问:
What causes us to perceive a person's gaze as meaningful?
I have seen time and time again, both in literature and in conversations with people I know, people describing someone's eyes. What I mean is that I have come across phrases like "Focused gaze", "Vacant gaze", "Fearful eyes", "Eyes lighting up", "Eyes glazed over",etc. What exactly is it that causes one to perceive another's gaze as focused, vacant, etc? Is it how often and how much the pupils contract? Is it the frequency of saccades? Is it something else? What is it about the eyes that causes us to perceive a person's gaze as having a certain meaning?</p>


问:
What is a validated online tool to administer Stroop and N-back test?
I'm trying to conduct a study in the field of cognitive experimental psychiatry. I need an online tool on a PC-based setup to administer Stroop, N-back, and choice reaction time tests. I found Psytoolkit an open-source tool than has Stroop and N-back and it is programmable. But I'm not sure whether this tool is validated or not. By validation, I mean whether N-back test measures working memory (as it is supposed to) or not when running the test on Psytoolkit.
I'm looking for validated online cognitive tests if anyone knows. Thanks.</p>

ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0


问:
Why is median motor nerve conduction velocity about 50 m/s?
I recently started reading Fitzgerald's clinical neuroanatomy and neuroscience (Mtui, et al. 2015) and reached chapter 12, electrodiagnostic examination, yesterday. The chapter deals, i.a., with nerve conduction studies and how to determine motor/sensory nerve conduction velocity (MNCV/SNCV). MNCV is about 50 m/s in a young, healthy adult as presented in the book. In a previous chapter, however, the reader is told that A$\alpha$ axons have conduction velocities ranging from 80 - 120 m/s which I also verified.

Isn't this contradictory? How can median nerve MNCV be less than the previously mentioned velocity? I know there are several fibers of a different type in the median nerve but shouldn't much rather scattering occur? What am I missing? Any help is greatly appreciated!

References

Mtui, E., Gruener, G., & Dockery, P. (2015). Fitzgerald's Clinical Neuroanatomy and Neuroscience. Philadelphia, PA:Elsevier.


问:
Is there any empirical support to "chemical imbalance theory" for mental illness?
Has it been proved by measurement of chemicals in the brain that psychiatric disorders have either their origin or continuance due to chemical imbalance in the brain? I saw the documentary Diagnostic & Statistical Manual: Psychiatry's Deadliest Scam which calls the chemical imbalance theory a fraud by people labelled as eminent practitioners of Psychology & Psychiatry. Is there a difference of opinion among experts in this field?


问:
Does studying multiples subjects in parallel effect performance?
Researches shown that multitasking is really bad.

But, does studying multiple subjects in parallel comes under it?

Is it okay to switch between the subjects (mathematics, physics, biology, ....) In small amounts of time (say 15-30 minutes)?  Is there any research on it whether is efficient or not for comprehending and deep understanding of subjects?

My personal experience: I tried to study 4 subjects in parallel for every 15-30 minutes (based on interest on the subject or boredom on the subject )for each subject, I notice an increase in my studying time and the breadth, as well as the depth of topics and I, 'm not getting any boredom and constantly thinking about subjects. So, feeling better than studying only a single subject for more time (say 3 hours).


问:
Looking for a paper: Fear response in a computer generated VR environment
I am writing a paper on why people ascribe certain qualities to certain places. I seem to recall an experiment where the subjects used a virtual reality system to navigate a completely fictional computer-generated underground space. A significant number of them chose the same 'spookiest place' and IIRC some quoted some spaces as being colder then others. I recall that it was a response to the claim that since so many people reported feeling of unease in a certain spot in an allegedly haunted house then it must be of supernatural origin. The common response to a fictional place seems to help disprove this claim.

I currently have a section on people ascribing positive emotions and responses to places but I am looking for the fear and anxiety response to a place.

Does anyone know of this experiment and can direct me to a paper? I have been searching most of the morning but cannot find anything.

Thanks


问:
Which neurodevelopmental disorders constitute learning disabilities?
I am actually looking at DSM-5 but I cannot find any exhaustive or otherwise comprehensive list or explicit association of which neurodevelopmental disorders are also learning disabilities.</p>


问:
Psychoanalysis and its metaphores derived from ancient Greek mythology
Introduction:

It's fascinating how many of the key concepts of psychoanalysis are presented by metaphores of the ancient Greek mythology. One might wonder whether the Greek mythology is actually the whole psychoanalysis in disguise.

Some examples to remember are the myth of “Narcissus and Echo” (embodied in Freud's essay "On Narcissism"), the Oedipus and Electra complexes, the Icarus complex, the Medusa complex.

Question:

My question is, could the building blocks of psychoanalysis be derived from the mythologies of other peoples, as well?

(The same questions from another perspective: could we find corresponding myths in the mythologies of other cultures. E.g, is there an equivalent to the myth of “Narcissus and Echo” in the mythologies of other cultures?)


问:
What is the psychology behind epiphany?
What are the neural precursors that lead up to the epiphany? How can one, have more creative insights? How this affects our psyche? What's the psychology behind it?

The word "epiphany" has a deep, archetypal resonance for us, dating back to ancient Greece. It comes from the Greek "epiphaneia," meaning "appearance" or "manifestation," and referred to the revelations brought to us by the gods. Today "epiphany" carries a range of meanings, including "an intuitive grasp of reality," "an illuminating discovery, realization, disclosure, or insight," or simply "a revealing scene or moment."

An ephiphany may change your life and most likely the life of the people around you. It could be as simple as braking a mental model, which could open many new doors or neural pathways... For that matter, lets share an interesting examples:

Allegedly Albert Einstein was struck as a young child by being given a
  compass, and realizing that some unseen force in space was making it
  move. Another, perhaps better, example from Einstein's life occurred
  in 1905 after he had spent an evening unsuccessfully trying to
  reconcile Newtonian physics and Maxwell's equations. While taking a
  trolley car to home, he looked behind him at the receding clocktower in
  Bern and realized that if the car sped up close to the speed of light,
  he would see the clock slow down; with this thought, he later
  remarked, "a storm broke loose in my mind," which would allow him to
  understand special relativity. Einstein had a second epiphany two
  years later in 1907 which he called "the happiest thought of my life"
  when he imagined an elevator falling, and realized that a passenger
  would not be able to tell the difference between the weightlessness of
  falling, and the weightlessness of space - a thought which allowed him
  to generalize his theory of relativity to include gravity as a
  curvature in spacetime.

What is happening on the psychological level when one experience such "aha moment"?

EDIT: What conceptual models of epiphany are out there?

Title: What is the psychology behind epiphany?


问:
Do any personality factors reduce illusory superiority?
Apparently individuals suffering from schizotypy lack illusory superiority in one particular domain: evaluation of their affect. That is to say, neurotypicals overrate their positive affect (and underrate their negative one), whereas individuals with schizotypy don't do either relative to how their affect is perceived by others.

There's another article which concludes that the five-factor model is good enough to capture schizotypy, although in practice (insofar) specialized tests are used to detect the latter.

That begs the following question: do any of the big five personality factors, especially those that load most heavily on schizotypy (neuroticism, introversion, low openness to experience) have a moderating effect on illusory superiority (in some domain) on their own? By "on their own" I mean: is there a correlation between any of the big five (or even HEXACO) factors and lessened illusory superiority (on some issue), including via an interaction effect of the factors, but found without segregating the sample into schizotypy and non-schizotypy?

N.B.: I'm aware of the controversy surrounding depressive realism, but let's stick just to personality here.


问:
Hypotheses about neural coding and neural correlates of concepts and reasoning - at the level of neurons and synapses
Are there some hypotheses about neural coding of language, concepts and logical reasoning in the brain, about neural correlates of thoughts? When I search the books, then I find lot of books about neural coding, but they are mostly about representation of stimuli and generation of action and not about thought processes.

I am interested in the emergence of mind in the brain-like neural networks. I guess, that the final answer is not yet given (and maybe never will), but there should be some hypothesis and my question is about those hypotheses.

I am interested in the microscopic theories only, only the level of neurons and synapses. I am aware of the research, that uses fMRI and similar technologies, but they are exploring only mesoscopic lever. GEVI (genetically engineered voltage indicators) are promising tools for microscopic exploration and there are efforts to use them. So - there should be also hypotheses at the microscopic level about emergence of mind.


问:
Are there specialized strategies for those with slight math disabilities?
I don't have very strong Dyscalculia, but I still have a generalized math disability, and despite receiving double-time to do quizzes and exams in my Calculus 1 course, I am still struggling to achieve the C grade I need to move onto Calc 2 which is required for my Computer Science major.

I want to improve at math and I am curious if there are specialized strategies people like me might benefit from.

I understand self-help questions are banned here, but judging by the response to the meta-site post regarding that. It seems like it might be allowable if the answers to the question can provide help to more than just the individual who posted the question.


问:
Data Cleaning - Stroop Test: Trying to find a paper than cleans the stroop test for individual questions
I am looking for papers that did data cleaning on stroop test results in terms of individual questions.

For example, for an individual stroop test Q, remove results that took less than 200ms and more than 3000ms.

I used http://doodlegames.com/stroop/ to conduct my stroop test so I have data that looks like this:

I'm planning on using average reaction time but am unsure how to clean my data.


问:
How is illusory superiority reconciled with the false-consensus effect?
On one hand, people often seem to exhibit various forms of illusory [self-]superiority, perhaps the best known example of that being the Dunning–Kruger effect.

On the other hand, the false consensus effect aka social projection seems to work in the opposite direction of making the subject believe he is more similar to others (by making the subject assume the others are [more] similar to him).

Is there an integrative account of these two effects? When does one dominate and when does the other?


问:
How long it would take to form a conceptual framework to justify a belief?
From what I understand, the reason to set 1 week as the time between two therapy sessions is for the clients to do homework, which can be: take notes on recursive thoughts and emotions, remember important information that lead to the belief, rewire the brain to build a new habit. (In case of threaten of suicide, it is allowed to have more than one session in one week.)

But from my experience, it takes up to 3 days or less to fully remember the necessary information and organize it in a clear, succinct manner. At then, the person basically satisfies with the answer, and only need to wait for feedback. We can say that the rest 4 days are for them to continue challenging their own view, but it seems that any new information that come up are just minor points, and don't really change the original outline of the answer.

Question: How long does it take to assimilate information, recall memory, verbalize tacit knowledge and organize them as a conceptual framework to justify the belief? Is the number 3 a typical number for most people, or is it just me?

I would exclude other non-cognitive factors, like having a day-job. The belief doesn't need to be true either.

A consequence is that the 1 week waiting between sessions could be different in cognitive therapy, since I think in a logical discussion, any emotions that are evoked will quickly be overcome, as long as the client concentrate on the logic.


问:
In Transactional Analysis, how can one kill or at least voice down the "Critical Parent" ego state?
The Parent ego state is like a tape recorder full of pre- judged, prejudiced, pre-programmed statements. These "taped" statements can get activated while we are in our Adult or Child and then we can actually hear them as "voices in our heads." The Parental tapes can feel good or bad depending on which Parent makes them. In other personality theories, the harmful Critical Parent voices are known as the harsh super-ego, negative self-talk, cognitive traps, low self-esteem, punitive protector or catastrophic expectations.

My question: What are the methods or options to either voice down or mute the Critical Parent?

Reference:

Transactional Analysis

The ego-state (or Parent–Adult–Child
(PAC)) models


问:
At what point does a human become self-aware?
What are the conditions for being self-aware? If this answer can not be answered by naming specific traits, behavior unique to a self-aware being, complexity of development or other tangible concepts, is there at least a time frame after conception, when we suspect self-awareness arises?

EDIT: As pointed out in one of the comments, my question lacks more information on the research I have done prior to asking it. The background for my question, arises from a discussion of pre- and postnatal development of humans during a seminar held at Department of Psychology at Charles University of Prague. So far, I have come across a lot "we don't really know", "many signs ..of self-awareness", biased religious theories, or answers more specific, but philosophical. Accurate methods of testing, such as MSR, do not provide a good general answer. So, to rephrase my question a little, is there some kind of general / 'official' concensus on the subject?


问:
Can frissons provide an accurate metric to gauge emotional intelligence?
This relates to my other post Frissons on demand. As is stated in the abstract of the cited source below (which discusses voluntarily controlled piloerection), the ability correlates with personality traits of openness to new experiences, and highly emotionally developed parts of the brain:

"Compared to previously collected samples, participants reported significantly higher openness to experience, and absorption in response to aesthetic situations. These preliminary findings suggest that this rare and unusual physiological ability has strong emotional and personality correlates."

https://peerj.com/preprints/26594/

So my question is, can frissons provide an accurate metric to measure EQ (emotional intelligence)?


问:
Are we programmed to live together?
In general, the humane tendency is to couple with only one person and to be faithful to one's only partner. So dating someone else is very poorly looked.

But there are in some parts of Africa, for example, people in whom having relationships with other people is normal, even if you are married.
Is it normal for humans to have one partner and to have strong feelings (such as jealousy and anger) when the partner is interested in someone else or when they go elsewhere? or is it society and evolution that taught us to think like that?

Title: Are we programmed to live together?


问:
Is decision making inference?
Inference is the process of generating further premises from information. Sperber et al (2012) write:

'An inference, as the term is used in psychology, is a process that, given some input information reliably yields as output further information that is likely to be true if the input information is. Inference is involved not only in thinking but also in perception and in motor control. When you see a three-dimensional object, a house or a horse, for instance, you have sensory information only about the part of its surface that reflects light to your retina, and perceiving it as a house or as a horse involves inferring from this sensory information about a surface the kind of three-dimensional object it is. When you decide to grasp, say, a mug, you use your perception of the mug and of your own bodily position in space to infer at each moment throughout the movement the best way to carry out you intention. Inferences so understood are performed not only by humans but by all species endowed with cognitive capacities. They are an essential ingredient of any cognitive system.'

Judgement and decision making are different processes.

Judgement, the process of generating factual conclusions from evidence using generalisations is clearly inference. Jolls et al (1998) refer to judgement as '[assessing] the probability of an uncertain event.' Baron (2008) confirms '[T]he term “judgment,” ... refers to the process of inference.'

However, is decision making, the process of choosing a course of action based on a judgement about the state of the world also an inference? If not, what is it?

Decision making is described by Tor (2008) as:

'...how individuals choose among the alternatives available to them...'

Title: Is decision making inference?


问:
Has ordering people along a Ape to Human diagram, as a measure of dehumanization for people in general, been validated in any way?
Has ordering people along a Ape to Human diagram, as a measure of dehumanization for people in general, been validated in any way?

Because it seems, if confronted with such a diagram and asking people where to place a specific person, or group of people...

It seems rife with the possibility of jokey answers, or only those thoroughly convinced in their belief of there being humans of unequal worth, such that it'd be more a test for whether someone is an unashamed racist or anti-vegan or some such, instead of a test about whether there's implicit dehumanization, like there are tests of implicit bias.

Is there any proof that the tests can screen out joke answers and are applicable to people who are not unashamed discriminators?

I don't have any access to journal subscriptions, so I wouldn't know where to go to check if there's been any proof that it successfully tests for deliberately hidden / repressed / implicit dehumanization.

Places where such a test has been described as being used, as reported by Vice.

Researchers have now found an explanation for why many drivers act out toward cyclists: They are actually dehumanizing people who ride bikes, according to an April study by Australian researchers in the journal Transportation Research.

[...]

The researchers asked 442 Australians, including those who identified as cyclists, to rank the average cyclist on a scale from ape to human. This ape-to-human diagram has been used in other studies, like this one from 2015, looking at the dehumanization of marginalized groups, such as Muslims and black people.

The April 2019 article says, in its abstract:

This paper presents a pilot study applying two validated dehumanization measures to a road user group for the first time.

OwnerDisplayName: Malandy


问:
In Bowen theory, what is the different between Emotion and Feeling
I'm reading Family Evaluation and Bowen/Kerr keep referring to Emotion and Feeling. Those seem like the same thing to me, so I'm wondering what the difference is between them.

Example:
"Objectivity and the associated autonomy from one's environment derive from the capacity to recognize the difference between emotional, feeling, subjective and objective responses and to act based on that recognition."

Obviously "objective", "subjective" and "emotional" are distinct concepts, but how is "feeling" different than "emotional"?


问:
Why do teenage girls "fall in love" with idols?
Why do teenage girls "fall in love" with idols they never met?

This behaviour is much more uncommon (if it happens at all) among teenage boys (At least in my experience. I also did a quick survey among around a dozen adults, half men, half women, none of the men recalled something like this from their teens, most of the women did.).


问:
Is there a real benefit to starting grade 1 at a older age? If so, why?
I think that some people think people should start school at the normal age instead of older because they claim they might become too old to learn. I learned from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7jHT7Tumcw that in China, students start learning fractions at a very young age and then end up learning them quite well and quickly. According to https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/science-says-were-sending-our-kids-to-school-much-too-early-and-that-can-hurt-th.html, it's better to start school at an older age. I think they mean it's better to start grade 1 at an older age because of course those who don't go to kindergarten then start grade 1 at the normal age start an an older age than those who do go to kindergarten then start grade 1 a year later than normal. Maybe for some things people can become too old to learn. For example, Mary and Janelle from Sister Wives were raised very differently and then they had trouble understanding each other's way of thinking until they went to a therapist to understand each other. That doesn't mean there's a universal tendency for everything to be harder to learn when you're older. Maybe the real reason why students in China learn fractions so quickly and well is not because they're taught so young but either because of the method they're taught fractions as described in the video or because there's a general tendency for Chinese people to be more likely to be smart because of their genome.

Maybe Mary and Janelle being too old to learn each other's way of thinking actually meant they were very smart. They cannot possibly figure out absolutely everything anyone else can figure out like a God and maybe being too old to learn means they're smart enough to be quite well aware that although there are risks with doing things exactly the way they are used to, there are also risks with trying doing things in a new and different way.

I think that in addition to that, sometimes when somebody learns something while they're so young, they're more likely to misinterpret what they're getting taught. This answer appears to support my claim. According to https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/926/whence-the-everything-is-linear-phenomenon-and-what-can-we-do-about-it, maybe some students learn something wrong and then after unlearn it later. Also in one episode of "My 600 lb life" the adult patient who is overweight during the episode, at the time she was 5, her parents kept saying "You're too fat. You can't have it" meaning dessert and then she thought it was a punishment for being fat and got very depressed. Unconsciously, that's probably because it's possible to deduce from the fact that she got a punishment that she did something wrong. I think that actually she was too young to be able to figure out how to interpret the message the way she was intended to and an older person who's fat if that was said to them would be able to figure out that the parents weren't trying to be so mean and meant they should not have dessert because it's very sweet and might make them fatter and then they might die of a heart attack.

Is it actually true that students tend to learn better from school when they start grade 1 at an older age? If so, could one reason be because those who start grade 1 at the normal age are more likely to face the problem where they are not yet ready to learn the basics and then they move on from the basics before they were ready to be able to learn them and then struggle to learn the later material because they're missing the basics? Could another possible reason be because they're less likely to be young enough to misinterpret what they're getting taught?


问:
What are some examples of psychosis in people who have major depression?
What are some examples of psychosis in people who have major depression? Especially how do delusions show up?

"Experiencing psychosis can be frightening and confusing, and
  psychosis can present in a variety of ways.

Symptoms of psychosis include:

delusions, also known as false beliefs or false perceptions

hallucinations,

or seeing or hearing things that are not present
  paranoia"
  (link)


问:
Is there a structural difference between Nerve cells in the Somatic and Autonomic Nervous Systems
Do the actual nerve cells in the Somatic and Autonomic Nervous Systems have a different structure or chemical make up or are they the same thing just separate systems?</p>


问:
Relaxing your concepts in meditation
I am using the app Waking up from Sam Harris. A lot of his guided meditations tell you to perceive the world as the raw data of experience, instead of perceiving objects and concepts. To illustrate gazing at your visual field and only observing the colours and contrast, not objects. It is reasonable to wonder if this can happen.

Where in the brain could this change possibly happen. I suppose it is higher-level vision processing. Signals from the retina are relayed further to LGN and the visual cortex, where they are mapped as states of what we are perceiving. Where can this change of perception happen?

EDIT that could possibly explain this is the so called feature integration theory, which states that feature are perceived early, automatically and in parallel, while objects are identified separately.

Title: Relaxing your concepts in meditation


问:
What is the state of the art on the wiring optimisation problem?
One of the earliest neuroscientists, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, postulated that brains are arranged to minimise wire length [1]. In [1] Dmitri Chklovskii and Charles Stevens formulate this problem as follows:

Wiring a brain presents formidable problems because of the extremely
  large number of connections: a microliter of cortex contains
  approximately 105 neurons, 109 synapses, and 4 km ofaxons, with 60% of
  the cortical volume being taken up with "wire", half of this by axons
  and the other half by dendrites. [ 1] Each cortical neighborhood must
  have exactly the right balance of components; if too many cell bodies
  were present in a particular mm cube, for example, insufficient space
  would remain for the axons, dendrites and synapses. Here we ask "What
  fraction of the cortical volume should be wires (axons + dendrites)?"

While the formulation of this problem continues to evolve and its solution is far from settled, I am motivated by its potential impact on different areas of neuroscience. In particular, the areas of developmental neuroscience, network neuroscience and biophysics(i.e. the energetic constraints on information processing in human brains).

Due to its historical importance and potential impact on the field of neuroscience, I'd like to learn more about the state-of-the-art on this problem. From my own literature review and a question I asked on Twitter, I managed to gather the following references listed below.

In this context, are there essential post-2000 publications that aren't in this reference list? One thing I find curious is that although there has been an explosion of neuroscience data since the year 2010 nearly half the papers I have found that directly attempt to answer the question were written before 2010.

References:

D. Chklovskii, C. Stevens. Wiring optimization in the brain. NIPS. 2000.

D. Van Essen. A tension-based theory of morphogenesis and compact wiring in the nervous system. Nature. 1997.

G. Shepherd, A. Stepanyants, I. Bureau, D. Chklovskii and K. Svoboda. Geometric and functional organization of cortical circuits. Nature Neuroscience. 2005.

M. Kaiser & C. Hilgetag. Nonoptimal Component Placement, but Short Processing Paths, due to Long-Distance Projections in Neural Systems. PLOS. 2006.

A. Stepanyants, L. Martinez, A. Ferecskó , and Z. Kisvárda. The fractions of short- and long-range connections in the visual cortex. PNAS. 2008.

Q. Wena, A. Stepanyants, G. Elstonc, A. Grosberg, and D. Chklovskii. Maximization of the connectivity repertoire as a statistical principle governing the shapes of dendritic arbors. PNAS. 2009.

C. Cherniak. Neural Wiring Optimization. 2011.

E. Bullmore , O. Sporns.The economy of brain network organization. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2012.

M. Hofman. Evolution of the human brain: when bigger is better. Frontiers in Neuroanatomy. 2014.

A. Gushchin, A. Tang. Total Wiring Length Minimization of C. elegans Neural Network: A Constrained Optimization Approach. PLOS. 2015.

J. Niven. Neuronal energy consumption: biophysics, efficiency and evolution. 2016.

I. Wang & T.Clandinin. The Influence of Wiring Economy on Nervous System Evolution. Current Biology. 2016.

S. Srinivasan, C. Stevens. Scaling principles of distributed circuits. biorxiv. 2018.

J. Stiso & D. Bassett. Spatial Embedding Imposes Constraints on the Network Architectures. Arxiv. 2018.
of Neural Systems


问:
Generosity in the World Happiness Score
One factor in the World Happiness Score is generosity. I had trouble to understand what this actually means and how it enters into the score.

These were my specific questions:

Does "generosity" mean that the individuals feel or are generous themselves (which feels good)?

Does it mean that the individuals experience generosity by their fellow citizens (which would affect happiness in a different way)?

Does it mean that the individuals experience generosity by their government or employer or other superior party?

Does it mean all of this together, giving a cumulated number of some kind?

Why is generosity preferred to other similar factors like fairness or solidarity?

At Politics (Beta) I got this answer:

According to https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2019/changing-world-happiness/

Generosity is the residual of regressing the national average of GWP responses to the question “Have you donated money to a charity in the past month?” on GDP per capita.

But for several reasons, this question - even with regression to GDP per capita - doesn't give a good measure for generosity, I believe:

Many people (in the Western world) donate money mainly around Christmas.

The amount of money they donate can hardly be considered really "generous".

Many people in poorer regions of the world don't have enough money to give some of it away (but possibly other things).

So my questions are:

Why did "generosity" enter into the World Happiness Score nevertheless, and in the way it does? And why so prominently, on an equal footing with social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, and - also quite surprisingly - perceptions of corruption?

Why is especially "generosity" believed to help quantifying "happiness"?

(Of course it's easy to believe that someone who is generous and experiences generosity is happier than someone who is greedy and experiences greed. But the same holds for fairness, solidarity, etc.)

Title: Generosity in the World Happiness Score


问:
Are there scientifically grounded alternatives to analytical psychotherapy?
I'm a physicist and am interested in exploring taking therapies to help me overcome anxieties and other issues that I have that seem to me to be psychologically founded. Anecdotally, a few people close to me have been in therapy over the years and have strongly advocated its efficacy. However, and equally, someone close to me tried therapy and found it useless. Moreover, as a scientist I am deeply sceptical of psychoanalysis as a theory and therefore quite adverse to contributing to its continuation.

So, are there alternative therapeutic techniques I could consider that have a more objective, scientific grounding? Or, am I simply wrong headed and modern psychoanalysis has evolved to the extent that it can be considered objective and scientific?


问:
Is there a double dissociation between face and object processing?
We know of the condition called prosopagnosia in which the processing of faces is impaired. Is there a condition in which the processing of faces is intact and the processing of objects is impaired, which would prove a double dissociation, which would further prove the independence of these two processes. </p>


问:
Are there any psychological studies of thirst following food that account for SFO-Nos1 activity?
Some studies up to 2015 surprising found that salty vs. non-salty food doesn't make much difference to thirst. E.g. a 2015 study found that:

However, according to Prof. Leshem, despite our gut feeling that salt increases drinking, this relationship has not been studied in conditions simulating salt-rich foods such as savory appetizers. Therefore, in the present study involving 58 student participants, Prof. Leshem sought to investigate the effect of salt in solid foods on drinking. Participants were scheduled to come to the lab every few days after not having eaten or drunk anything except water, and not having smoked, for two hours. On the days they came, they were asked to taste nuts -- one time sugary candied nuts, another time salted nuts, and yet a third time nuts with no additives. They rated their level of thirst and, during a couple of hours in which they responded to various questionnaires, they got bottles of water. Each subject could drink as much water as he or she wanted.

The main finding was that the level of reported thirst and the actual quantity of water that the subjects drank after eating salty nuts were not different than following consumption of candied nuts or nuts without added flavors. To more deeply examine a possible correlation, the researchers selected the 10 male and 10 female students who had consumed the largest quantities of salt (an average of 4.4 grams and 3.7 grams respectively) and sought to determine whether within this subgroup there was a connection between thirst and drinking, but here too no such correlation was found. This means that even those subjects who consumed larger quantities of salt did not drink more.

This despite the well-known osmotic mechanism that promotes thirst in response to salt intake, and which is verified experimentally in humans, when using hypertonic vs isotonic infusions.

A 2016 study in Nature sheds some light on this issue, basically finding that, in mice at least, SFO-Nos1 neurons anticipate any changes in actual osmotic response; the longer the mice ate, the thirstier they got, well before there were any osmotic changes detected by their brains. Alas, these changes were only detectable using optogenetic photometry, not some non-invasive techniques like fMRI.

So, I'm curious if there are any (post-2016) human studies of thirst due to food ingestion (of various kinds) that attempt to account for the multiple [animal] neural pathways that trigger thirst (which very likely have an equivalent in humans.) E.g. we now expect that thirst might get [almost] equally great eating any kind of peanuts (salty or sweet) in a short time frame, but maybe there's a difference in thirst in a medium (or at least slightly longer) time frame between salty and non-salty peanuts.


问:
Understanding the effect of a sudden cardiac arrest (lethal and/or non-lethal) on the psychological health of family/friends/survivors
Hello Psychology and Neuroscience. I am a resuscitation scientist exploring a largely neglected topic area in our field - the effect of cardiac arrest on the people around the event, mostly the family members of the deceased or survivor. These are sorts of articles that I am finding impactful:

Liu W-M, Forbat L, Anderson K: Death of a close friend: Short and long-term impacts on physical, psychological and social well-being. PLOS ONE. Edited by Papousek I. 2019;April 4;14(4):e0214838.

McLaughlin KA, Greif Green J, Gruber MJ, et al.: Childhood Adversities and First Onset of Psychiatric Disorders in a National Sample of US Adolescents. Archives of General Psychiatry. 2012;November 1;69(11):1151.

If anyone is familiar with this area of study or knows of any seminal articles, please let me know. I'm always looking for collaborators. I am specifically working towards formalizing the care of family members of cardiac arrest victims.

Thank you!


问:
If self-control is the executive function to resist temptation, how does the brain decide what is and what is not a temptation?
What determines the "default behaviour" if no self-control is applied?

Most documents refer to satisfaction of immediate desire, but that does not seem to explain how quite sophisticated behaviors can occur as the result of a failure of self-control. A temptation to eat fast food which involves purchasing it, or to consume internet pornography, can require higher or executive functions to satisfy in terms of computer operation and engagement with a purchasing process. A temptation to take illegal drugs can potentially require delaying gratification for an unknown period of time (to find a supplier).

So is there research on what determines the behavior without self-control, and how it is able to "hijack" executive functions that should rightfully be limiting the undesirable behavior?


问:
What are the thoughs of a blind and deaf person?
I've always asked myself of what are made the thoughs of a blind and deaf person... Are they made of concepts? Sensations? Ideas? Have we ever asked a blind and deaf person about that?</p>


问:
Are orgnizations like European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP) or European Family Therapy Association (EFTA) genuine?
My sibling mentioned me about her idea of pursuing a additional post-university training for obtaining an EAP and EFTA compliant certificate for psychotherapy.

I raised a question regarding the credibility of such programs, which visibly made her feel uneasy.

I have a technical background, and scam and pay per publish conferences and journals are very common in my field, and given my experience I can easily tell what a scam is in my field. However, my sister has little experience in her field, i.e., psychology, so I would like to make sure that she does not take the wrong path. The price of the course that she mentioned was over $3000 for a 4 year training.

In short: are EAP and EFTA trainings genuine? What is the worth of their certification programs in the field?

Note: I apologize if this question is inappropriate to anyone who might be associated to those organizations, but as I said, my background knowledge is very limited, but at the same time I want to be a helpful bro.


问:
Is it possible that information is stored based on similarity in the working memory?
Baddeley's model suggests two buffers in the working memory: a phonological loop for acoustic, and a visuospatial sketchpad for visual information. The evidence is that auditory interference caused more performance decrease in auditory rather than visual tasks, and vice versa.

But I don't think that this is a very big evidence for the theory, that is because, instead of two separate buffers for different kinds of information, perhaps the information held in working memory is more susceptible to similar information, and there is only one storage unit in the working memory.

For example, it is possible that a verbal task in French can more easily be affected by a French rather than English interference. (well... maybe this was not a good example, because there are many external factors here)

Is there any study which supports this idea? I couldn't find any, probably because my choice of keywords was not good.


问:
Is a deeper capability of feeling emotions linked to a higher intellectual intelligence?
Kazimierz Dąbrowski, in his Positive disintegration theory talks about overexcitability as the most evident aspect of developmental potential. He distinguishes five types of overexcitabilties: psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational and emotional. The emotional excitability, according to the Wikipedia

is characterised by heightened, intense feelings, extreme experience
  of complex emotions, identification with others' feelings to the point
  of actual experience and strong sentimental expression

These overexcitabilities tend to be present to different extents in gifted people, so it seems reasonable to think that in this case, a deeper capability of feeling emotions is linked to a higher intellectual intelligence.

Does this also happen in the wild? Are there any studies that not only establish the intellectual development of the species that surround us, but also their capability to feel emotions, and any correlation between that?

Ultimately, is intellectual intelligence development associated to emotional development? Are emotions needed to develop intellectual intelligence in a species?


问:
Will acquiring a second language improves the person's general intelligence and reading?
According to this information will acquiring a second language improves the person's general intelligence and reading, even if the individual started learning and have learned it after the age of 18?

How scienctifically and/or empirically accurate is the studies and information?

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-27634990

https://youtu.be/RXeDNkVauh4


问:
What is the personality type of King David?
Based on the books of old testament, can we tell what kind of personality King David had?

I am mainly interested in the five factor model and MBTI.


问:
What thoughts should one contemplate to minimize sleep latency?
While trying to fall asleep on night, I was wondering what my strategy would be if I was challenged to a competition where the goal was to fall asleep as fast as possible once I was lying in bed. The only degree of freedom would be thoughts. I.e., we assume I can't take a sleeping pill or exploit any other external factors (which are assumed to be averaged out).

What thinking strategies would likely yield the best results in terms of sleep latency? We're considering an average person here (i.e., not a person with special circumstances like insomnia or a biological predisposition/talent for falling asleep immediately).

That rumination will lead to the complete opposite effect has been documented in several studies (here's one among many) and is also intuitive. It has also been shown that gratitude reduces sleep latency. For me personally, imagining myself in cozy environments (e.g., a treehouse covered in moss) has been more effective than any other strategy (including mindfulness, trying to think about nothing, counting and others). The worst thought strategy for me was observing the process of falling asleep and I've never been able to fall asleep while in this mode of thinking (while I have been able to with heavy rumination in some cases).

Besides gratitude, have there been other thinking modes that have proven effective or are likely to be effective to minimize sleep latency? Perhaps there are other common themes in the positive psychology literature that pose likely candidates.


问:
Question about interrole conflict
Katz & Kahn defined the interrole conflict as a conflict between two roles that are incompatibles, or when more than one person has the same role.

I had a question today in an exam about role conflicts induced stress in the workplace and wondered if someone could shed some light about this.

Its a true/false question that goes like this:

```<code>A policeman is in a situation where he must rescue someone while risking his own security.
This is an interrole conflict. (T/F)
</code>```

I wrote false, because the question does not imply the policeman necessarily has other roles in conflict with this one. For example what if he doesn't have any family, any friends, etc.? But I ain't sure! Is simply being alive an implicit role? Is being healthy and in a state of security a role?

Isn't it more an intra role conflict then? In the sense his job probably doesn't ask for him having to put his own security at risk? I found this one quite difficult to answer.

I would like some opinions on this! I want to understand this correctly.

Thanks a lot for any help!

Title: Question about interrole conflict


问:
Is there any guideline on how a layman giving support for another layman on their psychological problems?
I am being contacted by a stranger for having some understandings about a psychological disorder (in this case, BPD). I will help them what I know, in my ability, but I want to avoid the assumption that I know the best, or any unintended harm on their therapy. I think the form of this support has been around for a long time, and basically we can rely on common sense to operate. However, is there a complete guideline for kind of situation?</p>


问:
How important is it to have a job that is aligned with one’s passion?
Ever since I left high school I kept reading and being told that it was of great importance to look for a job that alignes with one’s passion. Brochures distributed by both high schools and universities were stressing the need to choose the right subject; and judging from newspaper articles even a new profession had appeared, namely the “carrier advisor”, who was supposed to help high school graduates find the job or course that was aligned with their talents and passions. While I can’t remember this explicitely stated, I have feeling that it was implicetly assumed that one’s passion was not subject to their conscious choice, rather it had been predetermined (by genes? environmental influences in early childhood? I don’t know), and so it was important that one correctly discovers what really interests them and what they are really talented at.

In the field of IT I kept hearing similar stuff. Namely, I witnessed quite a few times when an experienced programmer was straightly recommending someone to not continue pursuing qualifications in this field. The arguments were usually along the lines of this:

If you have to make yourself programming or learning to program, if you don’t program because you deeply love this work and wouldn't go for a higher paid job even if you had an opportunity - do yourself a favor and find a different job. If you like programming in your spare time, do yourself a favor and keep it as a hobby. Going to this profession because it is well-paid is a major misunderstanding. You will soon hate your job so much that the very thought of sitting in front of the computer again will make you want to vomit. You might even become a decent programmer, but you will never be a great one, and those are paid best – so you will not even be getting the proper money you want in exchange for your wasting of your health.

I remember university trainers also saying something similar, however, they were putting more emphasis on the need to have the proper innate talents.

So I kind of accepted the above as facts.

However, then I asked a man I know who is a psychologist and, as far as I'm aware, is highly respected in his field. To my surprise he told me something entirely contrary:

Go ask a miner if he has a deep passion for his job and if he loves it so much that he wouldn’t exchenge it for a more highly paid one even if he could. He will tell you, ‘F*** off, I do this because I have a wife and kids to feed, I hate my job!’ And yet the society needs miners. All this talk about the need to find a job aligned to one’s passions completely ignores the simple fact that the main purpose of having a job is not to fulfill one’s passions but to make a living. While it is good to have a job one also has a passion for, this is a secondary goal, only to be pursued after one has already achieved financial stability. Ironically, those who reject the opportunity to work at a stable, relatively convenient and well-paid job because they choose to pursue their dreams to be, say, musicians or athletes or any other high-risk occupation often fail and have to work in a lowly qualified, poorly paid, tiresome and inconvenient jobs that do not even give them opportunities to pursue their hobbies in spare time. I also do not believe that IT is any different – on the contrary, a passionless job in IT might provide one necessary foundations to start trying to requalify.

I must say I'm confused.

To add one last thing to the mix. In the Uni we were told that symbolic operations, commonly found in computer science, mathematics, programming, and the likes, are not what our brains evolved to and, therefore, they are painful for our brains and one has to force themselves to perform such operations; as opposed to e.g. pattern-matching our brains like to do and are good at. Thus, people usually do not like, do not want and will not perform symbolic operations unless this innate aversion is offset by necessity or rewarded by satisfaction.

I’m now left with 4 hypotheses, not sure which one (if any) is correct…

It is unconditionally necessary for a job to be aligned with one’s passions, otherwise their quality of life and satisfaction will suffer greatly. (But the miner example! – on the other hand, I remember having read that many people are farmers out of deep passion rather than necessity, so maybe it also applies to lowly qualified, physical labors?)

A person may work physically without deep passion – this will be suboptimal but not unsustainable. As many people work at McDonald’s. However, highly qualified, intellectual work actually requires deep passion, because otherwise the subjectively felt urge to not work in this field and rather find something else to do may become unendurable.

This requirement to have a deep passion for one’s work is a trait appurtenant to intellectual work that requires symbolic opperations, like mathematics, programming or science; a person may, however, do a more humanities-related intellectual work out of pragmatism rather than passion.

The need to have a passion for one’s job is being over-emphasised regardless of the scope; it is first and foremost required to find any job that allows one to make a living and it is possible to work at such a job even without passion. Then, and only then, a passion may be pursued.

I suppose this topic had to be tackled by experts? What is the correct answer?


问:
Separation of romantic and sexual attraction
Occasionally I meet people who say that they are sexually attracted to X group of people (e.g. men) and romantically attracted to Y group of people, X and Y not being the same (Sometimes they overlap, e.g. a bisexual person who is only romantically attracted to people of the opposite gender,but sometimes not at all). Recently I got into an argument with a friend about to what extent this viewpoint (i.e. to what extent such separation is real vs. imagined) is supported by professional researchers and by hard data.

I found a variety of old articles regarding distinguishing between the different neurological and evolutionary bases for these being different separate systems:

(https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1019888024255) Defining the Brain Systems of Lust, Romantic Attraction, and Attachment

(https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1986-21992-001) A triangular theory of love.

and a couple articles from Lisa Diamond which specifically address whether these two modes of attraction can diverge:

(http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.110.1.173) What does sexual orientation orient? A biobehavioral model distinguishing romantic love and sexual desire.

(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.00287.x) Emerging Perspectives on Distinctions Between Romantic Love and Sexual Desire

In the lattermost article, Diamond argues in the abstract "not only can humans experience these feelings separately, but an individual's sexual predisposition for the same sex, the other sex, or both sexes may not circumscribe his or her capacity to fall in love with partners of either gender."

Diamond's work, being the work most directly addressing the question, seems to give a pretty direct answer - yes, this separation a real thing. The articles are very highly cited, making me think that this viewpoint is viewed favorably throughout the field.

However, my friend is not convinced and demands further evidence. I've had trouble finding more research or data that follows up on this topic one way or another. Is there more recent research or data on this question that follows up or supports Diamond's work? Diamond herself admits that she doesn't have much hard-data to draw upon at the time (over 15 years ago).


问:
Phrase for: Something needs a name before it can be perceived
Is there a word or a (catch) phrase for the phenomenon that after something (that is often more or less complex, mostly abstract) has a name, it becomes recognisable and usable?

An example where this happened is the perception of serendipity after the name "serendipity" for the referred henomenon was invented / became popular.

It may overlap with the baader-meinhof-phenomenon / frequency illusion, but in my experience there is more to it than an illusion, fallacy or bias.


问:
Should I make all my decisions standing up?
Does the brain work better:

...sitting rather than lying down.

...standing rather than sitting.

...walking rather than standing.

I have found this research, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3973903/, The effect of body posture on cognitive performance: a question of sleep quality, but it does not speak to decision making. The same for http://razlab.mcgill.ca/docs/Body_posture_alters_human_resting_state.pdf.

Can you offer examples of studies of cognitive function vs. body position.


问:
Patterns in psychosomatic pains
In the case of somatoform disorders, when considering such a disorder where seeing the scenes of the surroundings and sensing a series of  psychosomatic pains in a specific way, is there a name for that type of somatoform disorder?

Updated:

For example, psychotic pains are such that, for example, during anxiety thoughts in the upper right region of the apadiancy or thoughts and emotions related to the affection of the pain in the heart area and ...

This situation is somehow associated with repressive mechanisms and in some way when there is no possibility of feeling emotionally or there is a lot of work. Some psychologist said to me about Conversion disorder.

Title: Patterns in psychosomatic pains


问:
Can you prevent your biases from swaying your logic if you're aware of them?
As in the title.
Assuming you are aware of all your biases,and how they interact with your ideas, can you foresee how your biases will warp your judgement or logic, and stop that from happening?

Living a bias free life sounds like a lot of work though, my curiosity is simply in knowing if it would be possible to do so with the necessary knowledge, or if there is some sort of bias-avoiding killer hidden somewhere in the brain.

It looks like similar questions have been asked before, but none literally answer mine.
Introspection Illusion, IF it affects you only when comparing yourself to others, then it's of no obstruction to my question.
Superficially, the Introspection illusion doesn't look like a roadblock if all you're considering is "I know i like strawberries. I like no other fruit i tried, so if given the choice between strawberries and other fruit i tried, i will always pick the former."

The Bias Blindspot, superficially doesn't look like a negative answer to my question either.
Confirmation Bias is a good candidate for a negative answer. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201504/what-is-confirmation-bias) As described by the writer, Confirmation Bias is caused by wishful thinking and desires. But what if one was to remove any emotional investment from a belief, if that's even an option? Charles Darwin was a strong advocate of this detachment from information.

Here (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917255/) are listed some ways to avoid bias in a research setting, but what about normal everyday life? That's what i'm most interested in, and no reseach i was able to find can answer yes or no decisively. After all, everyday life is a flood of information.

If i may use myself as an example, i get slightly sick when i am typing biased arguments or fallacious ones, usually before i actually write them out, but sometimes the revelation of bias comes to me later on.
One example was one time i was talking about abuse, and having been the target of some types of abuse, i recognised beforehand (Because i was getting sick after predicting where my conclusion was going), that i was about to say that all abuse is equally damaging, but only based on my experience, and not on hard data or some experiment's conclusion. My experience was blinding my conclusion and i noticed, but can you do that with every bias out there?

I definitely don't think of myself as avoiding all bias just because very often i feel sick during debates or essays. When i have the information, i can also reliably predict my future behaviour, and if i can't, i just say "I don't know". It would still be useful to know if some research which i can't access because i'm a mere layman said anything about it.


问:
How can I learn Integrated information Theory
I'm looking for a syllabus for Integrated Information Theory that could help a non-scientists learn all the fundamental concepts required to fully understand IIT

It looks like it involves statistics, algorithms, and perhaps even some calculus, but I'm not sure what kinds.

I'm looking for a list of papers/ Courses/ subjects/ textbooks that could help me go from a basic understanding of IIT to a full understanding of its mathematical framework (Transition probability matrices,  discrete Markovian dynamical systems, etc).

FYI: My highest level of math was differential calculus, but that was a long time ago, so I would need a refresher on that as well.

Thank you!


问:
Supposed 'brain training'
The term brain training is nothing new, however how effective is the 'N-back' method, does this work scientifically speaking?

There are mixed reviews on this:
one claiming it works
https://www.highiqpro.com/dual-n-back/latest-n-back-training-studies

Another it doesn't
https://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/more/articles/brain-training-still-not-vital

Title: Supposed 'brain training'


问:
Is thought disorder directly treatable with pharmacotherapy?
Thought disorder is usually secondary to psychosis or schizophrenia. But there are those that have some form of thought disorder without any positive psychotic symptoms.

Is there any medication indicated directly for the treatment of thought disorder? Could it be treated using ADD stimulants? Atypical antipsychotics perhaps?


问:
Upper Bounds on Rat Maze Complexity
Suppose you make a rat run through a maze to find it's food. Every day, you put the rat into the same maze. The first few times this rat has to run the maze, it will probably take a little while to figure out. After doing it several times, the rat will find a path through the maze and stick to it; he'll make a habit out of each turn, and become an expert in his path, finding the food quickly every day.

I'm wondering: has anyone ever performed a study quantifying rat-maze complexity in terms of the number of decisions (left, right, or straight), and then measuring the number of daily maze-traversals required before the rat habituates a path through the maze for his food?

Does the number of traversals required to habituate a path increase linearly with the number of decision-points in the maze, or is there a curve in the relationship between traversals and decision-points?

Is there an upper-bounds on complexity, where the rat will no longer be able to habituate a path?

The reason I ask is first of all just to learn about animal psychology, but also to provide myself with an organic baseline for path-finding and path-normalization algorithms I'm writing into some code for a programming project.

ETA: Also, if you cite a study, please link me to it. Google knows I like code, and won't give me anything but programmer links when I google rat-maze stuff. I don't know what to search for to find actual rat studies.

Title: Upper Bounds on Rat Maze Complexity


问:
How do we imagine a mammal?
Say we have a sentence like, "Yesterday, I saw a giant mammal."
Or, "The monkey ate a piece of fruit".

These things are impossible to visualise. Because, for example, a mammal could be a big yellow giraffe, or a small grey mouse.
A fruit, likewise could be a yellow banana, or a purple grape.

Have there been any experiements to see what people visualise when the sentence is generic like this?

I think the alternatives are:

No visualisation, the brain just hears the words.

The brain visualises some sort of blurry combination of all mammal types.

The brain jumps between visualisations of different mammal types.

The brain chooses a random mammal type and sticks with it until further
notice.

Or something else.

I think for me "mammal" conjures up some sort of medium sized furry creature much like a giant wombat.
For fruit it conjures up a round, juicy object, with no specific colour. (I don't think I can imagine colours). Probably closest to a plum.

Title: How do we imagine a mammal?


问:
Does learning by heart improve memorizing abilities?
Some people around me believe that if you learn poems by heart in childhood, it will help you to memorize things better further. They say about improvements in memory in general: things like mathematical formulas, historical facts, and even to remember better conversations in real life.
I'm talking not about using some memorizing techniques, but about the ability to remember things better if you have "trained" your memory (short-time one?) by learning poems (not songs, not formulas, not stories).

I looked for answers on Quora, but they look like "I think" or "Researchers say" without any references to rated scientific journals.
Are there any scientific works on this topic?


问:
What's it called when you read a book with a particular focus and that focus is what you see and remember but other topics you forget?
I sometimes read with a particular focus or goal and don"t remember the things outside of my focus/goal even though I've read them. What is this phenomena called?

For example, you can read a religious text focusing on one subject and not notice the symbolism, then switch focus to symbolism and the symbols come to light. Switch your focus to numerology then you begin to notice the numbers in the story. That is three different things literal, symbolic, numerologic, and this phenomena is not limited to those things but also topic switching changes what you see in a story.


问:
Survey Kits for Political Affiliation?
Are there any widely used suites for measuring a subject's political views? Looking for something commonly cited beyond web quiz time sink quality.</p>

Title: Survey Kits for Political Affiliation?


问:
Why do some people not remember their dreams?
Why does the ability to recall dreams varies greatly from person to person?

Why Some Remember Dreams, Others Don't
https://www.livescience.com/38856-why-people-recall-dreams.html

I decided to ask my question because I read the above article, but the article is from August 13, 2013.  Bahar Gholipour is a staff writer for LiveScience. What have we learned about people's ability to recall their dreams since 2013?


问:
Active Sources Extraction
I am using the LORETA-KEY software for source localization, which gives as an output the current density of each voxel.

No voxel has zero current density, so which method should be used to decide the active sources?

Is the Region Of Interest (ROI) appropiate?

Title: Active Sources Extraction


问:
Could endowment effect be explained by unsurity about the object?
I'm reading about Endowment Effect on Wikipedia.

One of the ways of stating it seems to be

People's maximum willingness to pay (WTP) to acquire an object is typically lower than the least amount they are willing to accept (WTA)

There is a long list of explanations on the page, a lot of them attributing it to psychological factors, but I was wondering if it could be a product of rational reasoning that when you have owned a an object, you have had time to inspect it and use it in various ways. On the other hand, when you have to buy it, that assurance of quality isn't present, and hence the difference between the value.

I was wondering if this reasoning could be a valid explanation or not, and if it can be then if it has been already suggested as an explanation.


问:
What research is there into content of conversations vs IQ?
I wonder if there is any research into the content of a conversation between two people and how that relates to IQ. My casual conversations are that people of, lets say a more humble background, which generally correlates to a lower IQ, the topics of conversation tend to involve:

Food: What did you have for dinner.

Drink: How many pints did you/will you have this evening/last night.

Relations: Who said what to who, e.g. "He said.. then she said... then.."

What you like: Do you like Jam? I like Jam. Do you like Marmalade? I like Marmalade.

i.e. fairly simple stuff. I don't think it would be too hard to program that into a computer. In fact, I would even say there is a lower form of conversation along the lines of:

"Alright?" "Aye" "Yup." "Aye". "Ow's it going?" "Aye. Good." "Yup". "Aye".

(Some might argue that such utterances actually have deeper meaning learned through years of use.)

Whereas I would characterise higher IQ conversations tend to involve more imagination, meta-language, "And then he said... but why? And what were the motives?" Critical thinking, and going against the grain. But then this could be because it's more socially acceptable to have these ideas, whereas in working class areas you don't want to be seen as different or above your station.

I don't think this is a class thing. Because you can have quite rich people whose conversations are quite simple. e.g. like the stereotype of the Valley Girl who just like talks about like clothes like thing like.


问:
Scoring of the Wechsler Nonverbal Scale of Ability
How is the global test score supposed to be computed based on the individual scores in the Wechsler Nonverbal Scale of Ability?

Let's say the sub-test scores are A, B, C, and D.

From there:

how do we obtain the global score? is it age dependent?

I understand that the standard deviation on the total score is 15. Is this correct?

how is the confidence interval computed? is it symmetric around the "measured" value?


问:
What's the pathfinding algorithm the human brain uses?
I was trying to build a software simulation of people using different pathways in a city to get from point A to point B. I do know the Dijkstra's algorithm and the A* algorithm, but what they do is to find the shortest path between two nodes. Those algorithms can be used to do it, but they problem is that they only do that, they just find the perfect shortest path. And when I see realistic population movements in a city, I see different people choose different pathways to get from point A to point B, even the same person sometimes chooses a different pathway in two different moments.

I know part of that depends on emotional factors that would be impossible to predict. But my point is that when you look at a map and you decide yourself the path you are going to use to go from you location to a desired destination, you don't seem to run a Dijkstra or A* algorithm in your brain. In fact, I can't possible know the length of every road which is something necessary to run a Dijkstra or an A* algorithm. What algorithm does the brain use to choose a path? It's clearly not always the shortest path. I'm not just talking about the seemingly randomness that other factors like safety of the road can add to the result, or other emotional factors. Because even if my only goal is to choose the shortest path between two points, I am probably going to choose a pathway that is different from the one another person would choose, even with the same goal. I even saw that men and women tend to have brains adapted for this in a different way; in this Brain Games episode from National Geographic they briefly mention it, I don't know how scientifically accurate it is, but well, that's why I am asking.

I shorter words, I'm curious about the actual pathfinding algorithm the human brain uses. If there's one at all. Is there any paper or source that I could read about this?


问:
Does learning to compose music change our perceptions? Even without playing or singing
I am aware that the music and IQ question has already been asked. But I am not focused on IQ or intelligence here. Let me explain. Four years ago I taught myself music from scratch; I didn't know what a note was. I taught myself to compose. Even though I cannot play an instrument or sing. Four years later I can compose complex music both with staves and in a DAW. Changes I have noticed over 4 years of daily intensive music composing:
[1] I can hear musical detail that I could not 4 years ago.
[2] I can remember complex music easily; 4 years ago I couldnt remember any music.
[3] I can remember and change music in my mind to new music easily.
[4] I cannot remember lyrics anymore. Because I absorb lyrics and turn them into melody patterns instead. So I replay them as melodies that don't remove words, but create non recallable words.

Most of the four years has been spent in either Finale, a composing program, or in a DAW [digital audio workstation] called FL Studio. I have made classical, piano and electronic music. It's hard to quantify my hours spent composing over 4 years - it's been endless. Throughout it I am self taught from books; I've taken no lessons.

I can only present my experiences. I am not a psychologist or brain expert. So I have no access to studies.

Thank you.


问:
Why people feel more sleepy while doing something that's not interesting even when they are not actually tired?
We often see people and students yawning while reading a boring course book. But, when told about something interesting, their sleepiness vanishes.

Why and how does this happen? What are the exact hormones or biochemical pathways involved?

[NOTE: This is seen more when the temperature is slightly below body temperature at around 20-18°C. How does temperature play a role in facilitating this process?]
Thanks

OwnerDisplayName: Martin Medro


问:
Criterion versus Convergent Validity
I have some difficulties distinguishing criterion and convergent validity. According to Wikipedia, the difference is that criterion validity really focuses on predicting scores on another test, whilst converging validity is concerned with finding correlations between tests or variables that are theoretically assumed to be related (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrent_validity; To avoid any confusion: I know that concurrent validity is a subtype of criterion validity).
However, I found a multiple choice question online that confused me:

Scores on a final exam are related to student grade point average, the amount of time spent studying for the exam, and class attendance. What type of validity is demonstrated in this case?
A) convergent validity
B) discriminant validity
C) criterion validity

Apparently, the right answer is A), but I think you could still argue for C) in the following manner:
Scores on the final exam is the outcome measure and GPA, amount of time spent studying, and class attendance predict it.

Title: Criterion versus Convergent Validity


问:
What happens to the brains that are utilized during studies afterwards?
The procedures may vary from country to country, but I'm wondering if they are cremated or otherwise disintegrated.</p>


问:
Is there any research into the effectiveness of the "Zettelkasten" (slip box) method of processing notes?
In the book "How to take smart notes: one simple technique to boost writing, learning and thinking: for students, academics and nonfiction book writers" by Söhnke Arens the author makes the claim that using the "Zettelkasten" method for organizing notes is highly effective. To support this argument the author points to Niklas Luhmann who was a very productive social scientist in the 20th century and used the method. However the author does not actually cite any research that proves that the system works for everyone. Is there actually any research? If not, is there any consensus on which system students should use to organize their knowledge?

Edit: Here is Luhmann himself explaining his system.
http://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes


问:
how do Transcendental Meditation and mindfulness differ in terms of dealing with individual's anxiety?
I want to know how these two forms of approaches differ in terms of guiding a person's anxiety and helping them heal. there has been no research done using these two forms of meditation together on testing anxiety. they have been studied separately. So I had wanted to know, how they differ in terms of helping anxious individuals.
after reading this article i wanted to suggest understanding from the behalf of others, as i am new here :)
refrence:
Tacón, Anna M., et al. "Mindfulness meditation, anxiety reduction, and heart disease: a pilot study." Family & community health 26.1 (2003): 25-33.</p>


问:
Does OCD play a major contribution in an individuals suffering from anorexia nervosa?
Although  I have seen several studies that did substantiate low self esteem having a significant correlation with anorexia nervosa, but does OCD also play a major contribution in understanding the behavioral patterns  in an individual suffering from anorexia nervosa.
this question came into my mind when i read an article regarding Obsessive compulsive disorder among anorexia and bulimia patients
refrence :
Lilenfeld, L., Kaye, W., Greeno, C., Merikangas, K., Plotnicov, K., Pollice, C., Rao, R., Strober, M., Bulik, C. and Nagy, L. (1998). A Controlled Family Study of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. Archives of General Psychiatry, 55(7), p.603. </p>


问:
Do plants feel emotional pain as humans and animals do?
I have a question in mind regarding about plants. I remember there is an experiment where plants raised in good environment with compliments tends to flourish and grows bigger compare to the plants raise in a bad environment. Which leads me to ponder on the question whether do plants feel's emotions  the same way as humans do even though they do not have any means of expressing it.</p>


问:
How common is it to include unmedicated patients in first episode psychosis (or any type of psychosis) studies?
Is anyone familiar with this open access study?

Radua, J., Borgwardt, S., Crescini, A., Mataix-Cols, D., Meyer-Lindenberg, A., McGuire, P. K., & Fusar-Poli, P. (2012). Multimodal meta-analysis of structural and functional brain changes in first episode psychosis and the effects of antipsychotic medication. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 36(10), 2325-2333. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.07.012

I'm surprised by the included studies. 76% of FEP patients in the structural group (965 patients) received antipsychotics, and only 53% of FEP patients in the functional group (362 patients) received medication. I always assumed studies on FEP using medication-naive patients were almost unheard for ethical concerns. Unless I'm mistaken, that's not the case.

"Forty-three studies met inclusion criteria (Fig. 1). Specifically, in the structural meta-analysis, we included 965 FEP subjects (mean age 24, range 15–35 years; 34% females; 76% receiving antipsychotic treatment), matched with 1040 controls (mean age 26, range 15–35 years; 34% females). The cognitive tasks functional imaging cohort included 362 FEP subjects (mean age 26, range 19–36 years; 31% females; 53% receiving antipsychotic treatment)."


问:
What to call variables that measures human's random preferences to select a given experimental stimuli?
I understand that in some cases, given a set of objects, human subjects asked to randomly select one will tend to favor one over others.

We all know the situation where "37" will be favored when asked to select a random number between 1 and 100, and I'd once heard that the top right square of a square divided into four squares will be favored, etc.

My question is: what is the name for these types of variables? (Schleiderman Variables? Steinman Variables?...)

Thank you.


问:
How to generate functional connectivity matrices after first-level analysis in CONN toolbox?
I have a single subject data(T1w and rs-fMRI BOLD). I am wanting to generate functional connecitivty matrix after preprocessing the raw fMRI. I already used CONN toolbox to do the entire preprocessing. I have now completed the first-level analysis as well.

Since I am wanting to calculate FC matrix, I have computed ROI-to-ROI connectivty during first-level analysis. I belieive this is the correct way forward. I am having the output file named "resultsROI_Subject###_Condition###.mat". Can someone please show me how to compute FC matrix values using this file.

I am extracting 'Z' values from "resultsROI_Subject###_Condition###.mat". I am then calculating correlation coefficients of Z using MATLAB 'corrcoef' function. So the resultant matrix that I get after doing this MATLAB operation, is it the FC matrix that I want?

Here is the Z matrix obtained after running CONN preprocessing pipeline. Z is of size (RoI$\times$RoI). Here, the number of RoI is 105. Z represents Fischer-transformed correlation coefficient between each source and target RoI.

Here is the result after applying MATLAB tanh function.
MATLAB code -> Z_tanh = tanh(Z);


问:
Typing hear instead of here
Is there a technical term to denote when a person types here instead of hear or any other wrong word of a homonym pair--there for they're,etc.</p>

Title: Typing hear instead of here


问:
Help understanding and visualizing the data from EEG grasp dataset from kaggle
So, I downloaded the EEG grasp data set from kaggle. I am having a hard time understanding the data and plotting it. I extracted the " first subjects' " csv files from the train folder which consists of 2 files - data and events. The events has the 6 events (as the columns) and has binary values for whether the event happened or not.

I am having trouble understanding the data file, which consists of 32 columns representing electrode channels and over a 100k rows. Each row consisting of integral values which I think is the digitized amplitude (please correct me if I'm wrong); In the data set what are "series"and what are the 100k+ rows in each series?

Also to understand how the data works, I need to visualize it - which I have no idea on how to plot using matplotlib library (I am using python 3), I know that the x axis should be time, but what do I put on the y axis when having a data set of 32 columns

PS - I don't want to use any advanced libs/softwares like EEGLAB, mne..etc.


问:
How to analyse skin conductance in r studio?
Anyone knows if skin condutance may be analised by some package in r studio?

I have a signal in txt.file and I need to analyse, however I dont have any tool or software to do this beyond the R.


问:
How to chose which filter to design for EEG signal?
I am currently working on the EEG Grasp Dataset from Kaggle. I am aware that I need to filter the EEG signal as it is visually noisy (is there any way to mathematically show it's noisy?). How do I choose what filter I should use from the vast number of types available. Also how do I make sure that the filter improves the SNR while not removing/damaging the information in the EEG signal?

From The kernels in kaggle,
I have seen people use filters like discrete wavelet transform to get the frequency components and filter out unnecessary frequencies or they have used butterworth and notch filters, though one said that the notch filter "distorts" the signal and instead a high pass at 40Hz should be used. People have used different ones so, is there any procedure to determine which filter to use or should I start testing from the most basic filters then get into better frequency domain filters, then spatial filters and finally adaptive filters?


问:
How strong is the evidence for the effectiveness of psychoanalysis in the treatment of depression?
I often hear claims that psychoanalysis is ineffective, takes too long, is just pseudo-science, that other therapies such as cognitive-behavioural should be preferred or even that it should be entirely dismissed. In this talk however, the speaker seems to claim that psychoanalysis has quite a bit of empirical evidence going for it, which surprised and confused me.

How strong is the research on psychoanalysis as a treatment for depression?

I am not sure if this is too opinion based, so please help me make it better if it is (e.g. 'what is some of the best evidence on psychoanalysis as a treatment for depression?')


问:
Is Autism associated with an increased drowning risk for adults?
I have found several popular articles (e.g. ScienceDaily, The Globe and Mail, and WebMD) indicating that children with Autism have a significantly elevated risk of drowning. The general theory seems to be that the calming affect of water combines with a lack of situational awareness common in people with Autism to create a "perfect storm" situation in which the child is presented with highly appealing decision opportunities that they are not fully able to assess. A simple online search for "autism and drowning" turns up tons of articles and discussions about the risk of drowning in children with Autism.

Has a substantially elevated risk of drowning been shown to exist or not exist for adults with Autism? That is, is the risk of drowning for children simply more socially relevant today (e.g. drowning out any studies and warnings of potential linkages for adults), or is there substantial reason to believe that the maturity that comes with age does or does not reduce the risk of drowning to control group levels?


问:
Is there a neurological reason why women do not occupy top positions in the chess ranking?
I want to turn arround this question posted on chess exchange where sociological arguments are given to explain why only two of the world's top 100 chess players are women.

Are there neurological evidences to assert, in equal conditions, women would still be worst at chess than men?


问:
Reporting results of a Mann Whitney U test when the medians are equal
In the APA guidelines of reporting non-parametric tests they suggest reporting the median results when using non-parametric tests (http://evc-cit.info/psych018/Reporting_Statistics.pdf - search for 'non-parametric').

I have a significant result for a large non-parametric data set where the medians are the same, but the means are different. (I know that there is a debate on the usefulness of means for non-parametric data, but my professors have argued that it is useful in this case.)

Would it be 'OK' to report the results using the mean, or both the mean or the medium, or just stick to the median?

Thank you for any help.


问:
Upside down, backwards writing
I am an older adult, who entered college late in life. I came to find out that I have both Dyscalculia, and Dyslexia (formally diagnosed) through great difficulty in college. Not realizing that I had either of those throughout my life. But, in reading the criteria late in life, I find that those diagnoses explain a lot of weird traits, directional, perceptual as well as difficulty remembering.
I have always been able to write fluently- upside down, backwards, upside down and backwards, with both hands, also forwards upside down. (I am right handed), I also can write normally with both hands. But even still with the added abilities, I cannot learn math, or to read music and I cannot learn other languages. I learn music and repeat it through tone listening.
There has not been a lot of research for comorbidity between Dyslexia and Dyscalculia. I am wondering if anyone has any access to research that would explain my phenomenon.</p>

Title: Upside down, backwards writing


问:
What models are there for neuronal sequence memory?
This paper https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncir.2016.00023/full proposes a neuronal model to learn time-based sequences, referred to as HTM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_temporal_memory). An implementation is here: https://numenta.org/.

Are there any other models known or proposed?


问:
How could you define this variable?
The procedure of one experiment includes the next sequence:

The anagram is presented for several seconds;

The "special word" is presented for 90 ms;

The same anagram is presented again;

The anagram is solved by the participant.

It is predicted that the "special word" from the item №2 influences the probability  of solving the anagram successfully.

How is it better to define the "special word"? It could be defined as prime, but priming per se implies that the stimulus precedes the target stimulus (e. g., anagram), and that is not the case here.

Any other ideas?

Title: How could you define this variable?


问:
Bipolar Disorder Patient data
Can someone provide me with an electrocardiogram signal of a bipolar patient? I'd like to have a trace obtained in an intermittent period, i.e., when the patient is not experiencing a depressed or manic episode.

I have searched for it on Pubmed physionet but I could not find anything.

Title: Bipolar Disorder Patient data


问:
Timing mental arithmetic training for specific event
A test will take place in two months time. It will take place on 12:00 PM, and the test takes one hour. One has to perform tasks such as a basic IQ test, mental arithmetic and solving a sudoku. These types of tasks are known in advance.

Someone wants to train for this event by performing the tasks on a regular basis. What would be a good training schedule? Would it be best to train every day for an hour at exactly 12:00 PM, to condition the brain, or would it be better to train at random times to improve the brain's flexibility? Also, would it be better to take days off to have the brain rest, like you would do when training your body?


问:
Cognitively, where does spiritual feeling come from?
I am an Indian who believed in God and followed Hinduism.

Later, I went to college and became enlightened and ruled out the idea of third party creation or the existence of a creator. That said, during the time I believed in God, when I entered the temples I had a different feeling (I can't explain it, but it felt good) by hearing the chanting of mantras, the glow of lamps, the smoked smell of camphor, etc.

I think this is a spiritual feeling.

As I have lived my childhood as a theist and later as an atheist I can't differentiate if the spiritual feeling is because of childhood memories or is genetically embedded.

I ask this question to understand how people like OSHO and thousands of his variants in India could glue millions of followers without giving any material things.


问:
Neuroplasticity and Habit Formation
I am currently reading the book The Brain that Changes Itself and I ran across a passage that explains how habits "take over a bit of the brain map." By this, I thought it meant that each habit forms some connections between neurons (please clarify). It also states that this is why it is hard to break a bad habit. If our brains have so much capacity, why would some pathways being occupied affect the formation of others?

Below is an excerpt of the paragraph I got this from:

But when we learn a bad habit, it takes over a brain map, and each time we repeat it, it claims more control of that map and prevents the use of that space for "good" habits. That is why 'unlearning' is often a lot harder than learning, and wy early childhood education is so important- it's best to get it right early, before the 'bad habit' gets a competitive advantage.

Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science. Penguin.

Title: Neuroplasticity and Habit Formation


问:
How are attachment styles linked to personality disorders
There are three different patterns of behavior in the so called strange situation in which the caregiver leaves the infant for a while and a stranger comes in the room. These behavioral patterns are than classified in three attachment styles: secure, resistant and avoidant.

Is there any quantitative research that links the early attachment styles with the probability of certain personality disorders?


问:
What is the "perceptually correct" range or map of negative (inverted) colors?
When using software to invert the colors of a picture or screen, the software just blindly (literally) uses a mathematical formula to calculate the inverted color of each pixel.

For example, in RGB, if a pixel's color is represented by (100, 25, 5), then the inverted color of that pixel is calculated as (155, 220, 250).

However, human perception of color is not the same for all colors, we have different sensitivity to different color ranges.

What ends up happening is that objects/subjects in pictures that are inverted this way are hard to distinguish. The relationships between the colors are, at least perceptually, completely changed.

So, if I wanted to invert the colors of a picture, but keep the proper "perceptual relationships" between the colors of that picture. How should I do it?

By the way, you can easily test this by fiddling with the Accessibility features of your computer or phone and turning on (at least on Macs and iPhones) the "Invert colors" option.


问:
The differences in attachment between father and mother
Bowlby's attachment talks about the primary caregiver, it does not specify mother or father, even though it is mostly the mother. I want to know more about the specific roles of the father and mother in the process of attachment. I've read some studies than mention some differences.

Freeman & Brown(2001) examined attachment for adolescents, they used the Adolescent Separation Anxiety Test to evaluate this population, they found the mother is most often the primary source of attachment.

Main & Cassidy (1988) found that the infant attachment was less predictive of the attachment style at six years of age for the father than for the mother.

What are the studies that talk about the differences between mother and father in attachment?

References

Freeman, H., & Brown, B. B. (2001). Primary attachment to parents and peers during adolescence: Differences by attachment style. Journal of Youth and Adolescence; New York, 30(6), 653–674. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1012200511045

Main, M., & Cassidy, J. (1988). Categories of Response to Reunion With the Parent at Age 6: Predictable From Infant Attachment Classifications and Stable Over a 1-Month Period. Developmental Psychology, 24(3), 415–426. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.24.3.415


问:
Effects of expertise on mental condition?
As a search on Frontiers in Psychology shows, there a different articles and research topics about the topic of being an expert.

But is there any literature or research about the effects of being an expertise on the mental health of a person or the state of self-actualization ?


问:
In an experiment where motivation and expectation are mediators, are they considered parellel or serial?
I'm trying to understand the effect of a consumer's motivation for and expectation of a product on placebo effects as mediators of a condition in a marketing context.
In the experiment, I am not sure if I should consider motivation and expectation as parallel or serial mediators.

On the one hand, from Vroom's "Valence-Instrumentality-Expectancy" model, there is a relationship between motivation and expectation, but does a relationship like this automatically imply that the mediators are serial?

I am also unsure if Vroom's theory can be applied in the first place to product marketing.


问:
Can a trait like selfishness improve
Can a trait like selfishness improve with therapy or other methods. Or is it fixed and can not be changed whatever you do.

This article claims that it can be done, but I need more solid reasearch data :

https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/9kkeyd/can-a-psychologist-cure-my-worst-character-trait-unstoppable-selfishness

Title: Can a trait like selfishness improve


问:
Recovery of memory especially working memory after depression
The impact of depression on memory and working memory has been discussed extensively in the thread below.
I can't seem to find information about rehabilitation and recovery of memory after depression.
Has there been any studies looking at memory improvement after depression?

What effect can depression have on memory?


问:
The same neuron sometimes released different neurotransmitters, so how does this affect our interpretation of computational models?
Most studies I see compare firing rate with some observed variable (stimuli or behavior). However, they treat all spikes the same. But neurons sometimes release different neurotransmitters depending on the situation, meaning not all spikes are the same. Does this affect our interpretation of these studies? Are there models that account for this? Do spikes vary in any other way?

For example, knowing when a neuron is acting as excitatory versus inhibitory may vastly change our interpretation of it's role.

Additionally this may become even more of an issue when we attempt to model or predict from multiple channels as we are potentially missing out on a crucial piece of information. Without that, do we even have the ability to fully understand the area?

On a slightly different note: Are there other aspects of a neuron output that are important in it's computational role in the circuit? Why don't we take into account it's amplitude over-time for example?

My primary worry is that we are averaging away, or outright throwing away, a lot of information that which could be insightful.


问:
Reproducible Dynamic Causal Modeling/ model based effective connectivity analysis for fMRI
I am doing a Masters degree in Cognitive Neuroscience and was thinking on doing my master thesis on effective connectivity in Theory of Mind. I like the model-based approach of Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM). I have been thinking about how to that analysis in a reproducible manner. I have been reading a lot recently about reproducible fMRI analysis methods, like using Nipype in a Docker container.

However, I am unsure about how I would be able to achieve the same kind of reproducibility when using SPM, in comparison to using Nipype and Docker, where I can document every step of the analysis in a Jupyter Notebook. Nipype only seems to have interfaces for preprocessing and first level analysis in SPM12, but not for any of the DCM functionality.

I also found a Github repository where someone tried to port DCM to MNE-python, but the last commit was two years ago, so I don't think anything will come after that.

Does any of you have an idea how to address this? Any suggestions are welcome!

Thanks a lot!


问:
Is it possible to segregate components of verbal and visuospatial working memory using n-back paradigm?
I am trying to segregate different components of verbal working memory and visuospatial working memory.

In order to assess verbal working memory I am using an auditory version of n-back task with a load levels ranging from 1 to 2. The task requires the participant to respond when they here the same consonant one after the other (1-back condition) or when they hear the same consonant at an interval of another consonant (2-back condition)

In order to assess visuopatial working memory I am using a spatial n-back task. The memory load ranges from 1 to 2.  A set of cards are shown to the subjects sequentially, each card has a small back color dot on a white background. The position of the dot changes from card-to-card. The subject has to respond when they saw the dot appearing on the same location in comparison to the previous card (1-back condition) or after an interval of one card (2-back condition).

I am not sure whether it can segregate the components of verbal and visuospatial working memory.

Is there an article that might give me a clue as what component is tapped in the 1 n-back load level and 2 n-back load level?

Thanks
Vatsal


问:
Is there any research connected with typing/writing to help in creativity or focus?
In my personal experience, typing my thoughts when I am working through creative problems seem to help. But it's subjective and would like to have some confirmation.

Atkin in "The Phenomenological Influence of Inner Speech on Executive" shows that Thinking Out Loud can help in one problem-solving exercise. It seems that it was first noted by Newell and Simon in 1972 in their book.

(this is also confirmed anecdotally in Rubber Duck Debugging in programming, which for some works while typing)

There is a lot of literature connected to writing for learning, in school settings, so I am not sure if this works for creative problems or mostly for integrating knowledge.

There is also idea of "freewriting" by Peter Elbow which is something similar to what I mean, but it seems his research and articles that cite him focus on freewriting for writing fiction (I guess it's a bit similar).

Regarding phrasing, I saw phrases used as inner speech writing and private writing, but it doesn't seem to return a lot of results.

Sorry if I am breaking any rules here, I am not a student of psychology just a hobbyist


问:
Trust after the first 200 milliseconds
In the first 200 ms of meeting someone our implicit / System 1 brain makes a number of inferences (based on age, gender, race, voice, smell among others) to determine whether we ‘like’ the other person or not.

Is there any research or study that shows the relationship of this implicit cognition on latter / explicit evaluations of trust?

Title: Trust after the first 200 milliseconds