Does psychology lose it's validity when the subject is versed in psychology?

There are two different traditions referenced in this question, psychoanalysis and decision making. If by psychoanalysis you mean the tradition of Freud and Jung, my understanding is that it didn't survive first contact with evidence-based practice and is now mainly of historical interest. Maybe some surviving approaches claim their roots in this, I'm not sure, I don't know much about the clinical side of psych.
I do know a little bit about decision making though, the other half of this question, and there knowing the psychology makes surprisingly little difference to people's decisions. You can learn to recognize a base-rate-neglect style question and memorize the answers to the CRT, which will put you in the minority ~20% who tend to get these kinds of questions right, but mostly decision biases are as compelling as perceptual illusions: even knowing that it's an illusion doesn't stop you from seeing the illusion in most cases.
The reason why is probably the same for both! Just like the visual illusions, it looks like many decision-illusions are not so much a flaw in the system as an artifact of how people deal with uncertainty efficiently and effectively using limited resources.

For more on this you might enjoy Kahneman's 'Thinking fast and slow' or Ariely's 'Predictably irrational'. These don't directly address the 'studies on psychologists' thing, but do give lots of examples of hard-to-unsee effects that most definitely persist after reading about them.


Why do battered persons love their partners?

I long pondered the answer to this question myself.  The short answer is: Cognitive Dissonance*

("Cognitive Dissonance" is a hypothesized mental process in which two conflicting ideas are resolved through rationalization / attitude change, instead of addressing the underlying source of the conflict that the person may not be consciously aware of.  So here, we see two conflicting ideas - "I am being abused" and "I am not leaving" - resolved through a rationalization - "I love him", instead of addressing the underlying source of the conflict that the woman is not aware of - eg, "an addiction to the good times in the relationship."  More detail and references below.)

Long answer:

Research approaches to answering such a question are limited by ethical concerns, so most data on abusive relationships comes from self-reports, and most studies are conducted after the fact, though a few studies do examine self-reports during such relationships.

Reports of "love", "romantic narrative", or "emotional attachment" are common in such interviews, and often cited as the primary reason for staying.  However, like many other reasons for staying, victims often change their mind ("what was I thinking?") after break-up and recovery.  This suggests the possibility that emotional attachment may be a rationalization.

Real reasons for staying:

The likelihood of remaining in or returning to an abusive relationship is well predicted by other factors, such as economic dependency, social support, cultural factors, and characteristics of the abuse and the abuser.  This further supports the possibility that emotional attachment is a rationalization of an underlying reason that the victim is either unaware of or suppresses.

Consider another factor: In behavioural experiments, an intermittent reinforcement schedule is considered the most powerful schedule for addiction.  Abusive relationships typically involve a "cycle of abuse" (ie, intermittent) pattern.  Thus, "addiction" to the "good" periods of an abusive relationship may constitute the real reason for staying in some cases.

Rationalized reason for staying:

Dutton and Painter (1993) report that in their sample base, emotional attachment was highly correlated with intermittent abuse.  As is typical of addiction however, victims do not usually recognize the real reason behind it (eg, an intermittent schedule of abuse), and rationalize other reasons instead (eg, emotional attachment).

Dare, Guadagno, and Muscanell (2013) review the role of Cognitive Dissonance in abusive relationships:

  Women in abusive relationships may experience high levels of
  dissonance resulting from their negative attitude towards the abuse in
  the relationship and their inability to leave the relationship. If
  they feel "trapped" in the relationship, they may be inclined to
  change their negative attitude pertaining to the relationship or the
  abuse, whether they know it or not. ... Once the woman commits to an
  attitude change that results in her adopting positive feelings towards
  the abusive relationship, she will continue to have those positive
  emotions due to the human nature of wanting to remain consistent with
  our thoughts and actions; therefore, reducing dissonance. ...
  Eventually, her experienced dissonance will be at a minimum because
  her actions and attitudes have become consistent – she remains in the
  abusive relationship while developing a progressively more positive
  outlook on the relationship. This does not mean she thinks abuse is
  acceptable and wishes to be in a violent relationship, rather she
  feels most comfortable within the relationship whenever her cognitive
  dissonance is at a minimum.

Victims effectively convince themselves that they "love" their partner as a rationalization of their real reasons for staying in order to reduce their Cognitive Dissonance.

*-Note that Self-Perception Theory is an alternative to Cognitive Dissonance Theory that makes essentially the same prediction in this context, so there is no particular reason to prefer one interpretation over the other.


The relationship between narcissism and self-esteem

First off, your second link there hasn't been reviewed since 2010.  I got a case study from 2013, an attempt to change the DSM for narcissism due to it's actual granularity and subtypes from 2008, and a letter to the journal of Indian Pscy med from 2012.

  Seishin Shinkeigaku Zasshi. 2013;115(4):363-71.

  [A case of major depressive disorder barely distinguishable from
  narcissistic personality disorder].

  [Article in Japanese]

  Saito S, Kobayashi T, Kato S.

  Department of Psychiatry, Jichi Medical University.

  The recent increase in cases of depression with a narcissistic
  tendency, especially among young individuals, has been pointed out.
  When the narcissistic tendency is conspicuous, patients may be treated
  for a personality disorder or pervasive developmental disorder, and
  not for a mood disorder. A case is described of a man in his late
  twenties who developed depression due to his failure in research work
  and job hunting, and, after a time, due to the break off of his
  engagement with his fiancée, manifested with narcissistic symptoms
  including an exaggerated opinion of himself, a sense of entitlement,
  interpersonal exploitation, lack of empathy, strong feelings of envy,
  and an extrapunitive tendency. He was regarded at the start of
  treatment as having narcissistic personality disorder. However,
  persevering treatment, mainly with supportive psychotherapy and
  pharmacotherapy including antidepressants (high dose of maprotiline
  combined with low dose of mirtazapine), sodium valprote and
  aripiprazole, finally improved not only his depressive symptoms, but
  also the symptoms regarded as a deriving from a personality disorder.
  He presented fierce  anger and aggression regarded as a mixed state,
  and showed the rapid improvement  in his depressive state after
  hospitalization, which we considered to show potential bipolarity. We
  diagnosed the patient with narcissistic depression, emphasizing the
  aspect which suggested a mood disorder, such as the episodic presence
  of narcissistic symptoms as long as a depressive state resided, his
  circular, recursive discourse, and his potential bipolarity. To
  accurately evaluate the aspect of mood disorders which patients
  appearing to show personality disorders have, it is considered useful
  to grasp a patient's condition from the viewpoint of a personality
  structure and viable dynamics. From a therapeutic standpoint, we
  suggest the importance of simple but persevering psychotherapy and a
  sufficient quantity of antidepressant medication for patients with
  depression, even if they are thought to have a personality disorder.

  PMID: 23789317  [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Hmm well they seem to note initially that the converse is true in the first sentence.  We'll investigate why this is true soon too and the reasons for it.

Before even reading this, I hypothesized someone with bipolar disorder could have this type of problem...and sure enough...they mention the patient as potentially having it.

This one is back from 2008.  It seems like they were having some trouble with the DSM labeling of the disorder back then.  Apparently there are several different subtypes of narcissistic disorder, which could definatly seem viable.  So, so far your answer is 'sometimes'.

  Am J Psychiatry. 2008 Nov;165(11):1473-81. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.07030376. Epub 2008 Aug 15.

  Refining the construct of narcissistic personality disorder:
  diagnostic criteria  and subtypes.

  Russ E, Shedler J, Bradley R, Westen D.

  Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
  jonathan@shedler.com

  Comment in
      Am J Psychiatry. 2008 Nov;165(11):1379-82.

  OBJECTIVE: Narcissistic personality disorder has received relatively
  little empirical attention. This study was designed to provide an
  empirically valid and  clinically rich portrait of narcissistic
  personality disorder and to identify subtypes of the disorder. METHOD:
  A random national sample of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists
  (N=1,201) described a randomly selected current patient with
  personality pathology. Clinicians provided detailed psychological
  descriptions of the patients using the Shedler-Westen Assessment
  Procedure-II (SWAP-II), completed a  checklist of axis II diagnostic
  criteria, and provided construct ratings for each axis II personality
  disorder. Descriptions of narcissistic patients based on both raw and
  standardized SWAP-II item scores were aggregated to identify,
  respectively, the most characteristic and the most distinctive
  features of narcissistic personality disorder. RESULTS: A total of 255
  patients met DSM-IV criteria for narcissistic personality disorder
  based on the checklist and 122 based on the construct ratings; 101
  patients met criteria by both methods. Q-factor analysis identified
  three subtypes of narcissistic personality disorder, which the authors
  labeled grandiose/malignant, fragile, and
  high-functioning/exhibitionistic. *Core features of the disorder
  included interpersonal vulnerability and underlying emotional
  distress, along with anger, difficulty in regulating affect, and
  interpersonal competitiveness, features that are absent from the
  DSM-IV description of narcissistic personality disorder.* CONCLUSIONS:
  These findings suggest that DSM-IV criteria for narcissistic
  personality disorder are too narrow, underemphasizing aspects of
  personality and  inner experience that are empirically central to the
  disorder. The richer and more differentiated view of narcissistic
  personality disorder suggested by this study may have treatment
  implications and may help bridge the gap between empirically and
  clinically derived concepts of the disorder.

  PMID: 18708489  [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

And the story gets more complicated...to the point where there seem like many different types of treatment and just problems with therapists dealing with narcissists.

Q-Type Analysis:

grandiose/malignant
fragile
high-functioning/exhibitionistic

Core features of the disorder

included interpersonal vulnerability and underlying emotional
distress, along with anger
difficulty in regulating affect
interpersonal competitiveness

Looks like your question's answer is getting split up in many different ways.

I found this interesting letter that was sent to the Indian Journal of Psych Med.  It looks like there are specific type of strategies for dealing with specific types of issues....like for relationship issues there's one way, for other types...there's another.

I'll bold the interesting parts.

  Indian J Psychol Med. 2012 Oct-Dec; 34(4): 403–404. doi:
  10.4103/0253-7176.108236  PMCID: PMC3662146  Demystifying Paradoxical Characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder  Matthew
  Gildersleeve Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane,
  Queensland, Australia Address for correspondence: Dr. Matthew
  Gildersleeve, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane,
  Queensland, Australia.

  Sir,

  This letter is aimed for psychotherapy clinicians and researchers who
  should acknowledge the relationship linking Kohut's self-psychology
  and Glasser's Choice theory that can demystify relationship
  difficulties and mental health problems in narcissistic personality
  disorder (NPD). NPD is commonly experienced interpersonally by others
  as insufferable, pompous, and un-empathic.[1] NPD persons have been
  identified to possess giant self-centeredness, a certainty that they
  own supreme personality, and their humiliation of others makes them
  intolerable for interpersonal relations.[1] Importantly, Heinz Kohut's
  legacy to psychology is known as self-psychology and was centered
  principally on narcissistic personality development and treatment.[2]
  Suboptimal psychological development is thought to arise when maternal
  compassion is discriminately substandard.[3] As a result, the
  narcissistic self constructs a defense against the helplessness of a
  hurtful world.[3] Kohut[2] cited in Banai et al.[3] called the
  compassion required from maternal figures as “self-object needs”
  because these needs develop the self-image and are provided by
  external objects.     (Oh wow, it seems like they're talking about entitled rich kid's attitudes, that's kinda funny, interesting).

  By not receiving necessary self-object transferences through decisive
  epochs in development, the young individual cannot build the
  competence to control self-respect or construct a positive
  self-image.[3] *Consequently, the child, now an adult, depends on other
  humans to construct their self-image. The self-object transferences
  received as an adult provide a feeling of significance, which was not
  established during child development.[3] However, NPD persons are
  apprehensive of meeting self-object absence as an adult.[4] In order
  to feel the control of their fate, NPD persons present a mindset of
  dominance in the interpersonal sphere. As a result of this
  authoritarian manner, persons with NPD typically have a record of
  numerous unsuccessful relationships.[4]*

  Go to: PARADOXICAL CHARACTERISTICS IN NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY
  DISORDER Thus far, this letter has acknowledged that NPD persons rely
  heavily on self-object transferences to develop a positive self-image.
  The behavioral characteristics of NPD persons reflect this need and
  are well documented.[5] However, what is paradoxical about these
  behavioral characteristics is that instead of behaving in a way to
  increase the chance of receiving self-object transferences in
  relationships, NPD individuals act in a way to reduce that possibility
  by destroying interpersonal relations.
   (So not only have we seen narcissists become depressed...they also have the propentencity to do things in relationships that sabotage them....which may then lead to this depression.)

  Glasser[6] has specified relationship building and destroying behavior
  in a grand detail in his Choice theory. “Seven Caring Habits” and
  “Seven Deadly Habits” offer superb rules for how psychotherapists
  should interact with clients to enhance the likelihood that these
  individuals use caring interpersonal habits to attain optimal mental
  health. It is evident from the literature that NPD behavioral
  characteristics reflect the “Seven Deadly Habits.”[1] Glasser's Seven
  Caring Habits are Supporting, Encouraging, Listening, Accepting,
  Trusting, Respecting, Negotiating differences and the Deadly Habits
  are Criticizing, Blaming, Complaining, Nagging, Threatening,
  Punishing, Bribing, or Rewarding to Control.

  Go to: CHOICE THEORY The writing of Kohut and advocates of
  self-psychology argue that the feeling of love, belonging, closeness,
  and connectedness with other humans are essential for individuals with
  NPD who requires self-object transferences.[7] Unfortunately, the
  pushing, demanding actions (Seven Deadly Habits or External Control
  Psychology) being used by NPD persons destroy relationships and
  therefore prevents self-object needs being met. When external control
  is used by NPD persons, it will destruct the capacity of one or both
  individuals to locate contentment, eventually resulting in severed
  relationships.[8] This interpersonal disengagement is argued to be the
  foundation for the majority of human mental illness.[6] Choice Theory
  and the Seven Caring Habits are offered to replace external control
  psychology and the Seven Deadly Habits[6] to preserve relationships
  and optimal mental health.

  External Control Psychology is an attempt to control others to act in
  a way they do not want to.[6] This ideology of a person who uses
  external control does not permit individuals outside the self to
  formulate preference about individual freedom, and advocates that
  other individuals should be punished to modify their behavior to
  attain the controllers' needs.[6] The “Deadly Habits” demolishes
  individual freedom of the oppressed individual and therefore acts to
  disconnect relationships, as freedom has been identified as one of the
  basic human needs.[6]

  Consequently, a central thesis of Choice theory is that the only
  individual one can be in command of is themselves.[6] If the
  individual believes they can command other humans, then they will
  encounter anger and irritation leading to mental illness.[6] Anger,
  irritation, and mental illness will also arise if the individual
  believes that other humans can command them and then externalizes
  blame to the perceived controller for undesirable events.[6] For that
  reason, it is vital for the NPD individual to focus on internal
  control of their own choices and to value the rights of other people
  who have their own needs.[6]

  In conclusion, it is important that the caring habits be taught to the
  NPD client, once a therapist has identified an individual with strong
  self-object needs and who meets the criteria for NPD. Using Choice
  theory, the psychotherapist directs an individual toward fulfilling
  interpersonal relationships and educates the person to relate in more
  helpful modes using internal control psychology.[6] The better NPD
  persons are proficient at bonding and comprehending other individual
  needs, the better prospect they possess to receive positive
  self-object transferences and happiness.

  Go to: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to Amy-lee Weisse for constructive
  discussion and invaluable guidance.

  Go to: REFERENCES
  1. Millon T, Millon CM, Meagher S. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons; 2012. The Narcissistic Personality. Personality Disorders in
  Modern Life; p. 330.
  2. Kohut H. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 2011. Introductory Considerations. The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the
  Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders; p. 1.
  3. Banai E, Mikulincer M, Shaver PR. “Selfobject” needs in kohut's self psychology: Links with attachment, self-cohesion, affect
  regulation, and adjustment. Psychoanal Psychol. 2005;22:224–60.
  4. McLean J. Psychotherapy with a Narcissistic Patient Using Kohut's Self Psychology Model. Psychiatry. 2007;4:40–47. [PMC free article]
  [PubMed]
  5. Silverstein ML. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; 2007. Narcissitic Personality Disorder, Disorders of the Self: A Personality-Guided Approach; p. 27.
  6. Glasser Bloomington: IUniverse; 2011. Replacing External Control With The New Choice Theory Psychology. Take Charge of Your Life: How
  to Get What You Need with Choice-Theory Psychology; p. 8.
  7. Strack Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons; 2005. Self Psychological Foundations of Personality Disorders. Handbook of
  Personology and Psychopathology; p. 181.
  8. Glasser , Glasser New York: Harper Collins; 2007. External Control Can Kill a Marriage. Eight Lessons for a Happier Marriage; p. 11.
  Linkback here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662146/

So, it looks like there's alot of stuff going on with Narcissists.  Or what they call "NPD."

As for my conclusions:

NPD or (Perceived NPD) or actually scientists are still trying to figure it out I'm going to put into three categories that even have subcategories.

1)  Being the center of attention and always getting what you wanted
while growing up...only to realize when it times come to get a job
that doesn't exist anymore - which can admittedly be a difficult
shift for someone to have to make.  This could also stem from
derivatives of this.  Obviously would say psychopathology here and environmental    influencers are important players.**
The affects of this seem to appear as relationship issues mostly - as
they have developed a certain "expectation for this or that" which
puts stress on their mate....whom then eventually leaves
them....which then causes them to be a depressed narcissist.  This
cycle also seems to repeat itself although methods are suggested to
help treat a patient with this disorder in the last piece of
literature.

2)  Genuinely having some subtype of NPD that is more than just psychopathologically based.
This goes back to that 2nd study where they were trying to identify the subtypes for the DSM definition.  These adjectives don't seem to describe someone who would necessarily fit into category #1, although they partially seem to discribe someone who would fit into my 3rd category - someone who is simply bipolar and has a "narcissistic mania."  And yes, I just made that medical diagnosis up.

Q-Type Analysis (the authors labeled these as the three subtypes):

grandiose/malignant
fragile
high-functioning/exhibitionistic

Core features of the disorder (NPD)

included interpersonal vulnerability and underlying emotional
distress, along with anger
difficulty in regulating affect
interpersonal competitiveness

So I actually don't really believe many #1's would fit into this #2 category I have set up due to the lack of focus on problems in certain types of relationships (they mention interpersonal failures...but not as directly).

I'd say these are most likely people with a true "NPD" pathology - with  a couple bipolar's mixed in depending upon if their methodologies were very affective at weeding them out and since it's a Q-type analysis...I'd feel somewhat unconfident about that.

3)  Someone who is bipolar and when they have their manic episode, they become narcissistic.  Obviously they'd go up and down and have all sorts of fun problems.

Answer to your question:

They can be both, either/or, have it depend upon things like interpersonal issues because they feel like the world owes them something. Apparently the pathology of narcissism is a very complex thing to figure out or put any sort of hard and fast label on.  It could be caused by one's psychology from how they were raised or a genuine mental disorder of a physiological kind. There's also problems with distinguishing it from bipolar disorder (although I'd say if someone had bipolar disorder then they'd probably know it).


Drawing Parallels Between Finance and Psychology: A Psychology Metaphor

Classically, we might call emotional volatility neuroticism.  We could also refer to a continuum of affective reactivity (high vs. low reactivity; e.g., Gross, Sutton, & Ketelaar, 1998).

Emotion dysregulation need not imply emotional volatility. For example, depressed patients show stable depressed mood or emotional inertia (Brose et al., 2014), which is related to impaired affective updating under stress (Pe et al., 2015) and perseverative thinking (Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco, & Lyubomirsky, 2008).

A lot of these ideas can be pushed under the umbrella of affective dynamics, or how affect/emotions change over time (for recent theory, see this special issue of Emotion Review, 2015).

We can also say that fluctuations in affect represent deviations from allostasis (Sterling, 2013), which motivate us to engage in self-regulatory behaviors that bring us back to allostasis (Inzlicht, Bartholow, & Hirsch, 2015).

As part of a predictive regulation framework, emotional instability may result from feedback dynamics between positive and negative predictions about the world (Eldar et al., 2015; see the image below).  Relatedly, maladaptive priors and associated attentional biases (i.e., inappropriately weighted prediction errors) may also account for volatility (Huys, Daw, & Dayan, 2015).


In the digit span test, why do some strategies work and others don't?

Chunking leverages long-term memory for the chunks, i.e. we recognize and remember much easier the familiar chunks, sometimes algorithmically. This is much easier explained in the domain of letters/words, e.g. we'd recognize USA as substring among random letters. Similarly most would recognize the pattern 1945 (WWII end) by paired association, or 12321 algorithmically.

In the classic case of SF he used sequences familiar to him (running times) to greatly improve his performance. More unusual (cf. Memory Search By A Memorist) is Rajan's ability to recognize 13- to 17-digit chunks visually/syntactically, without assigning them meaning. Ishihara, who could memorize overall longer sequences than Rajan [under controlled settings], but was much slower, used a method to convert them into syllables; he was naturally very gifted at remembering nonsense syllables though (cf. Superior Memory).

A few other association methods exist, including with places ("loci"), which relies on visual memory etc. It's possible to train the average person using these and attain significant improvements; the graph below (3rd one bein relevant, but I've included all for the caption) is from a recent PhD thesis. It takes a significant amount of practice/time to become proficient/fast in the encoding/decoding techniques.

Some clarification in regards to these graphs:

The other two tests are self-paced (just with overall time limit) memorization tests, i.e. how many words/digits in a sequence can be retained in a 5-minute interval with no time pressure for learning each word/digit.
The digit span was tested with 2 second intervals, which probably helped with learning a bit. Other authors have used 1 second, which makes it harder to apply encoding/decoding techniques.
The training protocol (for the blue lines) was fairly involved using the Memocamp software which can display the memorization aids (loci or images), and can also display a configurable metronome.
"SEM" stands for "Standard Error of the Means (the error bars).

The handful of people (not in this thesis/experiment) who have practiced for years (one of SF's colleagues and two in a replication experiment) have reached 80-100 digits in the digit span test. For that level of performance, not only did they use an associative system, but also a hierarchical chunking method. The chunk size was almost universally 4 for these performers (thus the need for hierarchy). On average it took about 500 hours of practice to decrease decoding/encoding time from an initial 5 seconds to the 1 second required by the digit span test (all this cf. The Neuroscience of Expertise, pp. 110-112).


How can we know which types of brainwaves is dominated at particular state?

See a previous Q&A: Why do brains oscillate within specific frequency ranges?

I think that answer covers much of your question; I'll try to cover the rest here. In short, the names gamma/beta/alpha/theta/delta are just that: names of parts of a spectrum, just like colors red/green/blue. "Alpha waves" aren't necessarily a real, discrete thing, it's just a name given to oscillations in a particular frequency band which may or may not be due to a "real" oscillation: even a random system produces waves of many frequencies.

The power spectrum of noise in the brain is typically "pink" which means it falls off with ~1/f or 1/f2.

To see "real" elevations in a power spectrum, you need to plot the whole spectrum and look for "bumps." I just grabbed one from a random paper, and although I don't like how these data are plotted without a log scale, it does show peaks in the spectrum nicely:

  Image adapted from Cajochen et al 1995; annotations mine.

As far as the amplitude of these "waves" - that entirely depends on your recording system, skull geometry, and other technical issues specific to a particular recording: the actual amplitude in volts is not really important. Therefore, typically one normalizes the power spectrum and either compare across conditions in a recording (that is, keeping the recording system constant and looking at different epochs), or normalizes the entire spectrum to "total power" to compare between recordings.

It almost never make sense to compare power in different frequency bands, though, in saying whether a frequency is "dominant": there is no meaning to delta being higher than beta, for example, besides the power law relationship where power is almost always higher at lower frequencies (except for extreme cases like the alpha peaks in the image above). What is relevant, however, could be when "in condition A, delta is higher than delta in condition B, and beta in condition A is lower than beta in condition B": relative comparisons are key. The exception is when you have prominent peaks, like in the image above.

Cajochen, C., Brunner, D. P., Krauchi, K., Graw, P., & Wirz-Justice, A. (1995). Power density in theta/alpha frequencies of the waking EEG progressively increases during sustained wakefulness. Sleep, 18(10), 890-894.


The purpose of unbiased hit rate is to avoid invalid conclusions in cases where subjects indiscriminately use one (or only few) response options. To give an example (responses in rows, stimuli in columns):

        Happy    Sad    Angry   Fearful
Happy     1       0       0        1
Sad       7       8       6        5
Angry     0       0       0        0
Fearful   2       0       0        1

Consider sad faces. The uncorrected and biased hit rate for sad faces is $h_b(\mathrm{Sad})=8/8=1$. The unbiased hit rate is $h_b(\mathrm{Sad})=8^2/(8 \cdot24)=1/3$. The latter estimate better corresponds to our intuition. The subject responds almost always $\mathrm{Sad}$ and should be assigned a score slightly better than a random performance ($=1/4$).

You are looking for a total score. By definition a total score will account for this kind of bias as it uses all elements of the confusion matrix. Hence, there is no point in looking for a unbiased total hit rate and there is no point in trying to combine the unbiased hit rates.

Wagner (1993) makes it clear on page 4 that the question regarding a total score is distinct and different from the one he is trying to answer with his unbiased hit rate. In a footnote 1 on pages 27-28 he mentions methods for computing the total score:

  There are numerous ways of examining overall performance in judgment
  studies. In psychophysics, the confusion matrix resulting from the
  method of absolute identification (as the type of
  judgment study discussed here is known) has been examined with the tools
  of information theory (see Baird & Noma, 1978, for a clear exposition
  of this). [...] Other examples of measures of accuracy for  the whole
  matrix are Cohen's $\kappa$ (Cohen, 1960), and Rosenthal and Rubin's $\pi$
  (Rosenthal & Rubin, 1989).

Literature

Baird, J. C., & Noma, E. J. (1978). Fundamentals of scaling and psychophysics. John Wiley & Sons.

Cohen, J. (1960). A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Educational and psychological measurement, 20(1), 37-46.

Rosenthal, R., & Rubin, D. B. (1989). Effect size estimation for one-sample multiple-choice-type data: Design, analysis, and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 106(2), 332.


Voltage sensitive dyes technique: 2-photons microscopy vs confocal microscopy

Confocal Fluorescence Microscopy and 2-photon Fluorescence Microscopy are two techniques commonly used in neuroscience to image only one plane of the sample and thus increase resolution. However, how they achieve this technically is  distinct.

Confocal  (confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM))
In confocal microscopy the sample is scanned with a laser in X and Y coordinates and fluorescence is recovered by de-scanning the emitted photons. To select photons emitted only in the imaging plane (focal plane), a pin-hole restricts the collection of the emitted light allowing only the passage of photons emitted in the plane one is currently imaging.

This image exemplifies how emitted photons (dashed red beam) originating outside of the focal plane will be blocked by the pinhole before reaching the detector.

This has several consequences

1) The laser light will excite fluorophore which you are not imaging (because the emitted photons are blocked by the pinhole). This bleaches your sample below and above your imaging plane while you are not collecting information from those planes.

2) The emission path has to be de-scanned in order for the pinhole to work. This long path from the emission to the detection of the emission photons means that you are loosing some precious emission photos.

2-photon Scanning Laser Microscopy

In the case of confocal microscopy excitation is achieved by the acceptance of 1 high energy photon. However, in 2-photon microscopy, two photons of half the energy are used to excite the fluorophore.

This introduces a non-linearity that has the following immediate consequence : if you need to 2-photons to coincide on the same fluorophore to excite it then you will only excite molecules of flurophore in a small volume of space in which the intensity of the laser is sufficient. Then since the excitation of molecules is limited to a small volume in x,y,z.

This image shows the difference between excitation when done with single photon (left) and 2-photon (right). Black is the areas where the excitation took place. As you can see on the left the single photon excitation excites planes below and above the imaging plane.

Then 3 things happen

1) You can restrict your imaging to a plane without the need of adding a pinhole. In Confocal the pinhole restricts the passage of photons emitted from planes other than the imaging plane. In 2-photon your effective excitation is already restricted in the Z plane, so the emission will also be restricted to this plane.

2) Since you now don't need a pinhole, you don't need to de-scan the emission. This means you can put your detector (Photon Multiplier Tube: PMT) very close to where the emission happens. Now you want all the photons you can get, because they all come from your image plane!

3) You are not bleaching other Z planes of your sample, because the intensity in other planes is not enough so that 2 photons excite the fluorophores.


Is it possible to improve interoceptive awareness/accuracy? If so, how?

Interoceptive awareness and accuracy
Interoceptive awareness and accuracy are sometimes used interchangeably, but can also refer to two different things: awareness to the tendency to attend to interoception measured by self-report, and accuracy to the actual accuracy with which one does so (Chentsova-Dutton and Dzokoto, 2014). For example, a cross-cultural study involving West African and European-American found that "West Africans showed higher levels of interoceptive awareness, but lower levels of interoceptive accuracy than European Americans" (Ceunen, Van Diest and Vlaeyen, 2013).
Heartbeat perception training
There have been some recent attempts to produce improvements in interoceptive awareness and accuracy. Schaefer, Egloff, Gerlach and Witthöft (2014) gave 29 patients with somatoform disorders heartbeat perception training, and reported that the training selectively improved interoceptive accuracy in patients with low health anxiety, as well as improvements in symptoms.
Mindfulness
Silverstein, Brown, Roth and Britton (2011) also found that mindfulness training produced a statistically significant benefit in speed of interoceptive awareness, and that this improvement was associated with improvements in attentional, self-judgmental, and clinical factors of female sexual dysfunction. They reported the following about increased interoceptive awareness:

Women who participated in the meditation training became significantly faster at registering their physiological responses (interoceptive awareness) to sexual stimuli compared with active controls (F(1,28) = 5.45, p = .03, $η_{p}^2$ = 0.15).

Another recent study of experienced meditation practitioners did not report a benefit of meditation on either interoceptive awareness or accuracy, however (Khalsa et al., 2008). Additionally, I am generally skeptical of the benefits of mindfulness on cognitive ability. See Jeromy's answer about the general effect of mindfulness on cognition.
References

Ceunen, E., Van Diest, I., & Vlaeyen, J. (2013). Accuracy and awareness of perception: related, yet distinct (commentary on Herbert et al., 2012). Biological psychology, 92(2), 423-427.
Chentsova-Dutton, Y. E., & Dzokoto, V. (2014). Listen to your heart: The cultural shaping of interoceptive awareness and accuracy. Emotion, 14(4), 666.
Khalsa, S. S., Rudrauf, D., Damasio, A. R., Davidson, R. J., Lutz, A., & Tranel, D. (2008). Interoceptive awareness in experienced meditators. Psychophysiology, 45(4), 671-677.
Schaefer, M., Egloff, B., Gerlach, A. L., & Witthöft, M. (2014). Improving heartbeat perception in patients with medically unexplained symptoms reduces symptom distress. Biological psychology, 101, 69-76.
Silverstein, R. G., Brown, A. C. H., Roth, H. D., & Britton, W. B. (2011). Effects of mindfulness training on body awareness to sexual stimuli: implications for female sexual dysfunction. Psychosomatic medicine, 73(9), 817.


What is the relationship between Big 5 personality and the theory of planned behaviour?

Edit: Didn't want this question to be stuck with only that first answer I gave, so here is what I believe you were looking for more specifically.

  Psychol Health. 2011 Sep;26(9):1113-27. doi:
  10.1080/08870446.2011.613995. The theory of planned behaviour: reactions and reflections. Ajzen I. Abstract
  The seven articles in this issue, and the accompanying meta-analysis
  in Health Psychology Review [McEachan, R.R.C., Conner, M., Taylor, N.,
  & Lawton, R.J. (2011). Prospective prediction of health-related
  behaviors with the theory of planned behavior: A meta-analysis. Health
  Psychology Review, 5, 97-144], illustrate the wide application of the
  theory of planned behaviour [Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned
  behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50,
  179-211] in the health domain. In this editorial, Ajzen reflects on
  some of the issues raised by the different authors. Among the topics
  addressed are the nature of intentions and the limits of predictive
  validity; rationality, affect and emotions; past behaviour and habit;
  the prototype/willingness model; and the role of such background
  factors as the big five personality traits and social comparison
  tendency.

Abstract doesn't help us much.
No worries, I got the full text too.   You can download it here for free:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08870446.2011.613995 or just read the relevant except I took from it:

  As have other investigators in the past (Courneya, Bobick, & Schinke,
  1999; Rhodes & Courneya, 2003), Rivis et al. (2011) examined the role
  of the ‘big five’ personality traits – openness,
  conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism (Costa
  & McCrae, 1985) in the context of the TPB. In addition, they also
  assessed the general tendency to compare oneself to important others.
  Interestingly, however, rather than postulating a simple effect of
  these kinds of background factors on intentions and behaviour, their
  within-subjects methodology allowed them to examine the possibility
  that these variables influence the predictive validity of intentions
  relative to perceived prototype similarity (see the earlier discussion
  of this construct). Although the effects of the big five personality
  traits and social comparison tendency were quite small, this
  investigation – like earlier studies by Trafimow and Finlay (1996),
  Sheeran, Norman, and Orbell (1999) and others –
  shows that there may be stable individual differences that influence the relative weights of the different predictors in the TPB.

So it looks like this paper's research has found that the effects of the Big 5 personality traits (as well as social comparison tendency) weren't very significant.  But, because of the way in which some of the studies ran their methodology or perhaps certain other variables they measured they were able to see a few patterns that at the very least point towards what looks like (unnecessary quote again? yes.) "stable individual differences that influence the relative weights of the different predictors in the TPB."  Now I don't know what these differences are as they essentially left that vague.  Could they be Big 5 indicators or some other measurement they took?  I don't know as I can't access the citations, but....For convenience, I have each of them listed below though in case you do have access.  These are all the in-text citations from that excerpt.

  Courneya, K.S., Bobick, T.M., & Schinke, R.J. (1999). Does the theory
  of planned behavior mediate the relation between personality and
  exercise behavior? Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 21, 317–324.

  Rhodes, R.E., & Courneya, K.S. (2003). Relationships between
  personality, an extended theory of planned behaviour model and
  exercise behaviour. British Journal of Health Psychology, 8, 19–36.

  Rivis, A., Sheeran, P., & Armitage, C.J. (2011). Intention
  versusidentification as determinants of adolescents’ health
  behaviours: evidence and correlates. Psychology and Health, 26,
  1128–1142.

  Costa Jr, P.T., & McCrae, R.R. (1985). The NEO Personality Inventory
  manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.

  Trafimow, D., & Finlay, K.A. (1996). The importance of subjective
  norms for a minority of people: Between-subjects and within-subjects
  analyses. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 820–828.

  Sheeran, P., Norman, P., & Orbell, S. (1999). Evidence that intentions
  based on attitudes better predict behaviour than intentions based on
  subjective norms. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 403–406.

It will make more sense to flip the order of your questions:

  "What relationships have been obtained in empirical studies between Big
  5 personality and theory of planned behaviour?"

It looks like there isn't much linkage between the two according to the research that has been summarized in that paper.  There is a weak affect, but that's not very exciting.  If you have access to the journals you may be able to see more of the details but they're already pretty much summarized for you in the paper.

  "What theories have been proposed relating Big 5 personality factors
  with theory of planned behaviour?"

Now they did mention something about how they were able to see some sort of pattern in regards to "individual differences" towards the TPB - but it's somewhat unclear if that's because of other factors or because of interesting patterns they saw in the Big 5 --> TPB data.  The full text of those articles would probably reveal that though.  I can't pay $50 for each of them though, ha.  So that seems to be the most relevant theory regarding their relationship - and depending upon the semantics of the authors as they were somewhat vague.

Once again, they said:

  this investigation – like earlier studies by Trafimow and Finlay (1996),
  Sheeran, Norman, and Orbell (1999) and others –
  shows that there may be stable individual differences that influence the relative weights of the different predictors in the TPB.

Perhaps Big 5 Traits relate to a certain "stable individual difference" that then tends to relate moreso to a factor/weight in the TPB. They may have found that out in other variables they measured in those studies they cited....there doesn't seem to be much more theory about it out there.

But, as I did before, I'll postulate my own that involves the "Edge Effect" theories and how they could overlap and become a predictor not only psychologically but on a physiological level as well.

Edge Effect Theory

This is essentially a theory in how certain global neurotransmitters create your personality.  There's a bunch of tests he gives to determine your archetype.
I feel like all three of these could overlap and then concrete evidence could be obtained from that overlapping in the form of maybe even potential physiological studies.

This guy doesn't really cite much (alot of it is just coming from his head - and overall broad definitions of neurotransmitters) but gives some interesting definitions of people based upon their physiology.  In particular, relating to dopamine, serotonin, gaba, and acetylcholine dominance.

He classifies personality traits among many other things according to your dominance in these domains.  He even provides tests you can take.

Essentially, you can take this book and you can find the references or at least be pointed down the path towards them as you're trying to connect the two theories you cite.

Anyways the book is called the "Edge Effect" by Eric R. Braverman.  Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/The-Edge-Effect-Longevity-Advantage/dp/1402722478 (not an affiliate link)

I have the book, obviously, and found it to be pretty interesting in how he relates the neurotransmitters to all sorts of things.  If you read it you may find some things start to make sense on an intuitive level no matter how global or generalized they may be and that...he really didn't need citations.  There's all sorts of tests he'll have you take that actually do predict many things about yourself - and then he talks about what you should try to eat amino acid wise to naturally balance out certain neurotransmitters.

I know his theories have been criticized as a bit of a global generalization of neurotransmitters....but my defense against that is he is simply bringing them down to a practical level.  Otherwise, practicality becomes lost in the complexity.

So another new theory has been proposed by me based upon our potential earlier findings of a potential overlapping 3rd variable instead of direct correlation between the Big 5 & TPB.  :)


Short answer
Dreams cannot predict the future.

Background
Likely you are referring to Deja reve ('already dreamed'), which has been hypothesized to be (Schredi et al., 2017):

  ...the distinct impression that the uncanny familiarity one is
  sensing has come from a preceding dream, but one not usually
  remembered until the experience is taking place.

Deja reve are reported by Schredi et al. to occur in nearly 80% of the population.

Dreams are representations of past experiences (re-)generated is our minds creates while we sleep. It has been proposed that dreams reflect biological processes of long-term memory consolidation. Consolidation strengthens the neural representations of recent events (i.e., their memories) and embeds these new memory fragments into older, existing memories. This also maintains the stability of existing memory representations in the face of subsequent experiences (Payne & Nadel, 2004). In sleeping rodents, for example, neurons in the hippocampus fire in patterns remarkably similar to those recorded during a previous maze-running session—almost as if the animals replay the experience in their sleep (source: Science Magazine).

In all, dreams are related to memories and memory formation. However, they have nothing to do with future events. The brain cannot recall what never has perceived in the past. Hence, déjà vu experiences and dreams have nothing to do with what the future may bring, other than cases of pure coincidence.

References
- Payne & Nadel, Learn Mem (2004); 11(6): 671–8
- Shredi et al., J Consciousness Studies (2017); 24:(7-8): 155-62


Are there any recorded cases of hearing the outside world while in a coma?

Here's a study on Brain Response to One's Own Name in Vegetative State, Minimally Conscious State, and Locked-in Syndrome:
http://archneur.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=791093

  Background  A major challenge in the management of severely
  brain-injured patients with altered states of consciousness is to
  estimate their residual perception of the environment.

  Objective  To investigate the integrity of detection of one's own name
  in patients in a behaviorally well-documented vegetative state (VS),
  patients in a minimally conscious state (MCS), and patients with
  locked-in syndrome.

  Design  We recorded the auditory evoked potentials to the patient's
  own name and to 7 other equiprobable first names in 15 brain-damaged
  patients.

  Results  A P3 component was observed in response to the patient's name
  in all patients with locked-in syndrome, in all MCS patients, and in 3
  of 5 patients in a VS. P3 latency was significantly (P<.05) delayed
  for MCS and VS patients compared with healthy volunteers.

  Conclusions  These results suggest that partially preserved semantic
  processing could be observed in noncommunicative brain-damaged
  patients, notably for the detection of salient stimuli, such as the
  subject's own name. This function seems delayed in MCS and (if
  present) in VS patients. More important, a P3 response does not
  necessarily reflect conscious perception and cannot be used to
  differentiate VS from MCS patients.


Some research which may help is as follows:

Fingelkurts, A. A., Fingelkurts, A. A., Rytsälä, H., Suominen, K., Isometsä, E., & Kähkönen, S. (2007). Impaired functional connectivity at EEG alpha and theta frequency bands in major depression. Human brain mapping, 28(3), 247-261. DOI: 10.1002/hbm.20275

Peniston, E. G., & Kulkosky, P. J. (1991). Alpha-theta brainwave neurofeedback for Vietnam veterans with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder. Medical Psychotherapy, 4(1), 47-60.

Saxby, E., & Peniston, E. G. (1995). Alpha‐theta brainwave neurofeedback training: An effective treatment for male and female alcoholics with depressive symptoms. Journal of clinical psychology, 51(5), 685-693.DOI: 10.1002/1097-4679(199509)51:5%3C685::AID-JCLP2270510514%3E3.0.CO;2-K


Diagnosis and treatment for Concentration Deficit Disorder?

This answer covers the diagnosis of Sluggish cognitive tempo
While there is debate about its nature (Brooks, 2014, Silva, n.d.) there is a whole issue of the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology (Vol. 42, Issue 1 - January 2014) devoted to the subject of sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) and the debate. That issue has renewed interest in the condition (Silva, n.d.).
American Psychological Association (APA) publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and is the "go-to" for diagnostic criteria for mental disorders. The latest edition is DSM-5 (APA, 2013). As it stands right now, there is no official definition (as defined by the DSM) of "sluggish cognitive tempo" (SCT) or "concentration deficit disorder" (CDD), but the DSM-5 does mention that concentration deficits frequently occur following mild traumatic brain injury but,

can occur in brain-injured and non-brain-injured populations, including individuals with PTSD (page 280)

and

in individuals with acute stress disorder (pages 284 and 286)

Concentration deficits can also occur in depression.
While the Wikipedia article for "sluggish cognitive tempo" states that

there is no overlap between the official ADHD inattention symptoms [ADHD-I] and the SCT symptoms

there is actually a definite overlap.
The DSM-5 states that for a diagnosis of ADHD-I (emphasis mine on symptom category letters),

Six (or more) of the following symptoms have persisted for at least
6 months to a degree that is inconsistent with developmental level and that negatively impacts directly on social and academic/occupational activities:
Note: The symptoms are not solely a manifestation of oppositional behavior, defiance, hostility, or failure to understand tasks or instructions. For older adolescents and adults (age 17 and older), at least five symptoms are required.
a. Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, at work, or during other activities (e.g., overlooks or misses details, work is inaccurate).
b. Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities (e.g., has difficulty remaining focused during lectures, conversations, or lengthy reading).
c. Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly (e.g., mind seems elsewhere, even in the absence of any obvious distraction).
d. Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (e.g., starts tasks but quickly loses focus and is easily sidetracked).
e. Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities (e.g., difficulty managing sequential tasks; difficulty keeping materials and belongings in order; messy, disorganized work; has poor time management; fails to meet deadlines).
f. Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort (e.g., schoolwork or homework; for older adolescents and adults, preparing reports, completing forms, reviewing lengthy papers).
g. Often loses things necessary for tasks or activities (e.g., school materials, pencils, books, tools, wallets, keys, papenwork, eyeglasses, mobile telephones).
h. Is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli (for older adolescents and
adults, may include unrelated thoughts).
i. Is often forgetful in daily activities (e.g., doing chores, running errands; for older adolescents and adults, returning calls, paying bills, keeping appointments).

Citing Becker, et al (2016), Barkley (2018) and Becker & Barkley (2018), the Wikipedia article lists the following for the symptoms of SCT:

Prone to daydreaming DSM criteria b for ADHD-I
Easily confused or mentally foggy
Spacey or inattentive to surroundings DSM criteria b and c for ADHD-I
Mind seems to be elsewhere DSM criteria c for ADHD-I
Stares blankly into space DSM criteria c for ADHD-I
Underactive, slow moving or sluggish
Lethargic or less energetic
Trouble staying awake or alert
Has drowsy or sleepy appearance
Gets lost in own thoughts DSM criteria b, c and h for ADHD-I
Apathetic or withdrawn, less engaged in activities
Loses train of thought or cognitive set
Processes information not as quickly or accurately

While there is an overlap, in criteria, if consensus is achieved for the idea that SCT or CDD exists, there will be a need to officially define a set of criteria which would need to be met, due to the overlap with ADHD-I and the fact that the other symptoms listed can occur with depression.
In the meantime, the

13 SCT symptoms that loaded consistently on an SCT factor as opposed to an ADHD factor

put together by Becker et al. (2014) and copied into Wikipedia (listed above) are all we have at the current time for a diagnosis of SCT.

Although additional measurement work needs to be conducted now that these 13 items have been identified (15-17), it is important to note that parent, teacher, adult self-report, and child self-report ratings scales (18-23), as well as a semistructured clinical interview (24), have been developed that include at least most of these 13 items. Studies using these measures demonstrate that SCT can be reliability assessed, with excellent internal consistency and test-retest reliability, and moderate interrater reliability (14). (Becker & Barkley (2018))

On top of this, whilst research indicates SCT is associated with ADHD-I,

findings show that SCT is even more prevalent in autism. SCT is most common when autism and ADHD co-occur. Because autism without ADHD is rare (whereas ADHD without autism is not), it is important to assess both SCT and ADHD in children referred for autism evaluations and rule-out autism in children referred for ADHD. SCT may be another neurocognitive problem shared by children with autism and children with ADHD in need of assessment and intervention (Mayes, et al. 2020).

References
APA. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5®). American Psychiatric Pub. https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm
Barkley, R. A. (2018). Barkley Sluggish Cognitive Tempo Scale — Children and Adolescents (BSCTS-CA). Guilford Publications.
Becker, S. P., Leopold, D. R., Burns, G. L., Jarrett, M. A., Langberg, J. M., Marshall, S. A., ... & Willcutt, E. G. (2016). The internal, external, and diagnostic validity of sluggish cognitive tempo: A meta-analysis and critical review. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 55(3), 163-178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2015.12.006
Becker, S. & Barkley, R. A. (2018). Sluggish cognitive tempo (Chapter 15) Banaschewski, T., Coghill, D., & Zuddas, A. (Eds.). Oxford Textbook of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (pp.147-153). Oxford University Press. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292148331_Sluggish_cognitive_tempo
Brooks, M. (2014). Sluggish Cognitive Tempo a Distinct Attention Disorder? Medscape Psychiatry News https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/819838
Mayes, S. D., Calhoun, S. L., & Waschbusch, D. A. (2020). Sluggish cognitive tempo in autism, ADHD, and neurotypical child samples. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 79, 101678. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2020.101678
Silva, M. (n.d.). A Fuzzy Debate About A Foggy Condition Cincinnati Children's Hospital https://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/professional/resources/research-horizons/archives/2015/summer/sluggish-cognitive-tempo


Can the neuronal firing rate be increased through medication/diet?

You've received a few great comments from our neuroscience-savvy users that indicate ways in which this question can be construed as particularly challenging or maybe even unanswerable. However, I think there's a much more basic and limited understanding of your question that takes into account your self-professed unfamiliarity with neuropharmacology and permits a perfectly good intro-level answer. I don't specialize in this – I'm a psychologist, but more of a dabbler in neuroscience – but I'll take a crack at it anyway.

Agonists activate cellular receptors.
Excitatory receptors produce excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs); i.e., they encourage neurons (of which they are components) to "fire". Hence the simple answer: any agonist of a neuron's excitatory receptors increases its firing rate by definition.

Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter. It binds to glutamate receptors, which increase the likelihood or frequency of action potentials (i.e., firing events) in their neurons when activated. NMDA receptors (a type of glutamate receptor) play a role in long-term potentiation (effectively increasing the probability of firing and other criteria of synaptic strength), so the effects of glutamate sometimes outlast its direct activity.

Wikipedia lists several NMDA agonists, some of which are prescribed as ingested drugs. D-Cycloserine  has applications in anxiety and addiction treatments. However, there is a balance to maintain, and the objective of medication is generally to restore a normative balance given some abnormality or damage.

  Excitotoxicity due to excessive glutamate release and impaired uptake occurs as part of the ischemic cascade and is associated with stroke,[4] autism, some forms of intellectual disability, and diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, lathyrism, and Alzheimer's disease.[4][14]

Evidently treating Alzheimer's isn't as simple as increasing EPSPs – that might even be a move in the wrong direction. Nicotine may help with Alzheimer's, but the mechanism is more complex:

  While tobacco smoking is associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease,[85] there is evidence that nicotine itself has the potential to prevent and treat Alzheimer's disease.[86]...A study has shown a protective effect of nicotine itself on neurons due to nicotine activation of α7-nAChR and the PI3K/Akt pathway which inhibits apoptosis-inducing factor release and mitochondrial translocation, cytochrome c release and caspase 3 activation.[90]

It would seem nicotine's direct action is agonistic, but its mediated effect is antagonistic, and that's the effect that matters for Alzheimer's outcomes. Another wrinkle to nicotine's pharmacology is its agonistic role with acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that plays excitatory and inhibitory roles for different purposes. This demonstrates the practical complexity of action potentials' causes and consequences.

References
4. Sapolsky, R. (2005). Biology and human behavior: The neurological origins of individuality (2nd ed.) The Teaching Company. "see pages 19 and 20 of Guide Book"
14. Hynd, M., Scott, H. L., & Dodd, P. R. (2004). Glutamate-mediated excitotoxicity and neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease. Neurochemistry International, 45(5), 583–595. DOI:10.1016/j.neuint.2004.03.007. PMID 15234100.
85. Peters, R., Poulter, R., Warner, J., Beckett, N., Burch, L., & Bulpitt, C. (2008). Smoking, dementia and cognitive decline in the elderly, a systematic review. BMC Geriatr 8(36). DOI:10.1186/1471-2318-8-36. PMC 2642819.
86. Henningfield, J.E., & Zeller, M. (2009). Nicotine psychopharmacology: Policy and regulatory. Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, 192, 511–34. DOI:10.1007/978-3-540-69248-5_18. ISBN 978-3-540-69246-1. PMID 19184661.
90. Yu, W., Mechawar, N., Krantic, S., & Quirion, R. (2011, November). α7 nicotinic receptor activation reduces β-amyloid-induced apoptosis by inhibiting caspase-independent death through phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase signaling. J. Neurochem. 119(4), 848–58. DOI:10.1111/j.1471-4159.2011.07466.x. PMID 21884524.


What are "linear spatial weightings" and "specific temporal windows" in Philiastides & Sajda (2006)?

I can make a guess, until someone who really knows the answer comes along :) I haven't read the paper and the answer I can give is probably not going to be formal enough for a math student. But I can tell you what I think.

The goal of the paper, I'm guessing, is to look at the pattern of activation recorded by EEG when viewing pictures of faces and cars, and to try to say if the two activity patterns differ. One way to so this is to show some faces and cars, look at EEG activity and tell your algorithm which is which. Then, after a training period, let your algorithm classify future input into faces and cars as well as it can. In the end, you want to see if it can classify above chance. If yes, then you can say with certainty that the pattern of neural activity between cars and faces differs.

You might then wonder how it differs. If this guesswork is correct, then temporal windows refers to moments in time when this pattern classification works best - for example, 150-200 milliseconds after the picture was displayed. This can tell you something about how much visual processing must happen before objects are seen as belonging to a certain category. If not done properly, though, you might just be detecting simple visual differences such as amount of information in a certain frequency band - not very exciting. A very early temporal window of best performance of your classifier algorithm would indicate that this is the case. In any case, you learn something from seeing where the best temporal window is.

Spatial weightings of the sensors refers to the difference in activity recorded in each of the individual EEG sensors. From that, you might infer that the difference between cars and faces is most prominent in, say,  frontal sensors, which gives you a hint about the possible brain areas involved in category classification. The linear I don't know what to make of unfortunately. It refers to the bit of the algorithm that decides how to classify these spatial patterns, perhaps by relying on how neural activity is spread over a distance (i.e. how activity originating at a certain place will be captured by the sensor just above it, and how by sensors further away), but to know what makes it linear, you would really need to see the algorithm.

Hope this helps!


What is a science concept that we can teach preschoolers that's purely visual?

Consider showing a visual representation of the Earth-Moon-Sun system: either with videos or with globes.

Show a globe of the Earth, that it's round but looks flat up close, and that it spins.
Show that the Sun is also round, much larger than the Earth, but very far away, and looks like a circle from far away.
Show that the moon is also round, smaller than Earth, but not as far away (people have been there, the landing spots can be pointed to at night, and there are pictures of Earth from the Moon)
Show that the Moon orbits the Earth, that's why there are moon phases (notice how the lit side is always pointing towards the Sun) and the moon disappears every month (the Sun outshines the Moon when they coincide in the sky)
Show that the Earth orbits the Sun (this one is harder to intuitively demonstrate)
Show that the Earth axis has a tilt, and that's why there are seasons (might be stretch).
Then to really challenge them, you could even tell that some people don't believe any of this, and instead they believe that the Earth is flat and argue with each other about various details of how it's flat.


Studies on the appreciation of works of art

There was a target article published in Brain and Behavioral Sciences on a theory of art appreciation (Bullott & Reber, 2013) that I read for some reason…but it looks like it will finally be relevant!

According to this theory, one of the ways that you might come to appreciate art is through basic exposure, which involves perceptual exploration of the artwork independent of your knowledge about its art-historical context. Exposure alone is not responsible for art appreciation; rather, it triggers a set of cognitive processes, whose nature determines your experience of aesthetic pleasure or displeasure.  This includes the ease with which you can process the artwork (i.e., processing fluency; Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004) and the artwork's (un)predictability (Hogan, 2013).

With more exposure to the artwork, processing fluency increases, and so does your appreciation of it. However, over time, you also become more habituated to the artwork, view it as less salient, and appreciate it less.  This is akin to liking a song at first, then hating it after it's blasted on the radio 1,000 times. Indeed, repeated auditory exposure is associated with reduced emotional reactivity and reduced activation in a network involving the amygdala and certain cortical areas, thought to represent affective habituation (Mutschler et al., 2010).

Hogan (2013) thus suggests that the longevity of your appreciation for artwork depends on a mixture of predictability (fluency) and unpredictability. There are other variables like art-historical knowledge that influence liking over time, as well (Bullott & Reber, 2013).


How do you predict a cognitive bias theoretically using dual process theory?

Well, whether something is truly predicted or a post-hoc explanation can be difficult to disentangle in this area. What you're asking for is that dual-process theory predicts the existence of a new type of bias previously unobserved. And that's a tall order because observational psychology has been around for a log time.

Probably the area in which I buy the dual-process explanations the most is belief bias; dual-process theory predicts that our intuitions (T-1 processes) bias us for plausible conclusions (and against implausible ones), even if the reasoning (T-2 process) is faulty (and respectively correct).

Predicting an entirely new type of bias is not the only way to test dual-process theory. One can test it quantitatively by looking at known biases and verifying experimentally if the timing affects the level of bias. And in the case of belief bias, that seems to be the case.

The purpose of any scientific theory is to explain some aspect of the real world. Just because we don't continuously discover (qualitatively) new facts based on that theory doesn't invalidate it as scientific theory.

In psychology in general, experimental data is fairly easy to come by, so evidence often leads theory. It's not like in modern physics where you predict the Higgs boson and it takes decades to discover it in actual experiment. Or you predict the string structure of the universe, but it's unlikely we'll ever be able to test that.

By request, here's the introductory / "theoretical" part of the paper:

  [Dual-process] theories posit two distinct
  processes of reasoning that compete for control of the response that
  participants make in reasoning tasks. Heuristic or System1 processes are
  characterised as rapid, implicit, associative, and heavily contextualised,
  whereas analytic or System2 processes are described as slow and sequential
  but capable of abstraction and generalisation. Note that a key difference is
  the speed of processing. The reason for this is that analytic processing is a
  sequential process requiring use of central working memory and is
  constrained by its limited capacity. By contrast, heuristic processes operate
  through massively parallel implicit systems that exert an unconscious
  influence on responding. In support of this distinction is evidence of
  substantial correlations between general intelligence and working memory
  capacity with abstract deductive reasoning but not pragmatic, belief-based
  reasoning (Stanovich, 2004).

  While a mass of evidence has been recorded supporting the idea that there
  are two different processes of reasoning, more research is needed to confirm
  the characteristics that theorists have attributed to the cognitive systems that
  may underlie these observations. A relevant methodological innovation
  reported by Roberts and Newton (2002) is the rapid-response reasoning
  task. The idea is that by constraining participants to respond within a short
  period of time, the slower analytic process of reasoning will be differentially
  inhibited. For example, on the Wason selection task, there is a well established
  non-logical tendency, known as ‘‘matching bias’’ (Evans, 1998),
  to select cards that match the explicit content of conditional statements,
  regardless of the presence of negations. Roberts and Newton (2002) showed
  that measures of matching bias were significantly increased when a rapid response
  version of the selection task was compared with a free-time version.
  This is as dual-process theory would predict, since any influence of analytic
  reasoning to inhibit the bias would be suppressed by the requirement to
  respond quickly.

  A central phenomenon in dual-process accounts of reasoning is that of
  ‘‘belief bias’’—the tendency to evaluate the validity of an argument on
  the basis of whether or not one agrees with the conclusion, rather than
  on whether or not it follows logically from the premises. The
  phenomenon is one of the earliest reported in the psychology of
  reasoning (Wilkins, 1928) but the modern study of the effect dates from
  the paper of Evans, Barston, and Pollard (1983), which established the
  phenomenon with all relevant experimental controls. Evans et al. showed
  that participants’ evaluations of conclusions were substantially affected
  both by the logical validity of the arguments and by the believability of
  the conclusions. With the help of protocol analyses Evans et al.
  characterised the effect as involving a within-participant conflict between
  logic-based (analytic) processes and belief-based (heuristic) processes.
  Such a conflict is to be expected in view of contemporary dual-process
  theories. In support of this, it has been shown that participants high in
  general intelligence are more able to resist belief biases (Stanovich &
  West, 1997) and that logical and belief-based responding are neurologically
  differentiated (Goel & Dolan, 2003).

  In this study, we extend the rapid-response methodology of Roberts and
  Newton (2002) to the study of belief bias in syllogistic reasoning. Using a
  conclusion-evaluation paradigm with problems similar to those of Evans
  et al. (1983), we compare performance under rapid-response and free-time
  tasks. We predict that the participants required to respond rapidly will show
  (a) an increased level of belief bias and (b) a reduced level of logical
  responding.

And regarding prospect theory; quoting from Wikipedia page on it:

  Critics from the field of psychology argued that even if Prospect Theory arose as a descriptive model, it offers no psychological explanations for the processes stated in it.

So I don't see how it is any less of a reverse-fitting of (arguably more math-oriented) description to prior data.

Furthermore, the endowment effect is not even certain to exist, if wikipedia is correct (There are some failed replications, no meta-analysis that I can find.) There are a lot of other (possible) theoretical explanations given for it there as well. In fact there is more theory than there are experiments. Also, being much closer to economics, it's generally more likely to have mathematical models for it.


Does the scarcity of female programmers, suggest that men are more intelligent than women?

The short answer: No, sex differences in professions is not a good basis for judging the intelligence of males and females.
I would like to address some of the assumptions and misconceptions in the question. First, I would like to deconstruct the question, and then answer it.
Deconstructing the question
One of the earlier titles of the question was "Are men more intelligent than women?". It starts with the observation that there are more males who work in areas related to mathematics and programming, therefore males are more intelligent.
I think this is a common bias in humans. People know a lot about their area of expertise and then judge others by their lack of understanding of what they are experts in. To take a stereotypical example, perhaps a female clinical psychologist, doctor,  or lawyer may wonder why so many males are mathematicians and programmers. She might think that this is because they lack the intelligence to function effectively in domains that require strong interpersonal skills. I am not defending this point of view either. I merely intend to highlight that to judge others by your own standards of what represents intelligence is problematic.
Answering the question
Have a read of page 91 of "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns", which represents the position of a large reputable APA task force of leading intelligence researchers. Summarising a huge literature, males tend to perform much better on visual-spatial intelligence test items such as mental rotation and tracking moving objects. Females often perform better on verbal abilities such as synonym generation and verbal fluency. Overall, there is minimal difference in full-scale IQ.
You could also have a read of Hide's (2005) summary of meta-analytic sex differences across a wide range of cognitive tests.

Here, the author advances a very different view, the gender
similarities hypothesis, which holds that males and females are
similar on most, but not all, psychological variables.

However, this only addresses mean differences, and there is certainly much greater differences within sexes than between.
References

Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard Jr, T. J., Boykin, A. W., Brody, N., Ceci, S. J., ... & Urbina, S. (1996). Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns. American psychologist, 51(2), 77. PDF
Hyde, J. S. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American psychologist, 60(6), 581. PDF


Which branch of psychology deals with decision making under stress?

Decision-making or decision theory is its own subdiscipline under cognitive science (also often studied by statisticians, philosophers, economists, and faculty in business schools). Within this discipline, understanding how stress affects your behavior is very important and not understudied area. For a recent survey with a neurobiological focus, see:

Starcke, K., & Brand, M. (2012). Decision making under stress: A selective review. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 36(4), 1228-1248.

Of course, stress and decision making is not restricted to humans. It is also studied in a purely biological setting. For a survey focusing on predation, see:

Lima, S. L. (1998). Stress and decision making under the risk of predation: recent developments from behavioral, reproductive, and ecological perspectives. Advances in the Study of Behavior, 27, 215-290.


Direction of electrical information flow in the brain (and output locations)

As @AliceD pointed out in her comment, the concept of output of the brain is too broad. If you are interested in how eye movements are generated, I suggest you read about the frontal eye fields(FEF). This area of the prefrontal cortex is very closely related with the generation of eye movements, or saccades. However, its function is still not entirely clear. It participates in the generation of saccades, but also in the sensory processing and decision making.

Anatomically, the connections of the FEF are shown in the scholarpedia article I linked above, but I'll also copy it here.

Your question, however, seems to assume that the information in the brain has a definite bottom-up direction, which somewhat neglecks the fact that brain regions have abundant recurrent and top-down connections. This is part of the reason FEF is involved both in motor, perceptual and higher cognitive processing. Nevertheless, you should take a look at the motor cortex, that will give you some insight to which brain regions are associated to motor commands, i.e. outputs.


Converting human's memory into digital data

I am wondering whether converting someone's memory into digital data is possible or not.

Not today, but it is an active area of research.

One non-profit foundation, headed by computational neuroscientist Dr. Randal A. Koene (see also his personal website), that is working in this field is Carbon Copies.

Dr. Koene, in collaboration dozens of others and the Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research (CNCR) (2nd link) has developed simulation software called Netmorph:

  "NETMORPH is a simulation environment for the developmental generation of 3D large-scale neuronal networks with realistic neuron morphologies. In NETMORPH, neuronal morphogenesis is simulated from the perspective of the individual growth cone. For each growth cone in a growing axonal or dendritic tree, its actions of elongation, branching and turning are described in a stochastic, phenomenological manner. In this way, neurons with realistic axonal and dendritic morphologies, including neurite curvature, can be generated. Synapses are formed as neurons grow out and axonal and dendritic branches come in close proximity of each other.".

Also, Wikipedia has a webpage on Mind Uploading and Extracellular Recording.

The ability to make direct electrophysiological recordings from populations of neurons requires multiple parallel recording channels and high sampling rates (>10KHz) in order to properly characterize action potentials.

Electrodes can be placed on the scalp to record electroencephalograms (EEGs), but that is only the summation of the synchronous activity of thousands or millions of neurons that have similar spatial orientation. There are 64 channel neural probes available to record the action potentials (APs) of individual neurons, but the human brain has around a hundred billion of them:

  "The human brain has a huge number of synapses. Each of the 10$^{11}$ (one hundred billion) neurons has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 10$^{15}$ synapses (1 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates vary for an adult, ranging from 10$^{14}$ to 5 x 10$^{14}$ synapses (100 to 500 trillion). [Source: "Do we have brain to spare?" (Jun 27 2005), by David A. Drachman].

  It may sound ridiculous. However, if chance is not 0 then what kind of studies might be used?

Less than "ridiculous", less than possible too. You would need to install a trillion probes or find a means to externally measure with sufficient resolution, and make low error and low noise measurements. Still it's possible to measure very tiny portions of the human brain, or much smaller brains.

Perhaps neurophotonics can be combined with magnetoencephalography (MEG) to derive a means to obtain high resolution measurements simultaneously over a much larger area.

  What kind of theories and facts can be used to make convert someone's memory into digital data?

You can make digital and analog recording of a small section of the brain today, playing it back into another brain or interpreting the information is another matter entirely.

Even identical twins do not have identical genetics (due to copy error or copy number variation (CNV)) or identical brains, see Psychology Today's article: "Identical Twins Are Not Genetically Identical. In addition to recording the information you would need to remap from where it was read to where it was written, much like creating an .ISO file from a CD and burning it to a new disk; a procedure some people find challenging.

National Geographic's YouTube channel has a video titled: "National Geographic Live! - Mapping the Brain | Nat Geo Live" which provides a more in-depth yet accessable explanation, as does the TEDx Talk's channel video titled: "Human brain mapping and brain decoding. | Jack Gallant | TEDxSanFrancisco".

More advanced than the EEG and the functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI), which measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow, is the magnetoencephalography (MEG) functional neuroimaging technique. Even state of the art equipment has limited resolution.

See the Scientific America article about Nature's publication: "A Massive Global Effort Maps How the Brain Is Wired" (Oct 2 2015) which discusses the Human Connectome Project where by the end of the project they will have amassed a petabyte's (10$^{15}$) worth of pictures.

  "HCP collaborators worked with Siemens Healthcare in Erlangen, Germany, to soup up a standard MRI scanner. It generates a 3-tesla magnetic field—comparable to that in standard machines—but can control the field more precisely. MRI scanners use gradients of magnetic fields to aim at parts of the brain, and the stronger gradient of the HCP machine offers faster imaging and better resolution. That creates more-detailed images of axon bundles. A version of their machine is now available commercially, known as the MAGNETOM Prisma (an MRI).".

$$\text{CFT CMEG 275}$$


Do the neural substrates behind motivation to retain/dispose of property govern whether certain people view their friends and partners as possessions?

I can't speak to your first question, but I think the second question could be profitably reframed.  The orbitofrontal cortex seems to represent incentive/reward value of primary sensory information and is thus linked to the "hot" decision-making system, which manages decisions where there is a gain/loss of reward at stake or risk--this would necessarily cover property and personal relationships, which are both sources of reward.  So it's less that the part of the brain that manages property may sometimes also manage personal relationships, and more that this particular part of the brain is responsible for representing incentive or reward options, which are relevant to different kinds of rewards, including property and people.

Reference (just a good place to start, really):
Rolls ET, Grabenhorst F. The orbitofrontal cortex and beyond: from affect to decision-making. Prog Neurobiol. 2008 Nov;86(3):216-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pneurobio.2008.09.001


Is the decline of fluid IQ with age less severe for professors and scientists than it is for other people?

Seattle Longitudinal Study:

You might want to have a read about The Seattle Longitudinal Study of Adult Intelligence.
There's a summary of the study on this website.
To quote the website:

  The Seattle Longitudinal Study of Adult Intelligence has followed a
  group of more than 5000 people for well over four decades. The program
  began in 1956 and participants have been tested across a whole gamut
  of mental and physical abilities at seven year intervals since that
  date.

With regards to preventing cognitive decline the website suggests that

  The following variables may reduce the risk of cognitive decline in old age:

  absence of chronic diseases
  a complex and intellectually stimulating environment
  a flexible personality style at mid-life
  high intellectual status of spouse
  maintenance of high levels of perceptual processing speed

If these general points are true, then presumably an argument could be made that scientists and professors have more complex and intellectually stimulating environments. However, the age related declines may be most pronounced in what are potentially post retirement ages (e.g., 60 or 70 +), where the environment would be different.

Some general points

Professors and scientists have some of the highest levels of intelligence among the professions (see this table based on this working paper by Hauser, 2002, PDF). Thus, if everyone did decline cognitively at an identical rate, people from such professions would still tend to have higher intelligence (e.g., a 10-point decline from  130 is 120, versus 90 to 80). So, people with initially high intelligence even with decline can still be intelligent. However, this initially high intelligence is most likely due to genetics or some undefined source than to the stimulation of the profession itself.
Thus, indirectly, the above points (high intelligence of scientists and professors) and potentially environmentally stimulating environments suggest that they will be more intelligent at older age. But my guess is that most of that effect will be due to base line differences in intelligence.


Obsessions are defined as intrusive and recurring thoughts that an individual finds disturbing or uncontrollable, and are not a good thing.

There is a lay use of the word which means something like "a very strong interest," but it is just that: a perfectly normal if very intense interest, usually with no basis in abnormal psychology.

Note that 'fixation' is an outdated Freudian concept, unless, of course, you're talking about physically fixating your eyes on an object or area of visual space. Obsessions can be in almost any form, but common ones include recurring and distressing curse words, or a desire to perform dangerous or inappropriate acts (such as a spontaneous desire to jump out of a moving car, or to touch a nearby person in an intimate place.) Importantly, these are distressing and uncontrollable--the obsessive person does not desire these thoughts.


How much can users hold in their short term memory

This is a very simple question with no single answer, I'm afraid. The other classic paper quoted in this context is Miller's "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two). In the case of a user using a website, memory will also be affected by:

Familiarity with the subject. Is the website about a topic the user is intimately familiar with, or something completely new (unlikely) or somewhere in between?
Available contextual information. Can the user quickly get to supporting information? In which case, the load on memory may effectively be reduced
The extent to which the information presented on the site is related. The key message of Miller's paper is that people group ('chunk') information in order to reduce memory load

Not sure if your question relates to a specific problem, or if it's a general query, but things like memory limits are hard to define absolutely, hence testing should always take place in as realistic a context as possible.


Term for urban citizens tuning out their surroundings?

Habituation: habituation is the first word that comes to my mind (but see also Desensitisation).

  Habituation is a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations.

For example, the first night that you sleep in a new house, you will typically notice many noises. Over the course of a few nights you learn to progressively react less and less to the common noises as you learn that they are non-threatening and do not need to be attended to.

Information reduction:  There's also some interesting research on information reduction as a learning mechanism. For example, Haider and Frensch have research that shows how individuals gradually ignore task information that is seemingly not relevant to performance. Thus, part of performance improvement is attending to task relevant information. Of course, when you arbitrarily manipulate a task to all of a sudden make what was irrelevant into relevant information, accuracy suffers. Relating this cognitive psychology finding to urban behaviour, people learn that 99.9% of the time noises can be ignored during the night, but one night the noise indicates that someone needs help; a person might ignore the noise because they've learnt that it generally can be ignored.

Bystander effect: Note that the above mechanisms are typically implicit cognitive mechanisms. There is also research on diffusion of responsibility that links in more to social psychology. This has been used to explain some people's failure to help in urban settings.

References

Haider, H., & Frensch, P. A. (1996). The role of information reduction in skill acquisition. Cognitive Psychology, 30(3), 304-337.


Do people wake up faster with inconsistent alarm sounds?

A general model of processing stimuli suggests that when information does not provide informational value, then we gradually begin to ignore it. Such a model is consistent with the experience of many people in relation to background traffic noise when moving from a quiet to a noisy neighbourhood. I.e.,  the frequency with which external traffic noise enters into personal awareness gradually decreases over time.

Habituation to traffic noise while sleeping

It seems that there is quite a lot of research on the effect of traffic noise on quality of sleep and the role of habituation (see this google scholar search on "habituation to noise sleep").

Kawada (1995) provides a review of the effect of traffic noise on sleep. Specifically in relation to habituation the author wrote:

  Habituation to noise:  Views and opinions on this parameter differ. Thiessen et al. reported habituation to intermittent
  wakefulness10～12. In their study, subjects were exposed to passing
  truck noise less than 20  times a night with a peak level of 65 dBA.
  The  probability of a shift to shallower sleep and the  amount of deep
  sleep demonstrated failure of adaptation over 24 successive nights.
  The probability of awakening decreased by almost one  half in two
  weeks. Griefahn also studied  habituation of 36 students to
  high-density road  traffic noise and detected an all-night effect of
  noise on sleep for 12 consecutive nights13. Deep  sleep was prolonged
  and shallow sleep including  intermittent wakefulness became
  progressively  shorter at 37 to 63.5 dBA. Vallet at al. indicate  that
  there is no habituation to noise14. According to experiments on
  subjects living in a noisy  environment for more than four years,
  young  subjects showed less deep sleep and older subjects, less REM
  sleep under conditions of silence.  Both Di Nisi et al. and Ohrstrom
  reported that  there seems to be no habituation to noise
  exposure15,16. They exposed subjects to randomly distributed noise
  and it was impossible to  predict either the time of exposure or the
  type of  noise presented. Kawada and Suzuki could find  no definite
  habituation to a noisy environment17.  Their interval of noise
  exposure was 15 minutes  and there was only one pattern of passing
  truck  noise. Essentially the same noise characteristics  are reported
  by Thiessen, but the findings differed from each other. Based on
  inter-individual  variation in sensitivity to noise, habituation
  should differ according to the person.

I find this summary a little confusing. The between subject studies are not especially relevant in that habituation should presumably reduce the disruption caused by noise, but not necessarily remove the effect. Thus, it seems like longitudinal evidence would be the most relevant.

General review of noise on sleep

Muzet (2007) provides a relatively recent review of research on the effects of environmental noise on sleep.
With regards to habituation the author wrote:

  [Autonomic responses, such as heart rate changes and vasoconstrictions
  in response to noise while sleeping] have bee found not to habituate
  over long exposure times compared with clear subjective habituation
  over successive noise-exposed nights.

Research on alarm clocks

I found an article by Moorcroft et al (1997) that discussed the role of alarm clocks in peoples awakening process

  The ability to awaken oneself from sleep at a preselected time without
  external means (such as alarm clocks) was studied using, first,
  subjective and, second, objective methods. First, in a telephone
  survey of 269 unselected adults, over one-half said that they never
  use an alarm clock (or other external means) or always awaken before
  it. Another 24% said that they sometimes awaken before the alarm.
  Furthermore, this ability positively correlated with age and was
  related to consistency in the amount of nightly sleep but not
  consistency in wake-up time. Second, 15 people who said they regularly
  self-awaken were objectively tested for this ability in their own beds
  using actigraphy for three consecutive nights while choosing their own
  wake-up times. Five awoke within 10 minutes of their target time
  (mostly before) on each night, five did so on two of the three nights,
  and of the remaining five, four did so on one night. Choice of target
  times varied considerably within subjects but more so for those who
  were more successful. Taken together these results show that many
  people have the ability to regularly awaken themselves from sleep at a
  desired time and that such an ability is of practicable utility.

Does having a consistent alarm clock decrease ability to wake up

I haven't found any specific empirical data on your question.

Habituation processes would suggest that a consistent noise that is deemed to carry a lack of informational content will gradually be more frequently ignored, and thus an inconsistent noise may be more effective in generating attention and perhaps wakefulness. That said, alarm clocks do carry informational content, and people could potentially tune themselves to that noise as the important noise to indicate the time to wake up.

References

[10] Thiessen, G.J.: Disturbance of sleep by noise,
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 64, 216-222 (1978).
[11] Thiessen, G.J. and Lapointe, A.C.: Effect of
intermittent truck noise on percentage of
deep sleep, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 64, 1078-1080
(1978).
[12 Thiessen, G.J. and Lapointe, A.C.: Effect of
continuous traffic noise on percentage of
deep sleep, waking and sleep latency, J.
Acoust. Soc. Am., 73, 225-229 (1983).
[13] Griefahn, B.: A critical load for nocturnal
high-density road traffic noise, Am. J. Ind.
Med., 9, 261-269 (1986).
[14] Vallet, M., Gagneux, J.M., Blanchet, V.,
Favre, B. and Labiale, G.: Long term sleep
disturbance due to traffic noise, J. Sound
Vib., 90, 173-191 (1983).
[15] Di Nisi, J., Muzet, A., Ehrhart, J. and Libert,
J.P.: Comparison of cardiovascular responses
to noise during waking and sleeping in
humans, Sleep, 13, 108-120 (1990).
[16] Ohrstrom, E. and Bjorkman, M.: Effects of
noise-disturbed sleep: A laboratory study on
habituation and subjective noise sensitivity,
J. Sound Vib., 122, 277-290 (1988).
[17] Kawada, T. and Suzuki, S.: Instantaneous
change in sleep stage with noise of a passing
truck, Percept. Motor Skills, 80, 1031-1040
(1995).
Muzet, A. (2007). Environmental noise, sleep and health. Sleep medicine reviews, 11, 135-142.
Moorcroft, W.H., Kayser, K.H. & Griggs, A.J. (1997). Subjective and objective confirmation of the ability to self-awaken at a self-predetermined time without using external means. Sleep, 20, 40-45.