问:
Does this neural network model exist?
I'm looking for a neural network model with specific characteristics. This model may not exist...

I need a network which doesn't use "layers" as traditional artificial neural networks do. Instead, I want [what I believe to be] a more biological model.

This model will house a large cluster of interconnected neurons, like the image below. A few neurons (at bottom of diagram) will receive input signals, and a cascade effect will cause successive, connected neurons to possibly fire depending on signal strength and connection weight. This is nothing new, but, there are no explicit layers...just more and more distant, indirect connections.

As you can see, I also have the network divided into sections (circles). Each circle represents a semantic domain (a linguistics concept) which is the core information surrounding a concept; essentially a semantic domain is a concept.

Connections between nodes within a section have higher weights than connections between nodes of different sections. So the nodes for "car" are more connected to one another than nodes connecting "English" to "car". Thus, when a neuron in a single section fires (is activated), it is likely that the entire (or most of) the section will also be activated.

All in all, I need output patterns to be used as input for further output, and so on. A cascade effect is what I am after.

I hope this makes sense. Please ask for clarification where needed.

Are there any suitable models in existence that model what I've described, already?

Title: Does this neural network model exist?


问:
Scientific legacy of Carl Jung (and of analytical psychology)?
In the sprit of Is there anything in Freudian psychoanalytic theory that is scientifically sound? I want to ask the same question about the works of Carl Jung, because I know even less about them. Wikipedia has a short paragraph about his legacy, which is mostly about how cited he was (and that does not, alas, entail much how correct his ideas ultimately were), which mentions MBTI as a concrete offshoot of Jung's ideas. I know MBTI was mostly superseded as personality theory. In an blog discussing the latter matter, John A. Johnson (prof of psychology at Penn State) says of the wider Jungian works

Jung's scientifically dubious ideas about archetypes, alchemy, synchronicity, the collective unconscious, the paranormal, and so forth are irrelevant to his theory of psychological types. Jung's theory of types gave us the concepts of introversion and extraversion, which modern, scientific personality psychologists are perfectly happy to use today.

Does this mostly summarize Jung's legacy? I know there have been entire books on his works like The Handbook of Jungian Psychology, but I don't want to read all that to come to a conclusion. Also it seems that book has a single review in the Journal of Analytical Psychology, which looks like an in-house thing; nevertheless the review (by psychoanalyst Joseph Reppen) says:

Although psychology is one of the most popular American majors, Freud,
  Jung, and depth psychology are rarely present or are marginalized in introductory
  psychology texts. As one colleague remarked to me, if Freud gets a page, Jung
  gets a paragraph. And that paragraph probably includes a short comment about
  extrovert-introvert–case closed.

Which kinda mirrors what Johnson wrote, but with a bitter tone. The rest of the review is book-oriented, but Reppen seems to me to fail to make a clear case what else is important, legacy-wise in Jung's work.  So, are there other reasonably concise takes on Jung's scientific legacy? And do they agree or disagree with Johnson's take on that?

ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0


问:
Ben Franklin effect: mkay, what about help vampires?
Is the Ben Franklin effect as uncontroversial as wikipedia makes it to be? It states that once we grant someone a favor we're even more inclined to grant them subsequent favors. As far as I can tell from Wikipedia the effect was experimentally tested (under rigorous conditions) maybe 3 times. If the effect always holds, how comes we (eventually) dislike help vampires? Is there a liking curve that goes up and then down with the number of favors?</p>


问:
Eyewitness testimony study from Power of Habit
In his book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg refers to some study from the University of Western Ontario:

STEP THREE: ISOLATE THE CUE

About a decade ago, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario tried to answer a question that had bewildered social scientists for years: Why do some eyewitnesses of crimes misremember what they see, while other recall events accurately? (...)

She wondered if researchers were making a mistake by
focusing on what questioners and witnesses had said, rather than how
they were saying it. She suspected there were subtle cues that were
influencing the questioning process. But when she watched videotape
after videotape of witness interviews, looking for these cues, she
couldn’t see anything. There was so much activity in each interview –
all the facial expressions, the different ways the questions were
posed, the fluctuating emotions – that she couldn’t detect any
patterns.

So she came up with an idea: She made a list of a few elements she
would focus on – the questioners’ tone, the facial expressions of the
witness, and how close the witness and the questioner were sitting to
each other. Then, she removed any information that would distract her
from those elements. She turned down the volume on the television so,
instead of hearing words, all she could detect was the tone of the
questioner’s voice. She taped a sheet of paper over the questioner’s
face, so all she could see was the witnesses’ expressions. She held a
tape measure to the screen to measure their distance from each other.

And once she started studying these specific elements, patterns leapt
out. She saw that witnesses who misremembered facts usually were
questioned by cops who used a gentle, friendly tone. When witnesses
smiled more, or sat closer to the person asking the questions, they
were more likely to misremember.

In other words, when environmental cues said “we are friends” – a
gentle tone, a smiling face – the witnesses were more likely to
misremember what had occurred. Perhaps it was because, subconsciously,
those friendship cues triggered a habit to please the questioner.

But the importance of this experiment is that those same tapes had
been watched by dozens of other researchers. Lots of smart people had
seen the same patterns, but no one had recognized them before. Because
there was too much information in each tape to see a subtle cue.

Once the psychologist decided to focus on only three categories of
behavior, however, and eliminate the extraneous information, the
patterns leapt out.

Whole chapter is available here How Habits Work.

Do you know guys where I can find this study? In it not listed in notes.


问:
Why would someone be offended if you season your food before eating it?
I like to put ketchup on my pork chops but my wife gets mad that I do this before I taste her pork chops. We had a discussion about why she would be upset and that I just add the ketchup without first tasting the dish.

My View: I obviously dont feel its a big deal to add to something I was going to eat anyway and it did not reduce the amount I enjoyed it, if anything it made it better for me.

Her View: Was that it was rude to the cook and incorrect etiquette to modify the food in anyway that was served to a person. She believes that you should not modify the food in anyway during the meal.

Scenario 1: You get a burger at your friends BBQ and you put ketchup and mustard on the burger. No one is offended in anyway. (she agrees to this one)

Scenario 2: You go to Gordon Ramsey's burger restaurant and he serves you a burger made by him. I am sure the burger is good, but I still like to eat burgers with ketchup and mustard on it. (she thinks this is ultimately rude)

We would like to know if the scenario, occasion and or formality of the meal dictates the etiquette in which the eater is supposed to follow some unspoken eating rules or is this just a difference of opinions that are conflicting with a personal taste preference?

Not ignoring the persons feelings, but are they presumptuous in that someone should eat the food they were given the way you dictated it to them? Or should they be free to eat and enjoy the meal the way they would like (still enjoying the meal).

Please help with any feedback!


问:
(Flavours of) Psychophysiological Interactions
The paper by Fischmeister et al. 2016 (Cortex) analysed fMRI task-related connectivity patterns, for two tasks that relied vs did not rely on recursive reasoning. Namely, they found "increased connectivity within Default Mode Network (DMN) related brain areas during the representation of recursion, while non-recursive representations yielded increased connectivity within the Fronto-Parietal Control-Network".

This sounds to me a lot like a Psychophysiological Interactions (PPI) analysis, although the authors do not identify it as such. PPI can be defined as a technique that "identifies brain regions whose activity depends on an interaction between psychological context (the task) and physiological state (the time course of brain activity) of the seed region" (O’Reilly et al., 2012)

Could anyone explain whether the analysis reported in Fischmeister et al. is in a fact (a flavour of) PPI, and if not, how exactly it differs?


问:
Neural field application question
I am following a class where we have just learned about so-called neural fields (the prof called them recurrent neural networks and said they are used to model large populations of real neurons). Now we received homework to get to know the method using a simulation, but we got stuck at the last question, about the usefulness of a certain behaviour.

These are our guidelines:

Reset the field; make sure it can memorise one bump.
Give two equal inputs < 15 degrees apart. Reduce until the activity level forms one concave signal (so not like in the picture below).

This all works. As soon as the difference goes below 10, the bump changes from the signal below to a concave one, just as the input signal does. However, then we get the question:

In what situation would such behaviour be useful?

And we're sort of stuck there. Is there someone who could point us into the right direction?

.

Picture of neural field. The green line is the input signal, the red line is the output, the blue line is the neural field activity. The x-axis is the position in degrees.

Title: Neural field application question


问:
Longitudinal studies on: how attention to emotional stimuli develops from infancy to childhood?
According to LeDoux’s model (1996) we have specialized pathways for processing emotional cues. Pourtois, Schettino and Vuilleumier (2013) offer a neural model of how emotional signals capture attention. In their model, amygdala is not only able to respond to relevant cues, it also have a role in orienting attention towards emotional stimuli (with the assistance of other brain areas).

In other words, human beings don’t attend emotional stimuli in the same way they attend other objects.

Are there any experimental data explaining how this preference for emotional stimuli develops from infancy to childhood?

My reference:

Pourtois et al 2013 "Brain mechanisms for emotional influences on perception and attention: what is magic and what is not."


问:
Is hypnosis-enhanced therapy more efficacious than its non-hypnotic counterpart?
There is a farily upvoted question hene (and so are answers to it) on whether "Does hypnotherapy/hypnosis, in any form, for any type of disorder, work?". To me, that's a pretty weak and confusing question to ask. You can interpret it as "is hypnotherapy better than no therapy", which is quite a different question than "does hypnosis enhance (or not) another therapy, i.e. is hypnotherapy better than (a similar enough) non-hypnotic therapy". The latter question is in some sense superior because it tries to isolate whether hypnosis is worth the hassle when you can also do without.

And the studies I could find on this latter contrast are not as clear-cut as one would like. An 1995 meta-analysis on various conditions reported that hypnosis significantly improved outcomes, but a re-analysis a year later of just the obesity subset showed that the initially reported meta-analytical conclusion critically hinged on one study that was an outlier in terms of the effect size it reported; upon exclusion of that study the overall result lost statistical significance. Furthermore this re-analysis found numerical errors in the original one. From this, it's unclear to me whether the conclusion of the 1995 meta-analysis is tenable for any illnesses.

Likewise a 2012 review of CBT vs CBH for anxiety disorders could not really come to a conclusion and called for more research.

So--my question is--is there an illness for which hypnosis unequivocally enhances treatment outcomes compared to a similar enough non-hypnotic therapy? By unequivocally here I mean at least a review based on several studies deemed of reasonable quality.


问:
Memorising phone numbers with symmetrical digit arrangement (e.g. 321 123)
I have noticed, by chance, but I would very easily remember a phone number, if it has some digits symmetry, e.g. "540 045" (and mind you, I have very hard time memorizing numbers in general). At the same time, I have noticed that commercial companies would you use special phone numbers, using digits repetition, e.g. "67 67 67", in order to make them easier to memorize - but I can't say I would memorize a phone number in that format easier than in the "symmetrical format".

(I acknowledge though, that the "repetition format" is still better than any other format with no particular pattern.)

Therefore, my question is: is it universally valid among people that "symmetrical formats" are the easiest to memorize and if so, what could be the explanation?


问:
Are there dual-process IQ tests?
I mean tests that try to measure system 1 and system 2 performance separately, but more than short lists of trick questions which unfortunately seem to make the bulk of the empirical work in this dual-process area.

I can see that measuring system 2 might be more difficult because it usually requires background in math etc., which usually are outside the purview of pure IQ testing...

Also, I'm aware that widely used IQ tests like WAIS have subscales like verbal vs non-verbal (aka "performance"--confusing name if you ask me) which are futher subdivided into fine-grained tasks-oriented measures like working memory or picture completion (to pick some examples). But it's unclear to me how these would load into a system-1 or system-2 paradigm.

Title: Are there dual-process IQ tests?


问:
To what extent is face-detection achieved in peripheral vision?
I'm trying to find out to what extent mere detection of faces (i.e. determining that something is a face, as opposed to recognition of specific individuals) is favored in the central vision vs peripheral vision.

Ideally the answer should be in terms of areas of brain activation, but I realize this might be too ambitious (given the review I've looked at), so merely in terms of experimentally determined perception would an acceptable answer.

To reiterate, I'm talking about mere detection that something is a face, not identifying/recognizing that a certain face is someone in particular (or even deriving less specific attributes like inferring their affect). Whether face detection and recognition are really separate processes I'm not sure, but some neuroscientists have proposed that they are, e.g. Tsao and Livingstone:

The most basic aspect of face perception is simply detecting the presence of a face, which requires the extraction of features that it has in common with other faces. The effectiveness and ubiquity of the simple T-shaped schematic face (eye, eye, nose, mouth) suggest that face detection may be accomplished by a simple template-like process. Face detection and identification have opposing demands: The identification of individuals requires a fine-grained analysis to extract the ways in which each face differs from the others despite the fact that all faces share the same basic T-shaped configuration, whereas detection requires extracting what is common to all faces. A good detector should be poor at individual recognition, and vice versa.

Another reason why detection and identification should be separate processes is that detection can act as a domain-specific filter, ensuring that precious resources for face recognition (e.g., privileged access to eye movement centers (Johnson et al 1991)) are used only if the stimulus passes the threshold of being a face. Such domain-specific gating may be one reason for the anatomical segregation of face processing in primates (it is easier to gate cells that are grouped together). A further important benefit of preceding identification by detection is that detection automatically accomplishes face segmentation, i.e., isolates the face from the background clutter, and can aid in aligning the face to a standard template.

However, whether it is really the case that detection is independent of recognition doesn't matter much to me for in this question: I want to know if mere detection is favored in central vision and to what extent the detection changes as the stimulus moves towards the periphery of vision.

Unfortunately, it looks like not much is known about where face detection happens in human brains because the best known area that activates when looking at faces is the FFA (fusiform face area)... but this region is also overlapping the one for central vision. Quoting from the same source as above:

Although face-specific fMRI activation can also be seen in the superior temporal sulcus (fSTS) and in part of the occipital lobe (the “occipital face area”, OFA), the most robust face-selective activation is consistently found on the lateral side of the right mid-fusiform gyrus, the “fusiform face area” or FFA (Kanwisher et al 1997) (Figure 6). The fact that this part of the brain is activated selectively in response to faces indicates that activity in this region must arise at or subsequent to a detection stage.

On the other hand, the FFA is fairly closely associated with central vision. This idea is derived from where the fusiform face area (FFA) is located. Quoting a review of Kanwisher (2006):

Although it is not clear what is so special about this region of the fusiform gyrus that the FFA apparently has to live here, one intriguing clue comes from reports that face-selective cortex also responds more strongly to central than peripheral visual stimuli (even non-faces; Levy et al. 2001). This fact may suggest that face-selective regions reside in centre-biased cortex either because it has computational properties necessary for face processing, or because we tend to foveate faces during development.

But it's not too clear from this how much face detection actually happens in the peripheral vision. There's gotta be some level of detection that causes us to foveate faces (even just during development). So, to [re]state my question once again, to what extent is peripheral vision worse (than the central vision) at merely detecting faces?


问:
ROI analysis of a Z-Score map
I have a brain z-score image wich is the result of some test. The image is in the SPM space.

How can I perfrom a ROI analisis of different zones? And obtain some statistics for each place.

Title: ROI analysis of a Z-Score map


问:
What are the differences between Cognitive, Psycho-linguistic, and Behavioral approaches to learning?
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around cognitive, psycholinguistic, and behaviorist learning acquisition methods in the context of second language acquisition. I don't really understand their differences or how to identify which one is being used. From what I understand,

Cognitive: Sequencing grammatical forms in a syllabus for individualized learning. There is some innate learning mechanism that facilitates learning, so it is better for teachers to focus on "inputs"

(Shoebottom, P. (n.d.). An introduction to the work of Stephen Krashen. Retrieved January 19, 2018, from http://esl.fis.edu/teachers/support/krashen.htm)

Psycholinguistic: Links between instruction and its effect upon learners are crucial. Instruction should promote form-meaning "mappings" (providing a format to draw the learner's attention to the target form-meaning mappings)

(Psycholinguistics. (2018, January 16). Retrieved January 19, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics)

Behavioral: Learning occurs through repeated process with assessment of successful learning.

(Behaviorism. (n.d.). Retrieved January 19, 2018, from http://www.funderstanding.com/theory/behaviorism/)

If, for example, I gave an assignment to students that asked to convert french words to english.

E.g.
La piscine -> ?

Would this be a psycholinguistic approach? If I increase the number of questions and frequency, would this not be a behaviorist approach? Can anybody clarify the differences and give examples.

Thanks!


问:
Cognitive control tasks
What are the tasks that can be employed to measure cognitive control of an individual (proactive and reactive control). I have read about AX-CPT task [1]. In this task, they use letters. But I am looking for a non-linguistic task.

How about the use of:

antisaccade task

double step task

stop-signal task

go/no-go task?

Can we use these tasks to measure proactive and reactive inhibition? If so, how do we do that? I am looking for a task that uses eye-tracking method.

Are there any papers that measure proactive and reactive inhibition and how they are employed using these tasks? Especially, studies comparing monolinguals and bilinguals.

Also, I wanted to know how we can manipulate the antisaccade task to measure both proactive and reactive inhibition.

[1] "Dual mechanisms of cognitive control in bilinguals and monolinguals" by Morales et al.

Title: Cognitive control tasks


问:
Culture and/or personality influences on asking feeler questions
Are there studies looking at what influences the propensity for asking feeler questions, e.g. how much does personality (trait of some kind) influence this and how much does culture affect it? It seems to me like a good topic for twin studies...

In more detail, what I'm talking about is this supposed "ask vs guess" dichotomy (which I syspect is probably more of a contiuum in reality):

In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it's OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.

In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you're pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won't even have to make the request directly; you'll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.


问:
How to prevent falling for Jingle-Jangle fallacies?
What are some ways to avoid the Jingle-Jangle fallacies when it comes to choosing a form of measurement in psychology research?</p>


问:
How do different emotional intensity ratings within a condition influence the comparison across different conditions in an event-related fMRI task?
I'm planning an event-related fMRI-experiment to investigate the difference in processing natural and computer-generated expressions. For this, we recorded videos of 4 different actors posing  fearful and neutral expressions which last 3 seconds each and will compare them to computer-generated videos of fearful and neutral expressions. This was planned as 4 different conditions.

We noted now that the videos/expressions we recorded are of different emotional intensity (preliminary subjective ratings). Meaning some natural fearful expressions seem to be less emotionally intense than other natural fearful expressions and some artifical fearful expressions seem to be less emotionally intense than other artificial expressions. In general, artificial fearful expressions seem to be less emotionally intense than natural fearful expressions.

If we run the fMRI experiment as planned and contrast for example BOLD response to natural fearful expressions with BOLD response to artificial fearful expressions, how would the different emotional intensities of the videos affect the results?

We do not have enough videos to form a further "emotional intensity condition" and model the influence of the emotional intensity ratings in subsequent analyses.


问:
is saving money intrinsic or extrinsically motivated?
the 16 basic desires theory states that saving/collecting is intrinsically motivated. (Steven Reiss)

but monetary incentives usually fall under extrinsic motivation.
if you spend less you have more money so its like earning more...

or does it depend what you are saving the money for?

im trying to classify the motivation of online-pirates.


问:
Programmer: Effects of pauses on stress
I'm a programmer by profession. In the course of my daily routine, I observe that I'd have to frequently "wait" for the computer to do something, before I can continue with my work.

Empirically, I'd say that I'd have to interrupt myself in such fashion every 10 minutes. These frequent interruptions stress me out.

Is any one aware of any scientific study that measures the impact on such interruptions on an individual's stress levels?

Title: Programmer: Effects of pauses on stress


问:
why can't we override memory priority?
Is it known why certain information cant be retained by some people even  when it's important to do so? I've read that our ability to remember things   is based on every memory accessed before, priority, interest in the subject,   etc. So why doesn't it always work when you need it to? Like the time/date of   meetings, birthdays, names of co-workers, items you know will be on a test  later.

On the flip side, is it known what mechanism it is that gives a person  (like myself) the ability to remember the same things when generally speaking   it's not something they normally can do with any accuracy? Without really  trying I have little trouble remembering appointment dates/times but ask me   what day something happened a couple weeks ago and i've got nothing.

I hope thats not too much at once. thanks very much

Title: why can't we override memory priority?


问:
PSE with Palamedes or Psignifit
I have used a Cumulative Gaussian function to fit the data I got from a 2AFC experiment. How can I calculate the point of subjective equality using the Palamedes toolbox for matlab or the psignifit toolbox?

Background

It is a crowding experiment aimed to find which distance of target from flankers produces the strongest crowding effects. The flankers will always be gabors with horiz orientation and the target will have some tilt from the horiz (4 tilt levels). The conditions are: baseline, in which only the target appears, 1st experimental, in which the target and the flankers appear with distance x1 and the 2nd experimental in which the target appears with the flankers in distance x2.

In every trial I will have one of the tilt levels for the target (presented with the method of contant stimuli) and the participant will have to reply if the target is tilted CW or CCW with respect to the horizontal axis. For my analysis I will store for every tilt level the percent of the trials for which the reply was “CW” and I will plot this data as a function of tilt level. So the y axis must be from 0 to 1. In these data I want to use the max likelihood criterion to fit a normal cdf and find the discrimination threshold and std error of that threshold

Title: PSE with Palamedes or Psignifit


问:
Are there any practical implications for the purported neuroprotective effects of lamotrigine?
Lamotrigine is an antiepileptic drug used to treat seizures. Off-label, it is used to treat a variety of neurological and psychiatric disorders. Judging from Google Scholar, lamotrigine continues to be the subject of active research: both on the neuroscience end to elucidate its mechanism of action, and on the clinical end to investigate its efficacy in treating disorders beyond its approved usage for seizures.

There are interesting statements in the literature regarding the neuroprotective effects of lamotrigine, for example:

... several studies have investigated
  LTG’s neuroprotective effects in models related to the toxic
  effects of glutamatergic agents. [1]

and

Like the other mood stabilizers lithium and valproate,
  LTG also has neuroprotective properties but its exact mechanisms remain poorly defined. [2]

There are additional, supporting studies cited within the previous two references. I believe this bibliography, though of course not exhaustive, is at least representative.

My question is this: What on earth is the relevance of these statements for real-life scenarios involving humans? Neurodegeneration is a relatively common occurrence in human populations, resulting from such diverse sources as toxins, physical injuries to the head, and aging. Based on what is known so far about the involved neurological mechanisms, could lamotrigine potentially protect against neurodegeneration in any of these cases?

One particular case that came to mind is neurodegeneration due to binge drinking. I have heard that neuronal cell loss in this case has been hypothesized to arise from glutamatergic mechanisms, which could be relevant for lamotrigine since lamotrigine is thought to suppress release of glutamate. On the other hand, this article calls into question the glutamatergic explanation for alcohol-induced brain damage:

... the mechanism [for binge-drinking induced brain damage]
  is not directly related to glutamate neurotoxicity. [3]

Another case that occurred to me is amnesic shellfish poisoning, an illness caused by the neurotoxin domoic acid, which has a strong affinity for glutamate receptors.

I'm not an expert in neuroscience and/or pharmacology, so I have limited ability to take 1) the theoretical understanding of lamotrigine's mechanism of action, and 2) the theoretical understanding of various neurodegenerative disorders; and make some hypothesis about a possible neuroprotective effect, if any.

Is it likely that lamotrigine could have neuroprotective effect against the two illnesses mentioned above? Or are there other examples?


问:
Is this an accurate/correct example of pre-exercise? If not, what are some examples?
(After having read Piaget, I'm not sure if this could be considered pre-exercise, or not.)

Pre-exercise through symbolic assimilation could be alternately described as imitating a mode of being in behavior so as to increase the Child's understanding of said role, and to prepare them for such a role when they reach adulthood. It is pre-exercise precisely for this finalistic preparatory nature. An example; a child caring for a doll, like her mother would, is pre-exercise of the maternal instinct. Acting as such in order to assimilate to the role that she doesn't yet fully comprehend on a conceptual level.


问:
False statement by a dominant person in a group survives even if that person leaves the group
Can someone point me to a source for this study:

There was a group, in which a dominant person established a belief in
  a false statement by speaking with high confidence. The group still
  believed in the false statement even after that person had left the
  group. Newcomers to the group accepted the false statement through
  normative social influence.

I have read about that either by Kaneman, Ariely, Chabris/Simons or maybe Thaler but can't find the passage anymore. And is this still valid?

I'm not talking about the story with the apes, the banana and the ladder by the way - I know that never happened.


问:
How to implement an incidental processing task without a fMRI-compatible response box?

Background

I'm planning an event-related fMRI-experiment to investigate the difference in processing natural and computer-generated facial emotion expressions. My supervisor and I are discussing different task instructions for the scanning session (see below).

Two often applied task instructions involve:

Passive processing of facial emotion expressions Subjects are instructed to passively attend to the stimuli shown, no motor response or judgement required

incidental processing of facial emotion expressions For instance, subjects are required to press a button in case an inverted face appears (in 10% of all cases for example)

As we do not have a MRI-compatible response box available, I prefer the passive processing task instruction, even though possible attention interferences may emerge as we cannot "control" cognitive processes of the subjects while scanning. My supervisor prefers the incidental processing because of these possible attention interferences and suggests subjects may answer with a hand signal. For me it will be impossible to track those hand signals because of the room setup and I am bothered about reviewers criticizing that we implemented a task that we were unable to control and report. Furthermore, I'm worried that the hand movements may interfere with the image quality as subjects are moving. My supervisor rejects all those arguments as sustaining attention of the subjects is the strongest argument for him and he thinks reviewers will criticize that if we implement a passive task.

How to implement an incidental task with low cognitive demands without a response box?

We discarded a recognition task after the scan (e.g. have you seen this picture before?) or a counting task during the scanning session (e.g. how many female faces?), as the cognitive load may be too high during the scanning session.


问:
Compute single patient Z-Scores from atlas anatomical zone
I have one brain image from a single patient. I have a set of normal pateints. Both, single patient and normal patients are normalised to an SPM template and the NMI space.

I also have a brain atlas (AAL Atlas) in nii format.

I need to compute the Z-Scores for each region of the patient.

Which is the simplest procedure?


问:
How does Brief Strategic Therapy (Nardone model) compare to other psychotherapies in efficacy?
Based on Paul Watzlawick et al.'s work in Brief Therapy, Giorgio Nardone & Paul Watzlawick (2005) developed specific protocols for treatment for several distinct psychological disorders, such as panic, phobia, anxiety, OCD, eating disorders etc., which is referred to as BST - Brief Strategic Therapy (Nardone model) .

I have heard anecdotal evidence that BST is superior to other forms of psychotherapy (mainly CBT - cognitive-behavioral-therapy).

Superiority was unspecified in the above conversation, but could be defined as one or more of the following:

quantitatively greater reduction of symptoms measured as difference between a pre- and a post-treatment test score

greater persistence of symptom reduction over time

comparable symptom reduction while more economic (fewer sessions)

comparable symptom reduction while effective at a greater number of test subjects

I was able to find one comparative study specific to treating BED (binge eating disorder) and obesity (Pietrabissa et al. 2013, see link above)

What are the results of studies on the efficacy of BST in comparison to other models of therapy - mainly regarding the most common clusters of diagnosis?

References

Nardone, G. & Watzlawick, P. (2005). Brief Strategic Therapy: Philosophy, Techniques, and Research. Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson Inc. ISBN: 978-0765702807

Pietrabissa, G., Manzoni, G. M., Ceccarini, M. & Castelnuovo, G. (2014). A Brief Strategic Therapy Protocol for Binge Eating Disorder. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 113. 8–15. (Free PDF)
DOI: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.005.


问:
Is synchronization between the MRI scanner and the stimulus presentation necessary for every trial?
I'm planning an event-related fMRI-experiment to investigate the difference in processing natural and computer-generated facial emotion expressions.

I've seen a lot of studies that synchronize the scan acquisition with stimulus presentation. Is synchronization between the scanner and the stimulus presentation necessary for every trial or is it enough if the scanner and the presentation are synchronized for the first trial?

This question is asked assuming that trials are jittered.

Background

I have a Matlab script to present my stimuli and I've decided on the acquisition parameters (see below). I'll have to start the stimulus presentation with Matlab over a button press after a few dummy scans, as the scanner is not equipped with a synchronization box that tracks the scanner pulses and conveys them to my stimulus delivery computer. So, my presentation is only synchronized with the first scanner impulse.

The stimuli will be presented according to the following parameters and in the following order:

Fixation cross for 600-800ms (length randomly varying in 25 ms steps)

Video for 3 seconds (length not varied, but video type (natural or computer-generated) is randomized)

Blank screen for 3-5 seconds (length randomly varying in 250 ms steps)

Acquisition parameters

TR = 1.7s, TE = 30ms

Whole brain acquisition

Voxel size 3x3 mm, slice thickness = 3.9mm


问:
Validity of the "Common Factors" perspective
Research and practice in psychotherapy has been deeply influenced by two different approaches:

the Empirically Supported Treatments (ESTs) movement, due to the development of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) attitude in the mental health field, and

the Common Factors perspective, and the importance of common factors in the explanation of the therapeutic process.

These two different approaches are well described by Terence Tracey et al. (2003):

One view is that each model of therapy has distinctive effects on clients. This assumption of distinctiveness leads naturally to the inference that some models are more effective than others with particular client types

...

A  competing and perhaps complementary view is that different theoretical approaches are comparably effective” (p. 401).

ESTs can be tested with randomised controlled clinical trials (Herbert,  2003; Morrison,  Bradley, & Westen, 2003);, however there is a growth of studies about the “Common Factors” perspective confirming the notion that all therapies are equally effective — the so-called “Dodo Bird Verdict” (Luborsky et al., 2004; Luborsky & Singer, 1975).

There is emphasis on the economic factors in play when looking at Evidence Based Medicine, and the current "gold standard" seems to be CBT, not just for anxiety disorders (Otte, 2011), but for everything. Yet, there are shortfalls with CBT and as pointed out in that link, some say that the efficacy figures were artificially inflated.

While I can understand the standpoint of those who push for scientific scruitiny of psychotherapeutic approaches, as can be seen in Psychology.SE meta I am also a defender of approaches which have been denounced as purely pseudoscientific and therefore invalid.

Apart from what I covered in my answer in meta, and Sven Hansson's revision of his definition of pseudoscience (Hansson, 1996), are there other arguments, for and against, each side of the debate?

##References

Hansson, S. O. (1996). Defining Pseudoscience and Science In:Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem Pigliucci & Boudry (Eds.) Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
Readable in Google Books

Herbert, J. D. (2003). The science and practice of empirically supported treatments. Behavior Modification, 27(3), 412—430.
PMID: 12841591
DOI: 10.1177/0145445503027003008

Luborsky, L. et al. (2004). The dodo bird verdict is alive and well — mostly. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 9, 2—12(Free PDF).
DOI: 10.1093/clipsy.9.1.2

Luborsky, L., & Singer, B. (1975). Comparative studies of psychotherapies. Is it true that "everyone has won and all must have prizes"? Archives of General Psychiatry, 32(8), 995—1008.
DOI: 10.1001/archpsyc.1975.01760260059004

Morrison, K. H., Bradley, R. & Westen, D. (2003). The external validity of controlled clinical trials of psychotherapy for depression and anxiety: a naturalistic study. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 76(Pt 2), 109—132.
PMID: 12855059 DOI: 10.1348/147608303765951168

Otte, C. (2011). Cognitive behavioral therapy in anxiety disorders: current state of the evidence. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 13(4), 413—421.
PMCID: PMC3263389 Free PDF: ResearchGate & Archive.org

Tracey, T. J. G., Lichtenberg, J. W., Goodyear, R. K., Claiborn, C. D. & Wampold, B. E. (2003). Concept mapping of therapeutic common factors. Psychotherapy Research, 13(4), 401—413.
DOI: 10.1093/ptr/kpg041

ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0


问:
How are commercial psychometric instruments or content protected legally?
I understand the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is registered. </p>

<p>What are the limitations for individuals and other business wishing to utilise the MBTI without a license to do so. </p>


问:
How can a country's IQ be different of 100, if the average IQ of a population is always 100?
In The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up To, Dean Burnett write that:

"the average IQ of a population is 100. Without exception. If someone says, “The average IQ of [country x] is only 85,” then this is wrong. It's basically the same as saying, “ The length of a meter in [country x] is only 85 cm”; this is logically impossible, and the same is true for IQ." (cf https://books.google.fr)

I think this is misleading. He is right to write that the average IQ of a population is 100 (as explained here). But it doesn't imply that it's "wrong" to say that “The average IQ of [country x] is only 85,”. If one takes the whole word population as the population then one can then calculate the average IQ of the people in a particular country.

But then if it's how countries' IQ are measured, why so few countries have an IQ above 100? There is only 15 countries with an average IQ of 100 or above (the max is 108), and so many countries are below 100, the lowest being 59. Even with China (representing about 20% of the world population) pulling the world average IQ closer to 100, the countries' IQ given on that page are not coherent with an aveage wold IQ of 100.

So how are the countries IQ measure? My question isn't about why the average IQ of a population is always 100 but about the discrepancies between countries.


问:
Why is it hard to do a task while actually you can do it?
I would start it with a word "Laziness". I actually have realized that every task will not finish if I do not start do it, and I always trigger my motivation by thinking there will be big consequence if I keep postpone it. But, what is wrong with me? every time I start to do my task (assignments) I am getting sleepy, bored, and in few minutes I would grab my phone to chit chat with people or watching YouTube. I have tried to avoid my phone by asking my friend to hide it from me, but it did not work much, I just watched movie in my laptop. Come on, I cant ask my friend to hide my laptop too, my assignments are there.

It was happening for 6 years, and I just can not accept it. Actually, The assignment is not out of my ability, sometime I could do my assignments in few hours for several days, but without any reason I lost that spirit again. What is wrong? how can I deal with it? and why it happens on me while some other people could just control their self easily? is there any scientific explanation for this?

It perhaps the most stupid wrong placed question you have ever found, but I need your help, indeed. If you ever experience the similar thing, please share.. Thank you


问:
Cognitive Bias, illusory truth effect: its effects on Software Engineers
I have been trying to understand how illusory truth
effect creates problems for Software Engineers. I have found research on
the effects of other cognitive biases (e.g. representativeness, availability, etc.) have on Software Development, but none of them mention anything about illusory truth effect.

Does any such research exist? Can anyone guide me?


问:
Do memories cease to exist?
Do memories ever cease to exist?

For example, did the memories I had 20 years go (which I can't remember) disappear? If a machine that could access and show memories existed, could it bring back those 20 year old memories, or are they gone for ever?

Title: Do memories cease to exist?


问:
Has there been any substantive neuroimaging done to study Gendler's belief/alief distinction?
Tamar Gendler proposed a distinction between the concept of "belief" and "alief", "belief" being the more commonly held, intuitive conception of a certain type of propositional attitude and "alief" being a more subconscious or "primitive" mental state. She argues that, for example, while someone might have a belief that standing on top of a glass floor above the Grand Canyon is safe, they usually have a more primitive alief that they are very high above the ground and it is not safe for them to be standing there.

Since her proposal of the distinction, has there been any neuroimaging or other neuroscientific techniques implemented in a study to outline if there is a neuro-physiological difference between belief and alief? She argues that alief usually involves behavioral response patterns (anxiety being the example used in the Grand Canyon example) but has there been any research done to show any other distinctions between the neurological processes that play a role in belief?


问:
Filter of perception
I read a book about sensory perception in ASD from Olga Bogdashina(Sensory Perceptual Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome, Second Edition).

She reffer to some kind of filter in sensory inputs, but Whats Is exacly that filter ? How it can be dameged in persons with autism?

Title: Filter of perception


问:
Why we construct and estimate human brain models?
Based on clinical data collected using different brain imaging, researchers build a mathematical model of the activity of the human brain like the hemodynamic model (Friston, 2000) that describes the changes in blood flow and blood oxygenation during brain function.

Why do we need to build and calibrate models and what is the main impact and significance of constructing and identification of the models that describe the human brain function in neuroscience field?

References

Friston, K.J., Mechelli, A., Price, C.J., & Turner, R. (2000). Nonlinear responses in fMRI: the Balloon model, Volterra kernels, and other hemodynamics. NeuroImage, 12(4), 466—77.
DOI: 10.1006/nimg.2000.0630 PMID: 10988040


问:
Which is easier for human perception: type of variable before or after its name?
In some programming languages type of variable goes before it's name.

In another - name goes first and then type.
For example if I declare string:

String s = "some string"

Or

val s: String = "some string"

Which version loads brain less and allow easier think about problem ?


问:
Facebook dopamine kick - any proof?
A lot of people are writing that Facebook and other social media sites cause users to be addicted by serving up well timed dopamine kicks in response to interactions. I was searching for any sort of formal proof for this claim like a study of some sort but havent found anything. Is such a claim even provable?</p>

Title: Facebook dopamine kick - any proof?


问:
Ability to identify an "average" vs a maximum (or minimum)?
I have a hypothesis that humans are better able to identify the largest (or smallest) in a set of objects, compared to their ability to identify an average object, i.e. the one closest to the mean.

Has anyone tested response times or accuracy of people given a collection of objects or shapes, when the subjects are asked to identify the most extreme object, as opposed to the object that best represents the "average" object?  Or for a set of numbers, are people faster and/or more accurate at identifying the largest number as opposed to the one closest to the mean?


问:
What determines inebriated personality?
I've studied that alcohol impairs the functioning of the limbic system, slows functioning of the prefrontal cortex, which alters judgement and reason, and damages neurons leading to memory failure, death, etc.

Noting certain people seem to portray similar stereotypes drunk what determines what personality you have when intoxicated?

Is it a liberated version of more natural expression, free of stress?
A certain part of the limbic system damaged?

Title: What determines inebriated personality?


问:
How can I argue the year range for a sample?
I’m writing a thesis about alexythimic levels based on emo-stroop test results.

What could be a good age rate sample? What would be the reason to say I will exclude subjects younger and older than X? Is it easily argued with some already published works? I have read similar works and no one are giving reasons about their selected age range.


问:
Polypharmacy involving sumatriptan, tramadol and serotoninergic antidepressants and risk of serotonin syndrome
Let us consider the following clinical vignette:

A 61 y/o male presents complaining of migraines on the order of 2 or 3 times a month. When he gets them, the only thing that helps to mitigate them is a combination of Sumatriptan 100mg and Tramadol 37.5/325 . Given the patient's background, He asks you "I was hoping to commence treatment with an SNRI like Effexor or Cymbalta but I am concerned about Serotonin Syndrome when I get a migraine."

Based on best practice and current evidence, how legitimate are the patient's concerns?


问:
Mirror neurons in different ape & child rearing
Somewhere in the the past I saw a study talking about a type of ape that raises it's young in creches, unlike chimpanzees which at most carefully choose occasional babysitters. The study made the case that the apes with young in creches had more mirror neurons, and learned though mimicry more easily than chimpanzees, despite lower overall intelligence.

Haven't been able to find the study and it seems there are now some divergences in opinion about the function of mirror neurons. What I would really like to know is, is there evidence around child-rearing environments and mirror neuron development, and the impact of that in adult behaviour? In humans or across species is fine.


问:
If demyelination doesn't typically occur, what happens when a musician doesn't practice for a month?
In "The Talent Code," the author makes this statement:

What's the simplest way to diminish the skills of a superstar talent? The answer: don't let them practice for a month. Causing skill to evaporate...only requires that you stop a skilled person from systematically firing his or her circuit [and continuing to grow myelin] for a mere thirty days.

However, later in the book there is this statement:

Myelin wraps—it doesn't unwrap. Like a highway-paving machine, myelination happens in one direction. Once a skill circuit is insulated, you can't un-insulate it (except through age or disease).

Assuming these are both true, how do they coexist? If a neural circuit is not getting un-insulated in a month of no practice, why can't the performer resume at their previous level of skill?


问:
What does it mean one performs perfect and quickest Stroop tests?
As part of a neuroplasticity training program a subject has to perform in various Stroop Effect tests. Such as:

Color to color names

Animal to animal names

Position of a word within a square

Number of words within a square

If the subject performs perfect in all tests, and is extremely fast, has no problem whatsoever to perform in this test (meaning that responses are equally fast as if colors/symbols matches their words/positions), what does that tell us about the subject's brain or neurology? What is its meaning in relation to cognitive functioning and what are some real-life implications that can be derived from such a performance in this test?


问:
Does the percieved attraction of peers change significantly when living in a foreign culture?
Observation: After living 10 month in India me and other exchange students (subjectively) rated the attractiveness of Indians far higher than at the beginning of the stay.

Hypothesis: It (evolutionarily) makes sense to initially have a low attraction to strangers (<-> "do not fall in love with the enemy"), but to have a mechanism that lets the perceived attractiveness of people in your surroundings increase over time (<-> "procreate within new peer group").

Question: Is there a known psychological/biological effect that lets the attractiveness of humans with other ethnic background increase over time when living within this ethnic group?


问:
What reasoning processes underlie the Logima Strictica 36 and Logicaus Strictimanus 24?
I am conducting research in creating an AI with high IQ.
I am interested in the tests Logima Strictica 36 Test and Logicaus Strictimanus 24. Further links are here

What is the logic of these test items?

What reasoning processes underly these test items?


问:
What is the corresponding study about the effects of growing up without a mother?
We know that deprivation of a father affects development of children - and leads to them being angrier and more depressed as an adult:

‘This is the first time research findings have shown that paternal deprivation during development affects the neurobiology of the offspring.’ (Spencer, 2013)

The research article this was based on was:

Bambico, F. R., Lacoste, B., Hattan, P. R., & Gobbi, G. (2013). Father absence in the monogamous California mouse impairs social behavior and modifies dopamine and glutamate synapses in the medial prefrontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 25(5), 1163-1175.
  DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bht310

So there must be a corresponding study of development changes without a mother. What are the corresponding effects?

My question is: What is the corresponding study about the effects of growing up without a mother?


问:
Is it possible to recall old memories without altering them?
I want spend some time reminiscing about the past and I want to go deep. Upon Googling techniques on how to help memory recall I ran into an old fact I had forgotten about (ironically). The fact is that with every iteration of a memory reconstruction the memory is altered because it is open to suggestion. Of course tissues are plastic and they will change with time and use. I wanted to ask whether it is possible to do a recall in manner that conserves the integrity of the memory?</p>


问:
Is there research that estimates when people think something supposedly random is rigged?
Let’s say you flip a coin three thousand times. If it comes up heads two thousand times, I think it’s safe to say that people will assume this is a rigged coin in spite of the fact that each outcome is equally likely. Closer to the middle, the line gets less certain. Some people would consider 1550/1450 a genuine outcome whereas others wouldn’t. Is there research that has attempted to measure the crossover point here? </p>

<p>I’m looking for some study that has presented people with “random” data, such as coin flips or die rolls, and asked them if they think it was “rigged” or not. </p>


问:
Comprehensive Overview of the Literature regarding Meditation
There have been a lot of studies of meditation, but my understanding is a lot of it is put out by journals that have an invested interest in meditation "working" by whatever metric. Is there an overview of the literature that attempts to curate the things that we're most sure of? I'm looking for a meaty tertiary source, rather than say, a meta analysis. Ideally, I'd like something like a textbook regarding its effects and evidence thereof.</p>


问:
Quasi-experiment: If I change some procedures from my pilot experiment, can I still compare post-intervention results to the pilot results?
I am running a quasi-experiment with English proficiency as a factor (native speakers=9, ESL speakers=10)

I just completed a pilot and fully plan to conduct the intervention as closely to the pilot's procedures as possible--I am measuring the same DVs. I was hoping I could use the pilot as a "control group" of sorts to talk about the characteristics of the groups before intervention.

However, I have to change a few things in the procedure. For example, a lot of the ESL students did not understand my instructions, so I plan to display the instructions using graphics instead.

So my question is: can I still use the pilot results to compare with post-intervention results, even if the procedures are not identical?


问:
Is there a difference in time based goals and achievement goals?
Suppose I want to practice my calculus. Has a study been conducted which shows a difference between setting a goal like: 'I will study calculus for one hour' and 'I will study chapter 3 from my calculus textbook' in terms of completion?

Does one method have a higher failure rate than the other? Does one have a higher chance to begin the task?


问:
What ways are there to think?
When I think, I generally think in words (in English primarily, though sometimes in Russian). Essentially, I speak to myself in my mind, and ask questions and formulate plans. However, sometimes I think without words; I am still thinking with my conscious and not doing something out of instinct.

Example: I am being given a choice between two apples. I will usually think to myself, "I think I have tasted this apple recently and it was horrible," and choose the other one. Or, I might take a moment to decide which one tastes better, but without talking to myself.

I am fairly confident that I have been told from some people that they never think in words. Is this possible?

What other ways are there to think? Do some people think in images? (With the apple example, they would maybe visualize a couple images of them biting into the apple, of a similar apple they have seen, etc.

Or, perhaps, do some people think in scents? I do not imagine how this would work, because when I attempt to recall a scent or taste, I cannot recall it exactly; rather I think about whether it is good or bad, about when I enjoy it and with what, etc.

How would all this work on the neurological level? I am no professional in this area, but a suggestion is that thought in words happens in the section of the brain responsible for speech, and thought without words happens in the subconscious.

Sidenote: When I do math, I also think the names of the numbers or signs in my head, unless it is one I just invented. I know some people do not. This slows me down a lot in math, but also allows me to understand more.

Sidenote #2 (Edit): This question is asking about all the ways to think (this is the difference between it and the linked questions), and is looking primarily at personal experience-based answers.

Title: What ways are there to think?


问:
Why does daylight-saving have such a big impact on us and weekends don't?
Last weekend, at least in Germany, the clock got switched from 2:00 AM to 3:00 AM.

Today I found a few articles, that suggest, that the daylight-saving has a big impact on people. Judges punish harder and myocardial infarction rises after daylight saving. I've found those articles in here, which is a trustworthy German newspaper.

How is it, that just one hour of delay, has such a big impact on us? Me and most people I know, heavily change their sleeping habits on the weekends anyway. As for me, I stay up 2-4 hours later than usual, which is why I can't believe, that 1 hour makes such a difference.

Most people can sleep long on weekends anyways, so there shouldn't even be one hour of sleep missing.

Are those articles maybe drawing the wrong conclusions and connecting two things that might be correlated, but not linked?

This SE question is related, but rather holds the information that I already got from the linked newspaper article.

Sidenote: Since sleep mainly happens in our brain I posted this in psychology & neuroscience, I hope this is correct. If it rather belongs in Biology please let me know. I also couldn't find any more tags than "sleep". If you can think of more feel free to tell me.


问:
Why are young girls writing love letters to the Parkland shooter?
Nikolas Cruz, now widely known as the shooter responsible for killing 17 students in Parkland, Florida and injuring another 17, is according to both CNN and the Sun Sentinel receiving piles of love letters from young girls around the country.

What psychological phenomena would explain this?


问:
Can someone who is born a psychopath acquire empathy through conditioning and neuroplasticity?
Are there any studies of conditioning and neuroplasticity being used to bring back empathy to psychopaths?</p>


问:
What does 'Taxonimize' mean here?
I was reading a news article about increasing IQ and one psychologist wrote

Many of the changes in IQ are correlated to changes in schooling. One way that school increases IQ is to teach children to "taxonimize," or group things systematically instead of thematically. This kind of thinking is rewarded on many IQ tests.

https://www.livescience.com/36143-iq-change-time.html

What does taxonomise mean here? And does anyone know what specific study they are talking about?

Title: What does 'Taxonimize' mean here?


问:
What is the rule that describes sufficiently large groups will have bad actors?
I once heard of a rule/law/number that described any group sufficiently large enough will have "bad" people in it. It is most often used to describe how online communities will have to deal with trolls once they get popular enough.

I can not seem to find it again, does anyone know what this is?


问:
Is there any negative social or psychological implication of the current “slime” preoccupation of teenagers (mostly girls)?
This may not be the right place for this question.  If you think it belongs on another forum, please point me there.

My daughter has been into the “slime” craze for the past two years or so (she is now 14).  She makes several batches of slime a month.  She loves to play with slime.  She loves to watch YouTube videos of people playing with slime.  She sends pictures of her slime to her friends.  She wants me to touch her slime (I don’t like to because it is cold and slimy, ha, and it sticks to me, because she says I don’t know how to handle it).

I just started to wonder, the other day, why so many people, mostly young teen girls, are so infatuated with slime.  Is there some weird, psychological implication here?  Sexual, maybe?  Am I not touching her enough?  Or is it nothing?


问:
Are cognitive functions strictly divided in the left and right hemispheres?

I often see this kind of picture, claiming the strict lateralization of brain functions. Is this valid?

Then, what happens to left-handed individuals? Are their cognitive functions also switched around?

Lastly, I thought that analytical skills reside mostly in the prefrontal cortex, irrespective whether it's left or right.


问:
Negative correlation between AQ score and EFT score

E-S theory explains the social and communication issues seen in autism and Asperger syndrome in connection, on the one hand, to delays and deficits in empathizing . The strengths in assimilating narrow areas of interest, on the other hand, involve an intact or even superior skill in systemizing (Baron-Cohen, 2002 , 2008 , 2009 ; Lawson, Baron-Cohen, & Wheelwright, 2004 ).

Pathological Altruism (Page 346). Oxford University Press.

Therefore, people with high AQ (Autism Spectrum
Quotient) should perform well in EFT (Embedded Figures Test) test 1.

Yet, a study (Valla et al., 2010) has revealed that, the intercorrelation coefficient between AQ and EFT is negative (-0.192 for women, -0.093 for men). Same goes for the relation between RMET and EFT (-0.011 for women, -0.167 for men). Further meta-analysis found similarly incoherent results (Jolliffe & Baron‐Cohen, 1997).

I have seen educators making the assumption that people with high social intelligence are not supposed to be good at spatial tasks. Even Simon Baron-Cohen indicates that figuring out embedded patterns is a systemizing skill.

Empathizers are more interested in people — what they feel and why they think what they think. Systemizers are people who like to figure out the rules embedded in systems such as car engines, train time-tables, dance routines, or stamp collections.

Pathological Altruism (Page 347). Oxford University Press.

Do we treat Valla's experiment as an anomaly or a proof that social skills (or lack of it thereof) do not necessarily dictate systemizing or spatial abilities?

Valla, J. M., Ganzel, B. L., Yoder, K. J., Chen, G. M., Lyman, L. T., Sidari, A. P., ... & Belmonte, M. K. (2010). More than maths and mindreading: sex differences in empathizing/systemizing covariance. Autism Research, 3(4), 174-184.

Jolliffe, T., & Baron‐Cohen, S. (1997). Are people with autism and Asperger syndrome faster than normal on the Embedded Figures Test?. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38(5), 527-534.


问:
Converting Kendall's τ to r for meta-analysis
I'm conducting a meta-analysis of the relationship between male sexual dimorphism (masculinity) and mating/reproductive success. I'm converting all effect sizes to r and I'm a bit unsure of how to go about converting Kendall's τ. Gilpin (1993) has a table for conversion from τ to r, but those values are approximations and I'd like to be a little more specific. Is Kendall's formula (r = sin (.5πτ)) the best way to do it?
Thanks!

Gilpin, A. R. (1993). Table for conversion of Kendall's Tau to Spearman's Rho within the context of measures of magnitude of effect for meta-analysis. Educational and psychological measurement, 53(1), 87-92.


问:
Cognitive psychology and tipping point of believing a fact.
Can anyone suggest studies looking at the number of times participants have to hear something in order to believe something is true? </p>

<p>e.g. if participant A says something to X they may not believe it, but if A B C and D say the same thing to X then they will?
Is there an equilibrium at which a subject may start to believe what is being said, or that X number of reports strongly indicates a probability an event took place. </p>


问:
Is the phenomenom of “subjective consciousness” or “qualia” formally captured by any state-of-the-art Theoretical Model in Neuroscience?
Is the phenomenon of "subjective consciousness" or "qualia" formally captured or defined by any state-of-the-art Theoretical Model in Neuroscience? If so, can you share a brief summary of such formalization and references for further reading?</p>


问:
Task-based fMRI dataset with very simple task (e.g. view stripes)
For my Bachelor thesis I need an fMRI dataset in order to look for causal relationships. I want to be able to confirm my work, so the causal relationships should already be known. Therefore, ideally the dataset would involve very simple visual tasks, like viewing vertical and horizontal stripes. It should have at least 20 Participants and 30 trials per task. It should also be randomized, so the participant doesn't know what they are going to see next. Does anyone have an idea? I've been searching forever and haven't even come close to a dataset which fulfills my criteria.</p>


问:
Visualization of ICA (Independent component analysis) results to the brain spatial regions
In Calhoun et al, 2002, on the application of ICA to fMRI on page 4, ICA data is mapped to the different regions in the brain.

Brain Activation Maps

Question

My specific question here is that when we have got results of ICA in the form of spatially Independent components, then how are those data mapped to the brain activation region?

Also using visualization How do we know that which component is task related that is there must be some default component for a particular activity. For example If a person is doing some activity like seeing a picture and his/her fMRI is being done then how based on ICA when we got say 30 component we would see that which component is related to that activity?

My Understanding

Those template brain regions have spatial locations like x,y coordinates so these ICA components would be somehow transformed to coordinate system.

Calhoun, V. D., Pekar, J. J., McGinty, V. B., Adali, T., Watson, T. D., & Pearlson, G. D. (2002). Different activation dynamics in multiple neural systems during simulated driving. Human brain mapping, 16(3), 158-167.


问:
Any studies on authority influence in non-expertise area? (e.g., police captain giving medical advice)?
I'm just curious if authority influence, even if a little, carries over to areas in which the authority is not an expert.  Like a doctor giving advice about fashion or best kind of car to buy, etc.  Thanks.</p>


问:
The impact of adverse historical event on individual time preference
I am a Development Economist, I recently get interested in time preference reading several insightful economic papers (Godoy 1998, Godoy 2001, Holden et al 1998, Holden 2013, Galor and Ozak 2015).

I am currently looking for more bibliography on time preference and especially on the factors that can explain heterogeneity in time preference for individuals from a given population. If anyone of you know any research paper on the factors explaining within population variation in time preference I will be happy to read your comments.

What I plan to do is to assess whether, within a given population, individuals whose ancestors faced adverse historical event (such as forced migration (i.e. forced village relocation) during colonial times, around 70 years ago) exhibit today higher levels of time preference compared to their peers not affected by such event. The channel would be that such behavior, due to forced migration that uprooted former generations, transmitted through culture from one generation to the other.
In an agrarian economy, these differences in time preference would translate today in different investment behavior (such as decision to fallow land).

Godoy 1998 "The role of tenure security and private time preference in Neotropical Deforestation" Land Economics, Vol 74, No.2 May 1998 pp 162-170

Godoy 2001 "Tenure security, private time preference, and use of resources among lowland Bolivian Amerindians" Ecological Economics 38 (2001) 105-118

Holden et al 1998 "Poverty, market imperfections and time preferences: of relevance for environmental policy?" Environment and Development Economics 3 (1998) 105-130

Galor and Ozak 2015 "The Agricultural Origins of Time Preference" Working paper


问:
Temporal and frequency analysis of brain network to study autism disorders
I know it has shown in the literature that autism disorder affects brain network connectivity based on rs-fMRI data (Plitt, Barnes, & Martin, 2015). They have local over-connectivity but long-distance underconnectivity.

Does ASD affect dynamic of brain networks, such that has an impact on the temporal analysis? What about its effect on frequency analysis?
I wanted to have a whole brain, multilayer brain network analysis of autism disorders and wanted to know which one is better to build my multilayer model based on.

References

Plitt, M., Barnes, K. A., & Martin, A. (2015). Functional connectivity classification of autism identifies highly predictive brain features but falls short of biomarker standards. NeuroImage: Clinical, 7, 359-366.
doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2014.12.013


问:
Why we do what we aren't allowed to do
Don't touch the red button, or don't touch that chocolate cake while I'm gone. Why is it that we most likely will touch them anyway? </p>

Title: Why we do what we aren't allowed to do


问:
Difference between panazep and lupizep
When panazep did not work to reduce anxiety in me the psychiatrist prescribed lupizep. Since both contained the same ingredients Paroxetine and Clonazepam in the same amount I asked the doctor about the difference between them but he could not tell much about it. All he said was that in lupizep the molecules were joined with another technology. Can some one give a detailed answer please ? Thanks</p>

Title: Difference between panazep and lupizep


问:
Correlation of g and Honesty, Rationality, etc?
Are there any meta-analyses reporting the correlations of g (IQ, general mental ability) with:

Honesty-Humility (e.g. in HEXACO model).
I know Conscientiousness (of Big Five) generally has zero correlation with IQ.

Critical thinking, rationality, thinking biases.

Wisdom. As operationalized by researchers like Judith Glück. There are several scales for measuring Wisdom such as the Berlin model.


问:
Are there universal facial expressions for asking questions?
"Dog."
"Dog!"
"Dog?"
We know the first is a statement. The second a warning maybe. And the third a question.

Like facial expressions for emotions. Are there universal human facial expressions or voice modulations that show when we are asking a question? Or naming something. Or giving a warning. I imagine being able to distinguish these 3 things would be quite important for our ape-like ancestors.

In fact, do we share these with apes? When we try and teach apes words do we use things like pointing and intonation? Can they understand this?


问:
Voxel wise comparison (Voxel Based Morphometry or VBM) across subjects in fMRI studies
I am new to fMRI field. In many fMRI studies like This Study a voxel wise comparison is made across subjects and controls . As we know that  dataset in fMRI in the form of 3D matrix like Subjects  x TimePoints  x Voxels   that is on each person we have bunch of time points and on each time points we have voxel values as voxel is unit of measurement in bold signal in the brain that is brain is divided into small cubicle voxels.

My specific question No.1 is that if we have a dataset consisting of 20 control and 15 subjects  with 5000 voxels and 200 time points on all persons then we will have two 3D matrices in following form

For Subjects:   15 x 200 x 5000

For controls:     20 x 200 x 5000

Now how voxel wise comparison would be made between two subjects as these datasets are not balanced in persons or first dimension.

My specific question No.2 is that how regions are compared between those two group like this has been done on page 2(13).

My Understanding

For question No.1 my understanding is that a single matrix is made for each group by reducing the person(subject/control) dimension that is we will have two 200 x500 matrices average over individuals in each matrix and then the voxel wise comparison will be made using t test in any two voxel as each voxel will have 200 time points.

For question No.2 my understanding is that for a typical brain area like "Right thalamus" A group of voxel called cluster like 147 as used in the paper is organized and then voxel vectors are formed for both groups averaged over individuals like out of 147 voxel vector a typical voxel vector will have 200 values and that will be compared.

lastly some times the volumes are reported in the specific brain region like "Right thalamus" in cc and again my question is that how theses volumes are computed?

So I am totally messed up here and need guidance here in my understanding ?


问:
Causal reasoning(implicit models?) vs grammar of native language
I was reading about linguistic relativity and it struck me that there could also be differences in multilingual individuals and mono/bi-lingual individuals on how they derive/reason/create structure out of the environment (causality models).

Anyway, my question can be split as :

Are there standard/widely accepted experiments have been done to test methods used by individuals to infer cause and effect? Couple
of  examples for what i have in mind is here and here.

Is there consensus on correlation between these experiments and indication of causal models used?

If so, have there been studies of those experiments across monolingual, bilingual and multilingual individuals?


问:
What is it called when I a person transfers his angry towards another person, instead of the person that cause and anger?
My significant other has described to me how he has always been the good child who received 4.0 in school, went to the marines was honorably discharged and always do things for his family. He says some of his family members have taken things from him without his permission while he was overseas and not return or replace them.  When he tries to address them no one wants to address the issue, so when he gets angry they make him feel as if he doesn't have a right to his anger.  Now that we are together I feel he transfers these angry feelings towards me.  I try to express that I understand his anger and try not to take anything from him without his permission or I even try to replace things if I have done something to his possessions.</p>


问:
Convolutional Operations in the Visual Cortex
One of the fundamental operations in image neural networks is the operation of convolution, where a filter slides across the receptive field, activating on particular features. This is incredibly useful because it allows us to recycle filters, without having to train neurons on each piece of the receptive field.

It seems like such an operation is mechanically impossible within the human visual cortex. From the paper How does the brain solve visual object recognition - DiCarlo, et. al.,
the brain opts to instead use a massive amount of neurons in each layer, most of which are redundant in that many neurons detect the same feature at different locations. This is clearly unscalable to apply everywhere, so only about 10% of the visual field concentrates these neurons.

On the other hand, we do have the ability to perform convolutions by moving our eyes. So in effect, we can jitter our eyes thereby applying the same neurons to different parts of the scene infront of us. I would think that this, combined with short-term memory can help us process images.

Suppose I force a subject to focus their eyes on the
  center of some common object (e.g. a car), such that the object is
  within the center 10% of our visual field. Are there situations where
  the brain is unable to process what the object is, without
  jittering our eyes? Said another way, how much visual processing are we able to do without any physical movement of our eyes or head?

I'm interested in understanding this question because I'm not convinced that even the massive amount of neurons in the visual cortex are sufficient for visually parsing the object. Whereas by (even slightly) shifting the object in our vision, the combined featurizations from each location would significantly reduce the computational complexity.


问:
Most successful techniques to cope with emotional aversiveness when faced with tasks outside comfort zone?
According to state-of-the-art Psychology research, what are the most successful techniques to cope with / overcome the emotional aversiveness experienced when one is faced with tasks outside one's comfort zone?</p>


问:
Improving reading speed for complex material for already high comprehenders by eliminating mental vocalization?
I'm a heavy reader, but my reading is limited primarily to non-fiction and scientific material. I find that my speed is becoming a real hinderance and is starting to discourage consumption. Comprehension and recall are excellent; speed is the bottleneck.

I'm not seeking to "speed read" (skim, etc.), but rather to improve my intake rate while maintaining comprehension.

When I read I find that I have at least two primary difficulties (probably more, but these are what I mainly notice):

I vocalize what I read. This of course greatly slows me down (perhaps this helps in comprehension, but I can't believe it does entirely since the mind can process data more rapidly in a visual fashion).

I find myself lost in thought sometimes both about the material AND
occasionally other things.

It's clear that if I could eliminate these two issues I could dramatically increase my speed.

Are there any specific techniques available to help in these areas, perhaps especially in eliminating vocalization?

Perhaps there are other areas of improvement as well that could help, while reading such material. Any techniques or studies that have proven helpful in establishing good reading behavior and habits?


问:
Statistic analysis on EEG data - how to deal with it properly?
Let's assume that I have a datasheet looking like that:

```<code>Patient Electrode  Task Theta power
1       1          1    0.5
1       2          1    0.8
1       3          1    0.1
1       4          1    0.9
...
1       1          2    0.3
1       2          2    0.9
1       3          2    0.4
1       4          2    0.3
...
2       1          1    0.2
2       2          1    0.7
2       3          1    0.3
2       4          1    0.4
...
2       1          2    0.6
2       2          2    0.7
2       3          2    0.8
2       4          2    0.8
...
3       1          1    0.0
3       2          1    0.3
3       3          1    0.2
3       4          1    0.8
...
3       1          2    0.2
3       2          2    0.5
3       3          2    0.1
3       4          2    0.9
</code>```

I have for example 20 patients, each of the patient has 128 electrodes recorded from one experiment with 2 categories. So data for the patients (for example this theta power on each electrode) are INDEPENDENT, because the data are from different people, and from only one run of the experiment. But on the other hand the data regarding electrodes from each patient are DEPENDENT, all electrodes share a bit of common signal.

What kind of statistical tests we can use to check the difference in for example this theta power between the task no. 1 and no.2? How to take care of this dependancy/independancy in neuroscience data?


问:
Participant compensation and engagement in online studies
In research studies, it is common to compensate the participant for their time/effort by giving them monetary compensation. Is there any research on whether the amount someone is paid for participating in a study affects their level of engagement during that study?</p>


问:
What is an appropriate background for cognitive modeling?
Awhile back, I picked up Cognitive Modeling by Thad A. Polk (published in 2002 by MIT Press - and yes, before anyone points it out, I do realize that that's probably somewhat out of date at this point given its age). I found that I was somewhat confused by it, though. What is the appropriate background for this topic?

I'd give a little more of my personal background for context, but I'm not looking for personalized advice so much as a general explanation of what kinds of things (beyond an "ordinary" introduction to cognitive psychology) would be helpful to understanding this topic.


问:
Role of extreme experiences in psychological development
I would kindly like to ask for literature on the role of:

Overcoming extreme experiences (suffering - psychological, physical, etc. -, fear, etc.), in personal development

Sports psychology in personal development


问:
Can gamification lead to better group cooperation?
I was wondering. Would it be possible to stimulate an individuals sense of group by gamification?

For those who don’t know, gamification is a method of making a game out of the mundane.

For example:
If you earn a badge for every time you correct something on StackExchange. Would that be a good enough ‘reward’ for most people to keep doing it and not giving up after some time?


问:
Why do humans fail to correctly repeat the same word over and over again?
My five year old daughter asked me why we can't repeat the same word ad infinitum.

I have never thought about it before but she is right. Most people when given the task of saying a word, almost any word, will sooner or later get tongue tied and merge the syllables. It is not just boredom. You could bounce a ball until tired but then I guess there is a longer gap between bounces. If you reduce the time gap then we mess that up, too.

But saying a word is a simple thing and yet it is almost impossible to repeatedly say the word correctly. After 15 repetitions you start saying rubbish and need a break but it is not due to fatigue. Anyone with any thoughts?


问:
Has the optimal learning speed been studied?
My question is whether learning at "supernatural" speeds has been studied, in particular in relation to content retention and what are some research papers on this topic.

To clarify, one example of this would be watching lectures on youtube at 2x the
regular speed.

My hypothesis (as someone completely external to psychology!)  is that there is an improvement, for the following reasons:

there's no time to be distracted since there are no gaps in the presentation

the voice of the teacher sounds very robotic and non-human, which helps to stay alert

It just feels like taking a shortcut, so one is much more willing to put up with a 5min of videos rather than the original 10m.

I think this has to with the fact that they are shorter than the origianls. If the videos were 5' each to begin with this point would be nullified.


问:
is low pitched machine synthesized speech easier to comprehend at high rates?
all I have is anecdotal experience,
try it out yourself.

I couldn't find any published study,
was anything published about that?


问:
Why does anxiety medication work?
It seems really odd to me that anxiety medication can work, because I can't understand how a medication can alter a feeling.

My understanding is that the idea of anxiety medication is to alter neurotransmitters and activity in certain areas of the brain in order to change how a person experiences anxiety. For example for someone who experiences anxiety an ideal medication (very informally) would be a medication reducing activity of amygdala.

What I find very odd about this approach is that I don't believe feelings are just chemicals, i.e it dosen't make sense to me that altering some neurotransmitters in the brain can have a psychological impact on a person but only a physiological. I don't understand how someone can fear a something (for example a spider) and altering its brain chemistry and activity can make someone not feeling afraid of a spider.

So does anxiety medication have impact only on the physiological symptoms of anxiety?

Title: Why does anxiety medication work?


问:
Can reuptake absorb a selective or non-selective agonist?
For example, a lot of antipsychotics are chemically similar to serotonin, and at least partially trigger certain types of serotonin receptors.  Is there any evidence to suggest that, because of their chemical similarity, they can be absorbed into the neuron via reuptake?  Meaning, that this agonist could be recycled and continuously partially trigger the specific serotonin receptors?

Or, possibly more likely, has there been any evidence to suggest this can happen with non-selective agonists?


问:
Research showing short-term memory interferes with motor planning
Has research shown that keeping information in short-term memory, like two words or two numbers, make planning and completing a physical task more difficult?</p>


问:
Negative Rewards(punishment) processing in Human Brain?
Can someone please tell me how negative rewards or punishments are processed in the human brain? Do we have a separate segment to process positive and negative reward and are the positive and negative rewards processed in the same fashion?</p>


问:
Correlations with alien abduction experiences
I cannot find statistics about how many supposed alien "UFO abductees" have sleep paralysis.

I can't find statistics about how many alien abductees were hypnotized before concluding that they were abducted by aliens (because of the "buried" memories).

I can't find statistics about what emotions alien abductees associate with being abducted(good? bad?). What types of religious beliefs do those people in the study have?spiritual, christian, hells?,enlightenment?

I can't find statistics about how many "alien abductees" don't have religious beliefs.


问:
Is dissociation/detachment associated with gamma wave?
In this answer, it is said that pain signals can be numbed by dissociating through detachment (a psychological effect). On the other hand, in the article "The Brain of Buddha" by Christof Koch, it seems that a high intensity of gamma wave can also relief the pain (a neurotic effect).

So does dissociation/detachment associates with gamma wave? The Kock's paper doesn't mention anything about the dissociation.


问:
Do schizophrenics tend to believe they were gaslighted?
It would seem to me that it would be hard for a single person to manipulate a mentally stable into thinking they have schizoid problems. One might quickly become suspicious if the supposed delusions are only tied to a single acquaintance. But for people who are already slightly schizophrenic, it would be much easier to exaggerate their symptoms. Aside from cases of actual intentional gaslightings, schizophrenic people may tend to be paranoid and form beliefs that they are manipulated.

All that is slightly different from the more common situation where a schizophrenic person thinks he is lied to by psychiatrist, psychotherapist or another mental health worker.

Is there any research on the schizophrenic people believing they were gaslighted by friends, family or another acquaintances? Or at least some case notes or the mental health workers speaking about that issue?


问:
Are there any cutting edge techniques that would enable one to acquire a foreign language at a relatively fast pace?
I am aware of immersion methods as well as mnemonics such as the one Daniel Tammet mentioned in Born on a Blue Day. I read that Kim Peek's lack of corpus callosum enabled his brain to absorb information faster with his whole brain but that hindered other daily activities.

But my motivation was the folklore legends of William James Sidis who is supposed to have acquired a language in one day.

My question thus is two-fold:

Are there any medical conditions which allow one to learn a
language faster? For instance, consider John Travolta's character learning
Portuguese in a half-an hour car drive.

What are some current theories in cognitive science that allow one to acquire a language faster? For instance, see the book Babel No More. At the end the author mentions a trick of using the whole body to learn a language as well as the accent.

So, how would an artificial intelligence programmer view language learning? What sort of model would he attempt to create?


问:
Individual political belief test (Social and Economic Conservatism/Liberal)
I'm looking for a framework (question types) to estimate the political belief of participants. The survey will then be given to people from different parts of the world, but mostly occidental.

The 12 Items Social and Economic Conservatism Scale (SECS) (Everett, 2013) is pretty good but it only measures conservatism. In my knowledge it also was not used in large-scale survey such as the European Social Survey, European Value Study or The World value survey making the result not comparable to the global population.

There is the Political Compass, but the test is very long and not documented.

My target is to be able to place peoples on a two-dimensional scale, with very few questions:

References

Everett, J. A. (2013). The 12 items social and economic conservatism scale (SECS). PloS one, 8(12), e82131. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0082131


问:
Somatosensory evoked potentials
I am wondering what the best EEG recording montage is to use for recording of electrically evoked somatosensory evoked potentials after median nerve stimulation?</p>

Title: Somatosensory evoked potentials


问:
Correlationships between food choice and personality
There are known attempts to correlate the personality of an individual with their choice of a color or a shape - something which I have asked about here and am using in an app that I am delveoping.  I am now starting to ask myself whether there are any formal studies that attempt to correlate common food choices with personality.  I have come across a few useful ideas by simply googling for "food choice and personality".  e.g. Keller & Siegrist (2015). and Zayed (n.d.)

However, neither of those articles to my mind comes close to being a formal study of the subject.  In the context of my own app I am wondering whether I can augment its understanding of its user by adding - to an existing list of personality acquisition questions - a request to select from, say, images that show

A burger

An apple

A chocolate bar

A chili pepper

Given that I am using many other personality assessment measures I would imagine that even without any known prior art on the subject I will in due course be able to glean something useful from an answer here.  However, I would be most grateful to anyone who might be able to point me to any formal, peer-reviewed studies on the subject.

References

Keller, C., & Siegrist, M. (2015). Does personality influence eating styles and food choices? Direct and indirect effects. Appetite, 84, 128-138.
DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2014.10.003 PMID: 25308432

Zayed, A. (n.d.) What Your Food Choices and Eating Habits Say about Your Personality? Retreivable from: https://www.consumerhealthdigest.com/general-health/food-choices-and-eating-habits-says-your-personality.html


问:
Timing accuracy in presentation of videos with different frame rates (with COGENT)
For our fMRI study we want to present videos of 3 seconds duration. The videos have different frame rates:

48 videos were recorded with 50 fps

16 videos were recorded with 25fps

64 videos were recorded with 30 fps

I'm now faced with the problem that the videos are not presented for 3 seconds. The videos are either extended or shortened:

48 videos (50 fps): extended  (maximum extension between +6ms to
+10ms)

16 videos (25 fps): shortened (maximung shortening between -17ms and
-20ms)

64 videos (30 fps): shortened (maximung shortening between -17ms and
-20ms)

For this reason I assumed that the problem is caused by the different frame rates of the videos. But then I discovered that the extent of the extended or shortened presentation is changing from presentation to presentation and independent of the videos. So for example: Video1 is presented for 3006ms instead of 3000ms during the first presentation. During the next presentation Video1 is presented for 3008ms instead of 3000ms and so on.

Another problem is the presentation of a blank screen between each stimulus. It is set to range between 3000ms and 5000ms in varying steps of 250ms. Here I noticed an extended presentation ranging from +16ms up to 30 ms.

Questions

Any ideas what might cause this timing deviation?

Does this have to do with the hardware of the stimulus presentation
computer?

The refresh rate of the stimulus presentation computer is set to 60Hz. The computer is connected to a projector for the fMRI measurements (but the timing deviations do also occur when I present the stimuli full screen on the stimulus presentation laptop).


问:
How the Brain Does Garbage Collection in Real Time
When we read a sentence we don't "pay attention to" each letter and the structure of each letter and the placement of the letter and color and lighting and all that. We just "end up with" the meaning of the sentence.

From a computational perspective, you would parse the sentence into "tokens", convert those tokens into a tree of nouns and verbs and such, resolve the ambiguities, etc. All of this process requires a lot of data structures. That is, you need trees pointing to strings, and trees pointing to other trees, etc. This could create dozens of intermediate data structures. In the end you want a final data structure with the meaning. But now we have all these intermediate structures we don't really need anymore. What is needed is some sort of garbage collection.

So I'm wondering how the brain deals with this. How the brain "loses" or "forgets" or "discards" the intermediate information when parsing a sentence (or interpreting other visual or auditory information). Wondering how it knows to not permanently store that information, which would end up overcrowding our brain quickly. Wondering how it "ends up with" the final appropriate data structure. At least at a high level.


问:
What are the other "first cognitive tools" beside analogy?
In the paper The Analogical Paradox: Why Analogy Is So Easy In Naturalistic Settings, Yet So Difficult In The Psychological Laborator, Dunbar says:

Analogy is one of the first cognitive tools that they use when reasoning about  these  unexpected findings.

Some other authors would argue that analogy is the core of all thinking. But anyway, what are the other "first cognitive tools" that we have?


问:
Mapping concrete emotions to the PAD model
I'm in the middle of researching emotional models.

I've come across the PANA model and there are nice mappings out there of emotional words to various points on the PANA plane—the "Mood Meter", for instance.

Are there any similar mappings of emotional words to the 3-dimensional PAD model?


问:
What are the thoughts?
At the neuroscience level, what are thoughts? I mean, are they just electrical synapse through the brain in a recognizable patterns? if so, How are those electrical pulses originated?</p>

Title: What are the thoughts?


问:
Is it an issue to use a model for stimulus selection, when the same model is later tested against fMRI data based on those stimuli?
I am planning an fMRI experiment which looks at similarity of human brain activation when prompted with known words.

The goal of the experiment is to compare the similarity of activation with predictions made by a model. To get a good comparison, we would ideally want an even spread of similarity between stimulus words.

Is there a potential issue with using the same model to select stimuli of a range of predicted similarities?

Note that the analysis will not make presumptions about similarity of words other than what is shown from the data, so we should avoid circular analysis (Kriegeskorte et al, 2009). The model predictions don't influence data analysis until the final comparison between observed and predicted similarities in activation. It still feels intuitively like there might be an issue of false findings through the stimulus selection, but I cannot find/verbalize an actual problem.

An alternative would be to use existing literature to identify a word list with an even spread of similarity between words. But as our model is of course based on that literature, in practice this would result in a very similar list of words.


问:
How to identify the Default Mode Network in fMRI images?
I am relatively new to the realm of fMRI modality and the project that I am working on requires me to find the number of clusters in healthy and schizophrenic fMRI images by generating the Default Mode Network (DMN) t-maps. Is there any software available that exclusively allows me to do this? If not, is there a pipeline that I can follow in order to generate the t-maps? </p>