What is mindful focused self-awareness from a cognitive science perspective?

I think your asking a psychologically healthy spiritual question. Psychologist are told to promote spirituality and many concepts from religion have affected current day therapies.

Bishop, Lau, and colleagues (2004) offered a two-component model of mindfulness:
The first component of mindfulness involves the self-regulation of attention so that it is maintained on immediate experience, thereby allowing for increased recognition of mental events in the present moment. The second component involves adopting a particular orientation toward one’s experiences in the present moment, an orientation that is characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance.
In this two-component model, self-regulated attention (the first component) involves conscious awareness of one's current thoughts, feelings, and surroundings, which can result in metacognitive skills for controlling concentration. Orientation to experience (the second component) involves accepting one's mindstream, maintaining open and curious attitudes, and thinking in alternative categories (developing upon Ellen Langer's research on decision-making).

-wikipedia mindfulness
As a student of psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience I will give you my perspective of the cognitive science understanding of mindfulness. Then I'll give a less biased published view of a professor of psychology.
When I was 14 the church I belong to at the time was helped to be run by my Father. He built a pool for the church and right before the beginning of the High School semester we laid down concrete. For some reason the baseball coach decided to help us in exchange for some extra concrete for his field. I did not like laying concrete. The raking, bull float and constant worry that it would harden in an untenable way. To make matters worse the coach talked my dad into removing his partitions which would have made many small slabs around the pool into one giant slab. Anyone who knows about concrete in the south would immediately know that this means its going to crack and have to be sealed eventually. At the end of the day my muscles were give out and i lost my balance and my hand went into the crete a couple of times. In addition even though I count that day one of the times I worked extremely hard for no pay the coach had decided to call me various names and stuff. On the way home my father lost his temper with me. My grandparents put things into perspective.
Thier common way of doing it is consistent with Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) which uses mindfulness:

Cognitive defusion: Learning methods to reduce the tendency to reify (inforce negative and self defeating schema see this example from The Help) thoughts, images, emotions, and memories.

Acceptance: Allowing thoughts to come and go without struggling with them.

Contact with the present moment: Awareness of the here and now, experienced with openness, interest, and receptiveness.

Observing the self: Accessing a transcendent sense of self, a continuity of consciousness which is unchanging.

Values: Discovering what is most important to one's true self.

Committed action: Setting goals according to values and carrying them out responsibly.

-wikipedia ACT
They said, God loves you we love you don't worry (Observing the self,Contact with the present moment,Values), don't be upset at him (Committed action) he's tired and isn't thinking clearly (Acceptance), of course you worked extremely hard today but your father wasn't watching you I was (Cognitive defusion), everyone loses their balance at some point especially during the last few hours it was easily correctable (Cognitive defusion). This common sense, non-judgemental, encouraged me to consider the situation rationally, accept the fact that I was limited and my father was limited and not hold ill feelings toward him.
Evangelical Christianity is all about "Contact with the present moment", "Observing the self", and "Values". Services are chocked full of religious based phrases which lead people to experience a contact with the present moment through experiencing forgiveness, justification and cleansing of the past. God loves you it doesn't matter what you've done in the past your forgiven now, forget the past, your a new person in Christ now, there is hope for you, "Everything is working out for my good and for God's Glory". While we don't have all of ACT down if you go to such a church you will certainly learn to live in the present by allowing God to deal with you past. Such may be the case in other religions but I do not know.
The following is an exerpt from Dr. McFadden's Mindfulness, vulnerability, and love: Spiritual lessons from frail elders, earnest young pilgrims, and middle aged rockers:

Raised a nominal Roman Catholic, with no concrete plans for entering the ministry, John McFadden went on to serve as senior pastor of two large United Church of Christ (Congregational) faith communities for a total of 32 years. As a result, I became a “minister's wife” and received the blessings of friendship with many older men and women who were my first teachers about aging with grace. These lessons accrued through the years and inspired my academic exploration of the psychology of religion and aging. From the beginning, when we were 23 years old with no clue how to be a minister or a minister's wife, to the time my husband retired from ministry to a beloved congregation in 2006, it was the old people who reached out to us with a multitude of kind and generous acts. In our age-segregated society, if I had married an accountant, a dentist, or a professor, I probably never would have developed such treasured friendships with older adults.
My sense of time stops, and my identity as “Susan McFadden, Ph.D., Psychology Professor, wife, mother, blah blah blah” disappears as I crouch to grasp a hand, gaze at a face, and say “peace be with you.” Regardless of whether the person whose hands I hold can reply with a verbal blessing, the moment feels powerfully imbued with holiness. I face my own vulnerability, for one day I may be demented or immobilized by stroke. In that large, crowded room at the nursing home, I am uplifted by love given and love received.
Although we cherish our worship experiences at the nursing home, most of the time we worship in a bar with pierced and tattooed young adults. The service starts at “10:30-ish,” the pastor sits on a barstool like everyone else, and music consists of everything from alt-rock to bluegrass. This bar is a long way from the staid Presbyterian church of my youth and the Congregational churches John served in his ministry. We decided that his leaving the ministry afforded us the possibility of doing something completely different and exploring a new way of being in Christian community. Called the “emergent church” by some scholars, these groups attract people who have been described as “avant-garde youth and aging hippies” (Byassee, 2006: 20). Many have fled “big box” Evangelical churches with their “Jesus goes to Vegas” style of worship and their political allegiance to conservative causes. They are seeking an authentic way of holding one another accountable to love God and one another.
Like worship at the county nursing home, worship at the bar evokes feelings of mindfulness, vulnerability, and love. The mindfulness derives from the desire to be fully present to the mostly young adults worshipping in that odd place, with its pool tables and dart machines. John and I do not want to play the role of know-it-all baby boomers, but rather to join these persons as fellow pilgrims. On the other hand, he is often asked to schedule a time for coffee and theological conversation, while I am frequently asked for advice about academic matters. Thus, mindfulness involves intentional awareness of how best to be respectfully present to others and to humbly offer whatever we have gained from our experiences that might be helpful. Vulnerability is located in the conviction that we have much to learn from these young adults, and that our own faith can grow as a result of knowing them and hearing their tales of spiritual journeys that sometimes have moved through treacherous territories of drug abuse and lost-ness. This little community often speaks about love, and the challenge of following Jesus' commandment to “love one another” in a world full of enticements to love self first and foremost, as well as repeated messages that the self is not good enough, attractive enough, rich enough, or sane enough to be loved by another person.
All of these people—old and young—have taught me about relational mindfulness, vulnerability, and love. Their intensity, whether born of their conscious decisions to live by different values than those of the prevailing culture, or their un-chosen suffering, invites mindful engagement. All remind me about my various vulnerabilities, ranging from the existential reality of my finitude to my everyday struggles to live faithfully. Most importantly, they teach me new ways of giving and receiving love.

McFadden, S. H. (2008). Mindfulness, vulnerability, and love: Spiritual lessons from frail elders, earnest young pilgrims, and middle aged rockers. Journal of aging studies, 22(2), 132-139.


Do repeated measures designs in cognitive research permit causal inference?

If the researcher randomly samples individuals from the population of interest and randomly assigns them to different experimental treatments, then it is a true experiment. Quasi-experimental design occurs when there is no random assignment to treatments.

In general, true experiments can make claims about causality. Since all subjects in the experiment are randomly assigned to a particular treatment, any systematic differences between the groups after the experiment are likely to be due to the treatment.

However, this is all a game of probabilities. There's always a chance that any systematic difference between groups is from the random assignment. This is why inferential statistics are such an important aspect of evaluating the outcomes of experiments. We can estimate the probability of a particular difference between groups occurring due to random variation. If that probability is low (the typical convention is below 5%), then we can make a causal claim about the treatment.


Can we interconnect with other people mentally during dreaming?

Short answer
Telepathy is pseudoscience.

Background
I think you are referring to the phenomenon of telepathy, which can be defined as

  [T]he purported transmission of information from one person to another
  without using any of our known sensory channels or physical
  interaction

and you ask whether telepathy is a scientifically established phenomenon.

Telepathy in general is dismissed as being pseudoscience (Jogalekar, 2013) as it has been debunked in various scientific studies (e.g.
Ayeroff & Abelson (1976)).

Likewise, dream telepathy is considered pseudoscience. It was reportedly first documented by Freud in the 1940s. Freud founded many other pseudo-scientific concepts, including psychoanalysis (Jupp, 1977). Ullman & Krippner from the dream laboratory in Maimonides Medical Center in New York City claimed they had proven the existence of dream telepathy in the 1960s and 70s (e.g. Krippner & Ullman (1970). However, the studies were rightfully challenged. For example, many of their studies were based on a few or even on single subjects (e.g. Ullman & Krippner (1966) and Krippner & Ullman (1970)). Indeed, more recent studies have failed to replicate their findings (e.g.., Belvedere & Foulkes, (1971) and Hearne (1989)).

References
- Ayeroff & Abelson, Personality and Social Psychology (1976); 34(2): 240-7
- Belvedere & Foulkes, Perceptual and Motor Skills (1971); 33(3)
- Hearne, J Soc Psychical Res (1989); 55(814): 271-4
- Jogalekar, Sci Am (August 2013)
- Jupp, Philosophy (1977); 52(202): 441-53
- Krippner & Ullman J Nervous & Mental Disease (1970)
- Ullman & Krippner Int J Neuropsych, 2(5): 420-37


Why do one's surroundings still seem to rotate when you stop whirling around?

On each side of your head, in the middle ear, there is a system of canals in which displacement of a group of hair cells measure the movement along the 3 axes (the canals are tilted a bit back from 90°, so the coordinate system is not identical with that of the head).

So, when you move your head around and around as your body "whirls", the cupula of the horizontal canal (HC), which encases the hair cells, moves in the opposite direction and displaces the hair cells, causing the firing of action potentials. Once your head stops, the viscosity of the fluid in which the cupula is suspended prevents it from snapping right back to it's "default" position, so action potentials continue to be fired, and your nervous system (falsely) senses that your head is still moving.

 Courtesy of Scholarpedia Vestibular System


What contextual links would make full-text journal articles more useful?

This is a subjective question and what is useful would depend on from which domain of cognitive science the article originated. In general, I prefer when the PDF looks like the journal article (i.e., no formatting to indicate links).

Here is a list of things that I find useful:

Links from in text citations to the location of the full reference
Links from references to the full-text resource
Links between Table and figure references with the actual figure
Table of contents tied to sections in the article
URLs and emails that can be clicked on
Tables with exportable data
If the article includes supplementary material, links to that material that work and do not require password access.

A few extra things that might be nice perhaps in the HTML version:

Ability to export both the article reference and the references in the  article in various bibliographic formats (e.g., bibtex, Endnote, etc.)
Page view, download, and citation statistics
RSS feed options for the journal


Where do our memories get stored and how are they retrieved again?

Long-term potentiation (LTP) is thought to be a major mechanism of long-term learning, in which neurons throughout the brain undergo permanent physiological changes (e.g., migration of AMPA receptors to neuronal terminal buttons) that allow maintenance of the memory trace. A simpler version of this would be the famous aphorism (and oversimplication) regarding Hebbian learning -- "cells that fire together wire together."


Why does learning new mental skills lead to headaches?

Migraine and tension-type headaches are an important burden in many people's daily lives. This is not my direct research topic. But as far as I have read on the subject headache has been related to posture problems and vision problems. Some studies point to an increase in headache complaints, related to increased hours of study online. But this can also be related to posture and vision (tired eyes or dry eyes). Of course, the occurrence of headaches can affect the quality of the study (and acquisition of new skills), but estimating the opposite apparently still lacks proof. I leave below some links of articles about the subject that may be of your interest:
Behavioral Treatments for Headache,
Headache vs musculoskeletal pain vs vision problems
Headach - clinical setting


Solving T-shaped maze (probability learning): differences between rats and humans

I was unable to find this in a scientific paper, and it is not clear from the sources I did locate that this work was ever actually published. However, I found other sources that reference this work and several similar studies comparing humans to rats.

The study you mention is also referenced briefly in Tetlock's (2005) book on political judgment; a discussion of Tetlock's interpretation of the results can be seen on University of Pennsylvania's Language Log (2005). That blog post also indicates the experiments are discussed to some extent in a textbook by Gallistel (1993); finding that book may provide more information.

A paper by Spragg (1934) describes exploring anticipatory responses in both rats and human (student) subjects. Overall and Brown (1959) examined decision making behavior in rats and humans (students) using a maze task.

Gallistel, Charles R. (1993). The organization of learning (Learning,
development, and conceptual change). A Bradford Book: 662 pages.
ISBN-13: 978-0262570985
Language Log. (December 11,2005). Rats beat Yalies? Doing better by
getting less information? Retrieved from
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002700.html
Overall, J. E., & Brown, W. L. (1959). A comparison of the
decision-behavior of rats and of human subjects. The American Journal
of Psychology, 72(2) 258-261.
Spragg, S. S. (1934). Anticipatory responses in the maze. Journal of
Comparative Psychology, 18(1), 51-73.
Tetlock, P. (2005). Expert political judgment: How good is it? How
can we know?. Princeton University Press. ISBN-13: 978-0691128719


How does subjective experience arise from matter?

This is partially an aspect of the binding problem.

  Sensory information arrives in parallel as a variety of heterogeneous hints, (shapes, colors, motions, smells and sounds) encoded in partly modular systems. Typically many objects are present at once. The result is an urgent case of what has been labelled the binding problem. We must collect the hints, bind them into the right spatial and temporal bundles, and then interpret them to specify their real world origins. (2003, 97)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/attention/

The bottom line is that our senses are integrated and some of our most important senses (smell, sight, hearing) all have their organs located very close together.  Spatial perception is (at least partially) stored in the parietal lobes. The parietal lobes integrate information from somatosensors like muscle spindles to relay the body's position in space as well as the eyes (and ears), which help form a perspective of the environment.

You might also consider Tononi's framework for consciousness: integrated information theory which presumes:

  (i) the quantity of consciousness corresponds to the amount of integrated information generated by a complex of elements; (ii) the quality of experience is specified by the set of informational relationships generated within that complex. Integrated information (Phi) is defined as the amount of information generated by a complex of elements, above and beyond the information generated by its parts. Qualia space (Q) is a space where each axis represents a possible state of the complex, each point is a probability distribution of its states, and arrows between points represent the informational relationships among its elements generated by causal mechanisms (connections). Together, the set of informational relationships within a complex constitute a shape in Q that completely and univocally specifies a particular experience.

I think the deeper question we need answered before we get to your specific question is "how does a subjective experience arise from matter in the first place?".  Other than that, your question is no different than "why did that rock not get this rock's blemish?".  It was mostly likely just a matter of chance in initial conditions.


[Just addressing your title question:] supposedly so, but there isn't a lot of data on this. One of David Buss' students has this in his PhD thesis:

  participants from the Austin
  community completed a survey instrument that asked a series of questions about their
  most memorable fantasy of killing someone else. Seventy-six percent of women and 91
  percent of men reported having at least one homicidal thought in their lifetime. The
  person both men and women most frequently thought of killing was an intrasexual rival.
  The majority of homicidal fantasies involved the murder of someone who was not a
  genetic relative. Men were significantly more likely than women to have a murder
  fantasy triggered by a romantic partner’s infidelity. Women were more likely than men
  think of killing a rival who damaged their sexual reputation. These and other findings
  were predicted in advance by Homicide Adaptation Theory [HAT] (Buss & Duntley, under
  review).

As you can probably tell, their angle is evolutionary psychology; they don't care about any free will debates, it seems. I could easily find a criticism of HAT by Durrant (2009), which cites several works of Duntley and Buss on this; the latest cited in there being:

Duntley, J. D., & Buss, D. M. (2008). The origins of homicide. In J. D. Duntley, & T. K.
Shackelford (Eds.), Evolutionary forensic psychology: Darwinian foundations of crime
and law (pp. 41−64). Oxford: Oxford University Press

A more recent paper Reynolds & McCrea (2017) summarizes a few of the older studies on prevalence:

  Unfortunately, there is a paucity of
  research on homicide fantasies, with most of
  the research historically focused on criminals
  or the pathological [...] This tells us little about the psychology
  process of homicide in typical individuals.
  Kenrick and Sheets (1993) conducted
  two studies with college students as subjects
  to address just this limitation. In the first
  study, participants were asked about their
  most recent homicide fantasy, and in the second
  study participants were asked about their
  homicide fantasies in several contexts.
  Results indicated that the majority of participants
  did have at least one fantasy, with
  males recalling more homicide fantasies
  (e.g., 73% vs. 66% in Study 1), and males
  reporting longer and more detailed fantasies.
  Results were interpreted as supporting evolutionary
  explanations for homicide like the byproduct
  hypothesis.

  Crabb (2000) also found that homicide
  thoughts were common in normal
  undergraduates. Crabb investigated homicidal
  thoughts and the weapons used in these fantasies.
  Similar to Crabb, Kenrick and Sheets
  (1993) explicitly asked undergraduates questions
  concerning their thoughts about killing
  someone. Replicating previous research, most
  participants admitted to a homicide fantasy.
  Results also indicated that homicide fantasies
  were preceded by a threatening interpersonal
  event and involved weapons like firearms, knives,
  and clubs, rather than weapons like hands
  and feet. The evidence was interpreted as supporting
  the existence of evolved psychological
  mechanisms able to associate material–cultural
  implements, like firearms, with aggressive
  actions and to rehearse this through fantasy.
  These studies are important as they demonstrate
  that homicide fantasies are common and
  unlikely the result of pathological processes.
  Furthermore, they support evolutionary explanations
  for homicide like the by-product hypothesis
  and homicide adaptation theory.

Reynolds & McCrea's study tried to elicit subjects to spontaneously think of murder by providing them with some typical contexts in which murders occur, but they weren't terribly successful at this: less than 5% of participants reported such cued homicidal thoughts, although many more reported violent thoughts.


Why do people tend to reply to only one topic when multiple topics are brought up simultaneously?

I believe it has to do with two main factors:

1) Emotional response to one of the topics

Consider the case where a webpage or paragraph of text contains multiple topics. Each one with different emotional response from the reader:

Topic 1: X____|
Topic 2: XX___|
Topic 3: X____|
Topic 4: XXXXXXXXX
Topic 5: XX___|

Where the number of X's is how strong the response is. Suppose 5X's are needed to bother responding. Assuming the topics are encountered sequentially, Topic 4 will activate the strongest emotional response. Since it's also above 5X, the person may start responding, leaving topic 5 unread and un-responded to.

2) Social/technical norms of the online communication system

In many web platforms, the main means of commenting/replying is via typed text boxes, usually with minimum and maximum length limits. That's the technical norm. The lower the limit (i.e. a tweet), the less likely more than one topic will be responded to. Expectation of interruptions could also play a role. For example, in an online chat, many other emotional topics may be mentioned while typing out a long, nuanced response, potentially stopping it from being finished.

The social norms come into play when a reader observes how others have responded to the item and in what format. If others responded with short one-liners, the reader may be inclined to respond with a one-liner. If others wrote up elaborate essays as responses, perhaps the reader may do so as well.


I wouldn't call this reference authoritative, but after a bit of research the first article in this journal (originally published in the Journal of Parapsychology) introduces the term "randomania" as "attributing chance probability to (apparently) related phenomenon." Note that this term is specifically defined in contrast to apophenia.

As an aside, this blog post discusses the history of the term apophenia (and potential modern misapplications of its current definition).


When did the old term experimental reagent become experimental subject?

Psychological theory has often metaphorically used terminology from the technology or science of its time.

Freud explains certain aspects of the psyche in terms of the steam engine, and psychologists of the late 20th century think of the brain in terms of computer science.

In your case Titchener and other psychologists of his time tried to grasp psychology in terms of chemistry: "a reagent is a substance which, because it has a capacity for certain reactions, is used to detect, examine, or measure other substances" (Schultz, 2013, p. 88). Historians of psychology assess this term as evidence for the mechanistic view inherent in the structuralist approach to psychology. For Titchener, the human proband is a recording instrument (Schultz, 2013, p. 88).

As psychology as a science has shifted to a new paradigm in the early 20th century, the term reagent slowly fell out of use. The latest use in a psychological context that I'm aware of is in the late 1920s.

Sources:

Schultz, D. (2013). A History of Modern Psychology (2nd ed). New York: Academic Press.


Means and SDs are going to vary based on the specific personality measure, the measurement context, and the sample.
Many of the thousands of journal articles that measure Big 5 personality will report descriptive statistics for their measure.
In terms of some available raw data for the Big Five.
Here is some based on IPIP data:
https://openpsychometrics.org/_rawdata/
Here are a bunch of repositories with Big 5 data:
https://osf.io/4mruh/
https://osf.io/4mruh/
https://osf.io/62gs7/
https://osf.io/cwbgv/
https://osf.io/daext/
https://osf.io/qjd48/files
https://osf.io/qk4r9/
https://osf.io/qk4r9/


Where can I study cognitive science - long distance program?

There are a huge array of options here depending on the sophistication of the course you are looking for.

I would suggest for a free option starting with MIT, they provide a large range of modules online associated with psychology and neuroscience (please see the attached link) with videos of the lectures they have conducted within the university. A wonderful starting point in my opinion.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/brain-and-cognitive-sciences/

The british geoscience association also list a number of online courses here, however these are often more biologically focused than cognitive in nature. Most the short courses are less than £70.

There is also a range of courses on coursera provided by various universities, which will provide you with accreditation for the courses, here is a list.

As for workshops, they tend to be relatively expensive as most are provided for post-grads, many of which are working with individuals conducting neuroimaging studies as part of MSc or PhD projects and beyond. These are only really helpful when you start conducting studies. You can find many courses listed here on the British Neuroscience Associations website (the courses are based across many European countries).

I hope you enjoy your journey into what I believe is the most exciting area of scientific investigation. I would add one piece of advice, make sure you develop a good back ground in research methods and statistics (both are equally important) as this is what helps you to understand if research is good or bad, along with developing your own research skills for the future. Here is a basic but free starting point, I would recommend something with more advance statistical methods for going further.

Hope that helps.


What is the difference between a need, a drive, and a motive?

The sources and the theory you mentioned are quite old and may be outdated. I learned about drives, needs and motives in a more modern context during my introductory course of Industrial and Organizational (I/O) Psychology. Overall drives are more of a non-human concept that is too simplistic to explain complex human behavior (Landy & Conte, 2013). Nowadays, the definitions below are often used by psychologists.

According to Buchanan and Hyczynski (2013) a need is innate and related to survival such as the need for water, oxygen etc. Needs that are triggered by deprivation are known as drives.

Buchanan and Hyczynski (2013) use the following description of a motive:

  A socially acquired need activated by a desire for fulfilment.

Drives and motives can be contrasted using the information provided by Buchanan and Huczynski (2013):
Drives
 1. are innate
 2. have a physiological basis
 3. are activated by deprivation
 4. are aimed at satiation

Motives
 1. are learned
 2. have a social basis
 3. are activated by environment
 4. are aimed at stimulation

I know I somewhat glossed over the theory you mentioned but I looked it up and it seems somewhat outdated to me. I hope this more recent information helps answering your question!

Further reading:
Landy, F.J. & Conte, J.M. (2013). Work in the 21st century: An introduction to industrial and organizational psychology (6th edition). New York: McGraw-Hill. (Chapter 8)
Buchanan, D. & Huczynski, A. (2013). Organizational behavior: An introductory text (8th edition). Essex, UK: Pearson Education. (Chapter 9)


Effect of paper type on evaluation of resumes

Some findings:

http://job.sagepub.com/content/21/3/5.full.pdf
http://www.xavier.edu/appliedhrmresearch/1990-Winter/Henson%20_1_%202.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2164-585X.1979.tb00080.x/abstract (Abstract only)

These articles all seem to deal with paper color (white vs off-white), not quality, and the advent of personal computers and laser printers after this research was completed clearly outdates some of the research questions (e.g. typeset vs typewritten resumés).


Effect of variability due during motor skill training

According to "Motor Skills Are Strengthened through Reconsolidation" (available through SciHub) adding variability to practice sessions increases learning speed. In the paper, patients were directed to move a cursor on a screen to certain targets via pinch force. Patients who's pinch force mapping was modified during each trial ended up learning faster and performing better on the original pinch task.


What is "Predictive Reverse Engineering" and how can it be used for understanding brain structure?

I am unfamiliar with the term "Predictive Reverse Engineering" but your question seemed very interesting.  Informally speaking, "Predictive Reverse Engineering" seems to denote trying to reverse engineer the brain's architecture in a way that is also able to predict brain function, which was not used in the process of constructing the brain's map. In other words, to try to construct a model of the brain from sparse data, which is able to predict the results of novel observations. Like I said, I'm no expert in the subject so I poked around a bit and here is what I found. I hope it helps.

The human brain project (HBP) has a list of key results and publications list. The most noteworthy of all seems to be Markram et al (2015), which is a huge paper that shows the results of a first draft reconstruction of the rat's somatosensory cortex. This paper has a very long suppplementary information section describing how they reconstructed neuronal morphologies from the experimental data.

The introduction of the above article cites many works that communicate how the anatomical and physiological properties of synaptic connections can be characterized (Cobb et al., 1997; Feldmeyer et al., 1999; Frick et al., 2008; Gupta et al., 2000; Mason et al., 1991;
Reyes et al., 1998; Thomson et al., 1993). It also lists some methods used to map pre and postsynaptic neurons for individual neurons, such as: retrograde and anterograde tracers and trans-synaptic viral vectors, imaging with array tomography, and saturated reconstruction with electron microscopy. The references they cite for these methods are: Boyd and Matsubara, 1991; Callaway, 2008; Glenn et al., 1982; Kasthuri et al., 2015; Killackey et al., 1983; Micheva and Smith, 2007; Micheva et al., 2010; Wickersham et al., 2007.

The methods listed above by no way map the entire somatosensory cortex. They gather data from a sparse locations and Markram et al present a computational method to reconstruct the entire microcircuitry, i.e. reverse engineer the somatosensory cortex from sparse observations. They show that they are able to cross validate their algorithmic approach with the data and also account for new experimental observations.

Another paper that you could find interesting is Frackowiak and Markram (2015), "The future of human cerebral cartography: a novel approach", which is a perspectives article on how the brain can be cartographically mapped to understand function.


How do I determine whether my EEG signal needs denoising?

Your recording necessarily has noise. That's a property of any physical apparatus, and you are recording the activity of noisy neurons. The other property of noise is that, by definition, it will average out. So don't do anything about that. 100Hz is quite a low frequency. Artifacts (e.g. blinks, but I doubt you would have that in sleeping subjects) would typically have a higher frequency than that so (1) it's unlikely it has been recorded by your system at all, (2) you can low-pass filter your signal to remove both the 50Hz artifact and possible other artifacts. Other artifacts such as sleeping position would have very low frequencies. So you can high-pass your signal to get rid of them. I'm not familiar with sleep EEGs but I would not worry too much about it. You can also check few papers and see how they filtered their signal.


How does the mind build a model of reality?

Taking @BenCole's suggestion on the bolded parts...

  how the human mind creates and perpetuates the idea of knowing something

I think the philosophic response to this is "What does it mean to know something?". I'd recommend Searle's Chinese Room argument [1] and the many rebuttals to it (which include some computational explanations of understanding) to get a better idea.

  Do individuals build their own models of reality from whatever knowledge is available to their minds?

The simple answer is yes. But the interesting question is how much of our reality is shared vs how much of it is specific to each individual. In Computational Cognitive Science, the one area that tries to address this separation is Cognitive Architectures. CAs divide rational thought into two parts - the architecture that represents the common functionality across all humans and the knowledge which is different for each of us. For further reading, see Newell's Unified Theories of Cognition [2] for the groundwork, Anderson's How can the human mind occur in the physical universe? [3] for an emphasis on ACT-R (an example CA), and Laird's The Soar cognitive architecture [4] for an emphasis on Soar (another CA). Soar and ACT-R are the big two of the CA field but there are many others.

  present a finite understanding of a infinitely(?) complex reality as complete.

I'd argue that the opposite is true. That is, instead of presenting reality as complete, the  mind lives off of the differences between its understanding and the reality. Expectation-based cognition suggests that people are always generating expectations of what they expect to sense (see/hear/smell/feel etc) in the near future. These expectations are matched against observations. If expectations and observations match, then all is good. When they don't match, cognition is alerted. In this view, predictions flow top-down and errors (discrepancies between the prediction and the observation) flow bottom-up. Some good references on this idea are [5] and [6]

[1] J. Searle. (1980). Minds, brains and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (3): 417–457.

[2] A. Newell. (1994). Unified theories of cognition. Harvard University Press.

[3] J. Anderson (2007). How can the human mind occur in the physical universe? Oxford University Press.

[4] J. Laird. (2012). The Soar cognitive architecture. MIT Press.

[5] Lee, T.S., Mumford, D. (2003) Hierarchical Bayesian inference in the visual cortex. Journal of Optical Society of America, A. . 20(7): 1434-1448.

[6] Hohwy, J., Roepstorff, A., & Friston, K. (2008). Predictive coding explains binocular rivalry: an epistemological review. Cognition, 108(3), 687-701. ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV. Retrieved from http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/136548/


Abstract

  Background

  According to decades of research on affective motivation in the human
  brain, approach motivational states are supported primarily by the
  left hemisphere and avoidance states by the right hemisphere. The
  underlying cause of this specialization, however, has remained
  unknown. Here we conducted a first test of the Sword and Shield
  Hypothesis (SSH), according to which the hemispheric laterality of
  affective motivation depends on the laterality of motor control for
  the dominant hand (i.e., the “sword hand," used preferentially to
  perform approach actions) and the nondominant hand (i.e., the “shield
  hand," used preferentially to perform avoidance actions).

  Methodology/Principal Findings

  To determine whether the laterality of approach motivation varies with
  handedness, we measured alpha-band power (an inverse index of neural
  activity) in right- and left-handers during resting-state
  electroencephalography and analyzed hemispheric alpha-power
  asymmetries as a function of the participants' trait approach
  motivational tendencies. Stronger approach motivation was associated
  with more left-hemisphere activity in right-handers, but with more
  right-hemisphere activity in left-handers.

  Conclusions

  The hemispheric correlates of approach motivation reversed between
  right- and left-handers, consistent with the way they typically use
  their dominant and nondominant hands to perform approach and avoidance
  actions. In both right- and left-handers, approach motivation was
  lateralized to the same hemisphere that controls the dominant hand.
  This covariation between neural systems for action and emotion
  provides initial support for the SSH.

Citation: Brookshire G, Casasanto D (2012) Motivation and Motor Control: Hemispheric Specialization for Approach Motivation Reverses with Handedness. PLoS ONE 7(4): e36036. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036036


Precision medicine (PM) is a medical model that proposes the
  customization of healthcare, with medical decisions, practices, or
  products being tailored to the individual patient.

Precision psychiatry is a sub-field of precision medicine - focusing specifically on individually tailored medical interventions for psychiatric disorders.

The practice of precision psychiatry does not necessarily suggest a different diagnosis for psychiatric disorders such as PTSD or a different diagnostic criteria or process.  In fact, the diagnosis could very well remain the same.

Rather, precision medicine and psychiatry are concerned with customizing treatment.  To this end, medical testing would need to be more extensive and more accurate / "precise".  It is this additional testing, useful for tailoring treatment and monitoring its progress, that is the focus of precision psychiatry:

  The major challenge that precision psychiatry faces is that psychiatry
  does not yet use measurement to track the equivalent of vitals and
  images of the organs of interest, namely the brain and alterations in
  peripheral measures such as blood.

A couple of good examples to consider are schizophrenia and depression.

Schizophrenia was traditionally divided into several symptom-based sub-types.  This categorization was dropped recently, and early genetic research suggested quite different sub-types that might explain why the original sub-types did not work out.  However, sub-types based on genetic profile clusters may also be untenable.  Current research has revealed over 100 genetic loci contributing to schizophrenic symptoms, and suggesting the potential for custom treatments, as many medications have different targets.  Here we have a single diagnosis of schizophrenia done in the traditional way, where additional genetic testing may guide individual treatment.

Depression - the core clinical symptom of major depressive disorder - has several potential treatment regimens, including a variety of medications, psychotherapies, brain stimulation, and alternative therapies such as light exposure and meditation, each of which appear moderately effective across the patient population.  Recently however, some limited research has suggested that brain scans can help predict which therapy would be most effective for each individual.  Here again, we have a standard diagnosis based on patient-reported symptoms, where the addition of brain scans may eventually guide individual treatment and monitoring.

In precision oncology for example (another sub-field of precision medicine), the classification of biomarkers and their corresponding treatments has sometimes led to differential diagnoses, and sometimes not.  For example, breast cancer is known to have several different receptor biomarkers and corresponding treatments, but is not necessarily classified as different types of breast cancer because the biomarkers don't cluster - they are specific to the patient.


What does it mean for someone to "join narratives to explain their experiences"?

I think there is nothing formal psychiatry or psychology related about the psychiatrist's use of language when saying 'people join narratives to explain their experiences'. What he is saying is that people tend to link causally various narratives/stories they have heard of to generate an explanation without much evidence of there being an actual causal link. The joined up narratives then make an appealing sense of things having been explained.

The reason why explanations are appealing is clear upon reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_(game) - there is a very disturbing event - suicide by young people, then there is something of an explanation which seems to make some sense.

See also:

Causal relatedness and importance of story events; Tom Trabasso, Linda L Sperry
Journal of Memory and Language: Volume 24, Issue 5, October 1985, Pages 595-611
https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-596X(85)90048-8


Are mnemonics by creating associations good for memory?

Just a few words on mnemonics before answering your question. I have been practicing for two years. First because I was impressed how easy it was to remember items using these techniques. My personal best time for learning the order of 52 cards is 1min 40s, which is not really good compared to real competitors, but the point is that practicing 30min a day during 3 months can be enough to get this kind of performances. Of course to do that you have to learn a code that binds numbers or cards to predefined images. I can't be more specific because I would risk to be off topic.

However don't expect too much from these techniques concerning real world knowledge. With training you can learn fast as hell a list of words, but learning more semantic knowledge is - I think - more challenging. If you find good images, It can provides you a perfect recall, but you would need spaced repetition to ensure it on the long term. If you don't repeat, you take the risk to loose everything you learned, more than with classic methods I think. Unfortunately, I don't have many sources apart from my experience and experiences of friends to back up this claim. However, I found a study by Wang et al. (1992) cited in part 7 of an interesting review on learning techniques by Dunlosky et al. (2013) which found this effect on the use of mental imagery on vocabulary learning. There is no absolute proof that mnemonic techniques can  work for everything, but (1) it's interesting to see how it works (2) it is funny, especially memory palace building (3) if you spend enough time to learn a code, you can learn phone numbers, credit cards, poker odds and things like that very easily.

Concerning your practical questions, a good approach would be to check how the community proceeds to use mnemonic strategies. Have a look on the Mnemotechnics Forum on ArtOfMemory.com
 for example or their wiki. I think you would get more reliable advices than in books. For example the peg technique you mention (i.e. loci object in your words) is clearly less popular than the use of real place as locis. It has two main advantages :

It provides a good organization (your list order follows the spatial order of your locis). Then to remember your list, you just have to do a mental travel.
It is easier to store an image in a place, no need to find specific association, just picture your mental object like if it were really in your loci and let the magic happen.

Then, to answer your question, you really just need to memorize 1 thing : the images. Loci are just a powerful way to retrieve these images, like a storing device. Images are chosen to be firmly tied up with the item you want to learn so you don't have to spend time to learn the association you made.
Images don't have to be 'absolutely bizzare', it makes things more memorable but it's not an absolute condition. Trying to prove this, a study found no effect for learning a list of words, but I don't have the reference now. Same remarks for the stories. It makes things more memorable, and can provide you some links between the images, but again it's not an absolute condition. Moreover, stories can be very short, like a simple action or context linking the image 1 and the image 2.

You should not waste time and energy on creating associations. On the opposite, you should relax and let them come to your mind, and take the first things popping up. This kind of creativity is not a sort of adult-creativity for which time and work is needed, but rather a sort of child-creativity for which you just have to let your imagination take the control of your thoughts. It should not be a painful task, on the contrary, you should get some fun.

Wang, A. Y., Thomas, M. H., & Ouellette, J. A. (1992). Keyword mnemonic and retention of second-language vocabulary words. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84(4), 520.
Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58.


How to generate networks for dynamic emotion modelling

The networks are a stand-in for a variety of networks coming from various publications with roughly the same shape. For example, these networks from "Emotion-Network Density in Major Depressive Disorder" comparing the causal interaction between different states for those with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Healthy Controls (CTL) in various affective situations:

As well as these networks from "Exploring the underlying structure of mental disorders: cross-diagnostic differences and similarities from a network perspective using both a top-down and a bottom-up approach" doing the same comparison:

The method for creating these networks is covered in detail in "A Network Approach to Psychopathology: New Insights into Clinical Longitudinal Data".


Is it truly necessary to upgrade Tononi's criteria of consciousness in the Integrated Information theory?

Yes in science all things are constantly upgraded. My main concern is that Tegmark's level of specificity has not been validated through peer review so it may be faulty and not suitable to build future theories.

As Rex Kerr points out in examining Tononi's general criteria I'd consider Tegmark's criteria more specific expositions rather than purely novel information. Further specification beyond Tegmark's work seems to be necessary to define consciousness beyond primary like metacognition.

I don't see how a group of conscious individuals like a society having a collective consciousness by sharing information and integrating it into commonality like works of governance, science and art are differentiated from a conscious individual by either Tononi's or Tegmark's current level of specificity.

Edelman, G. M., Tononi, G. (2000). A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination. New York: Basic Books


Strange synchronized brain pulses on EEG using OpenBCI Cyton board

Turns out these pulses are due to software latency in the OpenBCI GUI.  One particular widget, the headshot widget, uses a lot of the CPU causing packet delay, and leads to the pulse pattern.  Once the headshot widget is turned off, then the pulse artifact disappears.

https://github.com/OpenBCI/OpenBCI_GUI/issues/349


Can bipolar disorder be considered a malfunction of the "love circuit" in the human brain?

A Love Circuit?

The idea that there is a "love circuit" has little evidence (for or against it). But in general studies that look at "love" (however defined) reveal broad activation across multiple intrinsic neural networks that are involved in many different cognitive processes (in favor of a constructivist view of emotions).

Consider the image from a meta-analysis (Cacioppo et al., 2012) of functional imaging studies on sexual desire and love:

Both sexual desire and love are associated with greater activation of the insula, hypothalamus, ventral striatum, VTA, amygdala, thalamus, hippocampus, anterior cingulate, and other limbic/cortical areas.  These regions are involved in interoception, memory, conceptualization, core affect, somatosensory integration, motivation, salience detection, and more.

Note, however, that these areas are not specific to love; instead, they are involved in emotional experience more broadly (fear, disgust, anger, happiness, etc.; Touroutoglou, Lindquist, Dickerson, & Barrett, 2015). It's still possible that the above pattern of activation is unique to love; however, this has not been tested (to my knowledge)--nor does it seem plausible in light of other evidence (i.e., Touroutoglou et al., 2015).

Because these brain areas are involved in many cognitive processes, we might imagine that dysfunction in at least some of them is associated with bipolar disorder.

Bipolar Disorder

Consider the image below from a meta-analysis (Chen, Suckling, Lennox, Ooi, & Bullmore, 2011) of functional imaging in bipolar patients:

Compared to healthy controls, bipolar disorder seems to be associated with decreased inferior frontal gyrus activation in response to cognitive or emotional tasks and increased limbic activity (amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, basal ganglia) in response to emotional tasks.

Conclusion

As you can see, there is some overlap with the areas activated for love/sexual desire and bipolar disorder (e.g., limbic structures).

However, this is not compelling evidence that BD somehow involves dysfunction in a "love circuit," as the limbic system is involved in all emotions, not just love. If anything, this suggests that BD is associated with dysfunction in emotion regulation/processing/reactivity (and executive function more broadly; Robinson et al., 2006).


What is the psychological term for reframing that uses false statements?

Short answer
I think you are referring to 'self-deception', or 'interpersonal deception'.

Background
Self-deception is

  a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception.

Self-deception is not simply an erroneous thought, as the acquisition and maintenance of the false belief is intentional not accidental. Self-deceivers apparently must (1) hold contradictory beliefs, and (2) intentionally get themselves to hold a belief they know or believe truly to be false. Therefore, it is related to interpersonal deception, where people intentionally let others to believe something, while knowing or believing truly that that is not true (source: Stanford University).

  Interpersonal deception theory (IDT) attempts to explain how individuals handle actual (or perceived) deception at the conscious or subconscious level while engaged in face-to-face communication.


Mostly it depends on the kind of experiment you're doing. If you're interested in speech (as I was), most of the important information is in the 300-3000 Hz range, where low-frequency noise will have little effect unless it's extremely loud. If the experiment you're doing deals with static or other sounds with broad power spectra, then low frequency noise could have a significant effect.

As with most questions of perception, what matters most isn't really the signal itself but how the signal is changing. It's a big change to go from from silence to loud static. It's a lesser change to go from quiet static to loud static. That difference is more significant than the difference between going from silence to speech and going from quiet static to human speech, because speech is similar to neither silence nor static.


What is Anxiety?
Give this a read.
I like this explanation of anxiety best, however:

  A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.

What is Stress?
Give this a read also.
For an explanation of stress as it pertains to your question, I like this best:

  A state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances.

How do the two differ? One can cause the other.
Give this a read.
Ultimately, stress can lead to anxiety, meaning that mental or emotional strain can lead to a general sense of fear toward imminent events with uncertain outcomes.

Furthermore, everything we experience in our lives where we feel discomfort can be described as stress or stressful, but it's not until it leads to an immobilizing state where we cannot process the world around us – e.g., inability to move, speak or think because of an onset of fear caused, typically, by an interpretation of a previous event where the outcome was too painful, or in other ways emotionally damaging, that one might then attribute said stress to be anxiety.


This is an interesting question as it has been of the opinion of many people around me that people who drive certain cars or are in a particular job or social status are selfish and don't care about anyone but themselves and maybe a little about those in their own circle of people.  But is this true?

TLDR - It seems to be true from studies presented, however there may be exceptions

For context, we need to define 'jerks' and 'rich' within the studies and the YouTube video you linked to (AppSCIENCE, 2018) had the studies and reports linked to it — NPR (2018), Piff, et al. (2012), Roberts & Zarracina (2015) plus others — which backed their claims.

Rich (Definition)

Roberts & Zarracina (2015) linked to the YouTube video talks of rich people being those who are

  at or near "the 1%" in wealth with an average income of $1M per year or more

some others would define it as someone who is substantially more financially well off and can include some below the top 1%.  My answer is based on this definition (see Social class, or socioeconomic status (SES) below).

Jerk (Definition)

The Oxford Living Dictionary defines Jerk as:

  A contemptibly foolish person

whilst the Urban Dictionary says

  Jerks are selfish, manipulative bas****ds

but Piff, et al. (2012) linked to with the YouTube video talked about:

  how social class is associated with unethical behavior, or actions that harm others and are illegal or morally objectionable to one's community

with Social class, or socioeconomic status (SES) being:

  an individual's rank vis-à-vis others in society in terms of wealth, occupational prestige, and education (Adler et al. 2000)(Kraus, Piff, & Keltner, 2011)

and there is a MacArthur scale of subjective SES which was used by Piff et al. (2012).

The evidence

Piff, et al. (2012) conducted 7 studies for their report

  In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals.

Roberts & Zarracina (2015) covered the Washington Post story about water restrictions imposed in the wake of California's drought, and how wealthy people were reacting to them, along with research by Gillens & Page (2014) and Page, Bartels, & Seawright (2013) which were studying the political viewpoints of the elite.

The Washington Post story quoted a wealthy Californian resident to have said:

  I think we’re being overly penalized, and we’re certainly being overly scrutinized by the world," said Gay Butler, an interior designer out for a trail ride on her show horse, Bear. She said her water bill averages about $800 a month.

  It angers me because people aren’t looking at the overall picture," Butler said. "What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on four acres?"

when talking about the fact that everyone had the same limit on water usage.  Defending the amount of water she and her neighbors "need" for their vast estates she also said:

  You could put 20 houses on my property, and they’d have families of at least four. In my house, there is only two of us,” Butler said. So “they’d be using a hell of a lot more water than we’re using.

Possible exceptions

On the other side of the spectrum, Rancho Santa Fe resident Randy Woods was feeling burdened by his lush landscape and opted to downsize. The 60-something chief executive of a biotech company moved a year ago from a two-acre estate — replete with two waterfalls, two Jacuzzis, a swimming pool and an orchard — to a condo in the tiny core of town known as “the Village.”

Woods said some of his friends would like to do the same, largely to cut down on their bloated water bills. But they have encountered an unforeseen obstacle, he said: The drought has dampened demand for large estates in San Diego County.  Another friend, Woods said, has seen the value of his nine-acre plot plummet from 30 million US Dollars to 22 million US Dollars.

So my question with those who are choosing not to sell because of drops in property value is, is this greed at play?  You could say that when you can still get $22M and therefore still live comfortably; plus Piff et al. (2012) states:

  Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.

Piff, et al. (2012) also highlights:

  significant philanthropy displayed by such individuals as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet

but the cynics would say that these people are motivated purely by self-interest rather than acting for honourable or unselfish reasons.  (They are doing it to look good and say "look at how thoughtful I am").

There are also likely to be instances of lower-class individuals exhibiting unethical tendencies, as research on the relationship between concentrations of poverty and violent crime indicates (Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997).

References

Adler, N. E., Epel, E. S., Castellazzo, G., & Ickovics, J. R. (2000). Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: Preliminary data in healthy, White women. Health psychology, 19(6), 586.DOI: 10.1037/0278-6133.19.6.586

AppSCIENCE (2018). Are Rich People Worse Humans? (YouTube Video)Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L90R6PtxFKE

Gilens, M., & Page, B. I. (2014). Testing theories of American politics: Elites, interest groups, and average citizens. Perspectives on politics, 12(3), 564-581.DOI: 10.1017/S1537592714001595

Kraus, M. W., Piff, P. K., & Keltner, D. (2011). Social class as culture: The convergence of resources and rank in the social realm. Current directions in psychological science, 20(4), 246-250.DOI: 10.1177/0963721411414654

NPR (2018). The Power Hour - Hidden Brain: A Conversation About Life's Unseen Patterns (Podcast)Available at: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/23/579976635/the-power-hour

Page, B. I., Bartels, L. M., & Seawright, J. (2013). Democracy and the policy preferences of wealthy Americans. Perspectives on Politics, 11(1), 51-73.DOI: 10.1017/S153759271200360XFree PDF from: James N. Druckman, Department of Political Science, Northwestern University

Piff, P. K., Stancato, D. M., Côté, S., Mendoza-Denton, R., & Keltner, D. (2012). Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(11), 4086-4091.DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1118373109

Roberts, D. & Zarracina, J. (2015). Rich people are jerks, explained VoxAvailable at: https://www.vox.com/2015/6/16/8790357/rich-people-jerks

Sampson, R. J., Raudenbush, S. W., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime: A multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science, 277(5328), 918-924.DOI: 10.1126/science.277.5328.918


Are connections in the human brain directed?

There are two kinds of neuron-to-neuron connections in the brain.  The most well known is the chemical synapse, which is unidirectional.  Despite this, two neurons can each synapse on each other with a chemical synapse, and both types of connection are observable in brain networks (unidirectional and bidirectional)

The second kind of connection is a gap-junction: electrical coupling.  In this case, it can be bidirectional or unidirectional, but all in the same synapse (whereas a bidirectional chemical synapse requires two synapses).

Typically, the chemical synapses are associated with memory.  There have been synapses observed that behave as engrams.


If a two-tailed test shows significance and the mean is higher, can you infer that one condition is significantly higher?

Yes.

A two-tailed test simply corrects for the appropriate probability of observing a difference as large as you observe given the null hypothesis is true. This probability is twice the one-tailed probability (in effect, a two-tailed test with alpha=0.05 is the same as two one-tailed tests each with alpha=0.025). You do not need a one-tailed test to infer the direction. If there is a significant difference with a two-tailed test, it clearly must be in the direction of the observed difference.


Why is sensory substitution not that successful?

Bach-y-Rita's Tactile Vision Substitution System (TVSS) project was initiated in 1963 and he has since been regarded as the founding father of sensory substitution. The concept of sensory substitution refers to the process of obtaining information about the world from a functional sensory system (e.g. touch) that would normally be obtained from a lost sensory system (e.g, vision in the blind).

Bach-y-Rita developed various devices, but his most cited one consisted of 400 vibrotactile solenoids mounted in the back of a dental chair. Camera images were converted into binary ("black and white") tactile representations onto the back of a subject ('seeing with the 'skin') (Bach-y-Rita 1969):

The results obtained with the TVSS were very promising: after sufficient practice (20 – 150 hours), blind subjects were able to perceive movement, recognize shapes and objects, and even identify faces. It also enabled the appreciation of more abstract concepts quite unfamiliar to the blind, such as shadow, depth, looming, zooming and parallax (Bach-y-Rita, 2003). A face projected onto the skin would have felt like something like this (photo of an oscilloscope image representing the voltage stimuli sent from the camera to the vibrotactile display).

However, as the first figure shows, the TVSS was large and bulky. Moreover, it was noisy and power hungry and simply not very useful outside the laboratory. Although various portable variants were constructed, they too suffered these limitations in various degrees:

Bach-y-Rita's work has been extended into electrotactile approaches and the company Wicab is currently marketing the BrainPort V100 device in Europe. It features a head-worn camera to scan the environment and translates these images onto a grid of electrodes that stimulate the tongue to elicit electrotactile sensations (much like a sip of champagne or a soda would do):

It uses electrodes instead of bulky vibrotactors which greatly reduces power consumption and this approach has made a portable application feasible. Electrodes, however, need a moist surface or very high voltages are necessary. A straightforward approach was to apply the electrode grid onto the tongue. The tongue is moist and has excellent resolution. The BrainPort currently features 400 electrodes and is able to provide graded voltages to present gray scale images onto the tongue.

The BrainPort has been marketed fairly recently in Europe (2013) and an FDA study in the US has just been finished. As far as I know they are busy with commercializing there as well.

Regarding your brain plasticity question: There is a wealth of information available on neuroplastic changes in the brain due to the use of the BrainPort or other sensory substitution approaches (VoiCE, EyeMusic etc etc). Basically it has been shown that the deafferented visual cortices are recruited for tactile information processing (e.g. Sadato, 2002), and hence, the brain actively adapts to the new source of information. So no, plastic changes are not the limiting factor.

Hence, the BrainPort (and other sensory substitution approaches like the SonicGuide etc.) is useful, portable, and not less importantly, the brain actively adapts in using the alternative visuo-tactile input by recruiting the visual cortex for processing visuotactile information. Why then haven't sensory substitution approaches conquered the world of visual rehabilitation of the blind"? There are a number of important downsides to sensory substitution devices (SSDs):

SSDs substitute vision (by tactile or acoustic information), they do not restore it;
The limited resolution of SSDs does not allow for detailed target analysis, i.e., discerning the difference between a fork and a knife will be very difficult;
Instead, relying on well-established coping mechanisms and sticking to their usual routines may be far more effective in everyday life. For example, simply touching the fork or spoon will immediately tell them the difference, while scanning them with a SSD takes them ages (i.e., SSDs are not very practical);
The restricted resolution of state-of-the-art SSDs also aids little in orientation and mobility (O&M). In other words, it does not help blind folks to go about. Instead, established methods such as the guide cane and guide dog are far more effective for O&M;
Learning to use a SSD effectively takes a lot of time. Not many people are willing to undergo an arduous rehabilitation program;
In case of the BrainPort - it is very visible to the outside world and not very discreet when a blind person is using it. It is known that 29% of consumers with disabilities abandon the use of assistive devices for reasons unrelated to device performance (Phillips and Zhao, 1993).

References
- Bach-y-Rita 1969. Nature 221:963-4
- Bach-y-Rita 2003. JHCI 15:285-95
- Philips & Zhao 1993. Assistive technology 5:36-45
- Sadato 2002. Neuroimage 16:389-400


Does the Minnesota 12 steps model really produce an effective change in the treatment of drugs addictions?

Grønbæk and Nielsen (2007) conducted a randomized, controlled study of the Minnesota model for treating alcohol dependence in Denmark. 148 alcohol dependent individuals participated. The study reported a significant difference in alcohol abstinence between control and treatment groups when data was aggregated over the one-year period. However, by the end of the one-year followup period, this difference had disappeared. They concluded:

  Twelve months after onset of treatment, the Minnesota day clinic treatment does not differ in effect from the much cheaper ‘standard’ public treatment. However, patients in Minnesota treatment were total abstainers throughout a longer period.

References

Grønbæk, M., & Nielsen, B. (2007). A randomized controlled trial of Minnesota day clinic treatment of alcoholics. Addiction, 102(3), 381-388.


What are the dangers of using mindfulness-based techniques for individuals suffering from Schizophrenia?

I cannot answer your question, because I'm not an expert on schizophrenia, but I would like to point out that the answer will depend on your theory of schizophrenia.

Post-mortem research on the brains of schizophrenic patients has found consistent anomalies:

widening of the ventricles (meaning a loss of subcortical brain cells)
structural abnormalities in the subcortical temporal-limbic areas such as the hyppocampus and basal ganglia
structural abnormalities in the prefrontal and temporal cortex

CT and MRI research on the brains of living schizophrenics has found similar anomalies:

enlarged ventricles
loss of cortical substance in the temporal and frontal areas
reduced volume in the basal ganglia (nucleus caudatus) and limbic structures

It appears that there is a general atrophy of brain tissue in schizophrenics, and from my non-expert knowledge there is nothing you can do to reverse this. Typical therapy in schizophrenia (today) is to give anti-psychotica to reduce symptoms, behavioral therapy to enhance social abilities, and family therapy to reduce hostility, excessive worrying etc. ("expressed emotion" plays a role in the etiology of schizophrenia). So basically what you do is not "heal" the disorder but alleviate the symptoms and help the patients with their everyday problems.

Since cognitive behavioral therapy (in which the patient is encouraged to consciously deal with his thoughts, including, I'd guess, the paranoic ones) is a normal part of clinical routine with schizophrenia, I don't see why mindfulness could not be beneficial. I believe it might well enhance the CBT in the same way as in the therapy of depression, where mindfulness and CBT are successfully applied in conjunction.


Can a shorter IQ test be devised that provides a more approximate measure of IQ?

Yes, what you say is entirely possible. If precision is not as much of an issue, it is possible to devise a test (of anything, not just a test of IQ) which would return a score of, say, 115 plus or minus 10 points. It could also return a yes/no answer to a question such as "is the score inside the range 100..120.

One person who explore such question is Laurencelle, 2015, Le différentiel de sélection multiple [in french] The Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 11(3), 174-188. doi http://dx.doi.org/10.20982/tqmp.11.3.p174


What keeps the cerebrospinal fluid circulating? Is it pumped by something?

There is no evidence that the CSF has a pump. A link to a Chiropract Medicine page (a good one, from my reading) tells us that:

It is something of a misnomer to speak of CSF “circulation,” particularly in the spinal canal, as there is no continuous loop circulation of CSF as in the cardiovascular system. [CEREBROSPINAL FLUID STASIS AND ITS CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Whedon et. al., Altern Ther Health Med. 2009 May–Jun; 15(3): 54–60.]

This is in keeping with the findings of decades of research in western medicine (M.D., Ph.D., D.O., etc.)

For quite some time, it has been known that CSF movement results from the formation of new CSF and motion of cilia on the surface of the choroid plexus and ependyma lining the ventricles. - Fluids and Barriers of the CNS

The "circulation" of the CSF, as already mentioned, is something of a misnomer. CSF is not known to "circulate" in the manner of blood. It does get agitated by pressure differentials, and it is 'circulated' in terms of being reabsorbed and replaced every 6-7 hours. Other than that, no circulation occurs.
Blood circulation is not generated only by the heart. Pressure differentials throughout the body affect the circulation of blood as well. One that is easily demonstrated (first documented in 1733) is the effect of intrathoracic (chest) pressure on circulation. The blood pressure of healthy people falls during spontaneous inspiration. When someone takes a deep breath, the blood return to the heart via the vena cava decreases, and pressure is exerted on the right atrium. Both cause decreased filling, which will drop blood pressure. Although this is best demonstrated with a blood pressure cuff, it can be demonstrated without. An unrecommended method is exemplified in a childhood game of passing out. A Valsalva maneuver (deep breath and glottal closure) decreases blood flow to the heart. Squeezing the chest further decreases return, resulting in fainting.
The same pressure differentials agitate the CSF. Additionally, smaller movements were seen with pressure differentials caused by the beating of the heart.

By employing this respiration-induced spin labeling bSSFP cine method, we were able to visualize CSF movement induced by respiratory excursions. CSF moved cephalad (16.4 ± 7.7 mm) during deep inhalation and caudad (11.6 ± 3.0 mm) during deep exhalation in the prepontine cisternal area. Small but rapid cephalad (3.0 ± 0.4 mm) and caudad (3.0 ± 0.5 mm) movement was observed in the same region during breath holding and is thought to reflect cardiac pulsations.

The image in the OP's question is of a patient with normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) showing pulsations of CSF with heartbeat, nothing more.
There are other factors that cause movement of CSF, but they are intermittent and variable.
Influence of respiration on cerebrospinal fluid movement using magnetic resonance spin labeling, Yamada et. al., Fluids and Barriers of the CNS 2013, 10:36
MRI showing pulsation of CSF


Interpretation & Actual Result of "10% of your brain" Myth

It is correct that only a small percentage of neurons increase their activities  relative to their baseline level in response to   new stimuli or to more abstract thoughts. There are many computational advantages to this. For instance, in deep learning, sparse coding is a class of unsupervised methods for learning sets of over-complete bases to represent data efficiently. Basically you have more combinations to store patterns if you activate a few cells than if you either activate too few or too many.


Significance of 4 stimulus cards in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test?

I cannot tell you why they chose four cards, but I do know that it is perfectly fine to use three, (e.g. Niv and colleagues, 2015).

To give you more info on why the WCST is used in the study by Niv. The study wanted to see how you could best model learning (and relearning) multidimensional information, to be able to better understand how people make sense of the multidimensional information provided by the real world. Therefore, they had participants perform the WCST with three cards. Multiple reinforcement learning algorithms were then fitted to the behavioral data, and they found that a reinforcement learning model that includes decay (as to model memory decay) was best able to do so.

I believe it would have been perfectly fine to have used four cards in that study as well. It would make it more difficult to learn on which dimension to focus, which would probably also be modeled.

There are also variations of the WCST (e.g. Catherwood and colleagues, 2014). In that study they instead of took apart four dimensions and showed a 2x2 matrix with each unit depicting a different dimension.

In short

Depending on the goal of your experiment, you can decide how you would like to use the WCST specifically.


What is the basis on deciding that a certain behavior/tendency is abnormal or a disorder

You can think of "abnormal" in two basic ways:

Statistical abnormality - The extent to which an individual is high or low on some trait compared to the average of the population. This use of the term is value-neutral, meaning that there is nothing inherently good or bad about being close to the average (i.e., "normal") or far from the average (i.e., "abnormal"). For example, an individual with an extremely high IQ is "abnormal" in the same way that someone with an extremely low IQ is "abnormal". In short, statistical normality is just a way to mathematically describe how extreme a value is compared to some reference. The key to this type of "normal" is that the reference point (e.g., mean) is empirically derived. It is simply a numerical description.
Social or clinical abnormality - The extent to which an individual expresses a value on some trait compared to some reference defined by people. This reference point (or set of points) might be defined by society (i.e., social norms) or by experts like clinical psychologists (i.e., diagnostic criteria). The key to these types of "normal" is that the reference point is not value-neutral. In fact, the reference points with social and clinical normativity are usually what is considered "good" by those setting the criteria.

People (professionals included) often fail to distinguish between statistical normality and social/clinical norms, but its important to keep these straight when thinking about mental or behavioral disorders. Saying that an individual is "abnormal" in a statistical sense means something very different than saying that an individual is "abnormal" in a clinical or social sense.

To answer your question:

Your question is about clinical normativity. There is one especially useful criterion that clinical psychologists use to determine whether a patient is presenting as abnormal (or "disordered"): The extent to which a patient's symptoms interfere with everyday functioning and basic well-being. An individual might meet several specific criteria for a disorder (e.g., ADHD, phobias), but if he or she has found a way to maintain stable relationships, keep a job, and is otherwise happy with their life, a clinician might decide against giving a formal diagnosis. In short, the clinician basically asks the patient to identify the things making them miserable and tries to determine if any of the symptoms might be responsible. Things that will tend to push a clinician toward making a diagnosis of a disorder are things like not paying bills, poor social relationships, not leaving the house, drinking too much alcohol, inability to stay employed, feeling anxious or depressed, etc.

Caveats

Of course, the "everyday-functioning/well-being" heuristic isn't perfect, but it is very useful for helping to organize one's thinking about what makes a behavior or disposition "disordered". The main drawback to this heuristic is that there are many things that interfere with everyday functioning that aren't considered disordered, like grief. Grieving over the death of a loved one can be incredibly disruptive to a person's life, but it isn't actually clear that a magic pill that could prevent the grieving process would be a good thing. Is it good for someone to lose their spouse and carry on like nothing happened the next day? Reasonable people can disagree on the answer to this question, but (for now) most clinical psychologists don't consider grieving to be "disordered" unless the person has been grieving for a very long time (e.g., years). So, the "everyday-functioning/well-being" heuristic is generally useful when trying to figure out if something is disordered, but keep in mind that there are many situations in which its application is of limited value.


I suspect that the reason he considers it unmotivated is that he would like to see a theory that can explain the hard problem(s) of consciousness.  In that final paragraph where he argues that the theory is unmotivated, he points out that (in his opinion) IIT seems to do nothing to explain why there is something it is like to be conscious from a subjective viewpoint (i.e., qualia).

My two cents is that I can see Searle's point; it is not clear how IIT would explain these aspects even if it is otherwise completely successful.  On the other hand, calling it "unmotivated" seems a bit unfair; perhaps it would still be useful for other purposes, for example judging whether patients in a hospital are (likely to be) conscious.  A more reasonable claim would be that it is not well motivated by trying to resolve the hard problems of consciousness, but may be well motivated by other goals.


Is there a such thing as collective narcissism?

Possibly worth considering: Theodor W. Adorno.  "What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?" (1959) included among selected writings in "Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader (2003).

Adorno wrote: "On the subjective side, in the psyche of people, National Socialism increased beyond measure the collective narcissism, simply put: national vanity. The individual’s narcissistic instinctual drives, which are promised less and less satisfaction by a callous world and which nonetheless persist undiminished as long as civilization denies them so much, find substitute satisfaction in the identification with the whole. This collective narcissism was severely damaged by the collapse of Hitler’s regime, but the damage occurred at the level of mere factuality, without individuals making themselves conscious of it and thereby coping with it."


How to specify the quickest movement a human can do based on MTM standards?

I don't know about any MTM standards or benchmarks, but motor response latencies have been assessed in many studies. Importantly, auditory response latencies are smallest, then tactile followed by visual response times. This, because the auditory system is swift, while the visual system is sluggish by comparison (source: Packman & Packman).

For example, Jain et al. (2015) report a mean visual response latency of 247 ms and an auditory response latency of 228 ms. Another study reports approximately 144 and 133 ms, respectively. The lower values are probably because the authors chose the lowest reading as their final measurement Gavkare et al, 2013). Other technical differences may also have yielded deviations. Importantly, stimulus intensity affects reaction time (e.g., louder auditory stimuli decrease reaction time) and other stimulus parameters do so as well (source: Packman & Packman). Importantly, age is positively correlated with reaction time (Ng & Chan, 2012).

A large data set where the authors stratified their subject pool in age groups as well as other parameters can be found in Ng & Chan, 2012.

References
- Gavkare et al,, Indian Medical Gazette, June 2013
- Jain et al., Int J Appl Basic Med Res (2015); 5(2)
- Ng & Chan, IMECS (2012)


What became of the CAM-Brain project in Kyoto?

Hah! That's funny, I was just looking for information about this project too. However, I was one of the guys involved (in Robokoneko project, more specifically).

No, it wasn't due to funding issues. Explaining what actually went wrong is a bit lengthy process and goes deeply into philosophy of mind, so to put this as short as possible: what do you think could be achieved in terms of understanding human mind by randomly evolving neural networks? If a being was created, fully aware of its existence, would you be able to tell what led to forming its consciousness? Their goals were absolutely pointless. Costly and hopeless, and with no applications.

There is no need to recreate complex natural processes, especially with (still) very basic understanding of brain machinery, if what needs to be done can be achieved with abstract constructs. My criticism of their approach led to denying me PhD studies and broke my career in science in general. On the other hand, in terms of software and engineering a lot of great people were involved.


How to get started with the glba R-package?

It appears as if the problem was caused by pre-processing using (the amazing) tidyverse package.  When I (a) wrote the dataframe as a .csv file and then uploaded it, the LBA worked (in most subjects) nicely, converged quickly, and yielded sensible estimates.

Thank you!


How does TD-learning explain trace conditioning?

See my comment above, but it is possible to assume that B acquires the same reward value as the original reward, so B can then be treated as a reward, which in turn brings A closer to the reward event (now at time B). Does that make sense? In other words, the addition of B allows the reward value to accrue to B and thus brings A closer to reward.


Does the way you perceive something for the first time have a big influence on future perceptions of similar stimuli?

In social contexts, one area to look is within the field of cognition. John Bargh’s famous experiment (ref below) showed that whether we hold a cold or warm drink in our hand prior to meeting a person for the first time influences our subsequent impression of them - this is called priming.

Stimuli that influence our attitudes to others do not only come from the environment. They also are processed internally. There is a vast field of experiments in social cognition (especially implicit cognition, happening in the first 200 milliseconds or less in ways we are not ‘aware’). These experiments show that unconscious evaluations and categorisations of others happen lightning quick, and influence later (conscious) attitudes we have towards them. These evaluations are made from everything from facial symmetry, height, weight, voice depth, accent, smell, age, gender and status.

We also generalise experiences. Let’s say you once had a negative experience with a man with a beard. Now, you may tend to react in the same way to other men with beards as that original person - no matter that they’re different.

Most of our relationships are built on these entirely arbitrary considerations, which are in all likelihood adaptations from previous evolutionary environmental challenges.

:: Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth

Lawrence E. Williams and John A. Bargh 2008

:: Implicit social cognition

Adam Hahn, Bertram Gawronski 2018


What is the optimal repetition pattern to maximize long term memory?

It sounds like you are interested in the Spacing Effect.
A search on Google Scholar for "spacing effect" for articles published since the year 2000 yields over 2500 articles some of which might be worth pursuing.

Perhaps you might want to start by having a read through the meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin by Cepeda et al (2006). To quote the abstract:

  The authors performed a meta-analysis of the distributed practice
  effect to illuminate the effects of temporal variables that have been
  neglected in previous reviews. This review found 839 assessments of
  distributed practice in 317 experiments located in 184 articles.
  Effects of spacing (consecutive massed presentations vs. spaced
  learning episodes) and lag (less spaced vs. more spaced learning
  episodes) were examined, as were expanding interstudy interval (ISI)
  effects. Analyses suggest that ISI and retention interval operate
  jointly to affect final-test retention; specifically, the ISI
  producing maximal retention increased as retention interval increased.

You may also want to read Pavlik and Anderson (2008). They used a computational model of known spacing and practice effects in order to try to develop an optimal practice schedule for maximising learning and retention.

References

Cepeda, N.J. and Pashler, H. and Vul, E. and Wixted, J.T. and Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological bulletin, 132, 354. PDF
Pavlik, P. I and Anderson, J. R. (2008). Using a model to compute the optimal schedule of practice. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14, 101. PDF


What effects does spending a lot of time in online communities have on interpersonal skills?

There seems to be a difference between social community users and non-users (e.g. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.01.026), but these are only correlative data, not causative, but in a recent study "Facebook usage was found to interact with measures of psychological well-being, suggesting that it might be beneficial to students experiencing low self-esteem and low life satisfaction." (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2010.550063)

This is just a quick hint and doesn't comprehensively answer your question, but maybe the articles contain references to other research.

Follow the links to get to the original publications and a short abstract describing the study and results.

More stuff I found through a Google Scholar search for "online communities effects":

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC411092/
http://repository.maestra.net/valutazione/MaterialeSarti/articoli/Johnson-Survey.pdf
etc.

I don't know, if any of this is relevant, I just want to give you ideas to do your own research.

If you access Google Scholar through a university network, you'll get links to most of the articles, otherwise you'll still be able to read most of the abstracts.


Is there a definitive list of intrinsic motivators?

While I wouldn't and cannot claim anything conclusive about intrinsic motivation, as far as I know, Self-Determination Theory (SDT, see below) is quite accredited. In short, at its core it postulates that humans are motivated by three innate psychological needs: Autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Moreover, I believe that the motivating factors listed in the question can be reduced to the three needs postulated by SDT.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68


There is no true frame rate of the eyes, but there are limitations.  The brain uses blurring to simulate continuity.  Films are shot at 24 frames per second; if you go too much lower than that, the film will seem choppy.  This is because the motion blurring process is too fast and it finishes "blurring" before the frame changes, so you just see choppy frames.  If it's a bit faster, suddenly the blurring occurs in a time frame on the order of the frame changing and it looks smooth.

Similarly, audio doesn't really have a frame rate, but there are limitations to what frequencies the sensory can transmit into neural code. ~(20 Hz - 20kHz).

So you do see some kind of frame rate for perception being plausible, and it turns out that higher-level perception rates are not fixed, but depends on the modality of the perceptions themselves:

  Recanzone has recently demonstrated that the perceived rate at which people judge a light to be flickering on and off can also be modulated by the rate at which a concurrent stream of auditory stimuli are presented

Even if there weren't a frame rate, due to differences in processing times between the two systems, there would still be a synchronization process required:

  Light travels through air far more rapidly than sound: 300,000,000 versus 330 metres per second. Differences in arrival time also occur for events that occur much closer to us, and yet we are rarely aware of them. Part of the reason for this is that the mechanical transduction of sound waves at the ear takes less time than that required for the chemical transduction of light at the retina. These physical and biophysical differences in the arrival time of light and sound cancel each other out when stimuli are approximately 10 metres from us, at the so-called ‘horizon of simultaneity’. Given most audiovisual events are not perceived at this ‘optimal’ distance, however, psychologists, neuroscientists and even philosophers have long puzzled over why the perception of multisensory synchrony should be such a pervasive aspect of our everyday phenomenology.

Spence, Charles, and Sarah Squire. Multisensory integration: maintaining the perception of synchrony. Current Biology 13.13 (2003): R519-R521.


What is the optimal exercise regime for improving cognitive functioning?

Yes, there are several  studies which found links between the amount of training and the effect of it on cognitive abilities. See the below for references and summaries of some of these:

Jaeggi, Susanne M., et al. "Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105.19 (2008): 6829-6833.

Jaeggi et al. found that dual n-back could improve fluid intelligence. This approach has been developed into a game, and this game which can be freely played online.

However, more recent research has failed to support its effectiveness for normal individuals, although I have read anecdotal evidence for effectiveness in increasing mental ability in older adults or individuals with ADHD.

Overall, it appears that the literature suggests that brain training does not work, that "the scientific literature does not support claims that the use of software-based “brain games” alters neural functioning in ways that improve general cognitive performance in everyday life, or prevent cognitive slowing and brain disease."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doesn-t-make-you-smarter/

However, working your brain hard through education has been linked to increases in IQ so maybe that is the best approach.

Winship, Christopher, and Sanders Korenman. "Does staying in school make you smarter? The effect of education on IQ in The Bell Curve." Intelligence, Genes, and Success. Springer New York, 1997. 215-234.


What is the difference between biological and artificial neural networks?

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are mathematical constructs, originally designed to approximate biological neurons. Each "neuron" is a relatively simple element --- for example, summing its inputs and applying a threshold to the result, to determine the output of that "neuron".

Several decades of research went into discovering how to build network architectures using these mathematical constructs, and how to automatically set the weighting on each of the connections between the neurons to perform a wide range of tasks. For example, ANNs can do things like recognition of hand-written digits.

A "biological neural network" would refer to any group of connected biological nerve cells. Your brain is a biological neural network, so is a number of neurons grown together in a dish so that they form synaptic connections. The term "biological neural network" is not very precise; it doesn't define a particular biological structure.

In the same way, an ANN can mean any of a large number of mathematical "neuron"-like constructs, connected in any of a large number of ways, to perform any of a large number of tasks.


Are axon terminals always part of a synapse, or are there any that just release neurotransmitters into the ether during an action potential?

By "ether" I mean to no post-synaptic cell in particular.

Yes; this is an important mechanism, as it allows the volume conduction of neuroactive chemicals. For example, many brainstem nucleus, such as the locus coeruleus, are small in size, yet affect much or even most of the cortex by this mechanism. Neurotransmitters are released and diffuse in the fluid-filled extracellular space (what you call "ether"), affecting many cells at once without making specific synaptic contact with any of them.

This mode of conduction is slow and spatially nonspecific compared to synaptic transmission, but it underlies much of neuromodulation, such as the setting of cortical states via norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin etc.

  If this is the case, how common is it for an axon terminal to not be part of a synapse?

This depends on what brain systems you're talking about. Intracortical connections and most direct afferent and efferent projections are mostly synaptic (since they require speed), but many other systems are greatly, or even mostly, volume conducting. Again, the brainstem nuclei are a good example, but gut neurons are another.

  Related question: do axon terminals form only as part of a synapse? Or are they formed ahead of time, and then connect to form synapses as needed?

Some synapse quickly, others never synapse.

References

Vizi, E. S. & B. Lendvai (2008): Synaptic and Nonsynaptic Release of Transmitters. Handbook of Neurochemistry and Molecular Neurobiology, pp 101-111

Taber, Katherine H. & Robin A. Hurley (2014): Volume Transmission in the Brain: Beyond the Synapse. The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 4-4.


What does the following sentence mean? I don't understand what they are referring to when they say "saturating concentrations" and "basal conditions"?

I will rewrite the sentence another way that preserves what a believe is the intended meaning:

There is little enough BH4 under normal conditions such that levels of BH4 are important for TH activity.

BH4 is an enzyme cofactor; in this context they're talking about it used with tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) to make a precursor (L-DOPA) to dopamine.
If there was so much BH4 available at basal (normal) conditions that adding more doesn't speed up TH activity, we can say it's saturated. In that context, BH4 changes don't really regulate TH activity (unless they are huge changes that bring it well below the 'saturated' level).
The sentence you quoted is saying this isn't the case. BH4 isn't present at saturated levels, so you can influence TH activity (and therefore synthesis of L-DOPA) by influencing BH4 concentration.


List of psychological conditions, disorders and illnesses

The DSM-5 is the current version of the diagnostic manual of the APA.
It's hard to say there is any such thing as a "strict neuro-psychiatric" definition; these definitions are by their nature not strict at all, but the DSM is probably the closest thing to some level of unified understanding in the field. That doesn't mean everyone agrees with it - they certainly don't - and you can infer from changes from edition to edition that it is all far from settled.