What makes someone attractive psychologically?

With regard to your first question about the psychological processes of interpersonal attraction there are (at least) 4 factors that have been found in the social psychology literature.

Contextual Aspects.
People are more likely to develop attraction
towards those they see more frequently than others. This is known as
the Mere Exposure Effect (Saegert, Swap & Zajonc, 1973).
Attributes of the Target Person.
The perceived attractiveness (for example of the
face) is another factor.  The comments point to resources regarding
this aspect.
Attributes of the Perceiver.
Mood has an effect on interpersonal attraction. Being in a positive mood makes a person more likely to develop attraction (Gouaux, 1971).
Aspects of the relationship between Perceiver and Target Person.
Perceived similarity has an effect on interpersonal attraction (Byrne, 1971).  Similarities can serve as a positive reinforcement of the attitudes of the perceiver.
They are also the foundation for common activities and also which in
turn lead to closer relationship.

References

Byrne, D. E. (1971). The attraction paradigm (Bd. 11). New York: Academic Press.

Condon, J. W., & Crano, W. D. (1988). Inferred evaluation and the relation between attitude similarity and interpersonal attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(5), 789.

Gouaux, C. (1971). Induced affective states and interpersonal attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 20, 37–43.

Saegert, S., Swap, W., & Zajonc, R. B. (1973). Exposure, context, and interpersonal attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 25(2), 234-242.


Is there a condition where a person doesn't feel emotional or non-physical pain?

Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP) is a condition in which a person cannot feel physical pain.  There is no known analogue encompassing all emotional (psychological) pain.
There are certain conditions in which a person may not be able to feel certain types of emotions, such as in psychopathy and related anti-social personality disorder.  This may be related to abnormalities in the limbic system - an area of the brain associated with processing emotion.
However, it is not always clear whether or not individuals who appear to lack the ability to feel certain types of psychological pain (eg, PTSD) in fact cannot feel it, or they can feel it but are indifferent to it, as in emotional numbness or apathy.
Additionally, modern theories of emotion suggest that emotion is "subjective" (context-dependent) - that is, physiological aspects of emotion (such as pain) are only part of the picture, and many other cognitive factors come into play.  So for example, in the case of a broken heart, as with psychological pain in general, it appears to share some mechanisms with physical pain - ie, this type of pain is effectively the same as physical pain.  Nonetheless, CIP patients appear to be able to feel emotions such as heartache normally, suggesting that the mechanism is much more complex, and physical pain is neither necessary nor sufficient for feeling psychological pain.  The added complexity may be the reason why an emotional analogue to CIP is not known - the number of systems that would need to malfunction simultaneously is too unlikely.  It is also probable that given the importance of emotion to normal functioning, that a condition of not feeling it would be equivalent to death.
PS: Sorry that I don't have any book recommendations for you, but Wikipedia articles I linked to contain many references to literature you can check out.


I don't know any such group in Italy but there is a group in Liege, Belgium which is called Coma Science Group. It consists of scientists of various disciplines and their main interest is understanding disorders of consciousness. Also their work has a clinical orientation as well. From your description, I think it will be interesting to you. Their website is http://www.coma.ulg.ac.be


What qualitative studies are there into mindfulness?

Wikipedia often provides references to scientific studies and the Wikipedia article on Mindfulness is no exception.

The main section of the article has

  ...Studies have also shown that rumination and worry contribute to mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety,[13][14] and that mindfulness-based interventions are effective in the reduction of both rumination and worry.[13][15]

  Mindfulness practice is being employed in psychology to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions, such as bringing about reductions in depression symptoms,[16][17][18] reducing stress,[17][19][20] anxiety,[16][17][20] and in the treatment of drug addiction.[21][22][23] Recent studies demonstrate that mindfulness meditation significantly attenuates pain through multiple, unique mechanisms.[24] It has gained worldwide popularity as a distinctive method to handle emotions.

  Clinical studies have documented both physical and mental health benefits of mindfulness in different patient categories as well as in healthy adults and children.[3][25][26]

plus

  Research on the neural perspective of how mindfulness meditation works suggests that it exerts its effects in components of attention regulation, body awareness and emotional regulation.[34] When considering aspects such as sense of responsibility, authenticity, compassion, self-acceptance and character, studies have shown that mindfulness meditation contributes to a more coherent and healthy sense of self and identity.[35][36] Neuroimaging techniques suggest that mindfulness practices such as mindfulness meditation are associated with “changes in the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, temporo-parietal junction, fronto-limbic network and default mode network structures."[37][38] Further, mindfulness-induced emotional and behavioral changes have been found to be related to functional and structural changes in the brain.[38]

There is also a scientific research section

  Mindfulness has gained increasing empirical attention ever since 1970.[120][unreliable source?] According to a 2015 systematic review and meta-analysis of systematic reviews of RCTs, evidence supports the use of mindfulness programs to alleviate symptoms of a variety of mental and physical disorders.[25] Other reviews report similar findings.[19][22][33] Further, mindfulness meditation appears to bring about favorable structural changes in the brain,[32][37][121] and may also prevent or delay the onset of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.[122] Mindfulness proved to be effective also in enhancing people’s capacity to self-regulate.[123]

References

These are provided in the full article

This question is close to being put on hold or closed and to indicate why, it would produce a posting which is much longer than the standard laid out in the help center,

  if your question could be answered by an entire book, or has many valid answers, it's probably too broad for our format

plus, there are so many referenced studies and articles of scientific research connected to this (I counted 25 in total - 156 in the full article) that providing a full list of references here would take me an age to provide in full (with weblinks etc.) on this site.


Why is the chicken crossing the road joke funny?

I think, as you surmised, the joke isn't all that funny. I would consider the dynamics of the social interaction in which the joke was told as more important than the joke itself.

Laughter is as much a social phenomenon as an involuntary reaction to something humorous. Duchenne laughter is even correlated with increased pain tolerance, in addition to feelings of well-being (https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2011.1373). People may laugh or otherwise respond positively if they are seeking social or personal approval.

But as an example of an infamous anti-joke, the chicken-road question "humor" is probably the relief of stress caused by the knowledge that the answer is trivial and thus we are obviated of the need to seek a more clever answer that would render this more of a riddle. The expectation is that the answer is something clever, interesting, or non-obvious, and so when the punchline is revealed, we are relieved and also fooled. The relief comes from the realization that it's not actually important what we said because the joke was a trick and our intellectual status was never on the line.

You may be interested in My Humorous Robot, a conference paper on human responses to an NAO robot telling jokes. The jokes range from actually funny to anti-jokes and human responses are statistically analyzed.

HRI '18 Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
Pages 193-194
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3177015


Those courses you mention are a part of a much larger "personal development" market that really boomed in the 90s, and keeps going on ever since.
There's a book called "Letting go: a pathway of surrender" and the part that really jumped at me is that the author lists dozens of different flavors of that "personal development" offerings:

“Well,” you say, “there have to be some experts who have the answers.” When upset, you go to a doctor or psychiatrist, an analyst, a social worker, or an astrologer. You take up religion, get philosophy, take the Erhard Seminars Training (est), tap yourself with EFT. You get your chakras balanced, try some reflexology, go for ear acupuncture, do iridology, get healed with lights and crystals.
You meditate, chant a mantra, drink green tea, try the Pentecostals, breathe in fire, andspeak in tongues. You get centered, learn NLP, try actualizations, work on visualizations,study psychology, join a Jungian group. You get Rolfed, try psychedelics, get a psychicreading, jog, jazzercise, have colonics, get into nutrition and aerobics, hang upside down, wearpsychic jewelry. Get more insight, bio-feedback, Gestalt therapy.
You see your homeopath, chiropractor, naturopath. You try kinesiology, discover yourEnneagram type, get your meridians balanced, join a consciousness-raising group, take tranquilizers. You get some hormone shots, try cell salts, have yourminerals balanced, pray, implore, and beseech. You learn astral projection. Become a vegetarian. Eat only cabbage. Try macrobiotics, go organic, eat no GMO. Meet up withNative American medicine men, do a sweat lodge. Try Chinese herbs, moxicombustion,shiatsu, acupressure, feng shui. You go to India. Find a new guru. Take off your clothes. Swiin the Ganges. Stare at the sun. Shave your head. Eat with your fingers, get really messy,shower in cold water ........

The point is that there are thousands of people out there who would be happy to take your money to tell you about your problems and subconscious. :)
From what I understand, EEG is very difficult to analyze, and does not have the accuracy that you are seeking.
From my personal experiments, observing the intensity and content of dreams may offer some insight into one's subconscious, however it is extremely subjective.


When delivering a bad news to someone, why shouldn't we show empathy at the beginning?

The short answer — TLDR
The answer to this question within the field of psychology will depend on the psychological approach the answerer is affiliated to.
In short, while a certain amount of empathy is required in both the 2 main lines of thought — after-all, how are you going to be an effective therapist without it? — the way it is to be shown is down to opinion really, and that opinion will drive the policies regarding "I'm sorry..." responses.
With regard to your job as a customer service representative/agent, if you don't want to have problems with your superiors, you should follow the protocol laid down by your employers.
If you feel a different approach should be adopted, maybe you could approach your line-manager for consideration.
With regard to other situations, it is down to opinion.
The full answer
Note: In my answer, there will be talk of therapists and clients. Where the therapist is referenced, this applies to anyone in a position of trust such as a doctor, dentist, customer service representative/manager etc.
There are 2 main approaches in psychology — Psychodynamic and Person-Centered
The Psychodynamic Approach started by Sigmund Freud
As pointed out by Jane Holder (2013), this approach to psychology involves analysis of resistance through ego-defence mechanisms, along with transference and counter-transference as described by Stephanie Cobb for the British Psychological Society (BPS, 2015):

Transference has been defined as ‘the client’s experience of the therapist that is shaped by his or her own psychological structures and past’, often involving ‘displacement onto the therapist, of feelings, attitudes and behaviours belonging rightfully to earlier significant relationships’ (Gelso & Hayes, 1998, p.11). Countertransference describes the therapist’s reaction to the client in terms of both feelings and behaviour.

A psychodynamic theorist will talk about psychological detachment requirements with regard to transference and counter-transference so will advocate total compartmentalisation to separate the lived experiences of the client and the therapist from each other.
The bottom line with the psychodynamic approach is

You must only relay the facts pertaining to the situation
The client's experience(s) are not yours to own to convey, and you should not be sharing your feelings about the situation with them either.

The downside of the psychodynamic approach
This approach can be seen to be very cold and stand-offish leading to possible feelings of resentment towards the therapist, which can be unnoticed by the therapist due to the detachment with the client's "here and now".
The Person-centered approach started by Carl Rogers
Again, Jane Holder (2013) covers this:

The person-centred approach focuses on the belief that we are all born with an innate ability for psychological growth if external circumstances allow us to do so. Clients become out of touch with this self-actualising tendency by means of introjecting the evaluations of others and thereby treating them as if they were their own.
[In therapeutic environments] As well as being non-directive the counselling relationship is based on the core conditions of empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard.

A person-centered theorist will talk about the need for these core conditions, and therefore will advocate empathy and concern for the client's current well-being. This is sharing the fact that while you still don't pass your feelings about their situation to the client as the experience is not your own, you pass on that you feel sorry for how they are feeling.
The downside of the person-centered approach
As a therapist, you can be so invested in your client's here and now, that you can suffer from too much empathy.
So what SHOULD you do?
In answer to your question with regard to your job, no matter whether your job is a customer service representative/agent or something else, if you don't want to have problems with your superiors, you should follow the protocol laid down by your employers.
If you feel a different approach should be adopted, maybe you could approach your line-manager for consideration.
With regard to other situations, it is down to opinion.
With the fact that psychodynamic approach can be cold and the person-centered approach can lead to excessive empathy in play, a more balanced approach can be employed. That's where the integrative approach comes in.
The Integrative Approach
An integrative theorist will be somewhere in between. As the name suggests, the integrative approach is

a combined approach to psychotherapy that brings together different elements of specific therapies. Integrative therapists take the view that there is no single approach that can treat each client in all situations. Rather, each person needs to be considered as a whole and counselling techniques must be tailored to their individual needs and personal circumstances.
Integrative counselling maintains the idea that there are many ways in which human psychology can be explored and understood - no one theory alone holds the answer. All theories are considered to have value, even if their foundational principles contradict each other - hence the need to integrate them.

With an integrative approach, you can be more psychodynamic when dealing with trauma for example and more person-centered with news of a death in the family. This is so that you can separate yourself from the emotional and empathic elements of dealing with the trauma whilst still having empathy for the client in their current situation.
References
BPS. (2015). What passes between client and therapist? The Psychologist 28(7) 600-603. https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-28/july-2015/what-passes-between-client-and-therapist
Gelso, C. J. & Hayes, J. A. (1998). The Psychotherapy Relationship: Theory, Research, and Practice. New York: Wiley. https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/The+Psychotherapy+Relationship%3A+Theory%2C+Research%2C+and+Practice-p-9780471127208
Holder, J. B. (2013). The main counselling approaches: What are they? Counselling Directory https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/memberarticles/what-are-they-comparing-and-contrasting-the-three-main-counselling-approaches


Which personality traits are proved to correlate with any facial features?

Reading people's faces to determine their character is called physiognomy.

Some might downplay the idea that it is real but

  scientists are nowadays starting to accept that there may be a correlation between the shape of the face and characteristics. In fact, a recent study showed that men with a wide face tend to feel more powerful. The scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee also noticed that men with this characteristic had a tendency to lie more in business in order to make more money. Find out more: The Royal Society Publishing (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2011.1193).

Paunonen, S. V., Ewan, K., Earthy, J., Lefave, S. and Goldberg, H. (1999), Facial Features as Personality Cues. Journal of Personality, 67(3): pp 555–583. doi:10.1111/1467-6494.00065

Talked about 2 studies which

  examined the effects of the appearance of specific facial features on attributions of personality. In Study 1, photographs of men and women were computer-manipulated to have larger than average or smaller than average eye size, and wider than average or narrower than average eye spacing. In Study 2, eye size and mouth fullness were similarly altered. Although it was found that neither eye spacing nor mouth fullness had any effect on perceptions of the targets' personality or physical characteristics, eye size had strong effects in both studies. Analyses of covariance revealed that the personality trait ratings that varied with eye size were mediated primarily by perceived differences in the targets’ masculinity-femininity and babyfacedness, and to a lesser extent by attractiveness.

There is also

Kramer, R. S. S. and Ward, R. (2010) Internal facial features are signals of personality and health. The Quarterly Journal Of Experimental Psychology, 63(11) DOI: 10.1080/17470211003770912

  We investigated forms of socially relevant information signalled from static images of the face. We created composite images from women scoring high and low values on personality and health dimensions and measured the accuracy of raters in discriminating high from low trait values. We also looked specifically at the information content within the internal facial features, by presenting the composite images with an occluding mask. Four of the Big Five traits were accurately discriminated on the basis of the internal facial features alone (conscientiousness was the exception), as was physical health. The addition of external features in the full-face images led to improved detection for extraversion and physical health and poorer performance on intellect/imagination (or openness). Visual appearance based on internal facial features alone can therefore accurately predict behavioural biases in the form of personality, as well as levels of physical health.


What is it called to attack a person then say something uplifting?

It sounds like a variant on the sandwich technique, which is advocated by some as the preferred way to deliver critical feedback to a person, like a student or employee. The sandwich technique can be defined as:

  ...offer[ing] a piece of negative feedback “sandwiched" between two positive
  ones, thus easing the blow of the critique.

Note that this technique is criticized, because people might not remember the crucial middle critical part of the message, because of the recency effect: our brains are hardwired to remember the first and last bits of a conversation whilst glossing over the middle part (source: WeQ).


What human limitations are there to object tracking and recognition?

I think you will want to look into ecological psychological models for perception.

Some cornerstones include 'the gorila study' show inattentional blindness

Others are among the many sub-phenomenon with Persistence of Vision studies, many of which now focus on the a concept called Iconic Memory.  These matters deal with misapprehension of (usually incomplete) visual stimuli due to the action of cognition to create a meaningful recogition (e.g. probably what is 'ready for encoding / memory').  This also generally covers the phenomenology where we receive too-few stilimuli (objects moving too fast), and must cognize the available information to create meaning.

Here are a few good perspectives on human vision.  This is far from being a comprehensive set of human vision limitations, but if you dig into their references, you will find much of the community that studies this topic.

Shaffer, D., Dolgov, I., Maynor, A., & Kelly, K. (in press). Blind(fold)ed by science:
A constant target-heading angle is used in visual and nonvisual pursuit.
Psychological Science.
Schwark, J., Sandry, J., McDonald, J., & Dolgov, I. (2012). False feedback in vigilance
tasks. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 74, 1583-1589
Dolgov, I., McBeath, M., & Sugar, T. (2009). Evidence for axis-aligned motion
bias: Football axis-trajectory misalignment causes systematic error in projected
final destinations of thrown American footballs. Perception, 38(3), 399-410.

(source / disclosure, I know some of the authors of the above papers)


What challenges the ideasthesia balance theory has to answer?

Short answer
Ideaesthesia does not comprise a theory or even a hypothesis. It is merely a term meaning 'sensing concepts' or 'perceiving meaning'.

Background
As Steven Jeuris also comments, ideaesthesia is not a theory, it is simply a term. It is a combination of two Greek words, namely 'concept' or 'idea', and the other is 'sensation', or 'aisthesis'. In translation, ideaesthesia means sensing concepts or perceiving meaning (source: Danko Nikolić).

It it used to denote phenomena as the Kiki/Bouba effect (Milan et al., 2013; Martinez & Milan, 2015) and synesthesia (Jürgens & Nikolić, 2012) as you write. These phenomena are associated with assigning shapes to names, and colors to graphemes (and the likes), respectively. As far as I can see, ideaesthesia does not explain anything, it is not an observation, it is not a hypothesis, let alone a theory. It is a term used to group phenomena where people associate seemingly unrelated concepts.

Further, for what it's worth, a cursory Google Scholar search on 'ideaesthesia' yields few hits (82), and those hits that pop up, in part referenced here, point sometimes to questionable journals or to irrelevant papers. I would hence use the term cautiously as it doesn't seem to be widely used.

References
- Jürgens & Nikolić, Translat Neurosci (2012); 3(1): 22-7
- Martinez & Milan, V Int Conf Synesthesia: Science and Art. Alcalà la Real de Jaén. España. 16–19th May 2015
- Milan et al., J Consciousness Studies, 20(1-2


What are the neural substrates of retrieval induced forgetting?

The neural substrates most involved in retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) appear to be the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex (DLPFC) and the ventrolateral pre-frontal cortex (VLPFC) (Bäuml, Pastötter and Hanslmayr, 2010). I will not pretend to one-up their concise summation of the evidence.

  The results are consistent with the view that the ACC detects interference from unpracticed material and the DLPFC and VLPFC resolve the conflict by strengthening the practiced memories and inhibiting the unpracticed memories.

Evidence for ACC-DLPFC-VLPFC involvement in RIF

Bäuml, Pastötter and Hanslmayr draw on a number of fMRI and EEG studies in order to support their narrative. Generally speaking, a study of electrophysiological correlates of RIF found that frontal activity was predictive of RIF effects (Johansson et al, 2007); this broadly concurs with my original intuition that the frontal regions are of primary importance in RIF.

More specifically, Wimber et al. (2009) reported fMRI evidence for ACC and DLPFC involvement during RIF, while fMRI evidence for VLPFC involvement was reported in Kuhl et al. (2007). These are only highlights of the main supports; a more complete basis is presented in the Bäuml, Pastötter and Hanslmayr (2010) paper.

References

Bäuml, K. H., Pastötter, B., & Hanslmayr, S. (2010). Binding and inhibition in episodic memory—Cognitive, emotional, and neural processes. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 34(7), 1047-1054.
Johansson, M., Aslan, A., Bäuml, K. H., Gäbel, A., & Mecklinger, A. (2007). When remembering causes forgetting: Electrophysiological correlates of retrieval-induced forgetting. Cerebral Cortex, 17(6), 1335-1341.
Kuhl, B. A., Dudukovic, N. M., Kahn, I., & Wagner, A. D. (2007). Decreased demands on cognitive control reveal the neural processing benefits of forgetting. Nature neuroscience, 10(7), 908-914.
Wimber, M., Rutschmann, R. M., Greenlee, M. W., & Bäuml, K. H. (2009). Retrieval from episodic memory: Neural mechanisms of interference resolution. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21(3), 538-549.


Does the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis apply to artificial (specifically programming) languages?

Firstly realize that Sapir-Whorf was proven wrong in the strong sense, but is accepted in the weak sense.  I don't think there's really any doubt now that learning new symbols and languages, or just enhancing your vocabulary in one language, influences thought.  Many mathematicians are especially proud of how accurately proofs communicate, and having gained this accuracy, the mind comes to expect it more and loathe ambiguities.  You see this happen with a lot of people in quantitative disciplines.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of research, but you're not the first to think of it.  Many programmers before have too (see wiki's references):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity#Linguistic_relativity_and_artificial_languages

Of course, none of them were neuroscientists or psychologists.  To test for causality would be difficult to control for (you'd have to provide a mechanism and we're only just about getting there at the neural systems level).  On the other hand, I'm sure you would find a correlation between programmers and certain kinds of behavioral and cognitive traits very easily.

In the end though, I don't really think there's any doubt among neuroscientists or psychologists; it's just a matter of finding the neural mechanism.  Language has been a pain in that regard.


Would an electroencephalogram detect a chip in you brain that is sending signals?

EEG electrodes are designed to record the electrical activity of the brain over the scalp. As @Bryan said the frequency of interest is usually less than 200 Hz, although it is possible to record up to 5KHz(e.g. BrainAmp). But we should keep in mind that even in the higher sampling frequencies, it is only recording the electrical potential over the scalp, while the communication devices you mentioned are using electromagnetic fields (Bluetooth and wifi) or radio frequencies (e.g RF modules) for communication, and seems irrelevant to compare these frequency ranges to the sampling rate of the recording device (apples and oranges).

However, any electronic device needs the power to run, and your device needs to be supplied with electrical source (i.e. batteries), and depending on how it is powered I think it would be possible to detected it with altered EEG on the electrodes above it. There exist passive implants that do not need external sources of energy to function, but they are not good enough to transfer data at the bitrates you mentioned. Bluetooth and wifi have a lot of power consumption and need batteries to function.

To sum up, it depends on how your device is powered, and if there is a source of electrical activity, it will alter the EEG and you can detect it, although, you might not be able to say on which frequency exactly is working on (is it Bluetooth, wifi, RF, etc. ?).


How would synapses behave if resting potential was zero?

There are two very different questions here. The first question is simple (although it could be interpreted a few different ways). The second question is very tricky and I am actually not certain we know the answer.

1. What do PSPs look like if the resting membrane potential is 0 mV?

If a cell is being held at 0 mV, its voltage-gated conductances are essentially broken and it is not actually able to fire an action potential. But let's put that aside and focus on synaptic events. Let's also assume that the reversal potentials for each ion are 'normal'.

The short story is that most excitatory receptors have a reversal potential near 0 mV, so EPSPs would have little direct effect on the membrane potential (remember this rule: current passing through an ion channel can only push the membrane potential toward the reversal potential of that channel). Inhibitory receptors tend to reverse around -75 mV, so they would have a large driving force and would strongly polarize the cell.

The slightly-longer story is that EPSPS would still have some effect--when ion channels open, ions flow in the direction of their electrochemical gradient. For excitatory receptors, this means that sodium flows into the cell, potassium flows out, and calcium flows in. The net electrical current would be roughly zero, but there would be an exchange of ions, and an opportunity for those ions to activate secondary signaling pathways.

Another effect of opening ion channels is a reduction in the resistance of the cell membrane. Thus at 0 mV, excitatory synapses can actually shunt IPSPs.

2. What is the reason for having a negative resting potential at all?

The first thing to recognize is that neurons store a large amount of energy in their chemical gradients. Potassium is pumped into the cell while sodium, chloride, and calcium are pumped out. Running these pumps is metabolically expensive (your brain takes up 20% of your metabolism at rest!), and the chemical energy burned in the process (ATP) becomes potential energy in the chemical gradient. Another way of saying this is that each of these ions prefers to be on the other side of the membrane, but the pumps keep them where they are.

Ions are generally pumped in such a way as to maintain charge balance--for every positive charge pumped in, one positive charge goes out. Now if you happen to have channels that admit only a single type of ion (we do), then opening that channel will result in an immediate flow of ions. But wait! Unlike the pumps, this ion flow is not charge-neutral, so after a very short time, the membrane becomes charged, and that charge imbalance (voltage) counteracts the chemical gradient (if ions dislike being on the wrong side of a chemical gradient, they absolutely hate being on the wrong side of an electrical gradient).

So what we have now is a huge energy store in the form of chemical gradients, and a means for the neuron to rapidly convert that energy into electrical potential. If the neuron wants to depolarize, it needs only open sodium or calcium channels. If it wants to repolarize, it opens potassium or chloride channels. You can think of it like a balloon connected by hose to two tanks: one high pressure, the other a vacuum. Open one valve and the balloon fills, open the other and it empties.

Ok, that was long but I am finally ready to talk about resting potential. The how is easy: neuronal membranes are more permeable to potassium than sodium. One of the valves is always open a little bit, and this drags the membrane potential negative, away from zero. Which is to say that the resting membrane potential is not at all the "driving force" for neuronal activity. Rather, it is almost just a side-effect of the real powerhouse--the chemical gradients.

I mentioned that neurons spend a lot of energy maintaining their chemical gradients. Why then, would the cell allow its potassium gradient to simply leak away? This is not an easy question! The lazy answer is "because all the voltage-sensitive channels operate in the range from -70 to 0 mV". I call this lazy because if there really was no benefit to having the cell rest at -70 mV, then evolution would find a way to conserve all that energy wasted by leaking potassium. So there must be a better reason. I've turned this into its own question here: Why do neurons have a negative resting potential?


Does caffeine improve performance for habituated consumers?

Nehligh's 2010 review

Nehlig (2010) wrote a systematic review article called "Is caffeine a cognitive enhancer?" (link to publisher, no PDF).
On page S89 to S90 Nehlig reviews the evidence of caffeine as a cognitive enhancer within the context of a history of caffeine consumption:

  In
  caffeine non-deprived young (20–25 years) and older subjects (50–65
  years), 250 mg caffeine slightly offset the decline in performance
  found in the placebo group on a digit span memory test. However,
  caffeine did not improve performance in the immediate word recall
  task in either age group [11]. Caffeine (12.5–100 mg) given after
  overnight abstinence improved cognitive performance in a relatively
  difficult and stressful task involving rapid visual information
  processing and using a high load of working memory in 11 males and 12
  females, aged 18–56 years. The effect was more marked in individuals
  with a high habitual caffeine intake [78]. In 68 volunteers
  consuming a regular daily amount of caffeine, 2 mg/kg caffeine
  improved the speed of encoding new information in a categorical search
  task [79]. Likewise, in a study comparing 24 non-consumers (20
  mg/day) to 24 consumers of caffeine (217 mg/day), there was no
  baseline difference between group performances. Caffeine improved
  numeric working memory reaction time and sentence verification
  accuracy; alertness was also increased, but in general caffeine tended
  to improve more the performance in non consumers [80].

  In adult
  subjects, a higher habitual caffeine intake with no additional
  caffeine administration on the day of testing was positively related
  to better performance on incidental verbal learning and visuospatial
  learning tasks [15]. There was also an association between estimated
  caffeine intake and performance in a choice reaction time task, and in
  delayed recall of a verbal word learning task [81]. In the former
  study, older sub- jects appeared to benefit more from higher caffeine
  intake [15], while this was not the case in the latter study [81].
  Also, in real life activities, regular caffeine consumption might
  benefit cognitive functioning in a non-working population [82].

Smith's 2002 review

Another good review is provided by Smith (2002, PDF).
The main claim relevant to the present question argues that coffee remains beneficial despite habituation:

  It has been claimed that the positive eﬀects of caﬀeine really reﬂect
  removal of negative eﬀects of caﬀeine withdrawal. This view cannot
  account for eﬀects observed in non-consumers or nondeprived
  individuals. In addition, there is little evidence of caﬀeine
  withdrawal impairing tasks which show improvements following ingestion
  of caﬀeine.

The article is worth reading if you want to read about the relevant empirical evidence and some of the limitations of existing research.

References:

[11] Rees K, Allen D, Lader M (1999) The influences of age and
caffeine on psychomotor and cognitive function. Psychophar-
macology (Berl) 145, 181-188.
[78] Smit HJ, Rogers PJ (2000) Effects of low doses of caffeine
on cognitive performance, mood and thirst in low and higher
caffeine consumers. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 152, 167-
173.
[80] Haskell CF, Kennedy DO, Wesnes KA, Scholey AB (2005)
Cognitive and mood improvements of caffeine in habitual con-
sumers and habitual non-consumers of caffeine. Psychophar-
macology (Berl) 179, 813-825.
[81] Hameleers PA, Van Boxtel MP, Hogervorst E, Riedel WJ,
Houx PJ, Buntinx F, Jolles J (2000) Habitual caffeine con-
sumption and its relation to memory, attention, planning
capacity and psychomotor performance across multiple age
groups. Hum Psychopharmacol 15, 573-581.
[82] Smith AP (2009) Caffeine, cognitive failures and health in a
non-working community sample. Hum Psychopharmacol 24,
29-34.
Smith, A. (2002). Effects of caffeine on human behavior. Food and chemical toxicology, 40, 1243-1255. PDF


Ways to treat disorganized thinking, other than pharmacotherapy

Metacognitive therapy has been proposed to improve disorganized thinking. Metacognition can be thought of as our ability to "think about thinking." Essentially, it's a person's ability to organize their thoughts into a coherent narrative, reflect on their thoughts and experiences, take the perspective of others, and make sense of the world. Individuals with schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis may experience disorganized thoughts, which can hamper their metacognitive ability. They may even have difficulty recognizing that other people would have thoughts or emotions about other peoples' lives or behavior.

Metacognitive therapy can take different forms, but in many cases it involves helping people organize their thoughts by eliciting narratives about their lives. For example, a therapist may ask a client to tell them about a recent trip to the store, or an event that was meaningful to them. If the client responds in a disorganized manner, the therapist can drill down to details, focusing on helping the client organize the story.

For example, imagine a client is telling a story about attending a basketball game, but has left large chunks of the story out, or has skipped around chronologically. This type of exchange might occur:

Therapist: "It sounds like you had fun, but I'm confused. When did you arrive at the game?"

Client: "Oh, about 7."

Therapist: "And did you go to the game with your friends, or meet them there?"

Client: "Sam and I met Bob there."

Therapist: "Oh, so you and Sam drove over to the game at 7pm, and met Bob."

Client: "No, Sam and I came separately, but we met up first at the game. Then later we saw Bob."

In this exchange the therapist keeps pulling for additional details, helping the client recall and organize the experience by re-telling it. The therapist also "inserts her mind" into the discussion by admitting "I'm confused." This tells the client that a) their story was not clear and b) the therapist is having thoughts and reactions to hearing the story. Over many sessions, metacognitive therapy may help clients organize their thoughts, and become more aware of other people's internal experiences.

This was a very brief explanation, and I've listed a series of papers and books about this type of intervention that can provide additional information. There may be other therapies that address disorganized thinking, but this is one I am most familiar with. I will expand this answer in the future, if time permits.

References

Brune, M., Dimaggio, G., & H Lysaker, P. (2011). Metacognition and
social functioning in schizophrenia: evidence, mechanisms of
influence and treatment implications. Current Psychiatry Reviews,
7(3), 239-247.
Dimaggio, G., & Lysaker, P. H. (Eds.). (2010). Metacognition and
severe adult mental disorders: From research to treatment. Routledge.
Hasson-Ohayon, I., Kravetz, S., Levy, I., & Roe, D. (2008).
Metacognitive and interpersonal interventions for persons with severe
mental illness: theory and practice. The Israel journal of psychiatry
and related sciences, 46(2), 141-148.
Lysaker, P. H., Gumley, A., & Dimaggio, G. (2011). Metacognitive
disturbances in persons with severe mental illness: Theory,
correlates with psychopathology and models of psychotherapy.
Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 84(1),
1-8.
Salvatore, G., Conti, L., Fiore, D., Carcione, A., Dimaggio, G., &
Semerari, A. (2006). Disorganized narratives: Problems in treatment
and therapist intervention hierarchy. Journal of Constructivist
Psychology, 19(2), 191-207.
Salvatore, G., Lysaker, P. H., Gumley, A., Popolo, R., Mari, J., &
Dimaggio, G. (2012). Out of illness experience:
metacognition-oriented therapy for promoting self-awareness in
individuals with psychosis. American journal of psychotherapy, 66(1),
85-106.


I don't think it is a matter of color/hue. Do you have a source for this hypothesis? If you were able to measure this effect then I would think it happens because of the importance rating a reader develops for a certain group of highlighted words, e.g. "all blue highlighted words are important to me."

The user Pete made a good comment in my opinion by pointing out the contrast issue. The attention of humans is foremost guided by luminance contrast. Then comes hue and then saturation. The colors you chose have a different luminance value and therefore attract attention differently.

Here's a link to compare the (relative) luminance values of your color sets.


Can one personality kill another personality?

Far from being simply encoded in the genes, much of personality is a flexible and dynamic thing (Mischel & Shoda, 1995) that changes over the life span and is shaped by experience (Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006).
  Can Personality Be Changed? by Dweck

After searching for related case studies, this is the closest I could find: "Deathman, age 27, intervened when John, Gail and Diana argued." -- Four Cases of Supposed Multiple Personality Disorder: Evidence of Unjustified Diagnoses This women's multiple personalities fought each other (even though the authors doubt she had MPD).

Perhaps "kill" is not the best word.


Have there been any studies which report a positive correlation between eating certain foods and reported sleep disturbances?

According to the article "Relationship between Food Intake and Sleep Pattern in Healthy Individuals" (Crispin et al. 2011), there appeared to be a gender based differences in how certain food intake affects sleep patterns.  Additionally, the time the food was eaten also affects sleep patterns.

A couple of key points from the linked article's conclusions:

  intake of high fat and carbohydrate foods preceding the sleeping period are associated with higher sleep latency. Other studies19,20 have demonstrated that individuals who ingested a high-glycemic index, carbohydrate-rich meal 4 hours prior to sleep presented a decrease in sleep latency. In addition to the amount of carbohydrates, the glycemic index may have an important influence on sleep patterns, especially in inducing sleepiness. Different types of fat have also been shown to influence sleep.

and

  ..Data from this study suggest that individuals who consume meals with increased fat content in the nocturnal period seem predisposed to have decreased REM sleep.

and

  ..high caloric food intake preceding the sleeping period was correlated with greater sleep latency in women (nocturnal caloric intake correlated positively with sleep latency).

(The full article is available at the above link).

Further, this About.com article, describes specific examples, such as cherries, which contain melatonin, that helps regulate sleep.

Even though the second link is not all that authorative, there are a number of peer-reviewed papers presented as its bibliography, namely:

Afaghi A, O'Connor H, Chow CM."High-glycemic-index carbohydrate meals shorten sleep onset." Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Feb;85(2):426-30. (full HTML article)

Burkhardt S, Tan DX, Manchester LC, Hardeland R, Reiter RJ."Detection and quantification of the antioxidant melatonin in Montmorency and Balaton tart cherries (Prunus cerasus)." J Agric Food Chem. 2001 Oct;49(10):4898-902. (full PDF article)

Gruber R, Xi T, Frenette S, Robert M, Vannasinh P, Carrier J. "Sleep disturbances in prepubertal children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a home polysomnography study." Sleep. 2009 Mar 1;32(3):343-50. (Full HTML article)

Nedeltcheva AV, Kilkus JM, Imperial J, Kasza K, Schoeller DA, Penev PD."Sleep curtailment is accompanied by increased intake of calories from snacks." Am J Clin Nutr. 2009 Jan;89(1):126-33. Epub 2008 Dec 3. (Full HTML article)

Ozsungur S, Brenner D, El-Sohemy A."Fourteen well-described caffeine withdrawal symptoms factor into three clusters." Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2009 Jan;201(4):541-8. Epub 2008 Sep 16.c(Full PDF article)

Shi Z, McEvoy M, Luu J, Attia J. "Dietary fat and sleep duration in Chinese men and women." Int J Obes (Lond). 2008 Dec;32(12):1835-40. Epub 2008 Nov 4. (Full HTML article)

I hope this helps.


Calculating Significantly Above Chance for 3-AFC Test

The hypothesis would normally be expressed as a one-sided test as p(X≥10). The online calculator you have selected is fine and the significant result could be expressed in an article as follows: (p=0.33, q=0.66, K=10, n=18, p-value = 0.043).

Another way to think of this is that 9 or fewer correct answers is more likely to be random chance.

At the threshold of 10, it is unlikely that the result could be explained by random chance.


Effectiveness of spaced learning when the data have personal meaning

I'm not sure if personal relevance of data has been studied directly, but this factor seems related to depth of processing [Wikipedia link A], which improves memory encoding. I'm not aware of any research on an interaction between depth of processing [Wikipedia link B] and whether learning is spaced (as an experimentally controlled variable). I hope others will have more info for you on these questions.
Relatedness of data has a clear effect on learning and recall. Chunking is a mnemonic technique that capitalizes on relationships among data to facilitate info-reconstructive processes in memory. This can even be performed on ostensibly unrelated data using elaborative rehearsal. (See also depth of processing link A.)  Example methods include combining disparate elements in a narrative, or associating them with landmarks using the method of loci.


In the article you provided (Molofsky et al., 2014) the authors refer back to (Arber, 2012) and surprisingly, the term puncta is not used in the latter. So that's pretty much a dead end.

I found another article (Ippolito & Eroglu, 2010) in which the authors do explicitly clarify their use of the word puncta. In this article, puncta is a term used in the Puncta Analyzer plugin for ImageJ. Image J is freeware to analyze histological preparations and features many options for histological analyses. ImageJ was also used in the article you originally referred to (Molofsky et al., 2014). The plugin specifically analyzes co-localizing spots identified in a preparation. Co-localization can be studied by, e.g.,  labeling of two different antigens (double-labeling). Co-localizing fluorescent markers in a preparation often indicate that the two proteins are localized very closely in the cell, and are probably involved in the same mechanism.

To extrapolate the information back to your question we could formulate a hypothetical histological example involving neurotransmission. Presynaptic puncta could then be formed when (e.g. red) fluorescent antibodies for an autoreceptor and another (e.g. green) fluoresecent antibody targeting a modulator of the autoreceptor would colocalize on a presynaptic membrane of a certain synapse. The green and red would appear as a purple spot in the overlaid image, and the plugin would identify this as puncta, in turn showing that the two are very close in the synapse on the presynaptic membrane.

In all, given the heterogeneity of the articles reviewed and their use of the term puncta, I think 'puncta' can be loosely defined as: "(immuno-)histological locations defined by computer algorithms using ImageJ and related plugins".


What is the correlation between self-rated and objective measures of intelligence?

The term you are looking for is self-assessed intelligence (SAI) (sometimes subjectively-assessed intelligence or self-estimated intelligence).  The leaders in this field are Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Adrian Furnham.  From their book "Personality and Intellectual Competence" (2014):

  Correlations between SAI and psychometric intelligence have been
  significant and positive, albeit generally modest (r<.30).

So you are spot on. :-) SAI is a subset of self-tests of intelligence, that can range from simple estimates, to full-fledged self-administered IQ tests.  As such, correlations can vary a lot.  However, SAI is generally considered to be an estimate, rather than a test, and this does not appear to be affected much by methodology.  From Paulhus et al (1998):

  Correlations between single-item self-reports of intelligence and IQ
  scores are rather low (.20–.25) in college samples. The literature
  suggested that self-reports could be improved by three strategies: (1)
  aggregation, (2)item weighting, and (3) use of indirect, rather than
  direct, questions. ... Although results showed some success for both
  direct and indirect measures, the failure of their validities to
  exceed .30 impugns their utility as IQ proxies in competitive college
  samples.

On the other hand, the SAI literature reveals significant gender differences in SAI estimates - with males significantly overestimating and females significantly underestimating their intelligence - as well as significant cross-cultural differences in estimates, suggesting that the correlation is more heavily affected by social stereotypes.


Does human to human interface carry the same information from the brain

The answer for the particular interface that you linked to is that a single scalar variable is being passed.  The EMG activity in one person controls an electrical signal that is connected to a nerve in the second person, which when activated causes the muscle to contract.  The EMG activity is thresholded and then the binary information of whether or not it passes that threshold is passed to a "TENS unit" whose output can be controlled in an analog way.

While the actual information being passed in this demonstration is binary, there is no reason why it must be so.  It is simply a result of the design decisions the creators made.


Are spaced flashcards effective for learning?

There's lots of research out there on flash cards and they are a proven, effective study aid.

Flash Cards work because of the "Forgetting Curve"; rehearsal and retrieval before you forget an item strengthens the memory before it decays allowing one to optimize encoding into LTM.

The paper Optimising learning using flashcards: Spacing is more effective than cramming is a good summary of why Spacing helps retention, highlighting why it's effective in education and should be emphasized over cramming, which current educational models (finals, tests) currently promote.

Spacing is effective for Long Term Memory as opposed to cramming/massing which is only effective (but it IS effective) in the short term as shown by the above forgetting function.


Why is chess considered special for educating a mindful person?

Chess is considered "special" due to certain attributes of the game. From "Beyond the 64 Squares: Does Chess Instruction Enhance Children’s Academic and Cognitive Skills? A Meta-Analysis":

  Two main explanations have been adduced to support this hypothesis.
  First, chess requires decision-making skills and high-level processes
  (such as acquiring and selecting relevant information from a problem)
  similar to those used in mathematics and reading (Margulies, 1992).
  Second, since chess is a demanding task involving focused attention
  and problem solving, playing chess should strengthen these cognitive
  abilities and thus be beneficial for children's school performance
  (Bart, 2014).

However, this consideration is only marginally valid. In "Enhancing Creativity in Children by Imparting Chess Training" the increase in mathematical skills from Chess was compared to mathematical instruction and playing the game Go. Although Chess outperformed Go, thus cementing it's "specialness", it did not beat basic mathematical instruction.

In conclusion, Chess is a bit "special" among games in terms of cognitive improvement, however it doesn't beat actually doing a task and it seems unlikely for any other game would be superior.


What does White guilt feel like, how does it socially manifest itself & is it treatable?

Given the asker's assertion (in a comment) that

  White guilt results in Black people being killed

here's a repetition of what is usually meant by this term (copied from Wikipedia):

  White guilt is the individual or collective guilt felt by some white people for harm resulting from racist treatment of ethnic minorities by other white people both historically and currently in the United States and to a lesser extent in Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Like all guilt, White guilt is associated with intentions of making amends toward victims. I think the OP's comment and the question are prompted by a failure to distinguish guilt as a psychological process and guilt as a legal concept.

Psychological guilt only exist if it is interiorized. A psychopath can be judged guilty by a court but feel no (psychological) guilt whatsoever himself. Here's a primer on guilt, in the psychological sense:

  Guilt may be defined as the dysphoric feeling associated with
  the recognition that one has violated a personally relevant
  moral or social standard. [...]

  In principle, guilt may be characterized as having both adaptive
  and maladaptive consequences. On the one hand, guilt
  experienced at moderate levels is described as serving a positive
  social function in inhibiting anormative behavior or, in the
  event of transgression, in stimulating impulses to make restitution
  and seek forgiveness (Ausubel, 1955). On the other hand,
  excessive or inappropriate guilt is also assumed to result in
  dysfunctional and disruptive experiences and, in some cases,
  clinical disorders (Lewis, 1971).

And regarding White guilt, here some of its correlates:

  In two studies, the authors investigated guilt as a response to group-based advantage. Consistent with its conceptualization as a self-focused emotion, White guilt was based in self-focused beliefs in racial inequality. Thus, guilt was associated with belief in White privilege (Study 1) and resulted from seeing European Americans as perpetrators of racial discrimination (Study 2). Just as personal guilt is associated with efforts at restitution, White guilt was predictive of support for affirmative action programs aimed at compensating African Americans. White guilt was not, however, predictive of support for noncompensatory efforts at promoting equality, such as affirmative action programs that increase opportunities (Study 2). In contrast, the other-focused emotion of group-based sympathy was a more general predictor of support for different affirmative action policies. Our findings demonstrate the benefits and limits of group-based guilt as a basis of support for social equality and highlight the value of understanding the specific emotions elicited in intergroup contexts.

So (to state the obvious) white guilt not unique in the sense that it's part of a larger category of "group-based guilt", sometime called "collective guilt". Another example of the latter that has been investigated a fair bit is German collective guilt with respect to the Nazi atrocities (and I'm not talking about guilt in the legal sense here, but the psychological one.) Likewise for colonial injustices. And since in this latter case the perpetrators were usually white, while the victims were not... here's the abstract:

  An investigation of the role of group-based shame and guilt in motivating citizens of ex-colonial countries to support restitution to former colonized groups which were the target of violence and oppression. Study 1 (N = 125) was conducted in Australia during the lead-up to the first official government apology to Aboriginal Australians. Among white Australians, guilt and shame were associated with attitudinal support for intergroup apology and victim compensation. However, only shame was associated with actual political behaviour (signing a petition in support of the apology). Study 2 (N = 181), conducted in Britain, focussed on Britain’s violent mistreatment of the Kenyan population during decolonization. It tested a hypothesis that there are two forms of shame—essence shame and image shame—and demonstrated that image shame was associated with support for apology, whereas essence shame was associated with support for more substantial material and financial compensation.

Since guilt and shame aren't easily delineated, you you'd have dive into the paper for their specific definitions. (The paper is open access, so I'm not going to reproduce all their definitions here.)

Guilt is not considered a mental disorder per se. There are no proposed treatments for guilt by itself, if by "treatment" you mean the usual sense of the word (medical, psychological). Making reparations could be considered a "treatment" for some very loose meaning of the word.

See Bybee and Quiles (1998) for a proposed framework for relating (type of) guilt to mental illness in general. Since this is a book chapter and lacks an authors' summary, here are two (one from the publisher, which is mostly quoting the conclusion section of the chapter, and another form the psycNET; the latter is mostly listing chapter sub-headings)

  Guilt plays a prominent role in cognitive theories of mental illness as well. Guilt has been associated with a number of internalizing disorders, but most frequently with depression. When guilt is chronic, it becomes closely linked with symptoms of mental illness. Perhaps the most important implication of the present work is the importance of alleviating guilt constructively and effectively. Lewis suggests that reaction formation or sublimation might be therapeutic for the individual experiencing chronic guilt. Even if the other person is dead, the guilty individual might provide indirect reparation by giving to charity in memory or honor of the deceased or by providing social or financial support to the deceased person's family. [...] Individuals might be encouraged to seek forgiveness for transgressions they have committed even when these lapses occurred long ago. Indeed, if guilt feelings are still operative years later, this may provide all the more reason for individuals to work to resolve them.

  Is guilt related to mental illness? The authors discuss a theoretical perspective intended to address and elucidate relationships between guilt and symptoms of mental illness. The basic principles of the model are: (1) Two fundamentally different forms of guilt exist that show radically different relationships to mental health. (2) Predispositional guilt, no matter how intense, is not maladaptive. (3) Chronic, unalleviated guilt is maladaptive. (4) Predispositional guilt is related to fewer symptoms of externalizing disorders and sociopathy. (5) Predispositional guilt is distinguishable from cognition, knowledge, and moral standards: guilt, not moral standards, is related to prosocial behavior.
  (6) Chronic, unalleviated guilt is associated with more severe symptoms of externalizing disorders. (7) Chronic guilt is distinguishable from shame: both are maladaptive and show distinct relationships to indices of psychopathology. (8) Characteristics of the individual may determine whether guilt is short-lived or chronic, in turn, affecting mental health. (9) Reactions to the precipitating situations may determine whether guilt becomes chronic (or is absent), in turn, affecting mental health. (10) The nature of the guilt-evoking events may determine whether guilt is short-lived or chronic, in turn, affecting mental health.

And if you wonder what they mean by those two types:

  The central tenet of the present theory is that two fundamentally different variants
  of guilt exist: predispositional guilt, which is a personality proclivity for experiencing
  guilt in response to specific, circumscribed, eliciting situations, and chronic
  guilt, an ongoing condition of guiltiness, regret, and remorse unattached to an
  immediate precipitating event. We argue that these two forms of guilt display profoundly
  different relationships to mental health.

I've only  skimmed the chapter, but they don't seem to discuss any form of collective guilt. I don't know if there is any research relating some form of collective guilt to (some) mental illness.

Also note that reactive formation is a psychoanalytic theory, so it may not have much empirical basis. Likewise for sublimation.


Scientists studying the matter generally believe multitasking, and women's superiority at it, to be a myth.  Men come out slightly better multitaskers than women but there's not really any meaningful difference.  The way it's defined is critical though; it's being able to do two things that typically require focal attention at the exact same time.  For example, driving and carrying on an important conversation on the phone.  In general, people are quite bad at any such multi-tasking.

When you interview women they tend to believe the myth that women are better but it's based on a different definition of multitasking.  They often mean that they'll start one task that can sort of self run, like putting the laundry in, and while that's happening go and work on a letter they've been writing to a client or some other task.  They would tend to say they do that all of the time.  There's not much research into whether men or women are better at that because that's generally not the kind of multitasking researchers have cared about. I should think an investigation into planning potentially overlapping tasks would be how you'd test this.

In addition, as one of the articles below mentions, there seems to be a general belief that while neither sex is particularly good at it, women actually do it more frequently.  That too, hasn't really been studied as far as I know.

Here are some related newsy articles:

Why men (yes, men) are better multitaskers

Are Men or Women Better at Multitasking?


Do humans only dream of things they have actually witnessed/seen?

People often report dreaming about  things that they have not experienced in the real world (e.g., monsters, flying, falling off a building).

With our own imagination while awake most people can visualise many things that they have never actually seen. It seems likely that dreams would be at least as flexible as our own imagination.

Videos, stories, images, and other media might inform this imagination. Likewise, in general, daily thoughts, emotions, and experiences are often weaved into dreams.

This is just a basic common sense answer. It takes for granted an information processing model of cognition that denies the existence of true psychic power in dreams. That said, a weak form of what might be labelled "psychic" or "premonitions" in dreams is still possible in the form of insight that was only first achieved in a dream. More deeply, it would be interesting to see another answer that compared the kinds of creative imagination exhibited in dreams relative to creative imagination while awake.


What adjectives can be used to describe emotional intelligence competences?

These are the best words I could find using the atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour (Mobbs, 2020).

being able to recognize and name one's emotions: self-aware, self-observant, reflective, contemplative.
being able to recognize and name other people's emotions: empathic, compassionate, understanding, sensitive, sympathetic.
being able to understand the root cause of certain emotions: wise, perceptive, insightful, discerning, astute.
being able to keep calm in the middle of strong emotions: self-governing, self-restrained, temperate, level-headed, dispassionate, balanced.

Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877


Smoking is associated with reduced memory and with decline in cognitive function over the long term. Compared to people who continue smoking, people who stop smoking sooner have less decline.

From Sabia et al 2008:

  smokers compared with those who never smoked were more likely to be in the lowest quintile of cognitive performance. After adjustment for multiple covariates, this risk remained for memory (OR, 1.37; 95% CI, 1.10-1.73)

and

From Sabia et al 2012:

  Faster cognitive decline was observed among current smokers compared with never smokers in men (mean difference in 10-year decline in global cognition = −0.09 [95% CI, −0.15 to −0.03] and executive function = −0.11 [95% CI, −0.17 to −0.05]). Recent ex-smokers had greater decline in executive function (−0.08 [95% CI, −0.14 to −0.02]), while the decline in long-term ex-smokers was similar to that among never smokers.

In the second study, the effect was observed in men but not women.

Because these are not randomized studies (and indeed, randomizing people to smoke or not smoke over decades is not an ethical study that will ever be conducted), causality is difficult to infer, but they are strongly suggestive.

Because these are long-term studies, they say little about the acute effects of nicotine. Acutely, like other stimulants, nicotine can cause cognitive enhancement. However, long-term users become sensitive to being deprived of nicotine and require nicotine to get back to baseline. Smoking more and more and more to get a benefit is probably not a great idea, so there is no potential for nicotine to be used for long-term cognitive enhancement.

From Myers et al 2008:

  Overnight tobacco deprivation resulted in impaired functioning on all cognitive tests and increased self-reports of tobacco craving and negative mood; nicotine normalized these deficits. In the nondeprived condition, nicotine enhanced performance on the continuous performance test (CPT) and an arithmetic test in a dose-related manner, but had no effect on working memory.

Myers, C. S., Taylor, R. C., Moolchan, E. T., & Heishman, S. J. (2008). Dose-related enhancement of mood and cognition in smokers administered nicotine nasal spray. Neuropsychopharmacology, 33(3), 588.

Sabia, S., Elbaz, A., Dugravot, A., Head, J., Shipley, M., Hagger-Johnson, G., ... & Singh-Manoux, A. (2012). Impact of smoking on cognitive decline in early old age: the Whitehall II cohort study. Archives of general psychiatry, 69(6), 627-635.

Sabia, S., Marmot, M., Dufouil, C., & Singh-Manoux, A. (2008). Smoking history and cognitive function in middle age from the Whitehall II study. Archives of internal medicine, 168(11), 1165-1173.


Does an action potential abolish an excitatory postsynaptic potential?

While model neurons like the leaky integrate and fire may use a simplification in which the neuron forgets all previous information when it emits a spike, in a biological neuron, the synapse and the soma are relatively electrically isolated from each other, so the voltage activity of the action potential does not make the synapse "forget" the EPSP.  Although see back propagating action potentials for a mechanism for somatic action potentials to affect dendritic processing.  (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8107777)


What brain wave states are associated with hypnosis?

Hypnotic states are associated with increased theta wave activity. Hypnotically susceptible participants also exhibit hemispheric beta wave asymmetry, but non-susceptible participants do not (Sabourin, Cutcomb, Crawford and Pribram, 1990).

References

Sabourin, M. E., Cutcomb, S. D., Crawford, H. J., & Pribram, K. (1990). EEG correlates of hypnotic susceptibility and hypnotic trance: Spectral analysis and coherence. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 10(2), 125-142.


Is there a specific name for the emotion I'm feeling?

This sounds a little bit like a mild form of Depersonalization.  From Wikipedia:

  The core symptom of depersonalization disorder is the subjective experience of "unreality in one's sense of self", and as such there are no clinical signs. People who are diagnosed with depersonalization also experience an almost uncontrollable urge to question and think about the nature of reality and existence as well as other deeply philosophical questions.
  Individuals who experience depersonalization can feel divorced from their own personal physicality by sensing their body sensations, feelings, emotions and behaviors as not belonging to the same person or identity. Also, a recognition of self breaks down (hence the name). Depersonalization can result in very high anxiety levels, which can intensify these perceptions even further.
  Common descriptions: Feeling disconnected from one's physicality; feeling like one is not completely occupying the body; not feeling in control of one's speech or physical movements; and feeling detached from one's own thoughts or emotions; experiencing one's self and life from a distance; a sense of just going through the motions; feeling as though one is in a dream or movie; feeling "weird" being alive; and even out-of-body experiences.

Does the above describe your feelings?

If so, you may want to talk to a professional, play sports, and lower your overall anxiety levels.


What is the scientific term for compulsive documenting of life experiences?

Hypergraphia is a behavioral condition characterized by the intense desire to write.

-wikipedia hypergraphia

Its difficult to tell if this is hypergraphia but that is the closest mental illness to which I am aware. If she is just writing in their journal "today I went to the store and met suzy and we went for coffee then I came home and watched tv" it would not be hypergraphia. Hypergraphia would be a compulsion to write large amounts which are rational outlines or nonsense.

There are medications to relieve some of the compulsions to write based on the cause of the hypergraphia.


Brain anatomy- hippocampus and amygdala positions

The hippocampus and the amygdala is neither part of the temporal lobe or the cerebrum, it part of the limbic system located at the top of the brain stem and is cover by the cerebral cortex that the temporal lobe is a part of.


What is the name of the phenomenon where a person abandons simplifying a complex system upon understanding the system?

The phenomenon may be explained like this :

The programmer was given the task to fix a bug on a complicated legacy code he does not understand.
The programmer forms a subgoal "Refactor the code", in order to achieve the above goal.
In the process of achieveing the subgoal "Refactor the code", he understands what needs to be done to fix the bug. So the refactoring is not a useful goal any more and it is abandoned.

So we have a primary goal of fixing the bug and a secondary goal, formed to serve the primary goal, to refactor the code. When the primary goal is achieved the secondary is no longer relevant.

To promote refactoring you must take actions so that the secondary goal of refactoring becomes also a primary goal, concurrently with other tasks like fixing a bug. For example you may give rewards to programmers that successfully refactor the code or you may change the culture of your team, so that refactoring is considered a social norm, etc.


What are some theories or cognitive models of human imagination?

Assuming imagination can be roughly defined as "taking things from reality/experience and mixing them up somehow to create something dissimilar from the inputs", then any cognitive framework:

with a probabilistic interpretation
who is capable of analogy

roughly models how imagination may manifest itself in the human mind.

Imagination as inference

Imagine you've ridden two bicycles: a fast bicycle and a slow bicycle. The bicycle salesman now shows you a third bicycle with a speed in between the two you've previously ridden. Although you do not have any direct experience with the bicycle, you can infer from your two previous experiences that the bicycle will give you an experience somewhere in between the two. This is what I mean by "probabilistic interpretation". If your cognitive model has a concept of a distribution of possible bicycle speeds, it can infer points along that distribution. This approach is used in cognitive models like neural networks.

Imagination as analogy

Consider the analogy:

  Structure of an atom is like a solar system. Nucleus is the sun and
  electrons are the planets revolving around their sun.

Given basic knowledge of the solar system, despite never seeing atoms, you can imagine a few things about atom structure. You can imagine electrons float freely around the center of the nucleus without slowing down. You were able to combine a symbol you had for the solar system with the unknown symbols of electrons and nuclei. This type of imagination is found in cognitive models like ACT-R.

Imagination as something more complicated

The two previous forms of imagination were pretty simple in terms of interactions. Two inputs formed a novel output, but scientists have all sort of theories about how we build models in our heads that involve scaling up to more than one input, drawing experiences from memory and interacting with the environment. There are so many that you have to start developing criteria for what the best model of imagination is. Obviously, I can't cover all the models, but hopefully this gives you a good starting point.


Is there experimental support for John Perry's "Theory of Structured Procrastination"?

In short, no. Perry's essay is amusing and compelling, but incomplete. Procrastination is an epiphenomenon of motivation, an active area of research which has some models relevant to the study of procrastination, such as:

Hyperbolic Discounting
Temporal Motivation Theory
Rational Choice Theory
Expectancy Theory

Perry emphasizes task importance as the metric that keeps a task unfinished and at the top of a structure procrastinator's to-do list. The truth is more complicated and not an entirely resolved area of research. Delayed gratification, immediate discomfort, and the procrastinator's prediction of probability of reward are some of the additional factors that determine which task a structured procrastinator will work on at a given time.

Over time, the least-desirable tasks often remain unfinished, seem increasingly important, and thus move to the top of the to-do list.

References

  Laibson, D. (1997). Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting. Quarterly Journal of Economics 112(2): 443–477.
  Steel, P., König, C. (2006) Integrating theories of motivation. Academy of Mgmt. Rev. 31(4): 889-913.


Do other forms of bias have their own terminologies, similar to "Stockholm Syndrome"?

Yes, Wikipedia even has a list.

Someone who makes an expensive purchase, and even when they are met with objective facts stating why it was a inferior purchase, they continue to sing it's praise.

This is related to the endowment effect and sunk costs fallacy.

Someone who blindly follows and defends their political party affiliation, even when confronted with facts showing why it's a bad affiliation.
Someone who commits to a lifestyle choice, and even when confronted with facts showing why it's a bad choice, they refused to believe it.

These are both fairly closely related, and there are several types of bias that could contribute to either - you'd have to have more information about what led to that bias, as you are sort of describing the 'symptoms' rather than causes. Conservativism bias, confirmation bias, bandwagon effects, social comparison biases, selective perception, reactance, and more.
However, I would also encourage you to be wary of the many forms of bias that cloud your judgment of others, as well. If you are perceiving people as being part of a 'bad affiliation' or making a 'bad choice' you should consider that your own biases may cause you to discount the reasons for those decisions. You may value different things than they do, and those differences in values may or may not be related to cognitive bias per se, but also simply individual differences in personality, life experience, etc.


This question came up in our tri-monthly site evaluation queue (Let's get critical: Feb 2014 Site Self-Evaluation), and I marked it as "needs improvement," so here's an indication why, and my attempt to do so.

The next-highest Google hit for this question's title, "Science: why we scream" (Highfield, 2008) seems pretty useful. Telegraph's terms and conditions are a little scary though, so I'll paraphrase some ideas rather than quoting directly.

Darwin himself argued that emotional expressions may improve selective fitness. This could explain the relatively universal uniformity of fear expressions, which generally include widened eyes and nostrils, lifted eyebrows, and maybe some inclination to scream (Susskind et al., 2008). This may improve olfactory and visual sensory intake and motion tracking. Pragmatic benefits aside, William James, another prominent historical figure in psychology, was well ahead of his time in pointing out that expressions affect emotions; they also affect neural circulation!

However, there are limits to the universality of fear expressions, and even to the uniformity of facial muscular anatomy (Waller, Cray, & Burrows, 2008)! Basic expressions like "happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust" are handled pretty well by five essentially ubiquitous facial muscles, but people differ in the number of additional, facially expressive muscles they have (19 may be the maximum). I've edited this summary of Waller and colleagues' results into the Wikipedia page on the risorius muscle just now:

  A study of 18 Caucasian cadavers found individual differences in the presence and bilateral symmetry of risorius muscles. Seven of these individuals (both men and women) clearly lacked the muscle; two were inconclusive; only four were conclusively symmetric.

Highfield (2008) associates the risorius muscle with "expressions of extreme fear," but Wikipedia only associates it with an "insincere-looking" smile; Waller and colleagues (2008) associate no expressions explicitly with the risorius muscle, which they don't really discuss in specific depth. However, Highfield quotes Waller directly (suggesting further unpublished discussion that may have supported his interpretation of risorius' function) as follows:

  Everyone communicates using a set of common signals...so we would expect to find that the muscles do not vary. The results are surprising. Some less common facial expressions may be unique to certain people.

Other quick Google Scholar results for "scream fear" ("scream pain" didn't produce anything promising at first glance) seem useful to mention here too. A study of rats and 160 undergrads found (in the human research) that a "yell, scream, or call for help...was frequent for females, rare for males" (Blanchard, Hynd, Minke, Minemoto, & Blanchard, 2001). A more general discussion of the function of fear screams in humans and other animals has also been published (Högstedt, 1983), so you may want to check that out too. It includes some literature review, so its references could probably lead much deeper into the question than you may wish to pursue it... ;)

References

Caroline Blanchard, D., Hynd, A. L., Minke, K. A., Minemoto, T., & Blanchard, R. J. (2001). Human defensive behaviors to threat scenarios show parallels to fear-and anxiety-related defense patterns of non-human mammals. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 25(7), 761–770. Available online, URL: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/11558273_Human_defensive_behaviors_to_threat_scenarios_show_parallels_to_fear-_and_anxiety-related_defense_patterns_of_non-human_mammals/file/9fcfd50c755e22230b.pdf. Retrieved February 8, 2014.

Highfield, R. (2008, June 17). Science: Why we scream. The Telegraph: Science News. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3344701/Science-why-we-scream.html.

Högstedt, G. (1983). Adaptation unto death: Function of fear screams. American Naturalist, 121(4), 562–570. Available online, URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2460982.

Susskind, J. M., Lee, D. H., Cusi, A., Feiman, R., Grabski, W., & Anderson, A. K. (2008). Expressing fear enhances sensory acquisition. Nature Neuroscience, 11(7), 843–850. Available online, URL: http://www.yorku.ca/khoffman/Psyc6253/Susskind%2708_Meotions4perception.pdf. Retrieved February 8, 2014.

Waller, B. M., Cray Jr, J. J., & Burrows, A. M. (2008). Selection for universal facial emotion. Emotion, 8(3), 435–439. Available online, URL: http://eprints.port.ac.uk/1629/1/WALLERetal2008b.pdf. Retrieved February 8, 2014.


Like most of language, we have an innate ability to learn by exposure, with the rules remaining subconscious until someone forces us to explain them.

Syllables are based on phonemes, so we need to know the rules of spelling if we don't already know the word by sound.  Each syllable consists of an onset and a rime.
The onset is a cluster of consonants (or it is null, at the beginning of some words).
The rime is a cluster of vowels {or diphthongs...}, plus an optional cluster of consonants {typically at the end of a word}.

Thus: cushion: [c] (u) + [sh] (io[n]) = 2 syllables


Does Facebook activity predict job performance?

Summary of Kluemper et al 2012

I had a read through the article by Kluemper et al (2012) mentioned in the answer by John Pick. The following summarises some key points.

After discussing the broader context of using social networks to measure personality, Kluemper et al (2012) cited the findings of a couple of existing studies:

  Karl, Peluchette, and Schlaegel (2010) found that social network users high in
  conscientiousness were less likely to post problematic content
  (e.g., substance abuse, sexual content), while Amichai-Hamburger and
  Vinitzky (2010) found a relationship between self-rated extraversion
  and number of Facebook friends.

The study by Kluemper et al (2012) involved two studies. Each study involved getting ratings on around 250 participants including self-report Big 5 personality and then getting three raters to read through the participant's Facebook profile and then fill out a measure of Big 5 personality. Self-other correlations for the same personality factors ranged from .16 to .44. This supports the idea that Facebook profiles can be used to get at least an approximate measure of personality.  It should also be mentioned that these self-other correlations are a fair bit lower than those obtained by Costa and McCrae (1998) when using the NEO, and a single knowledgeable other-rater (e.g., in the r=.5 to .6 range).

Meta-analyses have generally found a positive but weak correlation between Big 5 personality and job performance (e.g., Barrick & Mount, 1991). In combination with the results from Kluemper et al, this may suggest that personality measures extracted from Facebook profiles might predict job performance. However, given the relatively low self-other correlations, this still requires further empirical testing.

Furthermore, extracting Big 5 personality using three raters reflects only one rating strategy. Thus, there are many other useful measures and measurement strategies that could be explored.

References

Amichai-Hamburger, Y. & Vinitzky, G. (2010). Social network use and
personality. Computers in Human Behavior, 26, 1289–1295.
Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions
and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44, 1–
26.
Costa, P. T. & McCrae (1988, PDF). Personality in adulthood: A six-year longitudinal study of self-reports and spouse ratings on the NEO Personality Inventory. It's not a meta analysis. N = 167 for spouse ratings.
Karl, K., Peluchette, J., & Schlaegel, C. (2010). Who’s posting Facebook
faux pas? A cross-cultural examination of personality differences. Inter-
national Journal of Selection and Assessment, 18, 174–186.
Kluemper, D. H., Rosen, P. A. and Mossholder, K. W. (2012), Social Networking Websites, Personality Ratings, and the Organizational Context: More Than Meets the Eye?. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00881.x URL


Why neural architecture is not hardwired for N-dimensional vision but hardwired for abstract math?

Abstract algebra and n-dimensional space are constructs of the human mind. Since they are constructs of the human mind, it is of course possible for the human mind to grasp them.

N-dimensional space is a mathematical construct. That human mathematics allows for the construction of something, does not mean that it exists in reality.

For example, in mathematics, there are 3 apples. In reality, there are no 3 apples, because all apples are different (in size, color, ripeness, taste etc.), and the equation 1 apple = 1 apple is always false.

Mathematics is an abstraction from reality, and the fact that it is an abstraction means that relevant information is lost in mathematical representation. If you turn this around, it means that a mathematical model has an unkown relation to reality, because you don't know which information is not present in the model.

Even more basic, it is unknown if anything relating to that model even exists. For example, the equation 3 - 4 = -1 has no relation in reality. There are no negative objects or lengths. (All scales that include negatives, such as temperature, have an arbitrary zero point and can be transformed to a scale without negatives, e.g. Kelvin.) Even simple mathematics is fictional. The existence of a mathematical object or model, such as n-dimensional space, does not prove, nor even imply, the existence of a related reality.


Can incubation be facilitated, while, at the same time, being focused on a different problem?

This is an interesting question because it relates to different mechanisms that may be responsible for incubation effects:

Does incubation occur because creative insight is helped by unconscious processes? (Processes that are best left undisturbed by not consciously thinking about the problem?) In this case, the most important thing would be to focus on something else.
Or does taking a break simply reduce mental fatigue as some have claimed (e.g., Posner, 1973, as cited in Sio & Ormond, 2009)? In this case, just taking a break from thinking might be best.
Or is it because of certain patterns of conscious thought during incubation? In this case, the kind of problem one thinks about consciously during the incubation phase would matter.

Sio and Ormond (2009) have looked at this question as part of their meta-analysis of incubation studies:

They found that performing low cognitive demand tasks were associated with stronger incubation effects than just taking a break and doing nothing
However, high cognitive demand tasks were associated with smaller incubation effects

These results are not in line with a simple mental fatigue account of incubation. Instead, they suggest that creative insight profits more from distracting tasks that are low in cognitive demand.

One explanation for these findings is that low demanding tasks allow and promote mind-wandering (Baird et al., 2012).

Conclusion: So based on this research, when trying to generate some creative insight, it might be good to take a break after an intense preparation period. However, instead of occupying your mind with another hard nut to crack, it might be better to do so with something that is not very demanding. Try cleaning up your desk and water those sad-looking plants in your office!

References

Baird, B., Smallwood, J., Mrazek, M. D., Kam, J. W. Y., Franklin, M. S., & Schooler, J. W. (2012). Inspired by distraction: Mind wandering facilitates creative incubation. Psychological Science, 23, 1117–1122. doi:10.1177/0956797612446024

Sio, U. N., & Ormerod, T. C. (2009). Does incubation enhance problem solving? A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 135, 94–120. doi:10.1037/a0014212


What are the main sensory features of earliest memories of childhood?

I found a study by Mullen (1994) which discusses the empirical literature on earliest childhood memories (see also the wikipedia article on childhood amensia).

Here are a few interesting quotes:

  The average age of earliest memory is consistently found to be in the vicinity of 3.5 years.

Mullen mentions theories for the amnesia prior to this point focussing particularly on the role of language development and training provided by parents in how to socially construct accessible memories.

Mullen distinguishes between types of memories which in some sense pertains to your question about senses:

  White and Pillemer (1979) suggest that there may be a dual system of
  autobiographical memory in which one aspect is a verbally accessible
  store of interconnected narratives organized with respect to a time
  frame and the other aspect is an unorganized collection of fragments
  of images, behaviors and emotions.

In study 3, Mullen (1994) examined the content of earliest reported memories.
Here is a table summarising content features of these memories:

Thus, it appears that most of these memories reflect an event in some sense.

Of course there are a bunch of methodological things going on here.
I imagine if you delve into the references or these related articles you will find out more on the topic.

Kihlstrom et al (1982) looks like it might be worth a read.

References

Mullen, M. K. (1994). Earliest recollections of childhood: A demographic analysis. Cognition, 52(1), 55-79.
Kihlstrom, J. F., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (1982). The earliest recollection: A new survey. Journal of Personality, 50(2), 134-148.


Can I teach my brain to understand binary?

Quite a bit of foundational research on skill acquisition is on how people learn to send and receive morse code. I'm no expert at morse code but it seems like it shares quite a bit with binary.
For example, here is a graph of letters per minute that an operator could receive as a function of weeks of practice (Bryan & Harter, 1897).
A general principle is that gradually people move from identifying letters to seeing larger patterns like words and phrases.

Reading is a little different to receiving information aurally. But I imagine some similar principles would apply. If anything, I imagine that ability to recognise patterns visually would make the task of reading binary easier. That said, binary does seem far from optimal as a system for encoding letters in terms of efficient visual processing.
Bryan, W. L., & Harter, N. (1899). Studies on the telegraphic language: The acquisition of a hierarchy of habits. Psychological Review, 6(4), 345.


What is the purpose of dead end neurons in this diagram?

As said in the comments, $U_4$ and $U_5$ are not used to compute the values of the output neurons.

However, in some cases one may allow the connections between neurons to change over time, in which case $U_4$ and $U_5$ may be later used to compute the values of the output neurons. Seanny123 gives biology as an example. For another example, you may want to look at the  literature on neuro-evolution, i.e. optimization of neural architectures with evolutionary algorithms, which may allow changing the connections between neurons over generations (e.g. that's what I did for my master thesis:  Franck Dernoncourt. "The medial Reticular Formation: a neural substrate for action selection? An evaluation via evolutionary computation.". Master's Thesis. École Normale
Supérieure Ulm. 2011., though I may have coded the mutation and crossover operators in such a way that dead-end neurons don't appear, I don't recall).


Why would someone state that "self-esteem doesn't exist"?

In the video, he states:

  What is self-esteem? It is a word (actually it is two words). It is sort of something you think you might have or not have. But, that's a figure of speech. That's not an empirical phenomenon.

Thus, by stating "self-esteem does not exist", he is implying it cannot be empirically observed, i.e., it is not something that can be observed reliably and systematically.

From there on out, he starts arguing why this is so. Some key points:

Reported self-esteem measures are pretty appalling.
You can already model the concept of self-esteem with the Big 5. I presume he is implying here the concept is superfluous and implications of 'low or high self-esteem' are modeled better using Big 5.
The introduction of the concept has lead to undesirable consequence of advocating for self-esteem. But, there is no reason to believe that increasing your self-esteem is a good idea. "It is not at haste that you should have a good opinion of yourself in every bloody situation."

He continues to give examples for these points, e.g., "self-esteem might become disconnected from the actual accomplishment", but I believe this is outside of scope what you are asking for here.


Does self-directed speech help or hurt a blind subject's auditory recognition?

It seems apparent that generating and hearing self-directed speech during discriminatory listening would inhibit said discrimination. This is because auditory processing of self-directed speech and audio processing in discriminatory listening would have to compete for resources in decoding auditory information, leading to poorer decoding of the already low-quality muffled audio.

If on the other hand the self-directed speech is performed only in-between the trials of discriminatory listening, then this competition for auditory-decoding resources no longer occurs.  In this case, I expect that the self-directed speech would effectively prime cognitive resources that are involved in discriminating the source of the muffled speech. This, then, would result in improved discriminatory performance. At least that would be my initial hypothesis.


According to the Supplementary Materials the synaptic plasticity rule can be inferred from the data to be:

$$W(z) = W_0(z) + \alpha \sum_{t,t'=0}^{T} R_{CA1}(t')K(t'-t)R_{CA3}(z-x_A(t))$$

Where:

$z$ is the preferred location of the place cell
$W_0$ is the initial synaptic weight
$\alpha$ is a learning-rate constant
$T$ is the total running time of the experiment with $t'$ being when the plateau starts, although I'm not sure about $t'$ and it's significance
$R_{CA1}$ is a binary function which is 1 in the presence of the plateau
$K(t'-t)$ is an unknown kernel that determines synaptic weights change depending on the activity of the cells at time $t'=t$
$R_{CA3}(z-x_A(t))$ is a model of the firing rate of the place-cell given the preferred location and the current location of the animal

Given that the formula for weight change depends on both:

The firing rate of the place cell
A kernel which takes the firing rate of the place cell into account

I can say that the plateau selects for firing place cells. However, I'm still not clear on what they mean by storing "entire sequence of events that occurred for several seconds before and after plateau-potential initiation".


How much does money (or any desired good) influence a person on average?

Here are two studies may be relevant to your question:

Seeing green: Mere exposure to money triggers a business decision frame and unethical outcomes. The authors report that "individuals primed with money were more likely to demonstrate unethical intentions than those in the control group" and "money cues triggered a business decision frame, which led to a greater likelihood of unethical intentions and behavior." This article explains that the researchers "primed" the participants by showing them either "money-related" phrases or "neutral" phrases and measured how that affected their decisions in hypothetical scenarios or games. So even when there is no actual money involved, the study found that thinking about money can influence people's behavior.

Social Class, Contextualism, and Empathic Accuracy. The authors report that "individuals of a lower social class are more empathically accurate in judging the emotions of other people." In this article, a study co-author points out that people with more modest financial resources need to depend on others more than people who are more able to solve their problems with money. This may give them more experience cooperating with people and developing empathy. So in this case it's the money that someone accumulates throughout their life that may prompt them to act in a less empathetic way.


Why did Richard Feynman appear to recommend replication before manipulation when conducting lab experiments?

I think it's a basic concept of experimental design that you have control groups. So for example, if you want to study the effect of X (e.g., a drug) on Y (e.g., performance), you could manipulate X (e.g., give half the drug and the other half no drug) and randomly assign the participants to either group.
Random assignment is a strategy for making the groups on average equivalent. Thus, it is an attempt to control for confounding factors that might cause Y.

Of course, you could say that other researchers have conducted the equivalent of the control group condition, and just do a one sample study with just the drug condition. However, studies differ in all sorts of ways (participants differ, your exact measures might differ, the context might differ, etc.). Thus, you couldn't unambiguously attribute any changes to the effect of the drug.

That said, we often do compare the experimental outcome of different studies that differ in some respect. For example, meta-analyses often examine moderators which compare effect sizes across study features. While this is useful, you'll often get a cleaner answer to your research question by incorporating the moderator into a specific study where there are fewer alternative sources of explanation.


Yes -- I would look into the literature of attitude change. I think this research would be relevant to your hypotheses.  Here's the Wikipedia article for attitude change, and here's a representative paper from that literature that might be useful. At any rate, I don't think the phrase "norm adoption" is the right wording for what you're studying in English. Does this help?