in the U.S. giving birth to FAS children is 2,043 per year; if based on socioeconomic status, the number is slightly higher 2,366. Although race and SES are confounded in the U.S. studies, an examination of U.S. and European studies suggests that the major factor associated with FAS is low SES rather than racial background.

  Habbick, B. F., Nanson, J. L., Snyder, R. E., Casey, R. E., & Schulman, A. L. (1996). Foetal alcohol syndrome in Saskatchewan: unchanged incidence in a 20-year period.

  Despite major initiatives in public and professional education about foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) in Saskatchewan in the last 20 years, its incidence rate has not fallen. The rate was 0.515 per 1,000 live births in 1973-1977 and 0.589 in 1988-1992.

Conclusion

The story is not that clear cut. The hyposthesis is possible, however the incidence levels of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) has risen over the years. Speculation might say that the higher IQ averages would indicate that the average severity of FAS has decreased, but I cannot find any study to back that up.

References

Abel, E. L., & Sokol, R. J. (1991). A revised conservative estimate of the incidence of FAS and its economic impact. Alcoholism: Clinical and experimental research, 15(3), 514-524. doi: 10.1111/j.1530-0277.1991.tb00553.x

Abel, E. L. (1995). An update on incidence of FAS: FAS is not an equal opportunity birth defect. Neurotoxicology and teratology, 17(4), 437-443. doi: 10.1016/0892-0362(95)00005-C

CDC (2018). Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs) [Online]Retrieved from: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/fasd/facts.html

Habbick, B., Nanson, J., Snyder, R., Casey, R., & Schulman, A. (1996). Foetal Alcohol Syndrome in Saskatchewan: Unchanged Incidence in a 20-year Period. Canadian Journal of Public Health / Revue Canadienne De Sante'e Publique, 87(3), 204-207. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41991432 PMID: 8771927

NHS (2017). Foetal alcohol syndrome [Online]
Retrieved from: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/foetal-alcohol-syndrome

Riikonen, R., Salonen, I., Partanen, K., & Verho, S. (1999). Brain perfusion SPECT and MRI in foetal alcohol syndrome. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 41(10), 652-659. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8749.1999.tb00518.x

Streissguth, A. P., Herman, C. S., & Smith, D. W. (1978). Intelligence, behavior, and dysmorphogenesis in the fetal alcohol syndrome: A report on 20 patients. The Journal of pediatrics, 92(3), 363-367. doi: 10.1016/S0022-3476(78)80420-X


Can you really have "excessive empathy"?

The risks of excessive empathy is sometimes conceptualized as "compassion fatigue" or "vicarious traumatization". The problem is not necessarily considered an excess in empathy, it can also be described as an excess in work load.

What could be considered excessive is most likely individual, not unlike our capacity for handling other types of work, like lifting heavy loads or work long hours at the office, for instance.

The most reliable measurement i can think of is how much time a day we spend working as a therapist, for lack of better constructs. Another example for conceptualizing excessive empathy would be the prevalence of fatigue/secondary ptsd symptoms.

Also i'd be curious to see how therapists ambitions/expectations on therapy outcome factors into the risk of compassion fatigue. I don't believe such research has been made.

More research is needed for sure.

https://proqol.org/CS_and_CF.html


Is the split-brain, dual consciousness experiment from Rhawn Joseph valid?

Short answer
On the basis of a cursory literature review, I conclude that Jospeh's observations were correct, but his conclusions that a callosotomy can result in a dual consciousness were far stretched.

Background
First off, I'm not an expert on this topic, but I will give my referenced opinion anyway, as there is no answer yet to this question; Below are quoted the two sections from the wiki Dual consciousness (neuroscience), as linked in the question:

  Rhawn Joseph observed two patients who had both undergone a complete corpus callosotomy. Joseph observed that one of the patient’s right hemisphere is able to gather, comprehend, and express information. The right hemisphere was able to direct activity to the patient’s left arm and leg. The execution of the left arm and leg's action as was inhibited by the left hemisphere. Joseph found that the patient’s left leg would attempt to move forward as if to walk straight but the right leg would either refuse move or begin to walk in the opposite direction. After observing the struggles of the execution of activities involving the left and right arms and legs, led Joseph to believe that the two hemispheres possessed their own consciousness.[16]

  Joseph also noted that the patient had other specific instances of
  conflict between the right and left hemispheres including, the left
  hand (right hemisphere) carrying out actions contrary to the left
  hemisphere's motives such as the left hand turning off the television
  immediately after the right hand turned it on. Joseph found that the
  patient’s left leg would only allow the patient to return home when
  the patient was going for a walk and would reject continuing to go for
  that walk.

First thing to note - he describes two patients and only one of them is highlighted on the wiki; hence, this is a case report (Joseph, 1988). Case reports can't control for any other personal characteristics of that one patient. Such anecdotal reports are important, but they may not be a reflection of the population as a whole (i.e., people with a transected corpus callosum).

Secondly, the term 'consciousness' is a loosely defined and debated one. Similarly, the 'mind' is a broad and ill-defined term.

Then you proceed to scrutinize his work as based on his unconventional beliefs on the origin of life as based on a rational wiki page. Although his ideas on this may be unconventional, that doesn't mean he has reported flawed observations during his professional career as a neuropsychologist.

However, and I quote a part of the Discussion section of Joseph (1988) where he describes anecdotal behaviors of 2-C:

  [He] became angry with his left hand, swore and expressed "hate" for it, struck his left hand/arm with his right hand, and engaged in physical struggles with his left extremity, the right attempting to force the left to comply with some particular activity or to cease to act in a manner that the left hemisphere found objectionable or annoying. [...] In general, these findings indicate that the isolated right cerebral hemisphere of 2-C was able to understand and follow certain simple verbal commands, obtain and maintain knowledge [...], as well as respond, make decisions and act purposefully- even when his left hemisphere had no idea as to what information the right possessed and why it was behaving in a particular manner. Given the differential behavioral observations with regard to the activity and responsiveness of the left half of their bodies, it appears that 2-C (unlike 1-C) is possessed of two minds, one of which resides within the right, the other within the left cerebral hemisphere. Nevertheless, it appears that 2-C's left hemisphere remains predominant in regard to most expressive activities.

The bold text is probably what fueled the wiki article. To me, personally, the 'hatred' and frustration of C-2 is easily explained by the loss of body control. Who wouldn't feel frustration and resentment to that side of the body?

Indeed, a paper by Andrew & Akelaitis (1945) explains a similar behavior by their (partial-)split-brain patients with diagnostic dyspraxia. These authors explain the phenomenon not by a dualistic consciousness, but 'simply' by an unbalanced inhibitory influence of the dominant hemisphere over the non-dominant side. This decreased inhibitory control was hypothesized to lead to the uncoordinated behavior on the non-dominant side. These symptoms generally diminish over time, as the brain deploys alternative inter-hemispheric routing of communications. This sounds more plausible to me.

Lastly, there is a a publication that coins it "alien hand syndrome" (Feinberg et al., 1992). They too, ascribe the phenomenon by a disturbed inhibitory interhemispheric control, and I quote:

  Callosal AHS [alien hand syndrome] is best explained by hemispheric disconnection manifested during behaviors requiring dominant-hemisphere control.

So I conclude form this quick literature review that Joseph ascribes the presence of two minds based on something that can be explained at a more basic level, and hence by a more simple model, namely disinhibited motor control. Given the principle of parsimony, I conclude his observations were right, but that his conclusions were not.

References
- Andrew & Akelaitis (1945) Am J Psychiatr; 101(5): 594-9
- Feinberg et al., Neurology (1992); 42: 19-24
- Joseph, J Clin Psychol (1988); 44(5): 770-9


When a person is unable to recognize their own emotions, what is the name for it?

Are you referring to alexithymia?

Alexithymia is defined as a personality construct characterized by the sub-clinical inability to identify and describe emotions in the self. The core characteristics of alexithymia are marked dysfunction in emotional awareness, social attachment, and interpersonal relating. Furthermore, individuals suffering from alexithymia also have difficulty in distinguishing and appreciating the emotions of others, which is thought to lead to un-empathic and ineffective emotional responding.

Source: https://www.disabled-world.com/health/neurology/alexithymia.php


Can a sufficiently complex ANN simulate consciousness?

David Chalmers has argued against the thermostat view, suggesting that adaptation to the environment is not sufficient. John Searle also disagrees that the current state of machine learning is capable of consciousness on the grounds that information processing is not a sufficient criterion (public lecture, 2016). Both of these philosophers emphasize clarity in their presentation of arguments and I highly recommend reading some of their books for a general introduction to current problems in consciousness and perception.

Complexity

In 1998, Tononi and Edelman published a science paper on Consciousness and Complexity. One of the main proponents, from the same lineage of researchers, links the complexity criterion to consciousness: Anil Seth and colleagues have suggested that a measure of complexity is central to explaining consciousness (pdf). His works are probably a good starting point if you are interested in a possible link between (abstract formulations that are relevant to both) artificial intelligence and consciousness.

Recurrent Processing

Although "recursive complexity" is a concept in Anil Seth's work, if you are particularly interested in the role of recurrent processing for consciousness, Victor Lamme's work on vision could be a starting point: Lamme & Roelfsma (2000)

Et cetera

For various views and perspectives, visit the most complete collection of references on consciousness online: http://consc.net/online/


What brain regions are activated when a dream is remembered?

Your memory of a dream would be an autobiographical memory, which is a memory system that is based on a combination of episodic memories and semantic memories. Autobiographical memories are memories of events that have happened to you, and thus are often retrieved from a first-person perspective. These are not the same thing as episodic memories, however, as episodic memories are contained in a separate memory system.

Your autobiographical memory knowledge base is distributed through neural networks in the frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes. The frontal lobes and anterior temporal lobes represent the more abstract or conceptual parts of the memory, and the occipital lobes/posterior temporal lobes represent the more sensory and perceptual details of specific events. These are predominantly represented in the right cortex. [1] Initially, a memory is formed in the left prefrontal region. Over time, this memory is 'moved' and held at a higher level in the posterior region.

However, there are more widespread activation patterns throughout the brain, and almost every region of the brain has been represented in at least one instance of autobiographic memory retrieval. [2] This lends itself to the belief that certain regions are used for certain types of retrieval, such as re-living experiences associated with the memory versus retrieving factual information from the memory.

Dreams themselves are not episodic memories. During REM sleep, there are specific brain regions that appear to be affected; in particular, there is increased activity in the formation of the hippocampus and decreased activity in prefrontal regions. There appears to be no temporal lobe activity, which implies that 'dream memories' are not true episodic memories, but instead representative of episodic fragments (at best). One study [3] even found that the majority of dreams (>80%) were comprised of primarily autobiographical memories. This suggests that dreams themselves are comprised of fragmented and selective personal experiences, perhaps to aid in the assimilation of memories into the autobiographical memory schema.

Sources used:

[1] Conway, M.A., Pleydell-Pearce, C.W., & Whitecross, S.E. (2001). The neuroanatomy of autobiographical memory: a slow cortical potential study of autobiographical memory retrieval, Journal of Memory and Language. 45, 493-524.

[2] Svoboda, E.; McKinnon, M.C.; Levine, B. (2006). "The functional neuroanatomy of autobiographical memory: a meta-analysis". Neuropsychologia 44 (12): 2189–2208.

[3] Malinowski, J. E. and Horton, C. L. (2014), Memory sources of dreams: the incorporation of autobiographical rather than episodic experiences. Journal of Sleep Research, 23: 441–447.


A psychological theory that explains why people remember only the outcome?

I'm not sure about the problem-solution context, but there is the fairly well-studied "peak-end" phenomenon in which people appear most sensitive to the strongest and/or the final levels of positive or negative experiences in an episode. Daniel Kahneman has done a lot of work on this phenomenon, you can find a list of his papers on his website. A fairly simple demonstration is in this article:

Kahneman, D., Fredrickson, D.L., Schreiber , C.A. , & Redelemeier, D.A. (1993). When more pain is preferred to less: Adding a better end. Psychological Science, 4(6), 401-405.


How common is it for twins conjoined at the head to share thoughts and visual stimuli?

Short answer
Likely, the subject pool of craniopagus twins is too small to allow for scientific research.

Background
As far as I can see after a cursory search, there is no scientific data available on the shared thoughts and experiences of craniopagus twins. Note that the incidence is only 1 in 10–20 per million births in the US. The rare occurrence, together wit the fact that neurosurgical advances increase the odds of successful separation (Browd et al., 2008) make them a truly rare phenomenon. On top of that, parents with conjoined twins will practically be living in the hospital with frequent, stressful visits to a variety of caregivers. In those difficult living situations likely the last thing they are waiting for is another white coat asking questions. In other words, the subject pool for research is minimized further by low response-rates when invitations for research participation are distributed (educated guess, being a parent).

Reference
- Browd et al., J Neurosurgery: Pediatrics (2008); 1(1): 1-20


What is the concept that schema is opposed to

There are approaches in cognitive psychology that either emphasize top down or bottom up perceptual processes, or in some cases a combination of two. Psychology began using those terms after being radically influenced by the information processing framework. So I think that if a proper distinction is to be made, it would be better to put it in those terms namely, top down vs bottom up processing.

Having said that schemas are associated with top down processes as they involve the influence of knowledge on perception. So an opposite concept to schemas, if this is the right way to put it, would possibly be the concept of affordances which is associated with bottom up processes. James Gibson in his theory of affordances states that a sufficient amount of information is contained in the environment itself. Affordances in this sense, are "action possibilities" latent in the environment and are objectively measured contrary to schemas which are subjective by definition


Is there a list of large-scale, free datasets with psychological variables?

Participants at the last meeting of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science developed a list of >100 such datasets with some metadata such as topic, country, total number of participants, etc. The list is currently a collaborative wiki open to editing by anyone.

List of open psychology datasets and aggregators

Outside of psychology, there are a vast amount of aggregators. Here are two major resources:

https://www.quora.com/Data/Where-can-I-find-large-datasets-open-to-the-public

https://toolbox.google.com/datasetsearch


Canonical Literature for "Big 5" Personality Theory

I quite like Saucier & Srivastava (2015). They provide a very nice overview of the evidence for different trait models. They give you a good overview of how factor analysis and lexical studies relate to the Big 5.

You can see my own attempt at providing a primer on the Big 5 and trait measurement at Anglim & O'Connor, 2018. You could look at some of the following key references from that paper:

  ... the most influential basis for a Big Five came from Goldberg (1981, 1990) who conducted factor analyses on comprehensive sets of trait adjectives. Over multiple studies Goldberg found support for the “Big Five” factors of personality. Strong support for a five-factor model was also obtained in various studies by McCrae and Costa (1987) who repeatedly found five dimensions across instruments and observers (self and peer- reports). On balance, lexical studies along with studies using large questionnaires tend to support the idea that personality can broadly be described using the Big Five dimensions of personality (Condon, 2017; Costa & McCrae, 1995; Markon, Krueger, & Watson, 2005).

References

Anglim, J., & O'Connor, P. (2018). Measurement and Research Using the Big Five, HEXACO, and Narrow Traits: A Primer for Researchers and Practitioners. Australian Journal of Psychology. https://psyarxiv.com/a78g2/download
Saucier, G., & Srivastava, S. (2015). What makes a good structural model of personality? Evaluating the Big Five and alternatives. Handbook of personality and social psychology, 3, 283-305. http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~sanjay/pubs/structmodpersonality.pdf


How do people respond to auditory warning signals?

Often, very similar phenomena have different names when studied in different modalities, because they are studied by different communities. That's why searching for perception response times + auditory doesn't yield great results (Although I did find [1] this way).

Something else to try, is to pick a highly cited paper that you did find, and then search within paper citing it for relevant terms. I started from Olson's 2000 paper which you mentioned, and searched for "auditory" within citing papers, and quickly found [2] and [3].

You can also look for other papers by the same authors - people tend to keep studying similar questions for a while, and often keep using the same methodologies.

[1] Cheng, B., Hashimoto, M., & Suetomi, T. (2002). Analysis of driver response to collision warning during car following. JSAE review, 23(2), 231-237.

[2] Fitch, G. M., Blanco, M., Morgan, J. F., & Wharton, A. E. (2010, September). Driver braking performance to surprise and expected events. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (Vol. 54, No. 24, pp. 2075-2080). SAGE Publications.

[3] Cao, Y., Mahr, A., Castronovo, S., Theune, M., Stahl, C., & Müller, C. A. (2010, February). Local danger warnings for drivers: The effect of modality and level of assistance on driver reaction. In Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces (pp. 239-248). ACM.


Is the effect related to shutting your eyes when a car is turning well known?

Short answer
In general, sensory systems are not well equipped to perform absolute estimations of a stimulus level, especially since they adapt to the ambient level of stimulation, i.e., their baseline is re-set continuously. Nonetheless, the vestibular system is quite well capable of estimating the degrees of rotation, as shown in blindfolded subjects that were rotated along the vertical axis.

Background
Rotation initiated by an object you are sitting or standing on is sensed by the visual system and the vestibular system. The visual system is the most accurate, as it immediately senses a change in the visual scene. When the eyes are closed, only the vestibular organ is functional.

Movement in the horizontal plane is sensed by the semicircular canals in the inner ear (Fig. 1). One fundamental principle in sensory organs in general is that they operate on a relative scale. In other words, sensory systems excel in comparing two stimulus intensities. They are, however, poorly equipped to provide an absolute measure of stimulus intensity. How bright is bright? Only through experience does one know the absolute value of a stimulus. I'm in the hearing sciences, and I can pretty well tell what the absolute stimulus level is of a stimulus between 20 and 70 dB. But that's only because I spent hours and hours providing well-defined stimuli to study subjects. If you ask me how bright a certain flash of light is, I surely can't tell you.

What's more - sensory systems adapt quickly (Webster, 2012). For example, if you keep on moving in circles then the sensory end organs in the semicircular organs (hair cells and associated vestibular nerve) adapt and become less responsive to the ongoing stimulus (St. george et al., 2011). However, short circular movements in a car are typically short accelerations and decelerations, which are pretty well encoded by the vestibular system. Indeed, blindfolded subjects do pretty well in regaining their original position when rotated about a head-centered vertical axis. It is not until adaptation comes into play that things start to deteriorate. (St. george et al., 2011).

Reference
- St. george et al., J Physiol (2011); 589(4): 843–53
- Webster, F1000 Biol Rep (2012); 4: 21

Fig. 1. Inner ear. source: MedScape


What's the name of the quantifying preference for visual stimulus by varying size or distance as compared to a reference task?

Dude. This is an awesome experiment.

Emotional Design is written by my favorite cognitive psychologist, Donald Norman. It's full of research on taste. In it, he says taste is highly subjective and based on culture.

C is probably equally distant in both cases, at the point where it becomes unreadable. Unless at that point you'd rather look at C and say, "Hey, what's that?!" Like ship sails far away in the ocean.

One last point. We have no idea why we behave. We just rationalize it afterward. What we say we like and the way we behave are totally different. Girls just want to be with a nice guy.

There was a Harvard study for a painting class. Each class painted 5 paintings (or something). At the end of the semester, the teacher gave a class one of their paintings back. For the other class, the students took home their favorite painting. They waited 6 months (or something) and interviewed the students. The students who were given their painting LOVED it. They had their painting proudly displayed somewhere. The students who were given a choice were unhappy. They kept wondering what-if? They never felt right about their painting and most of them hid it away, maybe under a bed.

There's good evidence that if you want to stay happily in a relationship with someone, DON'T THINK ABOUT WHY YOU LIKE THEM. It will end badly. There's a whole study on this as well. It got ugly.


Do unschooled persons think differently from us (schooled persons)? How?

Given that 1) schooling intentionally exposes individuals to conventionally prescribed concepts they would otherwise not be exposed to, entailing formation of neurally encoded cognitive representations thereof at different levels of context-specificity (concreteness) and context-generality (abstractedness) and that 2) metacognitive activity (i.e. thinking and thought-processes) is concerned with the accessing and structuring of concepts seemingly relevant to one another, and can entail the emergence both of new levels of awareness and of thinking-related skills, it is logically predictable that wide differences in the nature of schooled and unschooled individuals' thinking would occur.


How exactly does transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) work?

I'm not sure at what level of sophistication you expect this answer, but the basic theory of how tDCS works at a cellular level is that neurons oriented roughly parallel to the electric field lines suffer a (partial) depolarization of the axon hillock cell membrane when the dendrites of the neuron are oriented toward the anode of a constant electric field, and the a reverse effect (hillock membrane hyperpolarization) occurs when the dendrites are oriented toward the cathode. (Niedermeyer's Electroencephalography, 6th ed., p. 1136) And on this basic theory, not much happens if the neuron is perpendicular to the electric field. Another way of saying the same thing (but more concisely) from Lefaucheur et al.:

  The primary effect of tDCS on neurons is a subthreshold shift of resting membrane potentials towards depolarization or hyperpolarization, depending on current flow direction relative to axonal orientation.

The simple theory above applies to a cell in isolation. I'm even less sure I understand your detail question "How that positive or negative current interferes with electric fields generated by neurons?" In more sophisticated approaches, the cell shapes also affect the electric field influencing nearby cells; see for instance Ye & Steiger. Ultimately, in a nonhomogenous medium like the brain, it's quite nontrivial to determine the local electric field orientation induced by some distant electrodes. To get a solution one needs to simulate the entire brain as done by Wagner et al. for instance.

To verify that tDCS basically works like this (i.e. as a modulation, as you correctly observed) one can experimentally add another stimulus that can trigger neuronal activation, for instance TMS, and measure how much of this extra stimulus is required to obtain the same effect with and without tDCS. This was done for instance in the highly-cited study of Nitsche and Paulus. They observed excitability changes of up to 40% using this method.

The basic theory doesn't quite explain everything relating to tDCS, in particular it doesn't explain why some effects persists for a time after the DC current is turned off; the extent of these effects is dependent on the current intensity and the duration of the stimulation. Nitsche and Paulus discuss some theories relating to this, mentioning that perhaps tDCS induces changes in the spontaneous discharge rate as well.


What evidence is there for a correlation between being tightly focused on a problem and only using one part of your brain?

You may find some explanation from the research done for attention. In the most famous experiment done by Simon and Chabris 1999 (see video), participants inhibited irrelevant information that was not related to the task of counting passes.

When you are performing a task, you pay attention to what is relevant to the task, and inhibit irrelevant internal and external distractions. The more focused you are the more inhibitions occurs. The degree of focus you devote to a task depends from the difficulty of the task and the engagement you have for it.

Programming is a very highly demanding task and usually programmers are very passionate about it. So programming is a very focused task, thus everything unrelated to the task of programming is inhibited. When you do programming, you inhibit information like where you are, who else is in the room, hunger signals (I know programmer who forget to go to lunch) etc. When you are interrupted you need some time to re-activate all those things that have been inhibited.


Is there a graph with extroversion-introversion score on one axis and IQ on the other?

Extraversion and IQ typically have zero correlation. In Bates and Rock (2004),we suggested that if the arousal value of the testing environment varies, this might induce a modest correlation with IQ (introverts doing best in silences, ambiverts with some noicse, and extraverts performing best under fairly loud white noise background. More basic measures like inspection time were unaffected.

Based on some followup queries, here's a graph of Extraversion against IQ-score in 597 adults from a normative sample in the United States: The MIDUS.

The plot shows the raw data points, and also a loess best fit curve: no relationship, even at the extremes.


Reproducible meta-analysis in psychology

I have started to see a fair bit of discussion about reproducible meta-analysis.

Tim Churches seems to have a github repository with a few examples of meta-analyses in R.

See in particular the public health example:

RMarkdown source
Formatted Markdown output


Does looking into a mirror relieve eye strain in a similar way to looking at distant objects?

As far as I understand it and as per explained by my eye doctor,

If we separate this variable from the other possible ones that can cause eye strain while staring at a monitor like amount of "blue light" (check out the program f.lux), overall brightness, refresh rate, etc., then-

-the variable that can cause eye strain as you explain, "looking at something too close for to long," is caused by overextending the muscles and/or the way in which they contract (some combination of this most likely) in your eyes that causes you to focus on something up close.

So, by looking off into the distance, you are stretching those muscles (changing the way their contracting kinda) and/or giving them a chance to relax for a bit.

I'm quite sure that you and not your environment are actually the true controllers over how these muscles contract.

Try this experiment: Imagine there are mountains behind your computer screen and try to look through your computer screen in order to see them.  It may feel unusual at first, and a bit difficult - however if done right you'll be able to feel it.

Here's another experiment: Find some shadow or corner in your room where absolutely no light shines into.  It could be a crevice or whatever - you could even make it artificially. It could even be in the depths between the keys in your keyboard.   Just as long as it's pitch black.  When you look into something that is pitch black, from a visual perspective, neither you nor your eyes know how far that darkness extends - meaning it's left up to you to determine how you focus or not focus on it.  I can look between the keys on my keyboard and see pitch black - I know that only extends a a few millimeters if any in reality...but my sight isn't telling me that.  For a sight perspective, those depths might really end at the center of the earth or travel on for millions of miles.

ie. you can change this focus just like as if you were changing the focus on a camera.  It is somewhat of a skill, but not too hard of one to acquire.

Now trying to achieve this effect is easier admittedly when there is true distance to look at or into.  If you're trying to fake it, I also wouldn't recommend trying to look through your computer screen as in my example above for relief.  That was just an extreme example to prove a point - it's possible, but not ideal (and you are still also left with other variables like refresh rate, brightness, etc.).

So as long as you are able to induce this change in eye muscle contractions by actually looking off into the distance, or artificially induce it by tricking your eyes into thinking they are doing so - it doesn't matter as the end goal was accomplished either way.  The only thing that differs is the potential intensity of this relief you'll get when trying to induce artificially in contrast to doing so in reality; the artificially part is obviously dependent upon your skill and belief that you can actually do that though.

  For the purposes of relieving eye strain, does the perceived increased
  distance of looking at an object in a mirror, serve the same purpose
  as looking at the same object from twice the distance?

If you perceive it to be true, then your eyes will too - so it would cause the same change in muscle contraction/stretching/relaxation effect that accompanies changes in focus.

After thinking about your mirror trick, I don't actually think it would work.  Your perception of the objects will be just as close as if you were looking right at them.


What is the effect of not sub-vocalizing on reading comprehension?

Yes, inhibiting sub-vocalization is likely to impair comprehension.

Here is the abstract from Slowiaczek & Clifton (1980):

  Two experiments demonstrated that subvocalization is of value in reading for certain types of meaning. Blocking subvocalization by requiring subjects to count or say “cola-colacola …” aloud impaired their reading comprehension but generally not their listening comprehension. The effect of blocking subvocalization was found to be specific to tests that required integration of concepts within or across sentences, as contrasted with tests that required only memory of individual word concepts. Two hypotheses were offered: first, that subvocalization results in a more durable memory representation needed for integration of concepts; and second, that subvocalization enables a prosodic restructuring that makes information needed for sentence comprehension accessible.

Reference

  Slowiaczek, M. L., & Clifton Jr, C. (1980). Subvocalization and reading for meaning. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19(5), 573-582.


What is the scientific term for the erroneous inversion of cause and effect?

According to a dictionary of psychology this is simply called "reverse causality"

In attempting to understand the relationship between cause and effect, a tendency to attribute what is actually the cause to the effect. For example, does the ingestion of lead paint cause a lower intelligence quotient (IQ) or is it that children with lower IQs tend to eat lead paint?


This LOP diagram explains it pretty well, acoustic information is remembered moderately well as it has moderate processing done on it to help you remember it, but as you can see, semantic  is the best way to remember stuff, something is semantic if it's understood well or has meaning to you, so the best way to learn it is it to make sure that you understand it!


Cognitive Effects of studying for the LSAT?

The study you refer to shows that a measure of brain white matter connectivity, called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) shows increases in structural connectivity between brain areas that have been previously implicated in reasoning and other brain functions.

The news article goes on to make additional claims, not made in the paper, that this result means studying for the LSAT improves reasoning overall. The study itself does not make that claim, and they did not test reasoning besides measuring LSAT performance. Therefore, you cannot conclude from this work that studying for the LSAT improves performance on anything besides the LSAT, only that studying is sufficient to make detectable changes in brain structure.

I would certainly say it is plausible that studying one set of tasks, like studying for the LSAT, would cause improvement in related skills (certainly this assumption is the basis of a whole lot of pedagogy), but that certainly doesn't mean it is the best way to improve or that it is special compared to other types of study.

Note also that the participants in the study were involved in a particular training program and the results may not generalize to other forms of LSAT preparation.

As a side note, it is always important to read original research articles before taking news at face value. Even the researchers quoted in a news article may not approve of how exactly they were quoted. The news process is subject to sensationalization and the qualifying language that scientists frequently use may not reach the final edits.

Mackey, A. P., Whitaker, K. J., & Bunge, S. A. (2012). Experience-dependent plasticity in white matter microstructure: reasoning training alters structural connectivity. Frontiers in neuroanatomy, 6, 32.


How can I determine which of Brainwave is dominant as one state by EEG data?

Each "brainwave" is a range of frequencies that make up the signal, usually called a frequency band (ie. "the gamma frequency band"). To determine differences between bands, you would generally look at the power spectral density (PSD) of the signal. For instance, you may want to compare the average power in each frequency band.

In practice the PSD is estimated by calculating a periodogram.


Has fiction or the study of fiction ever made meaningful contributions to Psychology?

Psychological scientists often cite works of fiction as sources of inspiration. In some cases, literary examples are used as illustrations of the phenomenon of interest. In others, researchers set out to test the hypotheses that are proposed or implied in fictional works.

Golding's Lord of the Flies and Zimbardo's research on deindividuation

For example, Zimbardo notes that his research on the effects of deindividuation in the late 1960s (Zimbardo, 1969) was inspired by literature:

  "Ideas for my first experiments in human aggression came from discussions we had in a research seminar about Golding's Lord of the Flies."

The Macbeth effect

Shakespeare is frequently cited as a source of inspiration. As one example, Zhong and Lilienquist (2006) have investigated whether sinful behavior prompts the need for physical cleansing - the "Macbeth effect", named after Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth who is compelled to wash her hands because of the crimes she and her husband have committed.

The Proust phenomenon

In the famous Madeleine Episode of Marcel Proust's "À la recherche du temps perdu", the narrator describes that the sensory perception of a tea-soaked madeleine has the power to elicit detailed and affectively-laden memories of a distant past. This hypothesis, which some call "the Proust phenomenon" has prompted a variety of empirical investigations. For example, in two experiments conducted by Chu and Downs (2002) "odor-cued autobiographical memories were reliably different in terms of qualitative ratings and reliably superior in the amount of detail yielded". (Also see this earlier question.)

References

Chu, S., & Downes, J. J. (2002). Proust nose best: Odors are better cues of autobiographical memory. Memory & Cognition, 30, 511–518. doi:10.3758/BF03194952

Zhong, C.-B., & Liljenquist, K. (2006). Washing away your sins: Threatened morality and physical cleansing. Science, 313, 1451–1452. doi:10.1126/science.1130726

Zimbardo, P. (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order vs. deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. In: Arnold, W.J. and Levine, D. (eds). Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 237-307.