Which Machine Learning classifiers do humans use?

This is of course a big question and I don't believe that there is a definite answer to it. A very thorough investigation of this matter comes from Rogers and McClelland (2004), who have a developed a parallel distributed theory of acquisition, representation and use of human semantic knowledge. As the name implies, this effort comes from the realm of parallel distributed processing, which is also called connectionism. The books that @DikranMarsupial cited can be seen as the foundations of the field. As far as I understand, the two volumes and their authors (McClelland is only one of them, at least two other important names are David Rumelhart and Geoffrey Hinton) had an enormous impact on the revival of neural networks within cognitive science and on the development of the parallel distributed approach.

Rogers & McClelland (2004) offer an interesting account of how things are grouped into categories, which is what you are asling about. To give a very brief explanation: according to their theory, all objects have certain attributes. For example, a canary has feet, wings and feathers. A robin also has all these things. A pine, on the other hand, has leaves, roots and roots. The same is true for an oak. In reality, there are much more attributes, but this should be enough to make the point.

Objects that tend to covary with one another in a coherent way (because they have similar attributes) are perceived as similar and are classified as belonging to a category, like the canary and the robin. Other objects, that do not covary with those from this first group, but that do covary coherently with other objects, are classified as belonging to another group, like the pine and the oak. It is these coherent categories that are important for classifying objects.

Rogers and McClelland (2004) used a neural network to demonstrate and test their theory. Their findings are consistent with a range of findings from developmental studies. They also have an article, which is basically a short summary of the book (Rogers & McClelland, 2008). If you are interested, you might want to check out this first. The article has peer reviewers commentaries that point out weaknesses of the theory, which is also very interesting.

Since you refered to machine learning in your question: the learning algorithm used in the simulation studies was the backpropagation of error - algorithm. As was also mentioned by @DikranMarsupial, this is not an especially biologically plausible algorithm. Interestingly though, as is also explained in much detail in the book, it is possible to predict the order in which the objects within the training corpus could be classified by an eigenvector decomposition of a special variant of the covariance matrix of the objects. I'm not an expert here, but to me there seems to be a connection to the so called covariance rule (unfortunately I don't have a citation here), which to my knowledge is biologically plausible.

References:

Rogers, T. T, & McClelland, J. L. (2004). Semantic cognition: A parallel distributed processing approach. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  PDF
Rogers, Timothy T., & McClelland, J. L. (2008). Précis of Semantic Cognition: A Parallel Distributed Processing Approach. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(06), 689. doi:10.1017/S0140525X0800589X PDF


Experimental design with two groups, pre-post measurement, and where everyone is treated

I would call it a pre-post quasi-experiment, albeit where you are assessing the intervention in two different pre-existing groups.

In terms of assessing the effect of the intervention, there are more threats to causal inference, when you don't have a control group (i.e., one where you have pre and post measures but with no intervention or a control intervention). I.e., In addition to the effect of the treatment, there are many other explanations for any changes observed pre-post. For example, learning, maturation, fatigue, and so on. Background knowledge may be able to assist you in appraising which if any of these are likely to be significant.

You then have two observed groups. This aspect is more like an observational study. You are assessing the interaction between group and the treatment. Because group is an observational variable, you would want to take care in attributing causal explanations to any differences between groups in treatment effect to group membership. Nonetheless, often in this context, the interest is more about understanding how well a treatment generalises to different populations.

So in summary, It would be better if there was a control group. Ideally, you would have a fully crossed design. I.e., group (A and B) by control (treatment and control) where participants were randomly allocated to treatment or control. But if that's not possible, the data would still be interesting; you'd need to think carefully about carry-over effects.


Where does the distinction between motives and goals lie in activity theory?

I think the confusion arises because the hierarchy of "activity" as described in that figure exist in the context of an ontology that is closer to dynamical perception-action cycles than to the evolutionary information processing ontology typically used in cognitivist approaches.

  The world is structured; it comprises discrete objectively existing entities, that is, objects. Subjects’ interaction with the world is also structured; it is organized around the objects. Objects have their “objective” meanings, determined by their relationship with other entities existing in the world (including the subject). In order to meet their needs, the subject has to reveal the objective meaning of the objects, at least partly, and act accordingly. — interaction-design.org, section 16.3.2.1

Activities are relations between subjects and objects (as in interests), so motives are objects. They exist in the sense that the grammar of a language exists, and are independent of any one person. Goals relate individual conscious processes (e.g., decision-making and planning) to these motives in order for the subject to concretely attain their object, and actions relate individual behavior to the goals.

However, these are only facets of the same continuously evolving system. There is therefore no way to describe an action without reference to an object and motive in an activity theoretical sense. In activity theory, all behavior is directed towards some motive as a matter of definition, and it is the motive which defines the activity. Motives entail goals, goals entail conditions, and reciprocally the other way around in a continuous dynamically evolving cycle.

  The motive is the object that the subject ultimately needs to attain. For instance, in some cultural contexts people reaching a certain age need to learn how to drive a car (and get a driver’s license); it is a general prerequisite of being a fully functional member of society. Learning how to drive a car is an activity which is organized as a multi-layer system of sub-units directed at getting a driver’s license. Actions are conscious processes directed at goals which must be undertaken to fulfil the object. Goals can be decomposed into sub-goals, sub-sub-goals, and so forth. For instance, one may decide to enroll in a driving school, purchase instructional materials, make a schedule of theoretical lessons and practice sessions, etc. Actions are implemented through lower-level units of activity, called operations. Operations are routine processes providing an adjustment of an action to the ongoing situation. — interaction-design.org, section 16.3.2.2

A potentially helpful tool in understanding this ontology may be to notice the remarkable similarity with the Gibsonian concept of affordances as objectively existing perceptual entities (e.g., Chemero, 2003), only seen from a socio-cultural point of view. The relation between affordance and organism seems closely parallel to the relation between subject and object in activity theory.

Much like ecological psychologists need to define an ontology of objective affordances that define behavior for specific organisms within a specific environment before anything they say makes any sense, activity theorists need to define an ontology of objective motives for specific subjects within a specific socio-cultural context. Unlike EP, activity theory does not appear to provide a concrete way to identify objectively existing motives, nor exactly define the subjects or the socio-cultural context, so AT is ambiguous with respect to any individual case (e.g., a 'survival' motive or goal). See also what's comments about AT being implicitly situated within a Marxist context.

References

Chemero, A. (2003). An outline of a theory of affordances. Ecological psychology, 15(2), 181-195.


There is a technical report by the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health at the American Academy of Pediatrics (Perin et al, 2002) which looks at all the scientific literature concerning homoparental upbringing, and they concluded that:

The small and nonrepresentative samples studied and the relatively young age of most of the children suggest some reserve. However, the weight of evidence gathered during several decades using diverse samples and methodologies is persuasive in demonstrating that there is no systematic difference between gay and nongay parents in emotional health, parenting skills, and attitudes toward parenting. No data have pointed to any risk to children as a result of growing up in a family with 1 or more gay parents. Some among the vast variety of family forms, histories, and relationships may prove more conducive to healthy psychosexual and emotional development than others.

They also concluded that:

Although gay and lesbian parents may not, despite their best efforts, be able to protect their children fully from the effects of stigmatization and discrimination, parents’ sexual orientation is not a variable that, in itself, predicts their ability to provide a home environment that supports children’s development.

References
Perrin, E. C., & Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health. (2002). Technical report: coparent or second-parent adoption by same-sex parents. Pediatrics, 109(2), 341-344. doi: 10.1542/peds.109.2.341


Is workaholism similar to any addiction or are there other neurological mechanisms at play?

This is a great question - one that resonates with me especially when reflecting on my own professional life.

My answer to your question would be both speculative and (hopefully) empirical. From personal experience, I have met people in my professional life that may exhibit 'workaholic' behaviours but it is unclear whether it is driven by fear and anxiety or behaviours aligned to values to achieve almost perfect work performance.

I would start with defining precisely what workaholism is. Spence and Robbins (1992) defines a workaholic exhibiting three specific properties:

  Highly work involved
  Compelled or driven to work because of inner pressures
  Low in enjoyment of work

If we compare those properties against an addictive disorder such as Bulimia Nervosa, some surprising similarities arise. Compensatory self-vomitting behaviours tend to be a product of overevaluation of body weight and shape (Lamparda et al., 2011). Let's assume that "inner pressures" represent an individual's need to achieve their body weight and shape. Analogously, "inner pressures" such as perfectionism and responses to fear can cause this seemingly addictive workholic behaviour. I would dare say that the cognitive processes involved between these two cases would be quite similar.

Examining workaholism from a neurological perspective, in my opinion, would mimic neurological studies on addictive disorders. However, I couldn't find much. Randles et al. (2010) make reference to neurological mechanisms in describing how perfectionism and rumination can contribute to goal-oriented behaviours.

The drive to work harder and harder is likely to be influenced by the level of perfectionism and anxiety experienced by an individual (Shafran & Mansell, 2001). Catastrophising and ruminating about work performance can theoretically compel an individual to work harder to the point of psychopathology (of course, we lack the criteria). On another note, personality traits such as narcissism would probably play a role in triggering workaholic behaviours.

References

Spence, J.T. & Robbins, A.S. (1992). Workaholism: definition, measurement, and preliminary results. Journal of Personality Assessment, 58(1), 160-178
Lamparda, A.M., Byrnea, S.M., McLeana, N. & Furslandb, A. (2011). An evaluation of the enhanced cognitive-behavioural model of bulimia nervosa. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 49, 529-535
Randles, D., Flett, G.L., Nasha, K.A., McGreggor, I.D. & Hewitt, P.L. (2010). Dimensions of perfectionism, behavioral inhibition, and rumination. Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 83-87
Shafran, R. & Mansell, W. (2001). Perfectionism and psychopathology: A review of research and treatment. Clinical Psychology Review, 21(6), 879-906.


Human's fear of the dark comes from our evolutionary past. Scientists believe it is genetically encoded in our DNA to be afraid of the dark due to the attacks of predators on our ancestors mostly occurring at night. Our ancestors who were afraid of the dark survived predator attacks and thus lived, transferring that trait to us.

Fear is normal and usually occurs when we try something new, something unknown. Children, more than adults, are always experiencing new things so they have more fears which can get to them especially at night.

Fear of the dark is highest among children between 4 and 6 years old, and begins to decline at around 9 years old. Sigmund Freud believed that the fear of darkness is linked to separation anxiety from the absence of our mothers. But psychologists believe it comes from children's highly active imagination.

Fear of the dark forms at the age when children are able to use imagination but not distinguish fantasy from reality. Their heightened imagination allows young children to make a monster out of a shadow. Plus there are not many distractions in a child's mind compared to adults. Most of this fear in children comes from watching TV and reading books. The sounds and images on TV are too stimulating to their young brains and the images in a book might be misinterpreted and provoke an already active imagination.

So the general fear of the dark is natural and evolutionarily derived from our ancestors. But children are more afraid of the dark than adults because they have a more active imagination, they're at an age where they can't distinguish fantasy from reality, and they don't have as many distractions in their head to occupy themselves with so their imagination runs wild.

For more information, see the following links:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/why-are-we-afraid-of-the-dark.html
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/fear-of-the-dark


Thinking with organs/systems other than the brain

To answer your question – no. It is the brain that ‘thinks’ and does complex cognitive reasoning. And actually, it depends what you mean by ‘thinking’. I have studied Neuroscience for a long time and there is no evidence to suggest that the type of complex reasoning you are talking about is performed by any organ other than the brain (in any animal).

It is true that other organs than the brain produce neurohormones, but it doesn’t mean these organs are the site of action of these neurohormones.

As for the specific parts of the brain involved – I don’t know – there is still a lot of research on this going on. The telencephalon is part of the brain, and includes both the cerebral cortex and sub-cortical regions. There is strong evidence to suggest the prefrontal cortex (cortex) and hippocampus (sub-cortical) are highly-involved in complex reasoning. And many other parts of the brain are also involved in conscious and unconscious cognitive processes.

Yes, we also have a brainstem, a spinal cord and an enteric nervous system, which perform complex neural computations – but they do not ‘think’ the way we commonly think about thinking. As for non-neural parts of an organism – there is no evidence that those ‘think’.

I hope this help. I'd be interested in what others have to say on this.

Regards

HM

BSc (Biomedical Sciences – Neuroscience) (UCL)

#

Here are some references that I studied from last year:

These University-level textbooks:
--- "Anatomy and Physiology" by Tortora et al;
--- "Neuroscience" by Purves et al;
--- "Principles of Neural Science" by Kandel et al;

Also:
The Making of Memory by Steven Rose;
The Human Brain by Susan Greenfield;

From Neuron to Cognition via Computational Neuroscience
.https://mitpress.mit.edu/neuron-cognition

Cerebral cortex – Scholarpedia article
www.scholarpedia.org/article/Cerebral_cortex

An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function,
Miller & Cohen 2001, Annual review of neuroscience

The hippocampal system mediates logical reasoning about familiar spatial environments, Goel et al 2004 - Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, MIT Press

Role of the hippocampus in imagination and future thinking
Maguire & D Hassabis - 2011 - PNAS

Think Twice: How the Gut's "Second Brain" Influences Mood and Well ...
www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/

may be useful:
.http://engineering.mit.edu/ask/how-does-random-group-molecules-form-thinking-breathing-human ;;;;;
.https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2013/aug/09/a-new-way-of-thinking-about-how-the-brain-works

As for evidence that anything else than networks of neurons can enable cognitive processes – eg. skin in your leg or bone in your arm – I have never seen. Although computer transistor circuits are a possible (non-biological) candidate.


What is the neurological mechanism behind the "fear of failure"?

According neurological perspective,  Amygdala  is involved in pleasurable emotional learning as well as fearful emotional learning. awareness of the aversive nature of  stimuli is sufficient to guide our actions. We avoid dangerous neighborhoods
or shark-infested waters, not mainly because we have been
 attacked by sharks in those locations, but instead
because we might have been given information regarding the stimulus aversive characteristics.
Previous research did substantiate on basis of humans using fear conditioning. they had had found that the amygdala is not completely important in terms learning or developing of an external, cognitive representation of the aversive characters of a stimulus or event .
This cognitive representation that depends on the hippocampal memory
system, which is significant in terms of developing declarative memories, which leads to recalling of past failed experience from hippocampus and feeling sense of fear of failure in future outcomes .although, the amygdala is important for expressing conditioned fear response towards the  same stimuli.
refrence : Phelps, E., O'Connor, K., Gatenby, J., Gore, J., Grillon, C., & Davis, M. (2001). Activation of the left amygdala to a cognitive representation of fear. Nature Neuroscience, 4(4), 437-441. doi: 10.1038/86110


How actively does your brain physically prune connections?

Apoptosis is the programmed death of a cell. This is not required for pruning of connections.

During development, axons and dendrites of neurons undergo extensive lengthening, branching and also retraction. Simultaneous with this process, many many synapses are being constructed and deconstructed between axons and nearby dendrites. Also during adulthood, synapses are constructed, strengthened, weakened and deconstructed.

Hard numbers:
Between the ages of 20-90, a 10% reduction in number of neurons occurred. On average, neurons make around 7000 synapses per neuron. Under the assumption that the number of synapses per neuron doesn't change, there will be around a 10% reduction of synapses between ages 20-90. The paper referenced below states that estimates of numbers of synapses over different ages is in progress, but I couldn't find a follow-up publication.

Source: Pakkenberg, B., Pelvig, D., Marner, L., Bundgaard, M. J., Gundersen, H. J. G., Nyengaard, J. R., & Regeur, L. (2003). Aging and the human neocortex. Experimental Gerontology, 38(1-2), 95-99. doi:10.1016/S0531-5565(02)00151-1


Certainly some statements are either true or false. Either it rains or it doesn't. But when you think about many of these statements more carefully, the truth of these statements isn't really binary at all, or the binary fact is largely irrelevant.

Using the weather example, for most people it is not very helpful to know that it doesn't rain when there is a hurricane or it's snowing, both of which wouldn't usually be considered "not rain" by someone who wants to know what to wear. So the answer to "Does it rain?" usually isn't "No", but, for example, "You should take your umbrella because it looks like it might rain later".

The brain also isn't binary. Axons do not either forward an electrical impulse or not, but impulses of different intensities or frequencies. Neurons are often not activated by impulses from a single synapse, but usually by multiple synapses. Synapses do not either send out transmitters or not, but different amounts of them. Functions aren't located in one area, but in multiple areas. And so on.

Logic and maths (and psychological theories) are simplifications of a very complex reality. They provide simple solutions that often work (because life is flexible enough to adapt to a rigid approach), but just as often logic or mathematical (or psychological) approaches to deal with real problems are destined to fail.


The eegkit package for R is a good and open source toolkit for data analysis. It is easy to use and you can get really cool plots.


How do congenitally deaf and mute people think?

Short answer
The inner voice of congenitally (pre-lingually) deaf people who have not received treatment like cochlear implantation, is not sound-based. Instead, it is mainly based on visual images, such as sign-language or printed material.

Background
According to an anecdotal report published in the Independent of a congenitally deaf person, who deliberately refused cochlear implantation or other treatments, the inner voice is a visual entity taking the form of sign-language, or visual images, or sometimes printed words.

An interesting report from UCL investigated congenitally deaf people suffering from positive psychotic symptoms. In normal-hearing people, positive psychotic symptoms typically involve hearing voices (auditory hallucinations). In congenitally deaf folks, who obviously never had the chance to hear any voices in their lives, these auditory hallucinations were described as

  [Not consisting of] sounds, but [...] the gender and identity of the voice [were recognized. They were] image[s] of [...] voice[s] signing [,] or lips moving in their mind.

Source
- The Independent, December 21, 2013, UK


I mentioned in the comment that it could be just a memory test, but now, with knowing a bit more of the context (it was an interview to join a bank), it could be a test about how you stick with your first decision and how you are influenced by an obvious suggestion  to change it because, supposedly, "70% people before you did", so to change the logic by which you ordered the cards the first time.

It was one of the aptitude tests, probably a variant of a situational judgement test.


What is the meaning of Trump's 'thumb-and-index-pinch' when he speaks?

Short answer
The 'OK pinch' (Fig. 1) expresses precision and control. It stresses particular phrases and shows commitment to his words.

Background
In an interview with Psychology professor Geoffrey Beattie, communication specialist Alan Stevens addressed this point on Euro News:

source: Euro News

  ...This is probably Trump’s most well-recognized gesture – the OK
  pinch between the thumb and forefinger. [It] helps him show precision
  and control.

  These batonic [Not representing anything specific] movements are stressing those bits of the message that he sees as important [...]. In some sense it’s showing commitment to what he’s saying[,] but what he’s also doing is adding an extra layer of subconscious meaning.”

Fig. 1. Hand gestures. The second shows the thumb and forefinger touch. source: Fred Hatt


Short term memory and an effective learning strategy

By one of Tony Buzone's memory book, I would say the right way is to memorize a topic/data, then do a 10 minute break. After 10 minutes, repeat it again. Then, Repeat it the next day, the next month and then the next half a year. That should put the topic in your memory in the long term.

However, it also depends on what kind of data there is in each topic. If the data is too similar with each topic, it will be too hard to memorize all topics at once without being confused and without mixing up facts. Other factors that you didnt mention are the volume of material in each topic.

Lastly, order of topics is not important. You may reverse the order of the topics to devote your mental effort to the hardest topic as being hte first...


How to interpret HLM analyses looking at work group and individual worker effects?

Tutorials on HLM

Ultimately the paper assumes that you understand  HLM.
HLM analysis is a bit more complex than multiple regression because it deals with multiple levels of variance.

There are various tutorials and readings that can bring you up to speed:

Woltman et al (2012) in particular provide a quantitative psychology tutorial.
For a textbook treatment you could check out Raudenbush and Bryk (2002).

Interpreting Liden et al (2004)

The study uses a bunch of variables some at the individual level and some at the group-level. There are 168 participants in something like 23 groups (although there may have been some deletion of groups with insufficient interrater reliability).

The study reports individual and group level correlation matrices of these variables. Group level measures are presumably the mean of the individual group members.

The study often mentions $r_{wg}$, ICC(1) and ICC(2). These are all indices of within group rating agreement. A general assumption of multilevel research is that if you are going to aggregate individuals into group level scores, then individuals within groups should be more similar to each other than across groups. Thus, these three indices are used to justify aggregation into groups. See LeBreton and Senter (2008) for a discussion of how interrater agreement indices can be used in organisational research.

The main HLM predicts social loafing from both group and individual level variables. They estimate that 49.99% of the variance in social loafing can be explained by group differences. So in summary, some groups engage in more social loafing than others. Nonetheless, there is still variation in social loafing within groups (e.g., loafers in non-loafing groups, and non-loafers in loafing groups).

The authors then go on to analyse what predicts variation within groups using individual level measures. In Table 3 shows a model with four predictors. For example, it shows that individuals with more task interdependence are more likely to engage in social loafing as indicated by the positive coefficient and the significant p-value. The authors note that they were able to explain 21.81% of the within-group variance in employee social loafing.

Then they report a group level analysis which predicts the variation in average social loafing in groups from other group-level variables. They find for example that larger, less cohesive groups have more group level social loafing. Not surprising, they also find that groups which perceive that others engage in social loafing do in fact engage in more social loafing. They find that 30.72% of the variance in group level variance is explained by these group level variables.

The HLM approach is thus a nice fit to studying workers who are situated in different work groups. You are able to examine both individual and group-level effects. This is consistent with a theory of behaviour in the workplace that says that behaviour is influenced by both individual characteristics as well as group dynamics.

References

LeBreton, J. M. & Senter,J. L. (2008). Answers to 20 Questions About Interrater Reliability and Interrater Agreement. Organizational Research Methods,11, p 815-852.
Woltman, H., Feldstain, A., MacKay, J. C., & Rocchi, M. (2012). An introduction to hierarchical linear modeling. Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 8(1), 52-69. PDF
Raudensbush, S.W. and Bryk, A.S. (2002). Hierarchical Linear Models, Sage
Publications.


Can habits be implemented by playing mental scenarios or playing things in your head?

The answer is yes and can be supported by a theory called implementation intention.

  An implementation intention is a self-regulatory strategy in the
  form of an "if-then plan" that can lead to better goal attainment, as
  well as help in habit and behavior modification. It is subordinate to
  goal intentions as it specifies the when, where and how portions of
  goal-directed behavior. The concept of implementation intentions was
  introduced in 1999 by psychologist Peter Gollwitzer. Studies
  conducted in 1997 and earlier showed that the use of implementation
  intentions can result in a higher probability of successful goal
  attainment, by predetermining a specific and desired goal-directed
  behavior in response to a particular future event or cue.


How do some traumatic experiences establish deep beliefs and ideas?

Childhood experiences have a greater impact than events later on. It is cognitive structure forming time, with a still strong biological background. Also, the child might see itself as vulnerable, thus willing to form bonds with any protective thing that might appear (Giller, 1999):

Chronic early trauma — starting when the individual’s personality is forming — shapes a child’s (and later adult’s) perceptions and beliefs about everything.
Severe trauma can have a major impact on the course of life. Childhood trauma can cause the disruption of basic developmental tasks. The developmental tasks being learned at the time the trauma happens can help determine what the impact will be.

Children can recover to leading normal lives after traumatic events, but not all of them. It gets worst if there are continuous traumatic events (Giller, 1999):

Although most return to baseline functioning, a substantial minority of children develop severe acute or ongoing psychological symptoms (including PTSD symptoms) that bother them, interfere with their daily functioning, and warrant clinical attention. Some of these reactions can be quite severe and chronic.

We go with defense mechanisms to protect ourselves. They might get repressed in our memories but never really fade-out. It is not consensual that it is OK to break down these defenses and make people revive those traumatic experiences. Thus, i do believe you are in a psychodynamic therapy or others. And no, it is not the only way to "reprogram" the brain. There is also cognitive , behavioral, and cognitive-behavioral therapy, which are problem focused, making you relearn the correct way to think/behave in problematic contexts.

CBT for trauma includes: learning how to cope with anxiety and negative thoughts, managing anger, preparing for stress reactions, handling future trauma symptoms, addressing urges to 'self-soothe' with alcohol or drugs and communicating and relating effectively with people (National Centre for PTSD, 2008).
The CBT model when used with survivors of child abuse usually focuses on the 'here and now' rather than revisiting the trauma itself (Henderson, 2006).
Cognitive–behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques have been shown to be effective in treating children and adolescents who have persistent trauma reactions. CBT has been demonstrated to reduce serious trauma reactions, such as PTSD, other anxiety and depressive symptoms, and behavioral problems. Most evidence-based, trauma-focused treatments include opportunities for the child to review the trauma in a safe, secure environment under the guidance of a specially trained mental health professional. CBT and other trauma-focused techniques can help children with cognitive distortions related to the trauma, such as self-blame, develop more adaptive understanding and perceptions of the trauma.

I'd hint that in a context which triggers some childhood trauma (even if it is in a deep layered reasoning), it still keeps that memory being fed, forbidding its physical memory-disposal. Learning the correct reasoning will make these memories fade away eventually.


"The United Nations World Drug Report 2013 estimated that approximately 16.5 million people worldwide aged 15 or older used heroin or opium. Of these users, approximately 23% are estimated to develop opioid dependence."

This is from the introduction section of Hser, Y. I., Evans, E., Grella, C., Ling, W., & Anglin, D. (2015). Long-term course of opioid addiction. Harvard review of psychiatry, 23(2), 76-89.

They cite:
United Nations Office on Drug and Crime. World drug report 2013. Vienna: UNODC, 2013.

&

Anthony JC, Warner LA, Kessler RC. Comparative epidemiology of dependence on tobacco, alcohol, controlled substances, and inhalants: basic findings from the National Comorbidity Survey. Exp Clin Psychopharmacol 1994; 2: 244–68.

There are various factors that push that probability up or down, sex, age, personality factors, circumstantial factors, some people would have a higher probability, some lower. But the base-rate probability is roughly 1 in 4. For perspective, it's worse odds than Russian roulette (1 in 6), but better odds than unprotected sex leading to an unplanned pregnancy (somewhere around 1 in 3, depending on various things). If you're comfortable with the folk-wisdom of either "Russian roulette will kill you" or "sex leads to pregnancy" you should also be comfortable with the statement "heroin will get you hooked". Sure, they're all approximations, but not terribly misleading ones.


What are the characteristics that make complex problem solving complex?

The complexity of the environment certainly is an issue. According to AI - A modern approach, the environment may be

observable / partly observable
deterministic / stochastic / strategic
episodic / sequential
static / dynamic
discrete / continuous
single agent / multiple agent

See also WikiDoc for a short overview.
In my oppinion, these criteria apply also to human problem
solving.

Another issue is the type of problem to be solved.
A measure for complexity may be the number of steps
that must be anticipated to solve the problem, e.g.
solving a chess endgame is more complex than solving
tic tac toe.


Are good students truly good at all things?

I would say that the reasoning behind a statement such as "good students are good in all things" is not one concerning the possibly wide variety of interests and abilities but one of emotional stability and general life competency.

No one in their right mind would doubt that different people are interested in different things and therefore not equally motivated to learn all skills and all knowledge. Most people would probably also agree that not everyone is equally talented at everything. Even the best students can be divided into those that excel at one topic and those that excel at another. There are rare individuals who excel in a lot of areas, but usually the best violinist is not also the best physicist, etc. So while "good" students are probably "good" in most areas, they are not the best everywhere. This makes the statement in question less severe, allowing us to rephrase it as:

"In most individuals, there appears to be a correlation between performance in different areas. Only very rarely is one person a top achiever in one field and a total looser in another."

The reason for this is that performance is, as we view "intelligence" today, not the result of an area-specific talent for, say, language versus maths, but that people differ in such characteristics as memory capaciy or processing speed, and that all skills depend on all of these physiological capacities. You need good memory for both language and math, you need processing speed for music as well as for physics. Therefore, someone who is good at maths is potentially also good at most everything else.

But more important than that all performance in all areas is based on the same physiological requirements is that the statement in question is, as I see it, not about ability at all, but about mental health.

What that woman is saying is that a person successful at life knows that good marks in school or college are important and has the will to get those good marks. Consistent good marks show not superior ability alone, but that a person has the emotional stability, familial support, and the physiological requirements to be successful in their lives in general.

If someone does not have straight As, with maybe a rare B, then you can almost always assume that they (a) are not good, or (b) have personal problems, or (c) are not interested. You want neither in an applicant. In that sense, a "good" (as in "good for our company") employee is (at least) "good" (that is, B) everywhere.


Can individuals with schizophrenia be talked out of their delusions?

You need to understand that their experience is highly emotionally significant for them. Not necessarily in a good way, but it is. For affected people it feels true - it "is true". What medications tend to do - they dampen the affective significance, among other things, and people in time become more able to be in touch with ordinary reality. By definition delusions are "unshakeable beliefs".

Having said that - it is known that there are possibilities of treatment without medications, or at least minimising their use. They tend to involve group and community based psychological interventions over long time. Scandinavian countries (e.g.  Norway) do a lot of work in that regard. From my colleagues I have also heard that medication use is less in India - but the family ties and family member availability seem greater hence it becomes more of a group intervention. The model is that many family members in a loving way provide information that conflicts with the delusional content.

Then there is http://www.isps.org/ - a reputable organisation for psychological and social approaches to psychosis.

I hope this shows you to not expect a solution that you might be able to effect on your own. The psychotic experience can be very disturbing and you may be in for something that you do not expect when trying "to talk this person out of their delusions". Often you can become a part of the delusion - which then lessens credibility of what you say in the person's eyes.

Good luck

P.S. Of course - we can have a different picture in illicit drug induced psychosis - by definition psychosis should abate soon after drugs are out of the system. It happens however that with recurrent drug use people develop psychosis that does not abate.


What is "Attention" in terms of brain activity?

Firstly its important to note that attention basically the outcome of automatic processes, although attention may easily be directed by conscious choices.

As a previous poster mentioned the reticular formation does have a mediating role in attention. However its doesn't really control attention, so much as it does direct it based on processing in other brain areas, Sturm and Willmes (2001) aptly encapsulate this as...

  For an interpretation of the findings, we have proposed a network in which the anterior cingulate gyrus and the dorsolateral frontal cortex intrinsically control the brain-stem NA activation system via the reticular nucleus of the thalamus.

The vast majority of attentional processing at the most basic level is scanning the environment, in order to create a simulation in our minds. This simulation is not perfect by any means, in fact it appears that we only pay attention to a few key features and it is only when we focus or are guided to use a narrow area of the perceptual field that we attended to things we might not have seen, such as demonstrated by the phenomenon known as 'change blindness'.

From a perception perceptive, early attentional processing is influence by a number of factors relating to stimuli variability, which may guide the deployment of attention, such as motion, size and colour.

Fig 1. Unguided environment scanning is non selective, feature scanning which requires more processing is selective and aids quick recognition. Searching for an object requires use of both of these systems.

This early feature recognition is strongly associated with activity in the ventral visual system, see fig 2.

Fig 2. Diagram of the dorsal visual stream (non selective) and ventral visual stream (selective).

The excellent work of Prof. Jeramy Wolfe, over views much of this perceptual research. When looking for particular information an individual easily guide there attention to the relevant information, such information may even be primed rather than instructed. The pathways and areas of the brain associated with selective attention are relatively simple: the frontal eye (motor control), super parietal lobe (suppress normal attentional flow to specify new target), intraparietal sulcus (spatial orientation, salience mapping, and short-term visual memory).

Fig 3. Areas associated with attentional control, and orientation (Blue).

Luckily after years of research we understand attentional processing from a perceptual viewpoint rather well, however simple questions are far more complex than they at first seem. The current focus on research are narrowing down these areas, personally I think the more interesting questions regard saliency and hedonics. These questions look at reward processing in the brain, and how attention is implicitly guided, if your interested in this then you should check out Kent Berridge's research, which guides this area of research. Finally I'll just mention that acting on implicit processes seems to depend on executive functioning, and working memory capacity.


Is tasting something you see a form of synesthesia?

After a fair amount of research, I came across Noam Sagiv, PhD, a professor at the Centre for Cognition and Neuroimaging who has done research into synesthesia, including visual-gustatory synesthesia (the proper term for seeing-tasting synesthesia). I contacted him about this and he said the following (reproduced with permission):

  I can understand your frustration with finding information about this.
  As you probably know already from trying to look up information on
  synaesthesia, there is a lot more research on coloured letters and
  numbers than anything else.

  There are a few types of synaesthesia
  where taste is the inducer (e.g., coloured taste) and a few that
  involve taste as the synaesthetic experience: For example, musical
  notes/intervals > taste, or lexical > gustatory that you mentioned
  already.

  In our experience there are also two other variants; there are no
  published papers yet that I am aware of but we recently accepted an
  invitation to write one.

  1) We tentatively
  labelled it mirror-taste synaesthesia - this is where you see someone
  else eating something (with no smell - e.g., on TV) and experience a
  flavour experience that mirrors the other person's - i.e., similar
  principle to "mirror touch" synaesthesia, where you see someone being
  touched, and feel the same experience on your own body. The "social"
  aspect here is critical - it's not enough to see the food, you need to
  see another person eating it. My conference presentations covered this
  one - particularly a brain imaging study we conducted, where we found
  that basically, we all do something similar, even if only a minority
  of individuals actually experience it: What we found is very simple,
  that videos of people eating activate not only the visual cortex
  (which is what everyone expects) but also the gustatory cortex,
  despite the absence of direct stimulation of the sense of taste.

  2) The other type of gustatory-visual synaesthesia we would like to
  start exploring soon, is the more direct type you describe. You see
  something that you've tasted before, and experience the taste
  involuntarily/automatically and vividly. We have a couple of anecdotal
  cases but haven't started the formal survey. I expect this to be more
  common with foods than with non-edible things, but the fact that you
  get this for some early experiences is consistent with findings from
  gustatory lexical synaesthesia (where the synaesthetic taste
  "repertoire" includes things you've eaten as a child, even if you
  haven't had those for 30 years, and doesn't include things you eat
  often now, but haven't tried as a child; these things probably
  consolidate in the first decade of life, probably first half).

  We
  often find we learn new things from synaesthetes and enquiries like
  yours. I'd be grateful if you did participate in our forthcoming
  survey, and/or other studies in the lab if you are in the area (West
  London, UK).

So the short answer from a leading expert in the field is: this area has not been extensively researched, but tasting something you see does indeed seem to be a form of synesthesia, possibly including the situation that I described in the question above.

Dr. Sagiv has also extended the invitation to participate in research on synesthesia to everyone here on CogSci Stack Exchange, so feel free to contact him to discuss any synaesthetic experiences, volunteer to participate in a survey, and/or go to his lab in West London.


Why do we stress over the smallest things?

This is highly individual, and related to the personality trait neurotocism.
From wiki:

  Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than the
  average to experience such feelings as anxiety, anger, envy, guilt,
  and depressed mood.[2] They respond more poorly to stressors, are more
  likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and minor
  frustrations as hopelessly difficult.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism


::: It seems like you're trying to get to the root cause as either organic or functional? Maybe a bit of both. They jury will forever be out thus we have the stress-diathesis model for comfort. Here is some interesting discussion on the norm-referencing in assessment of manic behavior such as hypersexuality and the implications of various factors like gender. OOhh - this is a good one too actually- a very large study on the whole range of abnormal sexual activity.

In working with individuals who are hypersexualized, i've found that it's learned, it's reactive attachment gone awry...co-occurring borderline meets cyclic dysthmia.... it's never just hormone or just addiction. I have not looked at extreme cases really, though...


Experiments reported in the article "Feeling the heat: body temperature and the rate of subjective time, revisited." (Weardon and Penton-Voak, 1995) observed that in many cases the rate of subjective time increased with increased body temperature.  They suggest that a possible mechanism being that body temperature change also results in a change in arousal state.


What are 'gap junctions' (electrical synapses) for?

Gap junctions can couple cells directly electrically. Cell types electrically coupled via gap junctions include neurons, the pancreatic islets of Langerhans (Andreu et al, 1997) and cardiac cells (Fig. 1.). In contrast to chemical synapses, information transfer via electrical "synapses" (gap junctions) is nearly instantaneous. In chemical information flow, the synapse is the rate limiting step, because it depends on the passive diffusion of neurotransmitters across the synaptic cleft.

Fig. 1. The pacemaker potential in cardiac muscle cells spreads rapidly across the surface of the heart to generate synchronous muscle contraction. Source: Austin Community College.

Moreover, in a structure such as a brain nucleus many cells can be coupled. In other words, if all cells in a tissue contain gap junctions, all these cells are directly electrically coupled, not just those cells directly touching each other. In a way, all cells in such a tissue are in open connection with each other. This means that when one cell fires, it can theoretically activate all the connected cells to fire an action potential in near-synchrony.

Hence, gap junctions allow for synchronous activation of inter-connected neurons, both  in the spatial and temporal domain.

While this can be the preferred mode of operation of firing in some neuronal structures such as the olivary nucleus (Leznik & Llinás, 2005), it can theoretically lead to trouble in case pathological synchronization is established, leading to epileptic activity (Dudek, 2002).

Whether we know little, or much of gap junctions is subjective. However, it is certainly true that way more research is available on chemical neurotransmission than on electrical transmission. Likewise, many more medications target chemical transmission than electrical neurotransmission.

References
- Andreu et al, J Physiol (1997), 498(3): 753-61
- Dudek, Epilepsy Curr (2002); 2(4): 133–6
- Leznik & Llinás, J Neurophysiol (2005); 94(4): 2447-56


What is the psychological basis of "survivor's guilt"?

1. Psychological basis of survivor guilt

Psychosocial and evolutionary perspective on survivor guilt

Survivor guilt may be a psychological response that is associated with depression. Loss of a beloved one, which constitutes a psychosocial attachment, can precipitate a proneness towards experiencing survivor guilt. In clinical samples, the clinically depressed tend to suffer from pathogenic cognitions in which they view themselves as harmful to others are an effect of feeling guilty from surviving a beloved one's death (O'Connor et al., 2002). In that regard, we can hypothesise that survivor guilt is probably a self-protective mechanism involving self-denunciation to combat guilt about surviving a beloved one's death.

  Tendency toward self-reproach which death invariably leaves among the
  survivors (Freud, 1987, cited in Ernest Jones, 1960)

Survivor guilt could have evolutionary roots as well: survivor guilt may be a product of evolutionary pressures with living in small groups as a means to promote social organisation (O'Connor et al., 2002). The loss of an individual within these close socially-knit arrangements creates dysfunction and survivor guilt is an evolutionary means to understanding the changes experienced.

Existential crises, anxiety and ambivalence

Drawing from logotherapy, survivor guilt can be understood further from an existential point of view by referring to existential dynamics (Tate et al., 2012):

  Mental health is based on a certain amount of tension [or existential
  dynamics], the tension between what one has already achieved and what
  one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what
  one should become. (p. 104)

Survivor guilt may be the tension created between an individual's past experiences and future possibilities. Past experiences such as traumatic events create tension with an individual understanding his or her existence compared to future potentialities. A person narrowly escaping death may physically survive the traumatic experience but in the present moment, they experience excessive amounts of worry about why they are here and what the future holds. This cognitive dichotomy of being shameful about the past and fearful of the future can lead to survivor guilt.

2. Studies on the psychological basis of survivor guilt

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), cognitive distortions and survivor guilt

Jones and Okulate (2006) conducted a study on the relationship between PTSD and survivor guilt by administering a questionnaire to 1,131 patients from the 68 Nigerian Army Reference Hospital, Lagos, Nigeria. Of these, 194 (22.09%) met the criteria for current
PTSD. Survivor guilt was found in 336 responders (38.26%). The following explanation is given by the authors:

  The
  reason for the very high rate of survivor guilt may be related
  to the intra-group identification and cohesiveness that usually
  develops in combat-effective military units after several years
  of training together. Unfortunately, loss of men resulting from
  death or injury in battle is inevitable. For those who survive,
  witnessing the death of comrades is additional psychosocial
  stressor to the combat situation itself, and the survivor guilt
  that may result is understandably very distressing.

Survivor guilt and chronic illness

Vamos (1997) provides cases on patients and their experiences of survivor guilt in the face of chronic illness and witnessing other people's illnesses:

  Miss A had visited her frequently and  had repeatedly had the
  experience of trying to bright-  en her friend by accounts of shopping
  expeditions or  other excursions, only to feel profoundly guilt-ridden
  that she could still be enjoying herself when her  friend’s life was
  so limited. Since the death, she had  been unable to weep but had
  found herself compelled  to clean both the house and herself
  repeatedly, and  had often wondered whether she should take a  ‘break’
  from dialysis

References

O’Connor, L.E., Berry, J.W., Weiss, J. & Gilbert, P. (2002). Guilt, fear, submission, and empathy in depression. Journal of Affective Disorders, 71(1), 19-27
Tate, K.A., Williams, C. & Harden, D. (2012). Finding purpose in pain: Using logotherapy as a method for addressing survivor guilt in first-generation college students. Journal of College Counselling, 2012, 16(1), 79-92
Okulate, G.T. & Jones, O.B.E. (2006). Post-traumatic stress disorder, survivor guilt and substance use – a study of hospitalised Nigerian army veterans. South African Medical Journal, 96(2), 144-146
Vamos, M. (1997). Survivor guilt and chronic illness. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 1997, 31, 592-596


What is the neural adaptation underlying the habituation to reversed visual images?

Short answer
From what I know from the literature, adapting to prism glasses mainly finds it origins in adaptation of behavioral motor control.

Background
The adaptation to wearing prism glasses is often ascribed to the adaptation of the proprioceptive system, i.e., subjects adapt their motor behavior to compensate for the visual field shift (e.g., Richter et al. (2002), Hatada & Rosetti (2006)), or through shifts in their egocentric reference frame. Admittedly, some subtle, short-lasting after-effects do seem to occur in the visual domain (Hatada et al., 2006), but gross adaptation is mainly centered on behavioral adaptations of motor control, at least as far as I am aware.

In four human subjects that wore prism glasses for about 36 days it was shown that after a week or two, also their ipsilateral visual cortices were activated, while normally only the contralateral cortex is activated (Miyauchi et al., 2004). So there is a definite visuo-neurophysiological correlate of wearing prism glasses. Nonetheless The authors conclude that...

  [The] changes observed [in] adaptation to left–right reversing may be associated with the process of [...] strategic perceptual-motor control. [...]. For example, when the subjects wearing left–right reversing goggles pick up an object located in the left visual field, they have to use their right hand which is normally located in the right visual field [...].

Note that the link you provide describes mainly anecdotal reports from a single researcher. Above studies included multiple subjects.

References
- Hatada et al., Exp Brain Res (2006); 173(3): 415–24
- Hatada et al., Exp Brain Res (2006); 174(1): 189–98
- Hatada & Rosetti, Exp Brain Res (2006); 169(3): 417–26
- Miyauchi et al., J Physiol - Paris (2004); 98: 207–19
- Richter et al., Exp Brain Res (2002); 144(4): 445–57


Getting useful readings out of GSR sensors while moving?

I think the general downside of the galvanic skin response (GSR) apply here. Wikipedia sums up a few confounding factors that affect the validity of GSR:

Temperature and humidity (affect the resistance of the skin and hence GSR);
Internal factors, such as medications and hydration;
Different locations of measurement on the body can lead to different responses; for example, the responses on the left and right wrists are driven by different regions of the brain, providing multiple sources of arousal.
Different body parts may have different sweat gland density
Electrodermal responses are delayed 1–3 seconds.

My personal biggest issue with the method is the fact that the GSR depends so much on the temperature of the room and activity of the subject. However, my purpose for it is a quantitative one; your is more of a qualitative one as I understand it. If yes, then some variability may not be so problematic and you can counter the above drawbacks by

Only do the experiment indoors in a climate controlled environment;
Calibrate the equipment on yourself and only use yourself as a subject and stay hydrated;
Always use the same location (fingers in case of your linked device);
Give your device some time to respond; so the (stress) situation has to be somewhat prolonged, and the response will be delayed.

Do note that skin conductances are finicky. You can assure good contact by rubbing the skin with alcohol and a rough-surface pice of gauze. Make sure to apply some conductive paste. Measure the impedances regularly.

FYI: I have chosen to use pupillometry as a measure of stress. It has its own drawbacks and issues (especially adaptational responses and baseline issues), but once it works, it's less prone to signal drift, e.g. because of impedance issues as with electrode-based methods.

Below I've added a reference that lists an entire protocol for such measurements.

Reference
- Cartocci et al., J Vis Exp (2017); 126: 55872


Do "overview" sections increase learning outcome?

There is something called "advance organizer", that traces back to Ausubel (1960). It is some kind of overview, in which a short summary is given and (more important), in which the following  topic is connected to prior knowledge (= Associations are being activated). In that sense it activates schemes, in order to assimiliate the new knoweldge to the old one or to accomodate/correct the prior knowledge. So, to be useful, advance organizers should have certain features:

Connections between the following topic and prior knowlege
Catch the attention of the student
Be concret, insted of abstract

F.e. Before teaching equations the teacher could give the analogy of a scale.

From a scientific perspective it is known, that advance organizers can have supportive effects on learning and retention (see f.e. Luiten, Ames & Ackerson, 1980)

Luiten, J., Ames, W., & Ackerson, G. (1980). A meta-analysis of the effects of advance organizers on learning and retention. American Educational Research Journal, 17(2), 211-218.


Research on avoiding thinking about things that trigger depression or anxiety

In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, one way to break this cycle is to examine the intensity of the anxiety, or the propensity to think anxiety-inducing thoughts, in different locations, home, shopping, gym, library, movie. Breaking the cycle by limiting time spent in the anxiety-inducing location is beneficial because triggering depression might trigger more anxiety-inducing thoughts, which will add to the depression...etc.


May somebody use oddball paradigm solely for psychophysical studies?

First off, I'm not an expert, but the oddball paradigm was initially developed for use in event-related potential (ERP) studies (basically EEG measures) (source: Wikipedia). Hence, because of historical reasons, you see this paradigm pop up especially in ERP studies. However, the task has been used in purely psychophysical experiments as well, without EEG or imaging (e.g., Stockdale et al. (2011)).

Reference
- Stockdale et al., Vis Res (2011); 51(11): 1232–8


Is there any significant empirical evidence showing drawbacks of ACT therapy?

After significantly more research, with help from the comments I have found the following:

According to The University of York,

  "Acceptance and commitment therapy was more effective than control conditions across several disorders, but there was no evidence that it was more effective than established treatments."

More specifically, they state:

  "[A]cceptance and commitment therapy was of statistically significant benefit for depression (two RCTs), physical health (five RCTs), and other mental health conditions (seven RCTs), but not for distress conditions (four RCTs)." and "When all trials were combined (regardless of comparison or duration of follow-up), acceptance and commitment therapy was significantly more effective than control conditions"

This evidence points to ACT being equally as effective as established therapies, but ineffective on distress conditions. As Fizz pointed out in the comments, the biggest issue with ACT and other third-wave CBTs is that they are over hyped as miracle solutions despite little empirical evidence showing they are more effective than already established methodology.


What is an effective metric of complexity for an Artificial Neural Network?

The standard complexity metric in theoretical computer science and machine learning, in particular in statistical learning theory, is the Vapnik–Chervonenkis (VC) dimension. It is of interest because it gives us a very good tool to measure the learning ability of a neural network (or any other statistical learner, in general).

A good introduction to the use of VC dimension for studying neural nets is:

Eduardo D. Sontag [1998] "VC dimension of neural networks" [pdf].

There, the author shows (for instance) that a network with one hidden layer, $n$ inputs, and $\tanh$ neurons has VC dimension of $n + 1$. He also explain some basic technique for how to upper-bound the VC dimension, and for how to use it for dynamic neural nets.


Why do males prefer females with blonde hair?

Ellis (1974) thought that men prefer rotund features in women and that blonde hair creates such a roundish upper body shape because the blonde hair, which is close in color to (a white woman's) skin, would blend with the skin.

In his famous book, The naked ape, Desmond Morris (1967) documented that men prefer adolescent features. In his opinion blonde hair serves as a secondary sexual characteristic, because skin and hair tends to be lighter in infants than in adults.

One recent study supports this view: Studying Polish men, Sorokowski (2008) found that those men rated blonde women as younger. Since the men also rated younger women as more attractive, Sorokowski concluded that blonde hair may serve as an age cue for men. Consequently, in a second study, Sorokowski found that middle aged women are more likely to die their hair blonde. Younger women already are young, so they don't need that cue to appear attractive. Only middle aged blonde women were rated more attractive than their non-blonde same-age peers. Young women of all hair colors appear equally attractive.

Youth is associated with fertility and health. Ramachandran (1997) proposes a theory that explains how blonde hair can signal health: blonde hair is usually found in women with light skin, and light skin better allows the detection of skin color changes that are symptoms of illness and infestation with parasites. According to Ramachandran, blonde hair simply signals that the man can more easily check if the woman is healthy.

Rowell and Servedio (2009) propose that male preferences help avoid competitive pressure from other males. According to this view it does not matter so much that maybe men prefer blonde women on average. The important finding is that most men fall into groups liking different kinds of women – differentiated not only by hair color but by complex combinations of traits – and therefore do not compete with each other. (Many men here will probably be able to testify that they found women unattractive that a male friend found attractive. In effect they could remain friends, because they liked different women and did not have to compete with each other.)

There is lots more. These are just the first hits from a quick search. An interesting article in the Guardian summarizes some more research: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/jun/04/men-blonde-women-attractive

Sources:

Ellis, H. (1974). Man and woman: A study of secondary sexual characteristics. New York: Amo Press.
Morris, D. (1967). The naked ape. New York: Dell.
Ramachandran, V. S. (1997). Why do gentlemen prefer blondes? Medical hypotheses, 48(1), 19-20.
Rowell, J. T., & Servedio, M. R. (2009). Gentlemen prefer blondes: the evolution of mate preference among strategically allocated males. The American Naturalist, 173(1), 12-25. Available online at www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/593356
Sorokowski, P. (2008). Attractiveness of blonde women in evolutionary perspective: Studies with two Polish samples. Perceptual and motor skills, 106(3), 737-744. Available online at http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pms.106.3.737-744


How to measure the correlation between "spirituality" and the susceptibility to false memories?

Maybe what you are looking for is the field cognitive science of religion:

  Cognitive science of religion is the study of religious thought and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. The field employs methods and theories from a very broad range of disciplines, including: cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive anthropology, artificial intelligence, neurotheology, developmental psychology, and archaeology. Scholars in this field seek to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit religious thoughts, practices, and schemas by means of ordinary cognitive capacities.

Follow up resources:

International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion (IACSR)
Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion


What is the scientific evaluation of Rapid Transformational Therapy?

There are no research papers on RTT present on Google Scholar.
Therefore, I think it is straightforward to presume that it has not been scientifically evaluated, which makes any claim whatsoever about its efficacy quite dubious. It's up to the people promoting an approach to demonstrate scientifically that it is effective, rather than for others to demonstrate it is ineffective.


What are the negative effects of meditation?

The adverse effects of meditation as reported in scientific studies are as follows:

relaxation-induced anxiety and panic
paradoxical increases in tension
less motivation in life
boredom
pain
impaired reality testing
confusion and disorientation
feeling 'spaced out'
depression
increased negativity
being more judgmental
feeling addicted to meditation
uncomfortable kinaesthetic sensations
mild dissociation
feelings of guilt
psychosis-like symptoms
grandiosity
elation
destructive behavior
suicidal feelings
defenselessness
fear
anger
apprehension
despair
increased false-memory susceptibility

Also, anecdotal evidence suggests that meditation can worsen symptoms of some psychiatric problems.

Sources:

Study from 1992:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1428622

  Adverse effects of meditation: a preliminary investigation of
  long-term meditators, by Shapiro DH Jr.

  Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, California College of Medicine, University of California, Irvine.

  Abstract

  Adverse effects of meditation were assessed in twenty-seven long term
  meditators (average 4.27 years) both retrospectively (time one) and
  prospectively at one month (time two) and six months (time three)
  following a meditation retreat. At both time one and time three
  subjects reported significantly more positive effects than negative
  from meditation. However, of the twenty-seven subjects, seventeen
  (62.9%) reported at least one adverse effect, and two (7.4%) suffered
  profound adverse effects. When subjects at time one were divided into
  three groups based on length of practice (16.7 months; 47.1 months;
  105 months) there were no significant differences in adverse effects.
  How the data should be interpreted, and their implications both for
  the clinical and psychotherapeutic use of meditation as a
  relaxation/self-control strategy, and as a technique for facilitating
  personal and spiritual growth, are discussed. Limitations of the study
  and suggestions for future research are also offered.

Meta-analysis from 2000:

  Meditation: concepts, effects and uses in therapy by Alberto
  Perez-De-Albeniz and Jeremy Holmes

  International Journal of Psychotherapy, Mar2000, Vol. 5 Issue 1,
  p49, 10p

  Abstract: This article reviews 75 scientific selected articles in the
  field of meditation, including Transcendental Meditation among others.
  It summarizes definitions of meditation, psychological and physiological
  changes, and negative side-effects encountered by 62.9% of meditators
  studied. While the authors did not restrict their study to TM, the
  side-effects reported were similar to those found in the "German
  Study" of Transcendental Meditators: relaxation-induced anxiety and
  panic; paradoxical increases in tension; less motivation in life;
  boredom; pain; impaired reality testing; confusion and disorientation;
  feeling 'spaced out'; depression; increased negativity; being more
  judgmental; feeling addicted to meditation; uncomfortable kinaesthetic
  sensations; mild dissociation; feelings of guilt; psychosis-like
  symptoms; grandiosity; elation; destructive behavior; suicidal
  feelings; defenselessness; fear; anger; apprehension; and despair.

New study shows increase in cortisol reactivity (a biological marker of stress): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24767614

  The present study provides an initial indication that brief
  mindfulness meditation training buffers self-reported psychological
  stress reactivity, but also increases cortisol reactivity to social
  evaluative stress. This pattern may indicate that initially brief
  mindfulness meditation training fosters greater active coping efforts,
  resulting in reduced psychological stress appraisals and greater
  cortisol reactivity during social evaluative stressors.

Another new study shows increased susceptibility to false memories:

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/26/10/1567

Increased False-Memory Susceptibility After Mindfulness Meditation by Brent M. Wilson, Laura Mickes, Stephanie Stolarz-Fantino, Matthew Evrard and Edmund Fantino in Psychololgical Science

  Abstract

  The effect of mindfulness meditation on false-memory susceptibility
  was examined in three experiments. Because mindfulness meditation
  encourages judgment-free thoughts and feelings, we predicted that
  participants in the mindfulness condition would be especially likely
  to form false memories. In two experiments, participants were randomly
  assigned to either a mindfulness induction, in which they were
  instructed to focus attention on their breathing, or a mind-wandering
  induction, in which they were instructed to think about whatever came
  to mind. The overall number of words from the Deese-Roediger-McDermott
  paradigm that were correctly recalled did not differ between
  conditions. However, participants in the mindfulness condition were
  significantly more likely to report critical nonstudied items than
  participants in the control condition. In a third experiment, which
  tested recognition and used a reality-monitoring paradigm,
  participants had reduced reality-monitoring accuracy after completing
  the mindfulness induction. These results demonstrate a potential
  unintended consequence of mindfulness meditation in which memories
  become less reliable.

Official recommendations in the US:
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/meditation/overview.htm#sideeffects

  Side Effects and Risks

  Meditation is considered to be safe for healthy people. There have
  been rare reports that meditation could cause or worsen symptoms in
  people who have certain psychiatric problems, but this question has
  not been fully researched. People with physical limitations may not be
  able to participate in certain meditative practices involving physical
  movement. Individuals with existing mental or physical health
  conditions should speak with their health care providers prior to
  starting a meditative practice and make their meditation instructor
  aware of their condition.


Depending on the instructions that you give to the person, you might be able to disguise the fact that they are completing a color-blindness test. You could use stimuli like those in the Ishihara test, but instead ask the subject to do a math problem where they add the previous two numbers. You can also tell them that sometimes no number will be presented, and have a few cases of actual blank tiles mixed in with the regular stimuli. If a subject reports the wrong sum consistently for trials that involve a particular hue, you can be reasonably confident that they are colorblind for that hue.

There is also a short test developed by researchers at City University London which has subjects track a square during a movie. It's probably no more subtle than the Ishihara test, but it is less well known and therefore subjects might not infer what the purpose is. See http://www.city.ac.uk/health/research/centre-for-applied-vision-research/a-new-web-based-colour-vision-test.


How much information is lost when conveying an experience or emotion to another person?

Communication is always a lossy and inexact process. If I am trying to convey information to you - the times of trains, for example - I can use dates and times that I can be confident that you will interpret the same way I do. But you may not - I may say the train leaves at 8:40, and you assume I mean the morning, whereas I actually mean the evening. So while there is a consistent and standardised worldview that I share, I can have reasonably high confidence in this.

When it comes to emotions, these are, by definition, more subjective. The shared worldview is much smaller, and the chances of the words having the same meaning between us is significantly less. Because most words actually have emotional resonances, there is always this danger, but when the emotional resonance is the intention, this is an issue. I can only be sure of communicating the emotions to you if we share the same emotional language.

This language is build though our experiences, memories, make-up etc, so to share a language, we need to share all of this - effectively impossible. To measure the difference, we would need to do a substantial comparison of the relevant worldviews of the two communicants. Given that most people cannot even start to quantify their own dominant worldview, this does not seem likely.

Just noted - you referred to experiences not emotions. However the same applies, because our experiences are communicated emotionally.


Can working memory actually be improved?

No program has been definitively proven to increase working memory in any generalizable way.

  The authors conclude that memory training programs appear to produce short-term, specific training effects that do not generalize. Possible limitations of the review (including age differences in the samples and the variety of different clinical conditions included) are noted.However, current findings cast doubt on both the clinical relevance of working memory training programs and their utility as methods of enhancing cognitive functioning in typically developing children and healthy adults.

-Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review.


Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity interpretation

The best explanation for STDP that I've ever seen is Nicky Case's Neurotic Neurons. In this Explorable Explanation, I think you'll find that your misunderstanding lies in the fact that both the pre-synaptic (Neuron A) and the post-synaptic neuron (Neuron B) exist in a network of other neurons. They are not only connected to each other. You are correct in saying that it often takes more than one incoming spike to make a neuron fire. These spikes are usually coming from other neurons (Neuron C, D, E... etc). So it's incorrect to think that "the only way a postsynaptic spike occurs is when the presynaptic neuron fires into the postsynaptic one".

So, to summarize, yes the time interval is the time difference between the last pre-synaptic spike to the first spike of the post-synaptic spike. These neurons exist in a network of neurons. It's probably best to think of STDP as a coincidence detector.


What is the longer term prognosis for women in their early 20's with Schizoaffective disorder?

Note, this is not my area, and not medical advice. If you need help with this you should consult an appropriately trained health practitioner.

To consult the scientific literature, do a search like "schizoaffective disorder prognosis" on Google Scholar.

For example, Robinson et al (1999) provide some relevant empirical data. The sample was 50% female and had a mean age of 25.6 (SD=6.3) years. To quote their abstract:

  Background  We examined relapse after response to a first episode of
  schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.

  Methods  Patients with first-episode schizophrenia were assessed on
  measures of psychopathologic variables, cognition, social functioning,
  and biological variables and treated according to a standardized
  algorithm. The sample for the relapse analyses consisted of 104
  patients who responded to treatment of their index episode and were at
  risk for relapse.

  Results  Five years after initial recovery, the cumulative first
  relapse rate was 81.9% (95% confidence interval [CI], 70.6%-93.2%);
  the second relapse rate was 78.0% (95% CI, 46.5%-100.0%). By 4 years
  after recovery from a second relapse, the cumulative third relapse
  rate was 86.2% (95% CI, 61.5%-100.0%). Discontinuing antipsychotic
  drug therapy increased the risk of relapse by almost 5 times (hazard
  ratio for an initial relapse, 4.89 [99% CI, 2.49-9.60]; hazard ratio
  for a second relapse, 4.57 [99% CI, 1.49-14.02]). Subsequent analyses
  controlling for antipsychotic drug use showed that patients with poor
  premorbid adaptation to school and premorbid social withdrawal
  relapsed earlier. Sex, diagnosis, obstetric complications, duration of
  psychotic illness before treatment, baseline symptoms, neuroendocrine
  measures, methylphenidate hydrochloride challenge response,
  neuropsychologic and magnetic resonance imaging measures, time to
  response of the initial episode, adverse effects during treatment, and
  presence of residual symptoms after the initial episode were not
  significantly related to time to relapse.

  Conclusions  There is a high rate of relapse within 5 years of
  recovery from a first episode of schizophrenia and schizoaffective
  disorder. This risk is diminished by maintenance antipsychotic drug
  treatment.

References

Robinson, D., Woerner, M. G., Alvir, J. M. J., Bilder, R., Goldman, R., Geisler, S., ... & Lieberman, J. A. (1999). Predictors of relapse following response from a first episode of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry, 56(3), 241. FULL TEXT


Is it okay to measure only a subset of the Big Five such as neuroticism and extraversion in research?

It's very common in research to only measure a subset of the Big Five. When I recently reviewed the literature on the Big Five and well-being, there were a huge number of papers that only used a subset of the Big Five. And I'd say that the most common variables to be measured in isolation were neuroticism followed by extraversion. More generally, if I were to add one more to the mix in health related research, I'd say that conscientiousness deserves greater attention. It's particularly relevant to health-related outcomes and captures quite a different mechanisms (e.g., compliance with treatment, healthy lifestyle, lower levels of compulsive behaviours, etc.).

And when you look at this research, they generally take scales from standard length measures of the Big Five (e.g., NEO FFI, IPIP NEO 50, BFI or BFI 2, etc.). You also have Eysenck's measures which are still popular and provide neuroticism and extraversion measures.

That said, I'm not really a fan of this piece-meal approach to personality measurement. It's not that hard to include a complete measure of the Big Five, and then you get a more comprehensive view of how personality maps onto the constructs of interest, rather than assuming a priori that the domains you're looking at are all that there is. If the number of items is a big issue, the BFI 44 is not that long or if you get desperate there's something like the Mini IPIP 20 (although alphas are a bit lower). We discuss these recommendations and trade-offs quite a bit in Anglim & O'Connor (2019).

Anglim, J., & O’Connor, P. (2019). Measurement and research using the Big Five, HEXACO, and narrow traits: A primer for researchers and practitioners. Australian Journal of Psychology, 71(1), 16-25. https://psyarxiv.com/a78g2/download?format=pdf


Are there any cognitive tests, or test suites, available on the Android?

The N-back task is a typical test for cognitive capabilities. There are many version of it in the Google play store. You could try a few of them and see which suits your needs best.


Psychometric information on IPIP representation of NEO facets

The table found at your second link (comparing the IPIP NEO and official NEO) seems to have come from this paper by Goldberg (1999): http://projects.ori.org/lrg/PDFs_papers/A%20broad-bandwidth%20inventory.pdf. This paper discusses the generation of the IPIP items as well as the sample it was originally administered in. A 2006 paper (also by Goldberg) provides additional information on IPIP development:

Unfortunately, I was unable to locate information on the factor structure of the IPIP NEO 30 facet form, only the IPIP 50-item FFM (Ehrhart, Roesch, Ehrhart, & Kilian, 2008), which seems to be a different measure (http://ipip.ori.org/newFinding_Labeling_IPIP_Scales.htm).

Ehrhart, K. H., Roesch, S. C., Ehrhart, M. G., & Kilian, B. (2008). A test of the factor structure equivalence of the 50-Item IPIP Five-Factor Model Measure across gender and ethnic groups. Journal of Personality Assessment, 90(5), 507–516.

Goldberg, L. A., Johnson, J. A., Hogan, R. , Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, & Gough, H. G. (2006). The international personality item pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84–96.


What is the neurophysiological mechanism behind double hearing?

Short answer
Damage to the inner ear can result in an asymmetric distortion in pitch perception between the two ears. This phenomenon can result in the same tone being perceived as a different pitch by the two ears.

Background
Damage to the inner ear (the cochlea) can lead to hearing loss. Hearing loss can sometimes lead to changes in perceived pitch. For people with unilateral cochlear damage, or asymmetrical hearing losses, the same tone presented alternately to the two ears may be perceived as having different pitches in the two ears (diplacusis). Sometimes different pitches are perceived even when the hearing loss is the same in the two ears (Moore, 1996). Diplacusis is associated with a higher perceived pitch in the relatively more impaired ear (Burns & Turner, 1986).

The precise origin of these pitch shifts is unclear, but are related to hearing loss (Moore, 1996). What is known, however, is that damage to the cochlea can lead to (Moore & Carlyon, 2005):

Reduced frequency selectivity in the ear, i.e., a reduced pitch discrimination. This may alter the perception of pitch in complex tones;
Altered velocity of the travelling wave on the basilar membrane. When the outer hair cells (the acoustic amplifiers in the cochlea) are damaged, the speed in which the acoustic wave travels through the cochlea may be altered, possibly leading to an altered perceived pitch;
Dead regions in the cochlea, where the inner hair cells (the mechanoreceptors of the inner ear) are absent. In this case a tone is perceived by adjacent regions in the cochlea. Because the cochlea is a frequency-to-place converter (basically a Fourier transformer), it may result in altered pitch perception;
Reduced phase locking (Koppl, 1997) in the auditory nerve. Phase locking refers to auditory nerve fibers following the waveform of the tonal stimulus, which may provide pitch information (in humans this process is mainly confined to low frequencies, ~1 kHz and below). Reduction of this property may alter pitch perception.

References
- Burns & Turner, JASA (1986), 79(5): 1530-40
- Koppl, J Neurosci (1997), 17(9): 3312–21
- Moore, Ear Hear (1996); 17: 133-60
- Moore & Carlyon, Springer Handbook of Auditory Research (2005); 24: 234-77


Why are empty spaces around hippocampus and striatum not filled with astrocytes?

Short answer
Glial scarring is due to brain damage. Brain damage results in molecular signals to be released that attract glial cells. Spaces in the brain present during development are not characterized by signalling molecules associated with trauma.

Background
The key here is that glial scar formation follows damage to the brain, and is associated with healing processes in the brain, including those occurring after ischemic stroke (Huang et al., 2014) and physical trauma (source: Society for Neuroscience, 2010). Brain damage results in the release of inflammatory proteins that signal glia to form scar tissue (e.g. Patel et al (2013)).

There are many vacant spaces in the brain (Fig. 1), most notably the four ventricles. These spaces are there from birth, and are actually formed within the first few weeks after conception. Because there are no signals involved from brain trauma, and these structures should be there, the glial system does not get signals to invade these areas and fill them up with glial scar tissue.

Also note that glial cells have little to do with neurogeneration; glia is not nervous tissue.

Fig. 1. Brain ventricles. source: Anatomy Note

References
- Huanget al., Int J Med Sci (2014); 11(4): 344–8
- Patel el al., Int J Physiol Pathophysiol Pharmacol (2013); 5(2): 73–90


What percentage of systematic data starts to be considered random

Tests of randomness like (my favorite) Kolmogorov complexity will tell you how random those objects seem scientifically. (I'm not certain but I think your describing chaotic behavior rather than random behavior because the random objects can only be rearranged rather than replaced.)

Aside from mathematics this is an active area of psychological research. Those with disillusion illnesses like schizo typical often have the trouble identifying when a pattern is random. The sick brain seeking to bring the universe into order or create a new reality to match its broken perceptions deludes itself into believing that random events happen as per a control. This is called Pareidolia (when there is something which might vaguely resemble a pattern) and Apophenia (when the data is obviously random).

Your test would be measuring Pareidolia, Apophenia as well as Pattern recognition.


Why do some parents prefer some children more than others?

There is quite a lot of research on parental favoritism. I'll summarize some of the findings:

girls are more often parental favorites (Harris & Howard, 1985)
women more often report parental favoritism (Chalfant, 1994)
parents favor less aggressive children (which partially explains their preference for girls; Tucker et al., 2003)
the youngest child is more often the parental favorite (Harris & Howard, 1985; Rhode et al., 2003; Tucker et al., 2003)
the middle child is least often the parental favorite (Harris & Howard, 1985; Hertwig et al., 2002)
19% of 1st-born siblings, 30% of middle-born, and 26% of last-born claimed to be their father's favorite (Chalfant, 1994)
23% of 1st-born, 10% of middle-born, and 28% of last-born siblings claimed to be their mother's favorite (Chalfant, 1994)
favoritism was most often reported from a parent of the opposite sex (Chalfant, 1994)
only about 10% of children and 10% of parents felt or admitted that they had been favored or favored a child (Bedford, 1992)
more than 75% of the siblings felt themselves to be the favorite of at least one of their parents (Kiracofe & Kiracofe, 1990)

As you can see, findings are somewhat contradictory.

Parental favoritism has consequences:

Self-esteem in the child correlates to perceived parental favoritism (Felson & Zielinski, 1989; Zervas & Sherman, 1994). Children, whose parents had treated all children equally, rated highest in self-esteem; favored children rated lower, nonfavored lowest (Zervas & Sherman, 1994). Parents' supportive behavior affects the self-esteem of children but child self-esteem also affects how much support children report their parents give them; in addition, parents have a greater effect on the self-esteem of girls than of boys (Felson & Zielinski, 1989).
Siblings express less warmth and greater hostility toward one another when parents show favoritism (McHale et al., 1995)
over time, being unfavored by parents produces behavior problems in children (Richmond, Stocker, & Rienks, 2005)

Explanations for parental favoritism include:

Stress predicts favoritism. Favoritism is more common when parents experience marital problems and when children have serious health problems (Singer & Weinstein, 2000).
Personality of the child predicts favoritism (see e.g. aggression above).

There is research on favoritism of children for parent also, as well as favoritism of adult children, both of which I did not report.

All of the above is limted to Western cultures. As we know, there are some cultures where parents go so far in their favoritism that they kill female children. The conclusion is that favoritism is not universal but culture specific.

Note: Most of the text above is copy/pasted directly from the quoted papers. I did not mark it as quotes as this would have greatly reduced readability.

Sources

Bedford, V. H. (1992). Memories of parental favoritism and the quality of parent-child ties in adulthood. Journal of Gerontology, 47(4), S149-S155.
Chalfant, D. (1994). Birth order, perceived parental favoritism, and feelings toward parents. Individual Psychology: Journal of Adlerian Theory, Research & Practice.
Felson, R. B., & Zielinski, M. A. (1989). Children's self-esteem and parental support. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 727-735.
Harris, I. D., & Howard, K. I. (1985). Correlates of perceived parental favoritism. The Journal of genetic psychology, 146(1), 45-56.
Hertwig R., Davis J.N., & Sulloway F.J. (2002). Parental investment: How an equity motive can produce inequality. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 728–745.
Kiracofe, N. M., & Kiracofe, H. N. (1990). Child-perceived parental favoritism and birth order. Individual Psychology: Journal of Adlerian Theory, Research & Practice.
McHale S.M., Crouter A.C., McGuire S.A., & Updegraff K.A. (1995). Congruence between mothers' and fathers' differential treatment of siblings: Links with family relations and children's well-being. Child Development, 66, 116–128.
Richmond M.K., Stocker C.M., & Rienks S.L. (2005). Longitudinal associations between sibling relationship quality, parental differential treatment, and children's adjustment. Journal of Family Psychology, 19, 550–559.
Rohde, P. A., Atzwanger, K., Butovskaya, M., Lampert, A., Mysterud, I., Sanchez-Andres, A., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Perceived parental favoritism, closeness to kin, and the rebel of the family: The effects of birth order and sex. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24(4), 261-276.
Tucker C.J., McHale S.M., & Crouter A.C. (2003). Dimensions of mothers' and fathers' differential treatment of siblings: Links with adolescents' sex-typed personal qualities. Family Relations, 52, 82–89.
Zervas, L. J., & Sherman, M. F. (1994). The relationship between perceived parental favoritism and self-esteem. The Journal of genetic psychology, 155(1), 25-33.


Voltage-dependent ion channels as operators

Yes, they are nonlinear filters, which are operators on temporal signals. I have not seen a single ion channel analyzed as nonlinear filter though. Most of the time, a system containing ion channels (such as some neuron's membrane) is analyzed as such. Papers describing the biophysics of neurons and their function as filtering devices has been one of the topics in computational neuroscience.

Gerstner, W. and Kistler, W. M. (2002). Spiking Neuron Models. Cambridge University Press
Marmarelis, V. Z. (2004). Nonlinear dynamic modeling of physiological systems.


Do people always decide to do things that they believe will provide them the maximum amount of positive feelings in their conscious life?

I would say that the more compelling scientific evidence would suggest the opposite.

Daniel Kahnemann got a Nobel Prize for behavioural economics, part of which discussed that the default decision making is not a rational, thought through process.  His book Thinking Fast and Slow discusses it quite well.

Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational discusses similar concepts, and covers some cognitive biases - specific examples of how people make decisions other than following rational decision making process.

Both of these books are readily accessible for people without a Psychology background.

One of the books suggested a way to reduce the impact of this tendency: draft out the framework for the decision making process before going into the decision environment.

I'd suggest that more decisions are made from the aspect of minimising negative feelings in the short to medium term.


How do our emotions toward a subject affect our brain activity within similar activities?

Ok, so since it has been two years and no-one has answered, and this is indeed a very interesting question, here is my attempt to shed some light on it.

  Is there any difference in brain activity while doing something you love or doing something similar you don't like?

Yes, without getting too deep into specifics - there certainly difference. Primarily these are that doing something that you love will produce more dopamine than doing something you dislike [e.g., 1]. Dopamine is linked to motivation to act and energy hence why it is easy to do more of the things that you enjoy [1].

  If our emotions do affect our brain activity significantly, would it
  be possible to psychologically train ourselves to like/dislike a
  certain activity we want to do more/less?

Yes, I think this can be done by managing the rewards involved. Think about the dopamine production - how do you maximise this, while minimising other detrimental factors (e.g., stress/cortisol).

Here are some ways to do this:

Break down the task so that you get a dopamine boost everytime you get one part done [e.g., 1]
Manage your expectations - much of reward is about expectations. If you want to be better than before when doing something, as opposed to be the best, then you are much more likely to find something.
Listen to music - in some cases this can raise dopamine levels to ensure that you have sufficient motivation to work [2]
Consume substances that will increase dopamine, like st johns wort, or its precursors, like Tyrosine.
This article [3] provides a set of potentially useful approaches that may be of use. However, before adopting them I would investigate the literature cited.

[1] Hoebel, B. G., Rada, P. V., Mark, G. P. and Pothos, E. N. (1999) 'Neural systems for reinforcement and inhibition of behavior: Relevance to eating, addiction, and depression'.

[2] Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A. and Zatorre, R. J. (2011) 'Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music', Nat Neurosci, 14(2), 257-262.

[3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201112/the-neuroscience-perseverance

I am happy to clarify or expand on any part of this answer if you want, so just let me know.


I don't know what the author(s) or editors intended this to mean exactly, but I would guess that examples could include smiling, shrugging, head-scratching, pointing, holding out one's hand to invite a handshake, management of personal space, etc. I'd love to know if I'm incorrect on any of these, but I'm a little pessimistic about finding out TBH. There may be no strict definition available. As such, matters like these are sometimes left open to interpretation based on professional experience, local clinical goals and policies, or whatever really...It's a bit of a problem for criterion validity, to say the least.

Your second question about empathy is a little unspecific, but maybe this is your intention. Generally speaking, there are several ways to evaluate empathy. Behavioral data allow objective assessment by others, but as you suspect, subjects can often act in ways that deceive clinicians, researchers, or other observers deliberately. Physiological data may be harder to manipulate, but this is not always the case, as the history of physiological lie detection has demonstrated (e.g., I've heard of subjects jabbing themselves with thumbtacks hidden in their shoes to elevate their stress at baseline measurements). "Internal states" as otherwise defined tend to be accessible only to subjective experience, which must be self-reported. Clearly this is no more lie-proof. Thus the optimal solution when deception is expected is probably to try to catch liars and exclude their data for any purposes with larger concerns than the liars in question (e.g., nomothetic population research). Where the individual is the primary concern (e.g., clinical diagnosis for the patient's sake), I'm afraid I don't know of a reliable solution for deception in general.


Role of extreme experiences in psychological development

after a quick search on the second topic i was able to find the following:
https://hastebin.com/osokoniwed.erl

not sure if all this literature is relevant, reason why i am asking. then on the hand of resilience psychology i found this https://hastebin.com/rebojuxeke.erl