Does intentionally being aware of an emotion or thought pattern increase the incidence of that thought pattern?

In general, theories of self-regulation, emotion regulation, psychoeducation, and many forms of therapy posit that, in one way or another, awareness of your emotions or thought patterns is largely adaptive.

This is true because self-awareness facilitates self-regulation (broadly speaking). For example, being able to identify the emotion you're experiencing allows you to plan a course of action to regulate it (e.g., Kashdan, Barrett, & McKnight, 2015).  If I become aware that I'm experiencing anger, then I know that I can modify my anger (up or down) by confronting the source of it (e.g., my friend who owes me money).  If I become aware of my sadness, then I know that I can down-regulate it by seeking social support.  And so on.

Similarly, promoting meta-cognitive awareness of thought patterns can reduce depressive and anxious symptoms (e.g., Papageorgiou & Wells, 2001; Wells, 2009). This is true because it allows you to examine your beliefs about how you think (e.g., "Is the way I think positive or negative? Does it make me feel good or bad?").  And once you've determined how adaptive your thought patterns are, then you'll be able to determine whether you should promote, maintain, or prevent their recurrence.

However, it's important to note that while self-awareness is necessary for better self-regulation, it is not sufficient.  Effective self-regulation also relies on your knowledge of, and ability to carry out, adaptive courses of action. For example, you've just identified your thought patterns as maladaptive, and now you want to downregulate those thoughts.  Toward this goal, you try to suppress them.  However, ironically, this strategy ends up spurring more of those thoughts (as predicted by ironic processes theory; Wegner, 1994).  So despite your awareness of your maladaptive thought patterns and your subsequent desire to decrease them, you've actually increased their incidence and made yourself feel worse.  Alternatively, you might have used more adaptive strategies like psychologically distancing yourself from your thoughts (e.g., Kross & Ayduk, 2011), engaging in mindfulness (e.g., Deyo, Wilson, Ong, & Koopman, 2009), reappraising the content of your thoughts (Beck, 2011), questioning your meta-cognitive beliefs (Wells, 2009), and other standard therapeutic and emotion-regulatory practices that would have more effectively modified your thought patterns.

So, overall, whether self-awareness increases or decreases the incidence of your thought patterns depends on your subsequent self-regulatory actions.


How did Ebbinghaus decide on his number of words in a series?

If you read Ebbinghaus' article carefully, you will note that in Chapter III. The Method of Investigation, Section 13. Establishment of the Most Constant Experimental Conditions Possible, Ebbinghaus gives the following third of seven rules "for the process of memorising":

  3 . Since it is practically impossible to speak continuously without variation of accent, the following method was adopted to avoid irregular variations: either three or four syllables were united into a measure, and thus either the 1st, 4th, 7th, or the 1st, 5th, 9th ... syllables were pronounced with a slight accent. Stressing of the voice was otherwise, as far as possible, avoided.

This rule results in 3- or 4-syllable substrings. Of course the whole string of syllables to be memorized must be a multiple of either 3 or 4, if it is to follow this rule.

Your answer is: Ebbinghaus chose 8, 12 or 16 syllables, to keep the experimental conditions constant.


Which equation is Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve and what do the constants represent?

The question which of these two descriptions is correct? is perhaps natural in the context of, say, someone studying for an examination. Epistemologists might suggest that a better formulation would be is either of these  correct?

However, as stated here there are clear reasons for preferring the first formulation to the second. I shall first explain why, and then attempt to reconstruct a more useful form for the second approach.

By substituting the value $t=0$, a time value (however the time variable is scaled) at which we would expect retention to be a maximum, we obtain:
$$ R_0 = 1 \\
b_0 = 0
$$
Another peculiarity of the second equation is that if $T=0.4297...$ we have:
$$
b_T = \pm \infty
$$
The latter is shorthand for the fact that as $t$ approaches $T$ from below then $b_t \rightarrow -\infty$, whilst $b$ then flips to $+\infty$ as soon as $t \gt T$ and thereafter decreases.

The factor of $100$ in the numerator of the fraction in equation $2$ suggests this was intended to be adapted to percentage correct, and should be dropped to make the two formulations more easily comparable.

The least changed version of eq. $2$ which makes some kind of sense would be:
$$ R_t = \frac1{1 + a \; ln(1+ \lambda t)}$$

This yields $R_0 = 1$, whilst $R_t$ is now a convex, strictly decreasing function of $t$. Surely both of these features are desiderata for any expression for retention.

Note that now (what we may term) model $1$ ($M1$) is a 1-parameter model, whereas $M2$ has two parameters, which might be preferred for an empirical data-fitting exercise. Both models have a linear approximation for small values of the time variable, namely:

$$ (M1) \; \; \; R_t = 1 -\frac{t}{s} $$

$$(M2)  \; \; \;  R_t = 1 - a \lambda t $$

So that we require $ \frac1s = a \lambda$ for compatibility. This suggests that a more useful form of $M2$, retaining the strength factor from the first model, is:
$$ R_t = \frac1{1 + \frac1{\lambda s} ln(1 + \lambda t)}$$

Where now $\lambda$ is clearly seen to be a scaling factor which must be applied to both variables, time and strength. This is perhaps a slight conceptual clarification, since the intervening variable strength is shown to be dimensionally equivalent to time. A strong memory is one that lasts for years, whereas, with the possible exception of the type of mnemonist studied by Professor Luria, few of Ebbinghaus' experimental subjects would retain any memory of his deliberately unmemorable nonsense syllables after the passage of more than a few weeks.

This observation also has a bearing on experimental methodology. Some nonsense syllables might be more memorable for a given subject - for example if, by chance, the syllable happened to match the subject's own initials etc. Such effects should, however, merely contribute a small addition of random noise to the experimental data.


Relationship and differences between psychosomatic, somatoform and idiopathic disorders

This is purely all about terminology.

Somatic means of the body; bodily; physical. whereas the psycho part of psychosomatic refers to the fact that the somatic problem (symptom or disorder) is created through psychological means (with no medical evidence of a physical problem e.g. broken bone and/or torn ligaments).

Symptom refers to an observable behaviour or state, whilst disorder refers to a cluster of symptoms.

Somatoform refers to a physical symptom that cannot be attributed to organic disease and appears to be psychogenic (Dorland's Medical Dictionary for Health Consumers, 2007).

Somatoform disorder refers to a set of psychosomatic symptoms (somatoforms) (Smith & Józefowicz, 2012).

Idiopathic, as you pointed out is

  Of, relating to, or designating a disease having no known cause.

Further clarification

Psychosomatic is a word describing a somatoform.  A psychological problem is a somatised (Al Busaidi, 2010), and therefore is producing the experience of somatic symptoms, which are in fact psychogenic.

If a medical problem is considered idiopathic, the issue of whether it is somatic or psychosomatic is not determined. It cannot be both psychosomatic and idiopathic at the same time.

References

Al Busaidi, Z. Q. (2010). The concept of somatisation: a cross-cultural perspective. Sultan Qaboos University Medical Journal, 10(2), 180. Pubmed: PMC3074701

Dorland's Medical Dictionary for Health Consumers. (2007). Retrieved from: https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/somatoform

Smith, J. K., & Józefowicz, R. F. (2012). Diagnosis and treatment of somatoform disorders. Neurology: Clinical Practice, 2(2), 94-102. doi: 10.1212/CPJ.0b013e31825a6183


What techniques can be used to differentiate between correlation and causation?

There is no statistical test for distinguishing mere correlation from causation. It has to come from ulterior (model) considerations.
Having said that, a common way is to design a new experiment, called a controlled study, in which [based on ulterior model considerations] you change something in some but not all the items/subjects observed. This is basically what you describe (propose to do) in your situation 1.
If you have no way whatsoever to change/adjust anything, then you are stuck so to speak; there's no way to go beyond observational studies. In practice, researchers come up with an idea of what causes what and try to "eliminate" (or rather account for) confounders--what you call an "external factor". There are various degrees of statistical sophistication at which you can do this, e.g. the so called path analysis. However, coming up with a complete list of confounders is hopeless.

A science in which by necessity many or most studies are observational is called an observational science (duh). Psychology is not the only science where you find a lot of observational studies. Archeology, geology, epidemiology or astronomy are other, perhaps more exterme examples. In general, a science being (mostly) observational entails that it's more difficult to replicate the results of studies findings... but some contend that this state of affairs is something people got used to... so the so-called "replication crisis" has mostly to do with controlled rather than observational studies. Quoting from the previous link:

But Peng also describes his own field, epidemiology, in the top left of the chart, as having largely been spared the reproducibility crisis, even though it is as theoretically rudderless as medicine or psychology (or archaeology). His contention is that in fields that rely on experimentation, breeds an unreasonable expectation that the results of single experiments (if well-designed and statistically validated) are true. Meanwhile, observational sciences, which are accustomed to the fact that they have little control over their observations and that single results may well be wrong, have already learned the core lesson of the reproducibility crisis: don’t trust that that isn’t replicated.

In fact some of the most controversial results in psychology have both a theoretical (albeit not deeply so) basis and rely on controlled rather that observational studies, e.g. the ego depletion hypothesis, which is roughly that sugar restores willpower.


A formal term for overcoming something, or getting over something

The term you are looking for is probably dissociation.

There is a range or continuum of experiences that can be subsumed under "dissociation", going from mild to pathological. On the pathological end of the continuum, for example, there is dissociative identity disorder.

Dissociation is technically a kind of defence mechanism. See for example the article Dissociation Isn't a Life Skill on Psychology Today. The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation has a long list of Dissociation FAQs.


What characterises people who stay calm in crisis situations?

This is measured with the Big5 Neuroticism#6 facet: Vulnerability.
This trait measures how an individual reacts to stress, including emergency situations:

  High scorers on Vulnerability experience panic, confusion, and
  helplessness when under pressure or stress. Low scorers feel more
  poised, confident, and clear-thinking when stressed. - See more at:
  http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/personality-tests-big-5-aspects.htm#sthash.PmuKOUm0.dpuf

http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/personality-tests-big-5-aspects.htm

This facet has shown to be the one more important for being able to make decisions and depending on others (page 153):
\http://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Watson14/publication/257044687_Procrastination_and_the_five-factor_model_a_facet_level_analysis/links/0a85e52fd0aa495d2f000000.pdf

This suggests that the panic, confusion and helplessness experienced may be due to being unable to make a decision on how to act and react.


Does learning (to play) music increase IQ?

Short answer
The recent literature shows mounting evidence for beneficial effects of music on cognitive abilities. The big 'but' in the issue is how specific those effects are and whether they will hold up in longitudinal studies.

Background
Great question.

Your citations provided reach back to 2006 so I thought to limit this answer using recent articles only. Overall, the beneficial effects of musical training seems quite overwhelming.

A number of papers, including reviews have shown that in kids learning to play a musical instrument

Raises their IQ (Protzko, 2017)
Enhances musically relevant auditory skills (Habibi et al., 2018
Enhances working memory (but not other outcome measures) (Guo et al., 2018)

In the general adult population review reports conclude that musical training

Enhances cognitive skills spanning executive control to creativity, albeit sometimes limited to the auditory domain (Benz et al., 2016)
Is correlated with positive outcomes on cognitive ability (Schneider et al., 2018)

Lastly, in the elderly musical training has been shown to

Better attention, episodic memory and executive functions (Mansens et al., 2016)

However, virtually all review studies conclude that more data is needed, especially from carefully controlled longitudinal studies. Many papers are retrospectively organized, and many studies find benefits on some outcome measures, but not all. Indeed, Hille et al. (2011) say:

  It is no longer the question whether or not musical training is associated with [better] cognitive abilities, because there is growing evidence that it is. An unresolved issue however, is the nature and specificity of the link.

Indeed, many primary research articles focus e.g. on auditory tasks, and not on others.

References
- Benz et al, Front Psychol (2016)
- Guo et al., Front Psychol (2018)
- Habibi et al., Annals NY Acad Sci (2018)
- Hille et al. Adv Cogn Psychol (2011); 7: 1–6
- Mensens et al., Aging & Mental Health
- Protzko, Developmental Rev (2017); 46: 81-101
- Schneider et al., J Appl Gerontology (2018)


Have the effects of MRIs and other electromagnetic devices on human psychology been studied?

Yes, the effects of electromagnetic fields on the brain have been studied extensively, especially with respect to cellphone, WiFi, and other small devices that emit such fields.  The results are typically mixed, but the overall consensus is that "it depends" - on the strength of the field, the environment, length of exposure, etc - and most modern consumer devices operate at levels well below safety margins.

The effects of MRIs on cognitive function have been studied to some degree, starting in the 1990s, early in their history.  The most prominent cognitive effects known include dizziness, vertigo, concentration, and awareness.  Most of these effects are temporary (limited to the time spent inside the MRI machine), typically only found in high-intensity MRIs, and in most cases require movement (movement is theorized to induce a changing magnetic field).

The long-term effects of exposure to MRIs are not well known.  However, as MRIs are in very common use, and are often a core part of studies on mental health and cognitive function, their safety is indirectly tested regularly.  As such, there is not much impetus to conduct a controlled long-term study.  Note also that MRI-related health risks tend to be more important for the operators who are chronically exposed, rather than for the patients who are only briefly exposed.

For your case, you should find out the MRI field strength used: "the majority of systems operate at 1.5T, commercial systems are available between 0.2T–7T.".  Most of the known effects on cognitive function are found with MRIs above 3T, which are relatively uncommon.  Even if you were inside a particularly powerful MRI machine, as long as you remained perfectly still, no significant magnetic field fluctuations should occur, and even if you did move, the effects are temporary.


Stress is a very broad term. For instance, I'm doing tests on listening effort using pupillometry. Pupillometry measures pupil diameter which is correlated to stress. More stress means larger pupils. Effortful listening is also a form of stress and hence indeed also evoke a pupil response.

I'm focusing on cochlear implant (CI) users, and these folks even have a lot of trouble understanding speech, especially in noise. But even in total silence (no background noise, normal 65 dB speech) they need to mentally focus on the task at hand. Hence they have large pupil responses even under optimal listening conditions.

However, normal hearing (NH) folks show, on average, also a substantial response in silence, although smaller than CI wearers.

To extrapolate these findings to your case by drawing the parallel between NH listeners (math proficient) and CI users (math deficient), I can assure you that even mathophiles  do show a stress response, even for relatively simple math assignments.


Does the informational content of the mind determine its structure?

I don’t think the question of whether the informational content of the mind determines its structure can be answered definitely by referring to current standard psychology or neuroscience references because there is still no consensus on what the mind is, and likewise for its structure. I’ll try to to give the answer based on current knowledge in physics and neuroscience, though.

First, let’s clarify what you mean by the phrase “determine its structure”. You give an analogy in your comment above: in general relativity, the distribution of mass-energy determines the space-time geometry (of that region). So, “determine its structure” here means “determine the topology/geometry of the structure”, not “determine the basic structure, per se”. That is, the mass-energy distribution does not determine the basic structure of the space-time – the basic-structure of space-time is still a 4-dimensional differentiable manifold, with three space coordinates and one time coordinate, coupled with the metric tensor g and governed by the Einstein Field Equation. [1,2] Each different space-time region with different mass-energy distribution just has different topology/geometry of space-time.

What is the basic structure of the mind? Certainly, there is no standard answer for this yet. However, currently, there are several theories [3-5] that assert that the mind is composed of information and information processing, which is the concept similar to the concept of your question. But none of these theories propose that the basic structure of the mind is determined by its informational content although the topology/geometry of the mind or what the individual mind is actually like is determined by its informational content. For example, in the Integrated Information Theory, the mind is invariably the integrated information, and in the Basic Theory of the Mind, the mind is invariably the composite of information processes – no matter what the informational content of the mind is. But, like the case of topology/geometry of space-time above, what the mind is actually like in each individual case is determined by its informational content.

Another obvious analogy is us. Each of us has different physical and mental compositions, which determine who each of us individually is (or determine the topology/geometry, if you will, of each of us). But the basic structure of us are all the same – the basic structure of homo sapiens.

To recap, the informational content of the mind determines the topology/geometry of the mind but does not determine the basic structure of the mind. This is what I can logically conclude from the current scientific knowledge.

References:

1.Wikipedia. Space Time.

2.Wikipedia. General Relativity Theory.

Doyle B. Mind-body Identity Theory The Information Philosopher.
Tononi G. Integrated Information Theory of consciousness: An updated account. Arch Ital Biol. 2012 Jun-Sep;150(2-3):56-90.
Ukachoke C. The Basic Theory of the Mind. 1st ed, 2018. Charansanitwong Printing Co.: Bangkok, Thailand.


it seems that it is a struct variable that is central to how images are visualized in spm. I found a description in the spm source code in this github repository (I linked to the exact line where it is described, 158). You can check if it's the same in your spm8 installation by looking at the code of the file "spm_orthviews.m" which should be in the spm8 folder but I'm pretty sure it is the original version. They also use it in this how-to on wikibooks but I'm not entirely sure if it's exactly the same.

You can look at the same file in the spm12 folder (if it still exists) to find out if there is an equivalent.

Comment:

If you use this variable in your own script do your future self and others a favor and give it a meaningful name.


Is meaning-seeking behavior a biological optimization problem?

it seems to me that a meaningful existence requires
  the absence of cognitive dissonances, but I wonder what science would
  have to say about this, and if there is any empirical basis for
  claiming this.

The difficulty, as you've pointed out, is that there isn't agreement on the definition of "meaning" in this context.  Meaning can be interpreted by different people (and cultures) variously as: "accomplishment", "social good", "altruism", "realizing potential", "inner peace", "knowledge", and on and on.

  the argument that meaning-seeking behavior is a purely evolutionary
  phenomenon that serves only to maximize one's potential for
  reproduction doesn't appear sufficient.

Read about evolutionary explanations for altruistic behaviour for example to see how this can be addressed: "Every single instance of altruistic behavior need not always increase inclusive fitness; ... it would be beneficial to err on the side of caution and usually be altruistic even if in most cases there were no benefits."

  how far would we need to curb the definition so that humans would no
  longer qualify as the only meaning-seeking organisms?

"Social good" and "altruism" are examples of meaning-seeking behaviours commonly found in many animal species.

  Could modern experimental methods such as EEG, fMRI, gene expression
  profiling and epigenome sequencing be used to answer some of these
  questions at least to a degree?

Sure, why not.  For example: "Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable."

  I'd be happy to know at least if there are some research groups or
  labs that try to tackle such questions.

The area of psychology most likely to address such an abstract concept as meaning-seeking is probably Humanistic Psychology: "Human beings are intentional, aim at goals, are aware that they cause future events, and seek meaning, value, and creativity."

You can read about research done in this field - there isn't very much of it though - and also about self-actualization (another common interpretation of meaning-seeking in psychology).


Should raw response time data be transformed?

You can transform RT, i.e., by log(1/RT). This makes the distribution roughly normal.  The problem is that you don't usually run the ANOVA on the RT values collected at each trial, but on the average for each participant. So the distribution across participants need to be normal. A trick is to transform the single RT values, calculate the mean for each participant and condition, and then transform the value back with the inverse.

Alternatively, you can run ANOVAs without corrections if you use the appropriate one (i.e., normality not assumed... this will lead to oddly-looking DOF with decimal values).


Correlation between anorexia and mass media stereotypes

Short answer
According to a study dating 6 years back, the incidence rate of anorexia nervosa was stable over several decades.

Background
According to a review paper published in 2012, the overall incidence rate of eating disorders, including anorexia, was stable over the previous decades.  However, there was an increase found in the high risk-group of 15–19 year old girls, but that might have been due to earlier detection of anorexia nervosa cases or an earlier age at onset (Smink et al., 2012).

Given that the tendency nowadays is a moving away from the stereotypical barbie-sized waistlines I reckon above study is a valid source of information, as I do not expect the number of anorectic people to be soaring.

Interestingly, while there are hosts of studies linking mass media and stereotyped ideal bodily proportions, a review study puts these findings in a different spot light. While the authors recognize mass media and eating disorders are linked, they question the size of the impact mass media has on these disorders. They did this by studying the correlation between social media versus negative body image and disordered eating in females (Levine & Murnen, 2009).

References
- Levine & Murnen, J Soc Clin Psychol (2009); 28: 9-42
- Smink et al., Curr Psychiatry Rep (2012); 14(4): 406–14


Conscious basis for gender identification

A conscious basis for gender identification?

There is currently no evidence to suggest that conscious experiences are a factor in leading a transgender person to identify with the opposite sex. Additionally, there is mounting evidence that transgender children are statistically indistinguishable from children of the gender with which they identify, meaning the process is set as early as five years old in humans (Olson, Key and Eaton, 2015). This suggests a predominantly biological basis. Because we cannot, for good reasons, conduct the appropriate experiments on humans, it is difficult to collect direct experimental evidence for any biological hypothesis, however.

Mammalian gender and sexual behavior

Rather than resulting from experience, the direction in which any mammal's sexual behavior will develop generally appears to be set sometime during the prenatal period, long before humans start having or remembering conscious experiences. In some sense, it appears that gender may be more biological and less psychological than traditionally believed.

The subject was covered in a recent Nature article, where researchers concluded that DNA methylation plays a primary role in the determination of gender and sexual behavior (Nugent et al., 2015). In their experiment, the researchers manipulated developing rats' exposure to gonadal steroids by gene manipulation and pharmacological means, and thereby induced or inhibited masculinized sexual behavior.

  Pharmacological inhibition of Dnmts mimicked gonadal steroids, resulting in masculinized neuronal markers and male sexual behavior in female rats. Conditional knockout of the de novo Dnmt isoform, Dnmt3a, also masculinized sexual behavior in female mice. RNA sequencing revealed gene and isoform variants modulated by methylation that may underlie the divergent reproductive behaviors of males versus females. Our data show that brain feminization is maintained by the active suppression of masculinization via DNA methylation.

One should be careful to generalize from rats to humans, but the proposed developmental dynamic of gender is highly consistent with the way mammalian sex is believed to be determined, and the ability to induce and inhibit masculinized sexual behavior at will provides substantial evidence for the DNA methylation dynamics hypothesis.

Concluding remarks

We ultimately do not yet fully understand the basis for human sexual behavior. What we can say is that we have no evidence for the idea that conscious experiences are in any way a factor in the development of gender or sexual behavior, and that already by five years old, the direction of sexual behavior development has been set for long enough to render the transgender child statistically indistinguishable from a cisgender child of the gender they identify with. A possible candidate theory for an underlying biological mechanism is prenatal DNA methylation dynamics.

References

Nugent, B. M., Wright, C. L., Shetty, A. C., Hodes, G. E., Lenz, K. M., Mahurkar, A., ... & McCarthy, M. M. (2015). Brain feminization requires active repression of masculinization via DNA methylation. Nature neuroscience.
Olson, K. R., Key, A. C., & Eaton, N. R. (2015). Gender Cognition in Transgender Children. Psychological science, 0956797614568156.


Association areas are exactly what you are looking for, actually.

For example, the ventral intraparietal (VIP) cortex, located in the inferior parietal lobe (along the right border of the yellow area in the image below), just on the border of the occipital lobe, integrates somatosensory (tactile) and visual information.

Image via Wikipedia

For an extensive look at the single electrode studies which illustrated this convergence, see the following article:

Duhamel, J. R., Colby, C. L., & Goldberg, M. E. (1998). Ventral intraparietal area of the macaque: congruent visual and somatic response properties. Journal of Neurophysiology, 79(1), 126-136. FREE PDF


Does a comparable metaphor exist for cognition that exists for slow & fast twitch muscle fibers?

It sounds like you are talking about system 1 and 2 thinking that Kahneman called'fast' and 'slow'.

While it's analagous to muscle fibre I'm not convinced it is as physiologically based.

System 1 is fast, but also characterised by its unconscious nature. The decisions made are automatic, and based on mental shortcuts or heuristics. It serves us well a lot of the time but is more error prone.

System 2 is more conscious and requires more cognitive effort. We are more likely to use it for complex decisions but only if we are aware of the complexity and consequences. It generally produces more reliable decisions.

You'll find the same concept with different labels, but the fast and slow thinking that Kahneman referred to is probably the best known.


What aspects of ACT-R are not contained within Spaun?

Both ACT-R and Spaun are modular, and could be extended to include capabilities of each other. Comparing the functionalities of the two architectures by a simple checklist is not the most appropriate way to compare them. Here are some points to consider:

1) ACT-R is primarily symbolic, whereas Spaun is a neural network. ACT-R is actually making a theoretical claim by committing to a symbolic architecture. This is one of the most famous debates in cognitive science; the upshot is that the two approaches each have limitations, and they go about solving problems in different ways. For a good starting point in this debate, see Fodor & Pylyshyn (1988).

2) Architecture aside, different algorithms can be implemented to solve the same problem. Maybe both Spaun and ACT-R can do simple declarative memory retrievals, but do they predict the same response times and accuracies for a given retrieval? I suspect they don't.

3) As mentioned in your answer, Spaun does not include a of long-term memory but does include working memory. In ACT-R, long-term memory and working memory are not distinct concepts; working memory can be construed as a subset of items in memory that are highly activated. There is no discrete distinction. This suggests that the structure of components in ACT-R is fundamentally different than Spaun.


Is there evidence for “because it’s boring, it’s very easy to make errors”

Short answer
There is scientific evidence that boredom can increase error rates.

Background
My gut feeling would tell me that boredom decreases vigilance, which then  would increase the chance of errors. Vigilance being defined as sustained attention (Oken, 2006).

And indeed, vigilance has been directly linked to boredom, and more specifically, boredom decreases the amount of vigilance. In fact, an accepted measure of vigilance is the error rate in task performance (Pattyn et al., 2008), based on earlier observations that motor task performance decreases with lower vigilance levels (MacWorth, 1968).

Another way to measure alertness or vigilance is with EEG. Generally, low EEG frequencies are associated with sleepiness and reduces alertness (Delta band with 0 - 4 Hz oscillations), while high frequencies are associated with alert states (Gamma band at >30 Hz). Figure 1 shows that EEGs with low frequencies are associated with higher error rates (Oken, 2006).

Fig. 1. Error rates plotted against EEG spectral frequencies. As time went by, the subject lost attentiveness, EEG frequencies went down and error rates went up. source: (Oken, 2006)

References
- MacWorth, Can J Psychol (1964); 18: 209-23
- Oken et al., Clin Neurophysiol (2006); 117(9): 1885–901
- Pattyn et al., Physiology & Behavior (2008); 93(1–2): 69-378


Is the Rubin Vase illusion an example of inattentional blindness?

Short answer
The Rubin Vase is a visual illusion, which can be traced down to the way the visual system analyzes visual scenes in terms of objects and background. Inattentional blindness is not an illusion, it is the failure to detect stimuli when the mind is focused on something else. It has to do with the limitations in the capacity of the visual system to extract relevant information from a visual scene.

Background

The Rubin Vase illusion (Fig. 1) is an example of an ambiguous figure/ground illusion. The visual system interprets patterns in terms of external objects. To do this, the visual system distinguishes objects (figure) from background (ground). In the Rubin Vase illusion, when the faces are considered background, you will see the vase as figure, and vice versa.

Fig. 1. Rubin vase illusion. source: TU Dresden

The visual system represents objects primarily in terms of their contours. Also, elements that are close together, or share certain features, or are homogeneous in certain respects tend to be grouped together (grouping). The sudden reversal one may perceive is thought to be due to a shift of attention on the shape of the contour. The observer's "perceptual set" and individual interests can also bias the situation. Biasing the shapes or contours can make one interpretation stronger than the other one. This particular illusion involves higher cortical processing, because previously stored information about vases and faces are resourced (source: TU Dresden).

The Invisible Gorilla (see a video clip here) (Fig. 2) is the effect where people instructed to focus on a particular target are prone to miss other salient, sometimes striking stimuli. The classic, familiar example being subjects shown a basketball game and they are instructed to keep count of how many times the ball is passed between players in the black team. When the subjects watch the video clip and attentively count the number of passes, about half of the subjects totally miss the scene in the video where a man in a giant gorilla suit walks slowly into the middle of the screen, beats his chest and then wanders off, because they were so focused on counting the passes (that’s not to mention the other deliberate mistakes in the video) (source: Life in the Fast Lane). A newer version hits home even harder; 24 experienced radiologists were asked to perform a familiar lung-nodule detection task. A gorilla, 48 times the size of the average nodule, was inserted in the last case that was presented. Eighty-three percent of the radiologists did not see the gorilla. Eye tracking revealed that the majority of those who missed the gorilla looked directly at its location. Thus, even expert searchers, operating in their domain of expertise, are vulnerable to inattentional blindness (Drew et al.,, 2013).

Fig. 2. Invisible Gorilla. source: Persuasion Blog

The Invisible Gorilla is an example of inattentional blindness. Inattentional blindness can be defined as:

  The failure to notice unexpected objects or events when attention is focused elsewhere [...] (source: Simons).

Reference
- Drew et al., Psychological Science (2013); 24(9): 1848–53


Do users of pictographically represented languages users have the same rates of dyslexia and dysgraphia?

Short answer: Perhaps, but it is difficult to measure because the functional accounts of dyslexia and dysgraphia differ between alphabetic and non-alphabetic languages.

Longer answer: It has been argued that oral reading in Chinese can proceed via (at least) two pathways: the lexical semantic pathway (which supports reading for meaning), and the nonsemantic pathway (which connects representations of strokes, radicals, and characters to their phonological representations). [1][2]

From Yin et. al. [2]:

  "...The patterns of acquired dyslexia and dysgraphia observed in Chinese cannot be identical to the patterns observed in alphabetic languages. This is because certain properties of the Chinese script do not allow direct comparisons between the disorders. For example, nonlexical stimuli in alphabetic scripts...cannot be constructed in Chinese. Thus, it will not be possible to replicate the pattern of preserved nonword processing in surface dyslexia and dysgraphia observed in English and Spanish."

The article stresses that the patterns of dyslexia and dysgraphia in Chinese are determined by the language 'environment', or the spatial characteristics of the script, and not the language itself. Since the language is spatial in nature, it is hypothesized that speakers use orthographic information from the character in order to determine the character's meaning. This means that if access to the semantics of a word is partially damaged, then surface level dyslexia can be observed in Chinese -- though, again, since the nature of the languages is different, it is not an exact 'replica' of lexographic dyslexia in alphabetic languages.

Thus, it is more common in non-alphabet languages for dyslexia and dysgraphia to be associated with oral or phonological deficits. Some studies have shown that Chinese may demonstrate 'tonal dyslexia' by providing the wrong tonal stress on a syllable, or by providing the wrong monosyllable for the word.

  "One view of phonological representations of Chinese words is that they have a non-linear structure containing separate syllabic, segmental (onset and rime) and supra-segmental layers...Tonal reading and writing errors result from impairment to the tonal tier or association between tonal and segmental tiers which leads to a dissociation between segmental and suprasegmental units, thus revealing the structure of the phonological lexicon."

Overall, given that there is no "universal" model of reading and writing, there is evidence that these dysfunctions in language processing arise within languages, not in spite of them, and thus take on different characteristics within each language. [3]

For individual characteristics among other non-alphabetic languages, feel free to look at the source material below.

Source used: Acquired Dyslexia and Dysgraphia Across Scripts

[1] To understand this within the context of alphetic languages, the dual-route theory of reading aloud describes observable potential deficits in lexical understanding and in phonological understanding when reading words aloud.

[2] W. Yin et al. / Acquired dyslexia and dysgraphia in Chinese (p. 163-165)

[3] B.S. Weekes / Acquired disorders of reading and writing: Cross-script comparisons (p. 53)


Q: Is there any Sleep limit for a human body?
Can we sleep throughout our whole life if we are supplied the necessary things like food,water etc.

A: Yes, there is a sleep limit for human (and other animals that sleep). And, no, we can’t sleep throughout our whole life even if all our metabolic requirements are supported. This is because sleep does not occur freely without any control but is under control of a complex neural network. This network limits how long one can sleep or be awake. It also regulates the time when sleep is to begin and to end. (Ref 1 - 4)

Sleep occurs alternately with wake in cycles, called sleep-wake cycle. These cycles are under control of a complex network of neural circuits in the brainstem, hypothalamus, basal ganglia, basal forebrain, and thalamus (see figure below).

(The figure is from Figure 2, Ref 1.)

And the periodicity of the cycles are controlled by circadian rhythm pacemaker in suprachiasmatic nucleus, internal homeostasis, and ambient light. (see figure below)

(This figure is from Figure 3, Ref 1)

In human and animals that sleep, this cycle is about 24 hours, with the mean duration of sleep (in human) of about 7.5 hours (with a standard deviation of about 1.25 hours) (Ref 2.). So, normally we sleep about 7.5 hours and then are set to be awake by these neural mechanisms. Because sleep is under control of these neural circuits, we cannot just fall asleep whenever we want and cannot sleep as many hours as we would like.

References:

Larson-Prior, Linda & Ju, Yo-El & Galvin, James. (2014). Cortical–Subcortical Interactions in Hypersomnia Disorders: Mechanisms Underlying Cognitive and Behavioral Aspects of the Sleep–Wake Cycle. Frontiers in neurology. 5. 165. 10.3389/fneur.2014.00165.
Purves D.  Chapter 27 Sleep and Wakefulness. Purves D, Augustine GJ, David Fitzpatrick D, Hall WC, Lamantia AS, McNamara JO, Williams SM, editors. Neuroscience. 3rd ed. Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates Inc; 2004. ISBN-13: 9780878937257 ISBN-10: 0878937250. p659-686.
Moore RY. Clinical Update - Circadian Rhythms, Hypothalamus, and Regulation of the Sleep-Wake Cycle. Medscape. 2019 Sep 1.
Wikipedia. Sleep


What research has been done on brain-to-brain interfaces?

Rao et al. 2014 claims to be the first demonstration of a brain-brain interface in humans, using EEG and TMS.

Abstract
We describe the first direct brain-to-brain interface in humans and present results from experiments involving six different subjects. Our non-invasive interface, demonstrated originally in August 2013, combines electroencephalography (EEG) for recording brain signals with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for delivering information to the brain. We illustrate our method using a visuomotor task in which two humans must cooperate through direct brain-to-brain communication to achieve a desired goal in a computer game. The brain-to-brain interface detects motor imagery in EEG signals recorded from one subject (the “sender”) and transmits this information over the internet to the motor cortex region of a second subject (the “receiver”). This allows the sender to cause a desired motor response in the receiver (a press on a touchpad) via TMS. We quantify the performance of the brain-to-brain interface in terms of the amount of information transmitted as well as the accuracies attained in (1) decoding the sender’s signals, (2) generating a motor response from the receiver upon stimulation, and (3) achieving the overall goal in the cooperative visuomotor task. Our results provide evidence for a rudimentary form of direct information transmission from one human brain to another using non-invasive means.


What is the matrix of self and the outside world, evil and good?

This may not totally match your description (the person's worldview, the evilness of the viewed objects), but it's quite analogous to the table of style of attachment, so I put it here.

I do notice that the major topic in the attachment theory is about relationship, while the topics in your description seem to be about moral in general, but I suspect that yours discusses about interpersonal relationships as well.

The image is captured from the book Interpersonal Communication: Everyday Encounters, 8th Edition. The original research is Butzer & Campbell, 2008.

One minor note: I see that many people use the word "matrix" as a synonym of "table". Technically, a matrix is a table of numbers, but not a table of ideas.


In partial answer to your question, yes, there have been several studies involved in this particular field.

Some findings include:

According to the article "The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation" (Baumeister and Leary, 1995), concluded that

  that human beings are
  fundamentally and pervasively motivated by a need to belong,
  that is, by a strong desire to form and maintain enduring interpersonal
  attachments. People seek frequent, affectively positive
  interactions within the context of long-term, caring relationships.

An important finding in that paper is that their research found that humans more readily make social bonds and resist dissolving them.  Essentially, we tend to 'stick around' rather than walk away.  Specifically (from the article:

  Not only do relationships emerge quite naturally,
  but people invest a great deal of time and effort in fostering
  supportive relationships with others. External threat seems
  to increase the tendency to form strong bonds.

Further, according to "Psychological need-satisfaction and subjective
well-being within social groups" (Sheldon and Bettencourt, 2000), concluded with a key point related to your final question (bolding mine):

  that formal group membership may come
  with some trade-offs: one gains a more distinctive group identity, but may sacrifice
  some personal freedom. Conversely, it seems that members of informal groups are able
  to feel greater autonomy and individual uniqueness within such groups, but they may
  not derive as much pride or sense of identity from comparing their group to other
  groups (Brewer &Pickett, 1999).

I hope this helps a bit.


How many trials do you have per condition? With a small number of trials in the deviant condition, and a small number of participants, these things can happen.

The ISI would not cause this per se, however, have you considered looking at effects of the previous trial? You can analyze the baseline intervals as a function of what type the previous trial was, and see if there is a difference in the period following deviants or standards.

You could also try to randomly sample as many standard trials as you have deviants per participant, and then re-do your analysis and see what happens. You can make a loop and do this many times, and then look at the median p-value.

It could also be that some small number of subjects is introducing some skew to your results. You could try to re-do your analysis on a single subject level, comparing standard and deviant trials within subjects. Then you could see whether all your subjects have this effect or only some of them. If it's only some, you could look at their data more carefully for potential outliers. If it's a general thing, I'd look into the effects of the previous trial.

And if it's the previous trial effect, you can just remove all standard trials preceded by a deviant and try again.

All that being said, even if you have a baseline difference, it might not really matter: this is what baseline correction is for. But I agree that it's disconcerting.

I'm also a bit confused why you would use an ANOVA to compare two conditions, and not a t-test. Maybe I'm not understanding you design completely.


Is mindfulness meditation an effective method to fall asleep?

**Is there any empirical evidence meditation is good for sleep? **

Yes. There is. But it definitely depends on the type of meditation. Some types of meditation increase alertness. A few articles I found mentioned a study based on this, but failed to link properly.

The below link is the empirical evidence.
Mindfulness Meditation and Improvement in Sleep Quality and Daytime Impairment Among Older Adults With Sleep Disturbances

This second study demonstrates that people who meditate may need less sleep. I don't know if that qualifies for you.
Meditation acutely improves psychomotor vigilance, and may decrease sleep need.


What is known about the information that's passed upwards within the neocortex?

Your guess 1 basically sounds like habituation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habituation

Per your clarification in your comment, 2 sounds like you are generally talking about the role of prediction error in learning. There's a lot of work on this. Neural network models generally learn by modifying the connection strengths in response to error. The most well-known algorithm for this is known as backpropagation. Although this is an error signal propagating down a network, not up it, as you proposed. There's also the Rescorla-Wagner model of learning, another example of error-driven learning.

3 sounds like top-down processing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-down_and_bottom-up_design#Neuroscience_and_psychology

Regarding 4, neural firing patterns definitely settle into attractors. This has been pretty extensively modeled:

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Attractor_network


What are the main causes of whether a person becomes introverted or extraverted?

Heritability estimates of Extraversion (and other Big 5 factors)

The introduction section of  Loehlin et al (1998) provides a narrative review of heritability estimates of big 5 personality traits (i.e., one of which is extraversion).
A brief extract gives a flavour of some of the research that has been conducted:

  A recent heritability analysis of the Big Five dimensions as measured
  by the Revised NEO Personality Inventory of Costa and McCrae (1992)
  used a total of 660 monozygotic (MZ) pairs and 380 dizygotic (DZ)
  pairs from pooled Canadian and German twin samples (Jang, McCrae,
  Angleitner, Riemann, & Livesley, 1998). For all five traits a simple
  model involving only additive genes and nonshared environment fit the
  data. Estimates for the heritabilities of factor scales for [Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness,
  Neuroticism, and Openness] were .50, .48, .49, .49, and .48, respectively. These
  estimates are obviously very similar—in partic- ular, the heritability
  of Agreeableness is quite in line with the rest.

They also mention other twin studies, with heritability estimates for Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness respectively as:

                       E    A    C    N    O
Waller (1999):        .49  .33  .46  .42  .58
Riemann et al (1997):  60  .57  .71  .61  .81

Thus, in summary, it seems that such estimates for the heritability of extraversion are around 50%.

Side Point

While inventories like the Myer-Briggs Type Inventory often categorise individuals, into categories, I find a continuous approach to personality traits provides a more accurate description of an individual. Using such an approach, people have a score on an extraversion dimension that is roughly normally distributed (or at least continuously distributed) in the population.

Limitations

I realise this only partially answers your question. It doesn't discuss the dynamic environmental-genetic interactions that cause personality traits , nor does it take a critical perspective on issues related to the measurement of extraversion, and the estimation issues related to heritability. Hopefully, it is a useful starting point.

References

Jang, K. L., McCrae, R. R., Angleitner, A., Riemann, R., & Livesley, W. J. (1998). Heritability of facet-level traits in a cross-cultural twin sample: Support for a hierarchical model of personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1556–1565.
Loehlin, J.C. and McCrae, R.R. and Costa, P.T. and John, O.P. (1998). Heritabilities of common and measure-specific components of the Big Five personality factors. Journal of Research in Personality, 32, 4, 431-453. FREE PDF
Riemann, R., Angleitner, A, & Strelau, J. (1997). Genetic and environmental influences on
personality: A study of twins reared together using the self- and peer report NEO-FFI
scales. Journal of Personality, 65, 449–475.
Waller, N. G. (1999). Evaluating the structure of personality. In C. R. Cloninger (Ed.), Personality and psychopathology (pages 155-197). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press. FREE PDF


Is there a downside to using more than the typical 20/40 trials in an IAT?

The main threat to a design's validity from increasing the amount of trials in any experiment comes from participant motivation and attention. After sitting in front of a monitor for a while, participants get tired, as anyone would. As a personal rule of thumb, a session should therefore not go beyond 40 minutes without breaks if possible. Rather than going with my anecdotal advice, though, I suggest you run planned analyses to check and/or control for any decline in performance.

Given recent developments, it would seem there is generally more of a downside to using the typical rather than to not doing so. The methodological skeletons have come tumbling out of the field's closet one after the other the last few years, and as we are seeing in recent open access efforts such as Many Labs, power matters.

Instead of going with the tried and (maybe, possibly) true, run a power analysis to determine your ability to detect an effect size of the magnitude you expect to find and set your sample size and trial length appropriately. If you don't find an effect or a different sized effect with a well-powered study, well, that's basically publishable these days. Especially if you pre-registered it!

Besides that, there is rarely a downside to gathering more data, provided your statistical methodology is appropriate to your research question and you know how to interpret it correctly. The more observations you make, the more confident in your increasingly narrow inference you can be. If performance declines substantially, it will show up in the data.


Quoting from the paper you refer to:

These connections form before the retina can respond to light, but at a time when retinal ganglion cells spontaneously generate highly correlated bursts of action potentials. Blockade of this endogenous activity

By "endogenous" here they are referring to the spontaneous activity generated before sight begins mentioned in the previous sentence, which organizes the circuitry for vision. It's endogenous because it's not triggered by an external stimulus like light, it's internally generated.
More generally, people tend to refer to "endogenous" activity that is not specifically related to stimulus-evoked activity that an experimenter can manipulate. Sometimes this is also called "noise" though there is debate about whether this term should be used (not that the people using it actually think it's truly noise).


What are the correlation between the Big 5 (OCEAN) dimensions of personality?

My answer to the question on evidence for the GFP provides numerous references on the correlations between the Big 5:

What is the support for a global personality factor?

The key bit of the answer is as follows:

  van der Linden et al 2010 extend the work of Musek (2007) by presenting a meta-analysis of Big 5 intercorrelation matrices
   in order to assess the evidence for a General Factor of Personality.
  Table 2 shows the meta-analytic average scale intercorrelations for the big 5 measures included in the meta-analysis. It shows how across a wide range of measures and measurement procedures, the Big 5 scales moderately intercorrelate. The average absolute unadjusted correlations between the Big Five was 0.23.

You can also check out other work discussing higher-order factors (typically one or two factor models). These imply a correlation between the Big 5.

To quote my own primer on the Big 5 (Anglim & O'Connor, 2018: https://psyarxiv.com/a78g2/download):

  Researchers have posited one and two factor higher-order models of personality suggesting that the Big Five may not be the broadest meaningful level of personality analysis (Anusic, Schimmack, Pinkus, & Lockwood, 2009; Digman, 1997; Musek, 2007; Veselka et al., 2009). Notably, a single, broad factor (termed the General Factor of Personality; GFP) has been proposed to account for meaningful trait variance at the highest level (e.g., Musek, 2007), although see various critical perspectives (Davies et al., 2015; De Vries, 2011; Revelle & Wilt, 2013) .

Thus, you could check out those references for further background on one and two-factor models. Such papers will generally also discuss the structure of correlations between the Big 5 and arguments for and against why they are meaningful.

References

Anglim, J., & O'Connor, P. (2018). Measurement and Research Using the Big Five, HEXACO,
and Narrow Traits: A Primer for Researchers and Practitioners. Australian Journal of Psychology. https://psyarxiv.com/a78g2/download
van der Linden, D., te Nijenhuis, J., & Bakker, A. B. (2010). The general factor of personality: A meta-analysis of Big Five intercorrelations and a criterion-related validity study. Journal of Research in Personality, 44(3), 315-327.


Analysis according to Jung's Psychological Types

If you are simply interested in how your personality would be construed within this specific psychoanalytic framework out of pure curiosity, I'm sure one of those Jungian psychanalists Chuck Sherrington mentioned would be tell you something about it (they get paid for it, after all). However, I think they would use the MBTI - that seems to be the only real implementation of a test of Jung's psychologcal types. Furthermore, I feel compelled to caution against personality type tests such as the MBTI from a scientific point of view, because they seem to have little to no empirical basis [1]. There are better personality tests out there. In fact, I would caution against psychoanalytic approaches in general, because they are hardly scientific. [2] So, in my personal opinion, if you are just curious, go for it. If, however, your purpose is anything more than entertainment, steer clear.

[1] Pittenger, David J. "Measuring the MBTI… and coming up short." Journal of Career Planning and Employment 54.1 (1993): 48-52.

[2] de Maat, Saskia, et al. "The current state of the empirical evidence for psychoanalysis: a meta-analytic approach." Harvard review of psychiatry 21.3 (2013): 107-137.


Limitations of Neural Engineering Framework (NEF)

The limitations of the NEF fall into three main categories.

1. Simplistic Use of Neurotransmitters

The NEF uses neurotransmitters and their rate of propagation to set a time constant on an exponential low-pass filter for spikes, as well as for modulation of learning rules (dopamine). This is currently the only use of neurotransmitters in the NEF, despite their being many functions that they could serve in terms of signalling and modulation.

2. Limitations When Using Complex Neuron Models

Although different filters are being investigated by Aaron Voelker, the vast majority of filters used, as mentioned in the last point, still rely on the single time constant and on linear decoding. More complex neural models, although easily included in a feed-forward connection, usually have multiple time constants and non-linear synpatic effects, which make it very difficult to capture their dynamics. This is covered in chapter 4 of Bryan Tripp's PhD thesis.

3. Lack of Developmental Explanation

This last problem may be more of a reflection on the state of neuroscience, than an actual limitation of the NEF.

The NEF describes fully formed, adaptive, but non-developmental networks. Although the NEF can learn functions, it does not describe how certain structures such as the Basal Ganglia came to be formed. Neither does it give any description of how neurogenesis might occur within the framework, although it is easy to imagine how it might be leveraged to increase accuracy of certain populations.

Conclusion

Although the NEF is the only framework I know of that tries base behaviour on a biologically plausible substrate, it is not the silver bullet of theoretical neuroscience. It is very much a zeroth-order guess at the computations that the brain my perform.


What would be the Term for this Character Trait?

Nathaniel made this in order to warn against this type of action or
  character trait but what is a term for this, this trait?

I think that Nathaniel is presenting a powerful indictment against individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD). He is not saying that one should ostracise the Borderline, but that one ought to proceed with caution when choosing to becoming entangled in the lives of those with BPD.

  the "protagonist" wakes up from a dream (or vision, maybe even
  reality) of all his religious towns folk members taking part in
  blatant evil deeds.

Clearly, the Borderline is experiencing the phenomenon of dream-reality confusion:

Dream-reality confusion in borderline personality disorder: a theoretical analysis

This paper presents an analysis of dream-reality confusion (DRC) in relation to the characteristics of borderline personality disorder (BPD), based on research findings and theoretical considerations. It is hypothesized that people with BPD are more likely to experience DRC compared to people in non-clinical population. Several variables related to this hypothesis were identified through a theoretical analysis of the scientific literature. Sleep disturbances: problems with sleep are found in 15–95.5% of people with BPD (Hafizi, 2013), and unstable sleep and wake cycles, which occur in BPD (Fleischer et al., 2012), are linked to DRC. Dissociation: nearly two-thirds of people with BPD experience dissociative symptoms (Korzekwa and Pain, 2009) and dissociative symptoms are correlated with a fantasy proneness; both dissociative symptoms and fantasy proneness are related to DRC (Giesbrecht and Merckelbach, 2006). Negative dream content: People with BPD have nightmares more often than other people (Semiz et al., 2008); dreams that are more likely to be confused with reality tend to be more realistic and unpleasant, and are reflected in waking behavior (Rassin et al., 2001). Cognitive disturbances: Many BPD patients experience various cognitive disturbances, including problems with reality testing (Fiqueierdo, 2006; Mosquera et al., 2011), which can foster DRC. Thin boundaries: People with thin boundaries are more prone to DRC than people with thick boundaries, and people with BPD tend to have thin boundaries (Hartmann, 2011). The theoretical analysis on the basis of these findings suggests that people who suffer from BPD may be more susceptible to confusing dream content with actual waking events.

  The next morning, his perception of everyone changes to the point he
  (not exactly) distrusts everyone

This is a classic Borderline trait: A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.

  dies lonely due to his callous nature. This callous behavior due to an
  imperfect/changed perspective?

No, the loneliness is due to the Borderline's Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Ironically, it is through this effort to escape their aloneness that the Borderline dies alone.


On a variation of Trolley's problem. How to explain the survey's results?

The two problems might seem to be equivalent but they aren't - in the "John" scenario those advocating not to arrest John and harvest his delicious organs are pointing out that:

  that John should decide whether to sacrifice for the benefit of the other patients.

This is showing that the problems aren't equivalent because John has a choice to sacrifice himself - he could turn to the docs and say - "Right! Knock me out and cut me up!"

In the trolley problem however the one doesn't have the choice to sacrifice themselves for the many, when deciding between forcing John to be an organ donor and letting the others die the ethical dilemma is about removing John's agency. To make the problems equivalent you would have to modify the trolley problem such that the "one" person also had access to a lever to divert the trolley such that it would kill them (and the knowledge of what pulling that lever would do).

Essentially the "John" scenario could be considered similar to the "stranger on a footbridge" variant of the Trolley Problem:

  In another version of the problem, the trolley, as before, is about
  to kill five people. This time, however, you are not standing near the
  track, but on a footbridge above the track. You cannot divert the
  trolley. You consider jumping off the bridge, in front of the trolley,
  thus sacrificing yourself to save the imperiled people, but you realize
  that you are far too light to stop the trolley. Standing next to you,
  however, is a very large stranger. The only way you can stop the
  trolley killing five people is by pushing this large stranger off the
  footbridge, in front of the trolley. If you push the stranger off, he will
  be killed, but you will save the other five.

-Ethics and Intuitions, Peter Singer 2005

As with the "John" case the majority vote not to kill the poor fat stranger and instead allow the hapless majority to die.

As to why the two different problems provoke such different responses, Dr Joshua Greene examined this in his doctoral thesis The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth about Morality and
What to Do About it and proposed that the difference was driven by a difference in emotional response.

As he put it:

  Because people have a robust, negative emotional response to the personal violation proposed in the footbridge case they immediately say that it’s wrong... At the
  same time, people fail to have a strong negative emotional response to the relatively impersonal violation proposed in the original trolley case, and therefore revert to the most obvious moral principle, ‘‘minimize harm,’’ which in turn leads
  them to say that the action in the original case is permissible

Greene tested this theory using an fMRI in An fMRI Investigation of
Emotional Engagement in Moral
Judgment and the results seem to suggest that the initial response to the stranger-on-a-footbridge variant is indeed an emotional one (based on activity seen on the fMRI in different areas of the brain) and it is this that leads to the difference in responses:

  The trolley and footbridge dilemmas
  emerged as pieces of a puzzle for moral philosophers: Why is it acceptable to sacrifice one
  person to save five others in the trolley dilemma
  but not in the footbridge dilemma? Here we
  consider these dilemmas as pieces of a psychological puzzle: How do people manage to conclude that it is acceptable to sacrifice one for the
  sake of five in one case but not in the other? We
  maintain that emotional response is likely to be
  the crucial difference between these two cases.
  But this is an answer to the psychological puzzle, not the philosophical one.


Evolutionary motivation for the existence of pleasure?

First a couple of definitions:

Positive reinforcement occurs when an event or stimulus is presented as a consequence of a behavior and the behavior increases.
Negative reinforcement occurs when the rate of a behavior increases because an aversive event or stimulus is removed or prevented from happening.

Learning may occur as a result of negative or positive reinforcement; ie, through the elimination of a need, or through the pleasure of reward.  Traditionally, these have indeed been thought of as two complementary mechanisms as you suggest, but the modern view is that they are actually synonyms.  They are different ways of looking at the same thing, like describing a glass of water based on how full or how empty it is.

For example, eating can be described as the elimination of hunger (negative reinforcement) or as the pleasure of taste (positive reinforcement).  The choice depends on the context of the situation, but it is always possible to describe any reinforcement as both negative and positive.

As for why the feeling of pleasure exists at all, you can think of it this way: If an action only results in the elimination of a need, then there is no motivation for the subject to do any better than that.  We can fulfil our hunger with rice-cakes, but we are motivated to seek high-calorie foods because of the pleasure they give.  This was an essential survival mechanism for our ancestors.


There is a wide variety of inhibitory neuron classes.  See here for a review of interneurons in the hippocampus: P. Somogyi, T. Klausberger, J. Physiol. 562, 9–26 (2005)..

Different classes of interneurons have different spike durations (e.g. "fast-spiking" or FS cells, generally used as a marker of putative PV+ interneurons).  Additionally, different classes of interneurons have different post-synaptic receptors with specific temporal and other characteristics.  For example, GABA-A receptors have time constants of ~10ms, whereas GABA-B receptors have time constants of ~100ms (and yes, there are subtypes of those receptor classes).  You can see a modeling paper I wrote for exploration of a use for different receptor classes, as well as more references for further research. H. Sanders, M. Berends, G. Major, M. S. Goldman, J. E. Lisman, J. Neurosci. 33, 424–429 (2013)..


How to test whether a person is Left-Eared or Right-Eared?

The Lateral Preference Inventory

Coren (1993) developed an inventory  for lateral preference (The Lateral Preference Inventory). Several items concerned ear preference.

I found the choice of items to be quite interesting. See below for the items concerned with ear preference.

Based on a large adult normative sample, a total score was created for the four items above (+1 for right; -1 for left; 0 for either)

Ear preference tasks

This is not my area, but I did a quick search on Google Scholar and found an article by Noonan and Axelrod (1981) where they discuss behavioural measures of ear preference.

  A total of 373 normal young adult subjects were distributed among 5
  experiments measuring earedness. Handedness, eyedness and familial
  L-handedness were also indexed. Special care was taken to remove
  environmental asymmetries when determining ear preference when
  listening to sound from a suspended earphone, and from a stopwatch on
  a table, and for using a telephone symmetrically constructed and
  displayed. Ear preference was strongly influenced by seemingly minor
  environmental asymmetries and did not influence telephone habits, and
  must be considered a very weak lateral preference. Earedness was as
  concordant with handedness as eyedness was found to be; earedness was
  concordant with handedness in 74% of dextrals and 65% of sinistrals,
  but earedness was not related to eyedness. Earedness did not vary with
  putatively hemisphere-specific stimulus types (music, speech).
  Laterality of telephone use was jointly determined by handedness and
  the expectation of writing, not by earedness.

References

Coren, S. (1993). The lateral preference inventory for measurement of handedness, footedness, eyedness, and earedness: Norms for young adults. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 31(1), 1-3.
Noonan, M., & Axelrod, S. (1981). Earedness (ear choice in monaural tasks): its measurement and relationship to other lateral preferences. The Journal of auditory research, 21(4), 263-277.


Why do we anchor our happiness to short term situational comparisons rather than large scale events?

Research on well-being has explored happiness from different temporal perspectives.

Much of the literature looks at how people respond to measures of life satisfaction, quality of life, and measures of tendencies to experience positive and negative emotion. These tend to reflect longer term evaluations and emotional experiences. This shows up in for example, the relatively stability that individuals show on such measures. For example Fujita and Diener (2005) examined longitudinal data over 17 years and found substantial correlations in life satisfaction over that period of time.

There are a variety of concepts such as the hedonic treadmill and set point theory which propose that people have a general tendency when it comes to well-being. General daily experiences can lead people to deviate from their set-point, but that with the exception of a few extreme events (e.g., divorce, major trauma, etc.) people tend to return to their set point.

That said, there is another line of research that looks more at the moment to moment affective experience. Such research has often employed experience sampling methods (e.g., Kuppens et al, 2010) and this clearly shows more of what you are talking about: i.e., the way that mood fluctuates in relation to the little daily hassles and pleasures that we experience.

One perspective is that the global assessment and momentary moods serve different functional purposes. Momentary moods help to guide our response in particular situations. For example, a stressful situation may call for increased vigilance or attention. An experience which elicits negative emotions maybe one to avoid. In contrast, global assessments of life satisfaction are much broader and all encompassing and may help to guide us in our broader life plans.

References

Fujita, F., & Diener, E. (2005). Life satisfaction set point: stability and change. Journal of personality and social psychology, 88(1), 158. PDF
Kuppens, P., Oravecz, Z., & Tuerlinckx, F. (2010). Feelings change: accounting for individual differences in the temporal dynamics of affect. Journal of personality and social psychology, 99(6), 1042. PDF


Homogeneous Poisson Process of spike train

First of all you should notice the assumption that spikes are independent and that every sequence of spikes over an interval has the same probability. That's why you can express $P[t_{1}, t_{2}, ..., t_{n}]$ in terms of $P_{T}[n]$.
Second, note that $p[t_{1}, t_{2}, ..., t_{n}]$ is a probability density. So you can express the probability as the integral of $p[t_{1}, t_{2}, ..., t_{n}] dt_{1}dt_{2}...dt_{n}$

$\Delta t / T$ is the probability that one spike occurs in that time interval. If $\Delta t$ is small enough, only one spike is within that interval, so just let $\Delta t \rightarrow dt_{i}$. Then  $p[t_{1}, t_{2}, ..., t_{n}] dt_{1}dt{2}...dt{n} = n!P_{T}[n]dt_{1}dt_{2}...dt_{n}(\frac{1}{T})^{n}$

You should see this as a joint probability.


Is it possible to get good hallucination while suffering from schizophrenia?

The short answer appears to be yes, to a certain degree, though there seems to be a need for more research in this area of viewing hallucinations as a boon, rather than a curse.
The positive symptoms of schizophrenia, in this case, hallucinations, often vary in how they appear to the subject. Some argue that one of the keys to how one might react to the manifestation of hallucinations has to do with their culture.
Larøi et al (2014), shows that changing perspective on the hallucinations in a more positive direction might help cope or manage the symptoms, they emphasize that cultural background needs to be considered, as there may not be a need for an intervention or help if the individual's culture does not view the hallucinations as bizarre or abnormal.
A great example would be the way people claim to be able to see or talk with a deity that has proliferated throughout the culture they inhabit. It becomes something that might be giving them those answers to an exam or that the hallucination is in love with them.
It should also be noted that not everybody who has hallucinations is going to show up in a clinical setting, so we still have do not have much data on how these symptoms manifest in different cultures. Something which Larøi et al mention in their article.
Reference:
Larøi, F., Luhrmann, T. M., Bell, V., Christian Jr, W. A., Deshpande, S., Fernyhough, C., ... & Woods, A. (2014). Culture and hallucinations: overview and future directions. Schizophrenia bulletin, 40(Suppl_4), S213-S220. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbu012


Does the "learned" in "learned helplessness" refer specifically to behaviorism's conditioning?

Wikipedia explains that there's not one theory of learned helplessness but several, some more encompassing than others with respect to what is learned:

Research has found that a human's reaction to feeling a lack of control differs both between individuals and between situations, i.e. learned helplessness sometimes remains specific to one situation but at other times generalizes across situations.[7][9][10] Such variations are not explained by the original theory of learned helplessness, and an influential view is that such variations depend on an individual's attributional or explanatory style.[11] According to this view, how someone interprets or explains adverse events affects their likelihood of acquiring learned helplessness and subsequent depression.[12] For example, people with pessimistic explanatory style tend to see negative events as permanent ("it will never change"), personal ("it's my fault"), and pervasive ("I can't do anything correctly"), and are likely to suffer from learned helplessness and depression.[13]

(Aside: contra to the somewhat one-sided way in which Wikipedia discusses this, the expanded theories were not that easy to demonstrate reliably, at least not with a sizeable effect.)


Tried and tested way to repair malfunctioning thought process

Psychotherapy is not something to be practiced without a licensed professional. It is very easy to cause damage to someone using tried and tested psychotherapy techniques. However from the standpoint of theory Psychodynamics, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Interpersonal Therapy are typically used to treat depression.


Are there any proven ways to increase concentration and focus?

Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain details a number of studies that link exercise to concentration and students' results. The accompanying website is a good primer.


Why is it easier to search memory for words starting with a particular letter than for words with that letter in a later position?

This is a very interesting question. Unfortunately, I was not able to find something that would give you a clear answer.

In essence, I think this question is asking for a cognitive mechanism underlying word generation in phonemic/phonological verbal fluency test which is a matter that has rarely been addressed (Robinson et al, 2012). Studies such as the previous and this have revealed that the neural systems for word generation by letter and by semantic cue are different, so one can assume that the explanation for the phenomenon you mention is probably not relevant to semantic properties of the word.

Also, studies by Troyer et al (1997, mentioned here) have shown that in a phonemic fluency test, a person often uses a strategy called "clustering". In this case, it is phonemic clustering and "clusters are defined as successively generated words that begin with the same first two letters, differing only by a vowel sound, or are homonyms". This may be indicative of how words are organized and represented in verbal memory.

However, the question remains as to why this form of organization and representation occurs instead of another. A possible explanation may lie in the ways we use to learn words, namely in what has been named as statistical learning. This correlation I am making is certainly a speculation and I don't know if it is a valid one but I imagine that because syllables form into words according to the transitional probabilities from one to another, a phonological representation of a word might be more easily activated by the first letters while a parallel activation might also occur throughout a certain phonemic cluster for successively generated words.


Why being ignored is 'painful' for human beings?

Ignoring is a type of social rejection see extracts from wiki:

Social rejection occurs when an individual is deliberately excluded
from a social relationship or social interaction. ... rejection can be either active, by bullying, teasing, or ridiculing, or passive, by ignoring a person, or giving the "silent treatment."
...
Researchers have also investigated how the brain responds to social
rejection. One study found that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex
is active when people are experiencing both physical pain and "social
pain," in response to social rejection.


How does posture affect cerebral blood flow?

Blood pressure decreases as one stands up.

A model of cerebral blood flow has been created in Modeling Cerebral Blood Flow Control During Posture
Change From Sitting to Standing:

  The characteristic features are that after standing up for 60 s, the pressure (both systolic and diastolic values) drops signiﬁcantly from a mean pressure of approximately 95 mmHg to a mean pressure of approximately 58 mmHg. At the same time, the blood ﬂow velocity also decreases followed by an increase. However, it should be noted that while the mean velocity decreases, the decrease is not as big, because of a large widening of the pulse-amplitude (systolic value minus diastolic value).

Other studies back this claim up such as Cerebral Circulation In Various Physologic States:

  Although our studies have not revealed a quantitative relationship between alterations in the arterial pressure and cerebral blood flow in the same
  person, there was a definite fall in cerebral blood
  flow with the fall in effective cerebral arterial
  pressure on standing.

More specific studies on posture and blood flow have also been performed to learn how to the best way to reduce blood pressure, which is important in head injury patients.
From Effect of head elevation on intracranial pressure, cerebral perfusion pressure, and cerebral blood flow in head-injured patients:

  There was no statistically significant change in CPP, CBF, cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen, arteriovenous difference of lactate, or cerebrovascular resistance associated with the change in head position. The data indicate that head elevation to 30° significantly reduced ICP in the majority of the 22 patients without reducing CPP or CBF.

This means that Inter-Cranial Pressure (ICP) was significantly reduced in most patients without reducing Cerebral Blood Flow (CBF). This means changes in pressure do not always equate to changes in blood flow of the same relative magnitude.

Reading more into those articles will give you more insight into the complexities of how the flow changes in posture, but unless you have a more specific question I believe that covers what you asked.


What is the difference between pre-synaptic versus post-synaptic?

Typically 'presynaptic' and 'postsynaptic' are used to indicate two neurons that are connected, as you indicate correctly in your second example. Information flow in the nervous system basically goes one way. If one neuron fires (presynaptic cell) it can chemically activate another cell on which it synapses (the postsynaptic cell), as shown in the following figure 1.

As an illustrative example consider the auditory system (figure 2).

The cells that send their axons from the inner ear to the cochlear nucleus (the first central auditory structure in the auditory pathway) are called spiral ganglion cells. The axons from the auditory nerve cells form the auditory nerve. The auditory nerve cells release glutamate from their axon terminal into the synapse, that in turn activates the cochlear nucleus cells. In this scheme, the auditory nerve cells are presynaptic, and the cochlear nucleus cells are postsynaptic.

Translating this example into Figure 1, the axon on top would be the auditory nerve cell and the postsynaptic neuron the cochlear nucleus that receives input from the auditory nerve.

However, to continue with the peripheral auditory system as example, the auditory nerve cells receive their input peripherally from hair cells in the inner ear, while the cochlear nucleus cells send their output centrally to the olivary complex. Hence, auditory nerve cells can also be classified as postsynaptic, while cochlear nucleus cells are also presynaptic. Again, as illustrated by this auditory-system-based example, it all depends on the context and the specific system under investigation.

The terminology can, however, point to a single cell as well. In the hypothetical scenario a neuron would send a collateral axon to its own cell body, it would be the presynaptical as well as postsynaptical cell. In the figure, the axon on top of the image (still correctly labeled as presynaptic) would then come from the neuron shown on the bottom of the image (still labelled correctly as being postsynaptic).


How do I stream SMI glasses eye tracker data into MATLAB?

Philip from iMotions here. Appreciate the mention, and yes for a simple streaming of data, our solutions are probably overkill. We do however offer real automatic gaze mapping in the cloud as well as auto segmentation which saves a ton of time

We also offer LSL in our latest version but yes SMI doesn't support the previous SDK.

I'll listen in and hope someone can help you with your inquiry.


Can Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), or a magnets cap make you smarter?

Short answer
A cap of magnets, or state-of-the-art TMS protocols, will not make you smarter.

Background
First off, TMS uses bursts of magnetic stimulation in the order of milliseconds (Rothkegel et al., 2010). Pulses of magnetic stimulation are used, because permanent magnetic fields will not induce current flow. Hence, wearing a cap of permanent magnets will not do the job.

TMS can be used using single pulses to evoke motoric muscle twitches when applied to the motor cortex, or to evoke phosphenes when applied over the visual cortex (Thut et al., 2003). In the clinic, typically repetitive TMS (rTMS) is used, where the subject is exposed to trains of TMS pulses (Horvath et al., 2010). rTMS is nowadays approved to treat depression. A popular description says it 'activates neurons' in the prefrontal cortex (ABC News), but a more realistic view is to say that nobody knows why it works, and whether it works (National Institute of Health). It's also been investigated to treat psychoses or to decrease ear ringing (tinnitus).

Hence, TMS is generally applied to disrupt ongoing neural activity, i.e. to remove something. Indeed, TMS is typically associated with a disruption of function. For example, visual task performance is decreased when folks are subjected to TMS pulses (Thut et al., 2003). Hence TMS is not applied to add or enhance brain functions, let alone higher cognitive functions that govern intelligence.

References
- Horvath et al., J Vis Exp (2010); 45: 2345
- Rothkegel et al., Clin Neurophysiol (2010); 121(11):1915-21
- Thut et al., Clin Neurophysiol (2003); 114(11): 2071–80


Is dyslexia less common among visually impaired?

The term Dyslexia is used to refer to a pattern of learning difficulties
characterized by problems with accurate or fluent word recognition, poor decoding, and poor spelling abilities.

DSM-5 posit: "The learning difficulties are not better accounted for by intellectual disabilities, uncorrected visual or auditory acuity, other mental or neurological disorders, psychosocial adversity, lack of proficiency in the language of academic instruction, or inadequate educational instruction"

This is one of the diagnostic criteria for a "Specific learning disorder".
Accordingly, the answer to your question is no, because in that case we should talk about another deficit.


One option is to use Inquisit Web Edition.
 Here is an example script with a lexical decision task.

Unfortunately, it is not free and it requires installation of a plug-in.

Version 4 of Inquisit runs on OSX and Windows. Thus, it wont work in Linux or on phones, tablets, etc.


Books on Statistics in R for behavioral data analysis

Just to add a few other options that I consider relevant:

-Longitudinal Data Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences Using R

-Behavioral Research Data Analysis with R

-Methods for the Behavioral, Educational, and Social Sciences: An R package (an interesting paper).


What is so "potential" about action potentials?

There are other meanings of "potential" than the regular meaning "having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future" (source: Google Translate).

In case of "resting potential" it refers to the voltage difference across the cellular membrane. Every cell maintains a voltage difference across the membrane (see a related question here: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/17840/resting-and-action-membrane-potential). The voltage difference is used for various purposes, including the transport of nutrients and ions, and it is crucial for action potentials to occur.

In case of "action potential" it refers to a series of successive changes in the voltage difference across the membrane, which occurs when an excitable cell is triggered (see a related question here: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/91/how-do-the-brain-and-nerves-create-electrical-pulses/110#110).


Okay, how many memory do we have?

Like many things in neuroscience & cognitive science, it depends on how you categorize it, it is also an evolving field and you might be surprised to know that the number of memory systems is closer to 10-12, although the number might go up or down in the future.

In general there are 2 ways of dividing memory: by time range ( Long term and short term) and by intentional recollection, each one further subdivides and overlaps at some points.

  One is fight or flight memory located in amygdala.

The Amygdala is a complex mass of gray matter that plays an important role in emotions, it both integrates and has a role in associative learning in between stimuli and experiences/feelings among other functions, so in a way it is involved in memory, ( emotional memory).

The fight or flight response on the other hand is a whole other complex subsystem of our bodies mainly involving the visceral motor system (the sympathetic division)

  Another is episodic memory located in hippocamus

Episodic memory is one of the subdivisions of memory, mainly dealing with events as opposed to facts ( that would be semantic)

The hippocampus is a crucial component to memory, but is part of a bigger system mainly involved with transfering and facilitiating the creation of short term memories to long term memories.

  If I can derive most math formula on top of my head but keep forgetting where I put my glasses, is something wrong in my hippocampus?

Most likely not, as this very brief and incomplete review hopefully shows you, there are a number of different systems at play for what we normally bunch up into the word memory, there are also different types of memories.

Deriving a math formula on the top of you head involves another type of memory, working memory, along with the phonological loop if you think in words about your equations ( these 2 are sort of buffers) , and long term memories across your neocortex with a number of connections and interconnections, in other words your whole brain lights up.

Forgetting your glasses on the other hand is usually a problem of not encoding the initial percept in the first place ( i.e. to increase the odds of you finding your glasses again, you need to consciously aknowledge where you are leaving them in the first place rather than just dropping them).

Additionally, what you do in between leaving your glasses and trying to recover them also influences how much you remember them.

As mentioned memory is a complex and deep subject, as way of sources here are a few books I consulted:

- Cognitive Neuroscience (Third edition)
- Neuroscience (Third edition)
- In search of memory
- The seven sins of memory


My suggestion is to look to prospect theory here. In general, people feel losses 2.5x more than gains (Kahneman + Tversky). There's also an inversion curve: more good has diminishing returns, more bad has diminishing returns too.
Basically we 'acclimate'

This is a very crude way to think about it.

Good news first:
In this situation, we could go up the curve, then 2.5X down for the bad news, or the other way around.

Bad news first:
In this situation, you go down the curve first, but coming back the curve you erase the curve of the bad news, which is 2.5x steeper, so you're actually net gaining in positive utility, because the same amount of good news brings you up the curve more.

This is called the silver lining effect in the literature.

So all in all, deliver the bad news first: you'll gain more 'upside' on reversing bad news than following up good news with bad (silver lining effect) + people will remember the good news at the end of the conversation (recency effect).


Is it possible to block out reality completely?

Yes, it is. Seeing objects, colors, hearing voices and sounds are electrical impulses translated by our sensorial organs and sent to the brain. There are cases of blind people which can "see" (feel?) a whole load of abstract images, and are actually bothered by it.

A person could have no sensing organs and still have electrical impulses by means of artificial brain stimulus, or due to a neurological damage; tinnitus comes to mind (no pun intended).

  When TMS [transcranial magnetic stimulation] is applied with a single pulse to motor or sensory cortex, it is possible to evoke a motor or sensory response. When the sensory cortex is visual cortex, the response is a phosphene.4 Phosphenes are the sensation of light in the absence of visual stimulation.


Is actively trying to create insight inducing conditions effective in generating insights?

This is all a fairly abstract discussion when it's independent of a particular task.

Insights are by definition those discoveries that you couldn't immediately make. Thus, they are often on the horizon of your understanding. So if you knew more to begin with, the solution may have been obvious. And ultimately solving the problem is typically the goal whether that requires and insight or not.

In general, I would assume that when people are under strong time pressure they may fall back on automated ways of doing a task. Thus, I imagine if you are trying to encourage creativity, to encourage an environment where such alternative ideas can be explored and tried. This may well relate to the issue of relaxation. If people are tense and concerned about their performance being judged immediately, they may be less able to cognitively explore the domain.

More generally, a key part of achieving insight is "incubation". Ultimately, this involves spending time on a problem, then having a break, and returning to a task.

So in summary, If you want to increase insight/creativity, I think it makes sense to do things like spending time on the task, taking breaks, creating a non-judgemental performance environment, getting input from external sources, and so on.


any reliable sources or any help for bransford and johnson's laundry experiment?

There was no laundry experiment per se.  What you are referring to is part of an experiment to do with investigations of comprehension and memory recall.
The following is a passage from Section 3.4 of the free online course Starting with psychology at the UKs Open University [with a link to the pdf provided by Erik M. Altmann of Michigan State University Psychology Department added by myself]

John Bransford and Marcia Johnson (1972) carried out a number of experiments which illustrated the role of schemas in our understanding and recall of information. In one experiment the participants were read the passage below and then asked to recall it as accurately as possible. However half of the participants were given a title for the following passage and the other participants were given the passage without the title.

The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups… Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo any particular endeavour. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important, but complications from doing too many can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well… At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one never can tell. After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will have to be repeated. However, that is part of life.
(Bransford and Johnson 1972 p. 722)

The passage was given to 2 groups — 1 with the topic of the passage, and 1 without the topic.

The instruction sheet for the toipc before Ss included the additional sentence, "The paragraph you will hear will be about washing clothes" (Bransford and Johnson, 1972 p. 722)

References
Bransford, J.D., & Johnson, M.K. (1972). Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 717-726. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(72)80006-9


Gaining and maintaining viewer sympathy for an anti-social protagonist

In a world where the Wealthy [are perceived to] abuse the Poor and Middle class, it is easy to subconsciously maintain sympathy for a 'honest' (passion to teach kids) and 'intelligent' (chem. teacher) person when they perform crime that it characterized in the 'Robin Hood' style.

I've never seen the show and so I'm sure that there are metaphors that make things more hazy than this, but these are broad societal themes in U.S. culture.