# Question
Title: Dopamine deficiency more frequent in the addiction prone?
I found this clip about dopamine deficiency.

> ...\[P\]eople with low dopamine activity may be more prone to addiction.

Is the reverse also true? **Does susceptibility to addiction** (genetic, etc.) **have an effect on the likelihood that one may have a dopamine deficit?**

# Answer
It seems that genetic plays significant roles in dopamine addiction: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22350797

And also a study of "born-addicts": http://www.addictscience.com/genetics-d2/

But also it is connected to ADHD studies. It is well known that people with ADHD are vulnerable to addiction. They think it is because reward deficiency system: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2626918/

When ADHD patients get medicine based on dopamine or amphetamine their attention improves.
> 3 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, clinical-psychology, addiction
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# Question
Title: What are the neurological mechanisms for a fear of heights when atop a building, but not in a plane?
A fear of heights (or acrophobia), can be debilitating (I know it can be for me).

My question is what is the neurological mechanisms that cause a fear of heights in a tall object such as a skyscraper or bridge, but not really occurring in a plane?

I have found that I can not stand too close to a window in the upper floors of a tall building, but will happily look out the window in a plane, inflight *and* while landing and taking off.

# Answer
A fear of heights on buildings is very common because there are natural vestibular and vertigo responses within certain height ranges. Furthermore, the effect is heightened if you're exposed to the elements out on a balcony as opposed to within the building.

Fear of flying is almost always related to the sensations of landing and taking off. If you've flown before you'll notice that those two events are very turbulent and it even seems amazing that some airplanes can stay together. However, once in the air you don't have the same effects of acrophobia that many people have on high buildings. Essentially, all perspective of height is removed when you look out the window of an airplane and thus the cues that trigger acrophobia. Your brain sees it like a painting of things in the distance and doesn't process it as height in the same way at all.

Brandt, T., Arnold, F., Bes, W., & Kapteyn, T. S. (1989). "The mechanism of physiological height vertigo. I. Theoretical approach and psychophysics". Acta Otolaryngol, 5-6, 513-23.
> 6 votes

# Answer
Those are different phobias with different names:

Acrophobia- Fear of heights.

Altophobia- Fear of heights.

Batophobia- Fear of heights or being close to high buildings.

Aviophobia or Aviatophobia- Fear of flying.

Pteromerhanophobia- Fear of flying.

In fear of flying is fear of loosing control, fear of not trusting someone else. In fear of heights is lack of trust in oneself and ability to move.

EDIT: In neurological way there are two paths, short and log, in fear of heights the sort one activates first... IMO In Fear of flight there are no short path of fear.

Source: http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~knutson/ans/ledoux00.pdf
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, phobia, fear
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title: How strong is the need to belong?

text:
# Question
Title: How strong is the need to belong?
Are there any studies that measure the need to belong?

Does this need vary greatly from person to person or is there a tight deviation?

What would explain why some have very little need to belong vs. those with a very strong need.

Also, to what extent will an individual forgo other needs to fulfill this need?

# Answer
> 7 votes
In partial answer to your question, yes, there have been several studies involved in this particular field.

Some findings include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope this helps a bit.

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Tags: social-psychology, motivation
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# Question
Title: Philosophy Meets Neuroscience: The Molyneux's Problem
Consider the Molyneux's problem

> "If a man born blind can feel the differences between shapes such as spheres and cubes, could he similarly distinguish those objects by sight if given the ability to see?" (Wikipedia)

There is recent evidence$^{1}$ that the answer is likely negative. In their experiment, Held et al. used "three-dimensional forms drawn from a children’s shape set" (Legos, actually). I was thinking would the results be the same, if the stimuli were reconstructions of snakes or other reptiles? Humans are argued to have evolved fear modules$^{2}$ in their brain for such creatures. Or, if the stimuli were directly related to humans, e.g. body parts? Could this kind of experiment test whether a child's mind is *tabula rasa*?

References:

$^{1}$ Richard Held, Yuri Ostrovsky, Beatrice deGelder, Tapan Gandhi, Suma Ganesh, Umang Mathur, Pawan Sinha, The newly sighted fail to match seen with felt, *Nature Neuroscience*, vol. 14, pp. 551–553, 2011.

$^{2}$ Arne Öhman, Susan Mineka, The Malicious Serpent: Snakes as a Prototypical Stimulus for an Evolved Module of Fear, *Current Directions in Psychological Science*, Z6:6, pp. 5-9, 2003.

# Answer
A child's mind is certainly not tabula rasa; language acquisition patterns in children suggest that they have an inborn module for it — domain-specific and, while flexible, clearly incompletely flexible.

The children would probably have the same troubles with constructions of spiders and snakes; the modules that we are said to have for those species concern our prepared learning to fear these organisms, not our identification of them.

Even if the modules did concern identification rather than fear, the fact that the inborn modules do not constitute inborn abilities or tendencies. Experiences must still be had with the snakes, spiders, etc for fear to be acquired.
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, learning, developmental-psychology, test
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# Question
Title: How did the unique features of human intelligence evolve?
I have been debating the following topic with a friend.

* She argues that humans do not descend from chimpanzees or orang-utans, because if we did, such animals would share the same cognitive thinking that humans have.
* I argue that we do descend from that such animals, and that a high protein diet has allowed early humans to develop a better memory, intelligence, and other mental processes.

### Questions

* What is the the real origin of human intelligence?
* If non-human animals do have intelligence too, why is their intelligence not as advanced as humans?

# Answer
> 6 votes
> If non-human animals do have intelligence too, why is their intelligence not as advanced as humans?

Notions like “advanced” or “better” really have no place in evolutionary thinking. Again, evolutionary fitness is about self-reproduction and success compared to whatever competition is present at any moment. There is no force “optimizing” species to meet some external criteria of “progress”.

One important observation is that (relatively) simple species have in fact been quite successful (in terms of number of individuals, total biomass, capacity to survive climate changes and other disruptive events, etc.). Humans have been flourishing very recently (few thousands of years), colonizing big parts of the earth, reaching large population numbers but before that there is evidence that they went through a severe population bottleneck as recently as 70000 years ago. Great apes populations are also not very large and all species are considered endangered.

Sustaining a large brain and human intelligence is in fact extremely onerous. The human brain requires a lot of energy. Furthermore, it has become too big to go through the mother's womb so that it still undergoes growth after birth, meaning that human babies require a lot of care and protection. All that suggest that “high intelligence” is not always such a big advantage, evolutionary speaking. As often, there are trade-offs and various successful “strategies”.

In any case, you might be interested in Wikipedia's article on the “Evolution of human intelligence”.

# Answer
> 5 votes
Let's first be clear that we didn't evolve from monkeys/apes/etc. That's a common misconception. Evolution states that we and monkeys/apes/etc. evolved from a common ancestor. Same with fish. If you go back far enough, we and fish share a common ancestor... we did not, however, evolve from today's Salmon or Macaque.

That being said, the origin of intelligence is an elusive topic. Intelligence isn't the most tangible concept to study in an evolutionary context as the associated molecular evidence is highly circumstantial. For example, it's difficult to interpret what behavioral differences emerged from the differences in receptor distribution and types associated with our genetic fission from the common ancestor.

Now that we've said that, there's several theories; many of them stem from language. It is thought that the articulation allowed by language allows us to more carefully think about things... but there's always the possibility that the reasoning came first and facilitated the language.

One of the more interesting theories I've read is the bicameral mind. Of course, note the criticisms against it:

"It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets." -Richard Dawkins

Others argue that human consciousness is a social construct.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Your own theory is bad because it seems to follow from a Lamarkian interpretation of evolutionary theory. In Lamarck's idea, a crab's offspring will have the genes bigger claws if the crab exercises his own claws a lot before giving birth. In the same way, you're suggesting that the way ancient human diets improve their mental health somehow led to this mental health being passed down to us.

To better understand the question, you should think not about what habits ontogentically lead to better thinking, but about what problems that ancient humans uniquely faced such that ultimately only those with our intelligence were able to successfully mate and reproduce.

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Tags: intelligence, consciousness, evolution, cognitive-neuroscience, animal-cognition
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# Question
Title: How can surprise be labelled conscious when mismatch negativity shows that surprise takes place earlier than conscious states?
Mismatch negativity (MMN) is the brain response to violations of a rule. The MMN peaks at about 100–250 ms after change onset. **If MMN occurs so early, before conscious perception, why is surprise considered a cognitive phenomenon?** Isn't it rather connected with autonomic processes that take place earlier than cognitive process. Surprise is considered as belonging to cognitive processes. Among emotion theories, the appraisal theory of emotions, considers that there can be no emotion unless I consciously 'label' it. Here I wonder - **how can there be any conscious 'labeling' of surprise when MMN shows that surprise takes place earlier than conscious states?** If we accept that surprise does not need conscious awareness for taking place then the appraisal theories that connect surprise with unexpected events are mistaken. See Ortony, Reisenzein and many other appraisal theorists on surprise.

# Answer
As often in this area, the problem seems to be entirely created by confusions about definitions and terminology and the difficulties resulting from the use of common-sense concepts like “surprise” in scientific theories. One answer would be “Why not?” Basically you seem to object to the definition of surprise used by some theorists but definitions are neither true or false, they are merely common or unusual, and useful or not. Emotions in particular have received so many definitions that there isn't much of a basis to claim any particular one as the “correct” one anymore. Those theorists are just talking about something else than mismatch negativity, it's as simple as that.

Obviously there is a such a thing as being consciously surprised and we have a word for it: “surprise”. There is no way around that without redefining the word to something unrecognizable to most speakers of the English language. It's only with a way to clearly distinguish (1) physiological processes (2) cognitive processes and (3) subjective experiences that we can begin to explore the relationship between them, describe the physiological underpinnings of surprise and account for the experience as such. This experience is a basic fact that you can always “define away” from the scope of your interest but would still need to be explained. Said differently, the “labeling” process is an interesting object of study in itself, whether or not you are prepared to include it in the definition of surprise or want to define emotion through, say, autonomic activation.

If you just assume “surprise” to mean “mismatch negativity”, what you have is neither an empirical finding nor an interesting theory of the conscious experience of surprise. You have just deprived yourself of the ability to clearly speak about the core phenomenon of surprise. In my view, interesting questions to ask would therefore be “What reason is there to conflate surprise with mismatch negativity (or, for that matter, any other brain process)?” or “To what extent does our experience of surprise coincide/follow from mismatch negativity?”
> 7 votes

# Answer
Also.

Appraisal theory argues that a cognitive mechanism assesses the meaning of a situation before initiating an emotion. It does not argue that this mechanism operates consciously, so demonstrating that it doesn't doesn't impinge on the validity of appraisal theory at all.

Mismatch negativity may be part of the process leading to surprise, but noting that a rule has been violated is peripheral to what surprise is all about. Surprise is the emotional response.
> 5 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, emotion, eeg
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# Question
Title: Does reading a book out loud make you better in social situations?
Suppose a person reads a book out loud for 1 hour straight. Would this "exercise" the parts of the brain involved in speech? Would this make the person a better communicator in social situations?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Based on general principles of skill transfer:

* Reading a book aloud should improve your skills in reading books aloud, and in particular it should improve your skill in reading the particular passages that you are reading. So if you are going to be reading a particular text in a public setting, it makes sense to practice reading that passage of text.
* Likewise, if you are preparing to give a lecture, then practicing giving the lecture should improve your performance giving that talk.
* Reading a book aloud is unlikely to help you in social situations because the dynamics of reading are quite different to the dynamics of social situations. Communication in social situations is interactive with its own specific set of conventions that need to be learnt. In contrast, reading a book aloud is not interactive. The rules that govern reading a book aloud are very different to those that govern social situations.

Based on the same principles, if you want to be a better communicator in social situations, your time would probably be better spent (a) studying social interactions, and (b) engaging and reflecting on social interactions.

**Update:** @ofri makes a good point. If a bottle neck on your social skills is actually articulating words clearly, then practicing that skill, such as would occur when reading, should be effective. Ofri uses a good example of a second language learner. The case I'm thinking of above is where the person is fully competent in articulating words verbally, and where problems with social skills relate more to knowing what to say when.

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Tags: neuroscience, social-psychology, communication
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# Question
Title: What causes student errors on a problem involving differentiating a factorial?
Consider the following maths problem, assuming only a high-school level knowledge of calculus:

> If $f(x) = x!$, find $df/dx$

Almost all of my respondents seemed to switch on their "mental differentiation pipeline" and tried to expand $x!$ as a product and got stuck. The right answer is that $x!$ is undefined for any non-integer, so $f$ is discontinuous, and $f'$ doesn't exist!

**Is there a name in psychology for the phenomenon that causes one to think along the wrong lines in the problem above?**

Is it the same as the one leading to incorrect answers to the bat and ball problem? Is this a test of your thinking style? For, perhaps an intuitive thinking style will lead one to expand $x!$ as a product and attempt to differentiate term-wise. Is there a "cognitive remedy" for wrong thinking?

# Answer
> 3 votes
I imagine this question is tricky for students for a several reasons.

1. **Question wording:** The question may suggest to the student that it is possible to differentiate $x!$. Or they may assume from the wording that some meaning is meant where it is possible to differentiate. For example, alternatively, you could ask a set of questions, one for each functions, about whether a given function was differentiable (e.g., $x^2$, $2x+3x^3$, $log(x)$, $x!$). This would clearly be easier, because it puts the potential that the function might not be differentiable into the student's mind. I'm not saying what method of questioning is better from a pedagogy perspective; I'm just noting that question wording influences the difficulty of the problem, and that in this case, the question might be labelled a "trick question".
2. **Analogy to solve novel problems:** If students think that there is an actual derivative as an answer, but no obvious solution exists, it is natural to apply strategies that seem relevant to the problem. For example, they might know how to calculate $x!$ for any given positive discrete value of $x$. Therefore they might assume that working out the derivative involves interpolating (e.g., something like a gamma function) or they might rely on what they know about the product rule or some such. In general it is common for people to try to solve problems that they don't understand by drawing on strategies that seems relevant.
3. The **question relies on the ability to apply a key fact** that discrete functions are not differentiable. Thus, students need to know that fact, and they need to know that the factorial is a discrete function, and they need to link these two ideas. Thus, from a knowledge perspective, this question relies on a piece of knowledge that students might not possess.

So, in summary, I think the question exemplifies the kinds of challenges that students encounter when learning and demonstrating mathematical skills. I think a lot can be learnt about students cognitive representations of a problem by the kinds of errors they make. However, I do not think failing to solve this problem correctly says anything fundamental about your thinking style.

For further discussion of cognitive science in relation to mathematics education, perhaps check out Robert Siegler's work.

### References

* Siegler, R. S. (2003). Implications of cognitive science research for mathematics education. In Kilpatrick, J., Martin, W. B., & Schifter, D. E. (Eds.), A research companion to principles and standards for school. mathematics (pp. 219-233). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathmatics. PDF

# Answer
> 2 votes
If you pose the question only to students who have a perfect knowledge of high school calculus, without any knowledge gaps, then they should all give the correct answer. The "problem" is, that you can graduate from high school without having understood all the details about differentiation. Most students don't finish high school with the best mark in maths, so obviously they *must have* some knowledge gaps. And even many who finish with the best possible mark have only understood the format of the questions, not everything that's behind them. And then there are those for whom this detail was not part of the curriculum. Because even with an identical syllabus, there will enough leeway for a teacher to focus on different aspects and only superficially touch upon others or leave them out altogether.

In short: **Assuming that everyone with a high school degree has the same depth of mathematical understanding is somewhat naive.**

I graduated from high school and never have understood even the basics of differentiation, despite the fact that it filled one year of my curriculum :-)

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, problem-solving, mathematical-ability
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# Question
Title: Any models that act using both streams of visual processing?
The Two-Stream Hypothesis, where object properties are processed independently from spatial information, remains the most well established theory of visual processing. However, it concerns me that most models that reference this theory stop at the end of the two streams (as per the cartoon model in the image below); they never say how the mind translates those sources of information into action (i.e. the two arrows in the picture never meet).

* **Are there models and/or theories out there that try and situate the Two Streams of information into a full perception action cycle?**
* **And if not, then why not (e.g. complexity, better theories, different level of analysis, etc.)?**

# Answer
You may be interested in the FARS model from Fagg and Arbib (1999) that describes the interaction of the two visual streams in the primate brain during object grasping.

The article What Puts the How in Where? Tool Use and the Divided Visual Streams Hypothesis (2007) makes use of the dorsal/ventral streams to explain our ability to use complex tool. As Frey argues, "the ability of the dorsal stream alone to account for one of the most common forms of human action, tool use, is limited. While experience-dependent modifications to existing dorsal stream representations may explain simple tool use behaviors (e.g., using sticks to extend reach) found among a variety of species, skillful use of manipulable artifacts (e.g., cups, hammers, pencils) requires in addition access to semantic representations of objects' functions and uses."

Apart from these two domains, I can not see one that would benefit from the "full perception action cycle": one stream is usually sufficient to describe a phenomenon.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Mario Liotti and Don M. Tucker (Brain Asymmetry, MIT, 1996) attempt to explain that the 'corticolimbic architecture is not left/right, but dorsal/ventral". In their opinion, the reason for hemispheric asymmetries can be found in the asymmetries of the dorsal and ventral systems. They proposed that emotional behavior could be interpreted by analyzing the vertical circuits (dorsal/ventral).
> 4 votes

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Tags: perception, cognitive-modeling, vision, computational-modeling, connectionism
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title: Can stress be detected by an fMRI?

text:
# Question
Title: Can stress be detected by an fMRI?
How does stress damage the brain (if at all)? Is it akin to taking drugs, heavy drinking, or a minor stroke?

Would an fMRI of a stressed person present evidence of stress?

# Answer
> 5 votes
There is little evidence that stress affects structural MRI (reduction in the volume of the hippocampus). The review article (*Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behaviour and cognition* Lupien et al., 2009) synthesizes the current knowledge in the field. Another article might be of interest (MRI measurement of hippocampal volume in post-traumatic stress disorder: A meta-analysis).

If you are interested in functional MRI and day-to-day stress, even less is known. The study (Perfusion functional MRI reveals cerebral blood flow pattern under psychological stress) shows that ventral RPFC (right prefrontal cortex) activation is specifically associated with psychological stress, and this activity persists even beyond the stress-task period.

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Tags: neuroscience, well-being, stress, brain-injury
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# Question
Title: What does scientific research say about the relationship between penis size and attractiveness?
Pop-culture often equates a larger penis with a more attractive penis.

* **Is there any scientific research examining the relationship between penis size and attractiveness ratings?**
* **What are the reasons for any such relationship?**

I've heard that symmetry is relevance to beauty, but what is the relevance of size.

# Answer
> 10 votes
If you are interested in scientific research, you may want to read **Lever, Frederick, and Peplau (2006)**. From their abstract

> Views about penis size were assessed in an Internet survey of 52,031 heterosexual men and women... Whereas 85% of women were satisﬁed with their partner’s penis size, only 55% of men were satisﬁed with their penis size, 45% wanted to be larger, and 0.2% wanted to be smaller. Satisfaction did not vary across age groups from 18 to 65. Men reporting a larger-than-average penis rated their appearance most favorably, suggesting a possible confidence effect of perceived large penis size.

They also summarise research on actual penis size (p.130):

> Combining the means and standard deviations reported by these researchers, we calculated that the mean erect penis length was 5.3 in. (13.5 cm), with 68% of men measuring between 4.6 and 6.0 in. (11.7 cm and 15.2 cm), 13.5% between 3.8 and 4.5 in. (9.7 cm and 11.4 cm), and 13.5% between 6.1 and 6.8 in. (15.5 cm and 17.3 cm); only about 2.5% of men possessed a penis over 6.9 in. (17.5 cm) long, and 2.5% were under 3.7 in. (9.4 cm) long.

They then go on to discuss:

> Why are so many men dissatisﬁed with their penis size when the vast majority of women are satisﬁed with their partner’s penis size? Past research has suggested that one reason men overestimate the importance of a trait to women is that media marketed to men give greater emphasis to the importance of this trait than do media marketed to women (Frederick, Fessler, & Haselton, 2005). For example, media marketed to men (pornography, popular magazines) may emphasize the importance of supersized penises, whereas media marketed to women may not. If individuals use media as a source of information about what physical features are important, than gender-differentiated media may mislead men about women’s actual preferences. Future research should examine in greater detail the degree to which men overestimate the importance of penis size to women and the reasons for this misperception.

**Drummon and Filiault** (2007) presents qualitative data in relation to penis size in the gay community.

**Francken et al (2002)** surveyed 170 sexually active women. They found that 20% of women found the length of the penis to be important and 1% very important. 55% and 22% found length to be unimportant or very unimportant. The pattern of results for penis girth were similar but girth was slightly more important. The correlation between importance of girth and width was very large (r=0.71) suggesting that there may be some underlying individual difference in women about the important of penis size in general.

### References

* Lever, J., Frederick, D. A., & Peplau, L. A. (2006). Does size matter? Men's and women's views on penis size across the lifespan. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 7(3), 129. PDF
* Drummond, M. J., & Filiault, S. M. (2007). The long and the short of it: Gay men’s perceptions of penis size. Gay and lesbian issues and psychology review, 3(2), 121-129.
* Francken, A. B., Van de Wiel, H. B. M., Van Driel, M. F., & Weijmar Schultz, W. C. M. (2002). What importance do women attribute to the size of the penis?. European urology, 42(5), 426-431. PDF

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Tags: physical-attraction, sexuality, aesthetics
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# Question
Title: Are Satoshi Kanazawa's findings about racial differences in attractiveness valid?
This post discusses a study published in a blog post by an evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa. The study suggested that black women were rated less attractive than women of other races. There is a copy of the original blog post here.

* **Are the conclusions in the Kanazawa article valid?**
* **What criticism can be made about the article?**

# Answer
> 12 votes
The first thing to note is that the study was not published as a peer-reviewed journal article. It was published as a blog post. Thus, it has not gone through a peer review process. While the reader can function as the reviewer, the article does not follow the structure of a journal article. As such, there is an inadequate description of the method in the blog post to facilitate a proper evaluation of the study, although if you follow a trail of references, there may be more information, such as in this related post comparing male and female attractiveness ratings.

Here is a critique of Kanazawa's blog post "*Why black women are less physically attractive than other women*":

* **Subjectivity of ratings**: Kanazawa states that "the interviewer rates the physical attractiveness of the respondent objectively". This is incorrect. Any rating by an individual of someone's attractiveness involves a degree of subjectivity. By averaging ratings over many raters we can obtain what we might call inter-subjective agreement about attractiveness. The more raters you have then the more reliable will be the individual-level measurement. That said, even such inter-subjective ratings will be influenced by the pool of raters used. For example, what is the gender, racial, composition of the raters. To what extent do these factors influence the ratings provided? Raters also come from a particular historical period where there are particular views about attractiveness. Thus, it's important to consider these factors when discussing any measure of attractiveness.
* **Error in ratings**: Kanazawa gets attractiveness ratings by averaging three ratings from three raters." From these three scores, I can compute the latent physical attractiveness score". This is not true. Three raters is better than one. But there would still be substantial unreliability in measuring "latent physical attractiveness". This is over and above the general issue of there being different definitions of latent physical attractiveness based on the pool of raters used and definitions applied. Kanazawa then goes on to make other points about factor analysis which are incorrect (e.g., claiming that factor analysis "eliminates all random measurement errors"). That said, some unreliability in measuring individual attractiveness is not fatal to the study. If anything, it would reduce observed group differences.
* **Inadequate sample and rater description:** There is no explicit reporting of sample sizes or sampling procedure. Thus, it is difficult to evaluate how robust the results are and whether the groups are comparable on other relevant factors such as age, dress, and so on. Furthermore, the lack of information about where the sample comes from and where the raters come from make it difficult to see to what extent any findings would generalise to other times, places, and locations.
* **No standard deviations provided:** There is no standard deviation provided which makes it difficult to assess the size of the group differences. If we assume that attractiveness ratings are z-scores (which is likely if derived from a factor analysis). Then the differences in attractiveness ratings between black and white women were about 0.25 standard deviations. Thus, whatever the ratings captured, if you assume SD=1, then the differences between black and white women is fairly small.
* **Inadequate discussion of covariates:** Kanazawa inadequately discusses covariates that might explain any observed differences. He briefly mentions BMI and intelligence as covariates. However, there are presumably many relevant covariates including age, socio-economic status, physical health and more. An adequate analysis would explore a wide range of covariates and how they relate to attractiveness ratings, and the degree to which group differences are altered by such measures. In particular, taking the perspective of evolutionary psychology requires that you first rule out short term cultural explanations such as poverty and health related explanations.
* **Inadequate discussion of explanations:** Kanazawa writes that "the only thing I can think of that might potentially explain \[the differences\] is testosterone". This seems quite naive when I can think of a wide range of reasons why any observed differences could emerge, such as socio-economic status, money spent on appearance, lifestyle factors related to health and exercise, and most importantly culture-specific values about attractiveness that the raters may be applying.

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Tags: physical-attraction, aesthetics, cross-cultural-psychology
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# Question
Title: With the brain's propensity for homeostasis, how can some drugs be labelled addictive and others not?
The human body is always striving for homeostasis. One of the purposes of the brain is to maintain homeostasis, but also the brain needs to maintain homeostasis within itself.

**Ergo:** Given the use of any drug, that acts of the brain, will cause a change in brain chemistry.

Why are some drugs are regarded as addictive and others are not?

# Answer
Here is a part answer to your question.

According to the article Drug Facts: Understanding Drug Abuse and Addiction and Drugs, Brains, and Behavior: The Science of Addiction, addiction is a disease caused by some types of drugs. Specifically, they rewire the brain to cause an overstimulus of the 'reward' centres and by imitating some of the pre-existing neurochemical messengers in the brain - essentially, 'tricking' the brain that homeostasis is maintained.

Related, the article "Why does the rapid delivery of drugs to the brain promote addiction?" (Samaha and Robinson, 2005) concluded that the rate of delivery is an important factor:

> that rapidly delivered drugs might promote addiction by promoting forms of neurobehavioural plasticity that contribute to the compulsive pursuit of drugs.
> 3 votes

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Tags: psychopharmacology, addiction
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# Question
Title: Is the process of long term potentiation (LTP) definitively linked with brain plasticity?
Given that the process of Long Term Potentiation (LTP) is one of the processes that increases synaptic efficacy:

Is it reasonable to conclude that the process of LTP is sufficient and necessary to control plasticity of circuits within the brain?

Can we assume that the biochemical factors that modulate LTP are also intrinsically linked with brain plasticity?

# Answer
Although LTP might be necessary for brain plasticity, I would doubt that it is also sufficient. There is quite a lot of literature about homeostatic plasticity (for a review, see Turrigiano & Nelson, 2004) and synaptic scaling (for another review, see Turrigiano, 2008) which seem to be necessary to keep LTP working in the long run.

**References**
Turrigiano GG, Nelson SB (2004) Homeostatic plasticity in the developing nervous system. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5, 97-107. Full text

Turrigiano GG (2008) The self-tuning neuron: synaptic scaling of excitatory synapses. Cell 135, 422-435. Full text
> 7 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, plasticity, ltp
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# Question
Title: Status of introspection in psychological research today
Historically, psychological understanding was largely gained by introspection: the philosopher observed the workings of his own mind and deduced the principles of the human psyche from that.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth century this approach has slowly been superseded by principles of objective measurement that were developed in physics and the natural sciences. The question, if psychological measurement is possible, has not been conclusively answered, nevertheless it has become the standard practice and is, along with the experiment and statistical analysis, the main prerequisite for psychological research today.

But has introspection been completely banished from the canon of psychological methodologies, or does it still have a place in serious academic research?

# Answer
> 5 votes
Okay, let's see if I can tackle this...

Almost all of my answer to this question is being drawn from the first chapter of Michael Posner's Foundations of Cognitive Science. I, myself, am just a rising freshman at a decently ranked American university who has been studying the cognitive science literature on my own for the last few years.

Here I will attempt to explain one (and perhaps the most significant) example of introspections in modern cognitive science: protocol analysis.

I've only recently learned about it, but with the book here in front of me, I'm sure I can manage to give a good summary of it.

Protocol analysis, simply put, is the use of verbal reports of mental activity as data. It's not quite the same as the introspection of early psychology. From Posner, "Although verbal reports date back to the introspectionists, the use of such reports as data should not be misconstrued as introspection. Introspection took subjects' verbalizations at face value as constituting a valid theory of their own thought processes. Protocol analysis today, however, treats verbal reports as a source of data to be accounted for with an experimenter-generated theory, perhaps in the form of a computer simulation.”

The instructions given to subjects about how to report their introspections seems to have a great impact on the content of verbal reports. Here are some examples:

* You could ask someone to "Think aloud" as they are performing some task. ("25 plus 25. 2 plus 2 is 4, and 5 plus 5 is 10, so carry the one and the total is 50.")
* You could ask them to report their mental processes as they are performing their tasks. These tend to elicit more theoretical answers ("I am now visually processing..."), especially since you're probably questioning college psychology students. These answers are usually not preferred by modern psychologists.
* You could ask the subjects questions. ("How did you decide to do that?")

And so forth. The verbal reports get transcript-ed and then the experimenter then segments the report into parts that can be encoded (translated into a formal language, like mathematics) independently. Reliability of the data becomes higher the more simple and precise your coding scheme is. In fact, some systems have been invented for the automatic coding of segmented protocols, though they don't rival human experts quite yet.

After analyzing many subjects' narratives in this way, you have loads of rich data about how people think through a given task. Since we aren't introspectionists, of course, we don't interpret this data at face value. So how do we interpret it?

“Verbal protocols generally provide explicit information about the knowledge and information heeded in solving a problem rather than about the processes used. Consequently it is usually necessary to infer the processes from the verbal reports of information heeded instead of attempting to code processes directly.”

So protocol analysis is most useful for understanding the knowledge consulted when one is thinking through a task. The verbs that participants use to describe their thoughts often provide useful clues about the processes involved in completing a task. For example, the tenses of verbs can distinguish between the retrieval of information from memory and the planning of future actions.

Since we are cognitive scientists, after all, our interpretation of verbal reports are usually informed by information-processing theories of thinking aloud. In other words, our science of introspection improves our ability to derive correct conclusions from introspective data.

But yeah. As a tool for guiding the creation of more precise hypothesis of human thinking (with computational models), introspection is still quite useful. Today it's more diffident and rigorous and better informed, but still alive.

You also can't understate the role introspection probably informally plays in driving the hypothesizing of cognitive scientists. This has less rigor, however, and may even be holding us back.

I keep saying "us" like I'm a scientist already. I'm not. \>\_\<

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Tags: measurement, methodology
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# Question
Title: Do smart drugs (nootropics) make you smarter?
1. Do nootropic drugs like modafinil make you smarter?
2. Are they like coffee?
3. Do they improve working memory?
4. Is there a potential for a pill like NZT-48 from the movie Limitless? From the Wikipedia plot summary:

> After taking \[a nootropic drug, NZT-48,\] Eddie finds himself able to learn faster and recall memories from his distant past, with the only apparent side effect being a change in the colour of Eddie's irises while on the drug - his eyes becoming an intense shade of electric blue. He uses this ability to finish ninety pages of his book. The next day, the effects \[have\] worn off...
>
> Testing his new ability on the stock market, Eddie makes large returns on small investments...

# Answer
Your question is very vague, and on a subject where a lot more research needs to be done, so forgive me but my answer is also going to probably be more vague and less definitive than you were hoping for.

Provigil, as far as I can tell is just another brand name of modafinil, which has some very clear advantages when it comes to increasing your concentration and stamina. Military experiments show increases to precision and alertness in pilots after being awake for extended periods while on the drug compared to the control. Its actual capacity to increase your intelligence is harder to determine however. Some studies have shown it is effective, but in a meta analysis the benefits appeared to be mostly limited to those who did not have a high IQ to start with.

From what I have seen so far, modafinil is more reliable as a stimulant. It can increase working memory and performance at a selection of tasks in some people, but is not a magic bullet for becoming a genius temporarily. In addition, it is not particularly safe for long term use. Other drugs with less severe side effects, and measurable long term side effects exist, but they are not nearly as dramatic. Piracetam and choline are probably the best known and most widely studied combination for this.

As for NZT, there is unfortunately nothing at all like that yet and my speculation on the matter would be meaningless.

**Reference**

Kelley, A. M., Webb, C. M., Athy, J. R., Ley, S., & Gaydos, S. (2012). Cognition enhancement by modafinil: A meta-analysis. *Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, 83*(7), 685–690.
> 10 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, working-memory, psychopharmacology
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# Question
Title: Quantify degree to which non-diagnostic features bias category-present response
I need a measure of the degree to which each of several features biases participants to respond "yes" in a category present / absent task for each of several categories.

I have stimuli defined along 3 binary feature dimensions, let's call them a, b, and c. Each feature is perfectly diagnostic for 1 of 3 categories, let's call them x, y, and z, and perfectly non-diagnostic for the other 2. In other words, for example, a stimulus belongs to category x if it has feature a and not if it doesn't, and it is equally likely to belong to category y or not, and to category z or not, both when feature a is present and when it is absent. Participants are shown stimuli and asked whether or not they belong to a given category. In a given block of the experiment, they are only asked about 1 of the 3 categories.

So going back to my question, if the feature is the one diagnostic for the category, then correct response would be "yes" 100% of the time the feature is present and "no" 100% of the time the feature is absent. If the feature is one of the two irrelevant ones, then "yes" will be the correct response 50% of the time regardless of feature presence. In fact it turns out that people respond "yes" more than 50% of the time when the irrelevant features are present, and less than 50% of the time when they are absent, indicating that the irrelevant features bias them to respond "yes".

What I need is a way to quantify that effect. Things I've considered. (1) Subtract the positive response rate for feature absent from the positive response rate for feature present. 0% would indicate no bias for irrelevant features. (2) Divide the positive response rate for feature present by the positive response rate for feature absent. 1.0 would indicate no bias for irrelevant features. (3) Combining feature present and absent, divide the positive response rate by the correct response rate (i.e. the response rate of the perfect responder). 1.0 would indicate no bias for irrelevant features.

I am wondering whether there is a good "standard" measure for this kind of situation or, failing that, whether anyone can think of a good reason to prefer any one of the options above, or another one I haven't thought of.

I'm not sure whether or not signal detection theory is relevant here. My sense is that it's not, because I'm not looking for general response bias but rather the bias induced by specific features, and also because I have binary rather than continuous features, but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise - maybe I just don't understand SDT well enough.

Oh, one other thing in case it matters - the stimuli in question are graphs and tables of data from 2x2 experimental designs, while the features / categories are presence / absence of main effects of each variable and the interaction.

# Answer
I've been going through your question a couple of times now and I find it quite tricky to get all the details. So please correct me, if I misunderstood you in some point.

Basically you have a test and your subjects have to determine if a stimulus belongs to a certain category or not. Of the three possible features, one is a perfect indicator for a specific category, while the other two are unrelated to it. So far, so good. But I think that there are a couple of problems with the way that you framed the problem.

**Correct Response vs. Expected Value**

You say that,

> if the feature is the one diagnostic for the category, then correct response would be "yes" 100% of the time the feature is present and "no" 100% of the time the feature is absent.

Now, I think that there are three things mixed together in this statement:

* the correct response,
* a certain response rate whith which the correct response might be given and
* the *expected value of category membership given the perfect indicator*.

These may seem like a subtle differences, but I would argue they are not. While you can determine, what the correct response to a question is, there is not really a correct response rate. When a subject answers a question correctly in 95% of the cases, he gave the wrong answer a couple of times. But the response rate is not right or wrong, it's just what it is. And the response rate does not have to equal the expected value (which is 100% in this case). Jeromy Anglim already commented somehting along these lines as well. This becomes even clearer for the next statement:

> If the feature is one of the two irrelevant ones, then "yes" will be the correct response 50% of the time regardless of feature presence.

Again, *the expected value of category membership given an unrelated indicator* is 50%. And since we know about that, we can formulate the hypothesis, that the subjects will catch on to it. But it's just a hypothesis and it cannot be taken for granted.

**Is it really a bias?**

Now, administering the test, you have found that

> In fact it turns out that people respond "yes" more than 50% of the time when the irrelevant features are present, and less than 50% of the time when they are absent, indicating that the irrelevant features bias them to respond "yes".

I'm not so sure that this really is a bias, at least not one that is caused by the features. As Jeormy Anglim mentioned in the comments, the subjects might come up with all sorts of strategies. A tendency to answer with "yes" might also be some sort of *aquiescence bias* (Ray, 1983). To be sure, that would be a bias, too, but it would not be caused by the features. But since it is not clear, how the subjects *should* respond to the test, it does not make sense to speak of a bias.

**Quantifying the results**

Having said all that, you could still quantify the results. A good way to do that would be to look at the *conditional probabilities of a correct response, given a certain feature* (which is what you already did). E.g. $$P(Y\_x=1|a)$$ would denote the probability of getting a "yes" for an item $Y$ that asks about category $x$ when feature $a$ is present in the stimulus. You could do this for all combinations of categories and features. This would also allow for testing hypothesis about certain response rates like: Is the response rate for a certain combination significantly different from some value $P\_0$?

The other suggestions that you make would work, as well. E.g. taking the difference between the conditional probabilities (like in your first suggestion. A result of zero indicates that there is no difference between the proportions.

If you are interested in pairwise comparisons you might take a look at the *odds ratio* (Agresti, 2007). The odds ratio considering features $a$ and $b$ for a given category would be defined as $$OR = \frac{P(Y=1|a)/(1 - P(Y=1|a))}{P(Y=1|b/(1-P(Y=1|b)}$$ which is the same as $$OR = \frac{odds(a)}{odds(b)}.$$

References:

<sub> Agresti, A. (2007). An introduction to categorical data analysis (Vol. 423). Wiley-Interscience.
Ray, J. J. (1983). Reviving the problem of acquiescent response bias. The Journal of Social Psychology, 121(1), 81-96.</sub>
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, learning, bias
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# Question
Title: Why is it difficult for employees to express hatred to their boss?
Suppose Bob hates his boss. Note that Bob is an "average" person. Also suppose that he shouts as loudly as possible "\[Curse\] my boss" (with nobody else around but him).

Why is it so difficult for Bob to say this directly to his boss? Is this based on social norms or is there a specific brain region which restrains this outburst?

# Answer
> 4 votes
While there may be many social norms operating that discourage expression of hatred to your boss, typically there would be many rational reasons not to express such hatred:

* The employee's job could be terminated, which may result in lower income for the employee or a worse job in the future. Swearing in the workplace would often be considered harassment which would often be grounds for termination.
* Even where an employee has arranged another job to go to (but then technically, the relationship is not really one of employee to boss), there is the risk associated with reputation damage that can result from verbally abusing a boss.
* If the outburst does not result in loss of job, a boss typically has extensive control over the employee. Bosses can typically influence your work duties, when you get leave, when you have to be at work, whether he supports a promotion, who is terminated during a redundancy process, etc. If your boss likes you, then they often have substantial discretion to make your life easier. In all those kinds of situations, life is easier if your boss is on your side.
* Independent of the power relationship, you need to spend time with co-workers, and many people find it more pleasant to exist in a pleasant social work environment.

Thus, I don't think we need to resort to a neural explanation to adequately understand this behaviour.

Furthermore, presumably there are legitimate ways of expressing displeasure with your boss that would be more effective in achieving your goals. This might broadly come under the heading of "negotiation".

# Answer
> 1 votes
I think it's learned behavior by the culture: You know that finding a new job is extremely hard, you have bills to pay so you do slave-like things even you don't like them. Long term thinking is largely involved (middle parts of your cortex)

But the areas of controlling the short term social behavior are located to the large extent in your prefrontal cortex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefrontal\_cortex

> Subsequent studies on patients with prefrontal injuries have shown that the patients verbalized what the most appropriate social responses would be under certain circumstances. Yet, when actually performing, they instead pursued behavior aimed at immediate gratification, despite knowing the longer-term results would be self-defeating.

and fear is also to the large extent efected by amygdala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala.

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Tags: social-psychology, emotion, io-psychology, communication, norms
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# Question
Title: If people did not have to work, what would motivate them to work?
In industrialized countries around the world, "work" appears to be something that most people try to avoid as much as they can, dreaming of winning a lottery so they will never have to work again -- and be free to do nothing or do what they like. Money serves as a motivator for work, because in these cultures you need money to stay alive, or at least to live well.

Many social welfare states pay a basic income to people unable to find work. Despite the fact that usually this basic income is not unconditional but a transitional payment only and bound to the receiver's attempts to find a job, there is quite a lot of hostility from those who force themselves to their jobs each morning, towards those who appear to be happy with having little and prefer not to work.

Around the world there are proponents of an unconditional basic income that would free individuals from the necessity to take up work. I don't want to go into the whys and wherefores of such a freedom, or into how such an income could be financed, but want to ask you:

**If everybody received an *unconditional* basic income that was high enough to make their lives reasonably comfortable, what would incite people to do the work (like baking bread) that needs to get done?**

I am not lookig for opinions or theories here, those already abound on the net, but for empirical evidence for:

* which percentage of a populace can be expected to busy themselves without need, and
* how those that like to laze around can be motivated to work without need.

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B.F. Skinner in his utopian novel *Walden Two* attempts to design a society where no-one is required to work more than four hours a day and unwanted jobs result in more credit points than desirable jobs, so that some people clean the toilet and then have more free time than those working at their dream jobs, but this concept relies on a virtual currency of points that you have to earn, so there is a need to work to earn your living, even if it does not have a payment of traditional "money".

In my question, the motivator for work must not be anything that *has to be* fulfilled, but something that does not take away the freedom not to work. Something that makes even the least desirable job attractive. In the case of the toilet it might be something simple like this being your toilet, and if you don't clean it, you'll have to use it anyway. But there are public toilets. What would work there?

# Answer
If you take a look at **games like minecraft**, they have quite a lot of players who do not work (students, college students, etc). These people first mine thousands of blocks, then rearrange them in a creative way. There's absolutely no need to do so, it is entirely voluntary, yet **people end up moving hundreds of thousands of blocks to do something creative or to fulfill their design**.

Players of minecraft explore the game environment, make tools, extract raw resources and ultimately make virtual structures like in the image below.

Statistically speaking, minecraft has more players(11 million paid users) and instructional videos(with millions of views) on YouTube than any other game I know of.

From this, it appears that in a world without need to work, creativity, design and "market of 1 person" would motivate people to do something. Cleaning toilets is not such thing. Maybe painting toilets, or designing them is.
> 11 votes

# Answer
*\[This started as a comment but became really long, hence an answer.\]*

The hostility is real but the premise that more than a small minority of people forgo “working” by laziness is in fact very questionable, in several ways. People might dream of winning the lottery but there is very little evidence that they generally avoid “work”. In fact, with the same income, people who are unemployed report being less happy than people who have a job. There are however reasons to think that the eagerness with which someone looks for a work of the “traditional” salaried kind might be endogenous. If there is no job to be found, then you will stop looking for one and exposing yourself to constant humiliation (see this post by Chris Dillow for some evidence on this). This is unrelated to some pre-existing “preference for work” or fundamental psychological “laziness”. Psychologically, it could be related to “learned helplessness”.

Another obvious issue is that to the extent that unemployment benefits or basic income give an incentive not to work, it would only have a strong impact for people close to this level. There is no invariant threshold beyond which needs are met and whatever this basic income, there would therefore still be an incentive to earn more. In fact, people have been predicting that we would soon satisfy all our “basic needs” and work much less for quite some time (just came across one such prediction from Keynes, writing in the 1930s). In some sense most people today are richer than the elite of a few centuries ago (certainly in Europe) and yet this hasn't happened. We are very sensitive to our position in society, just create perceived “needs” all the time, etc. A static view of needs, incentives and motivation just isn't enough to account for that.

Also completely ignored is the problem of what counts as “work” in a society. Many people are already very busy doing things that aren't recognized as proper work. In fact, whether it is domestic production, charitable or creative activities or simply sports or “hobbies”, very few people if any are completely inactive, barring clinical depression or debilitating illnesses. The simple answer to the first question is therefore “100%”. There is no need for some “laziness” trait to explain being busy or not, the main issue is what activities are deemed productive or deserving in a particular society and about fairness in the distribution of income (“*They* are going fishing with *our* money”). Note that no matter how time-consuming they are, many activities regarding as feminine like caring for children or homemaking are still not considered “work”, not fully at least.

Incidentally, the appeal of the lottery and the reason some people might stop working after winning it is that it's not just making you comfortable, it's making you (what feels like being) filthy rich. It's therefore not a good model to understand ordinary decisions about work. Furthermore, as far as I can tell, people who are very rich (and not somewhere between a poorly paid job and welfare or even merely having above-average income) are not particularly inactive. Many work long hours although they could be “comfortable” working less or not at all, some work very late in life, others might engage in activities that would not be regarded as “work” but are pretty exhausting nonetheless (say golfing around the world). Some of these activities might be regarded as work, others might be classified as leisure, deserved or undeserved (i.e. “being lazy”), but in any case people do not engage in them merely to reach some comfortable income and stop there.

Finally, there is a direct contradiction between your notion that some works “needs” to be done and your search for a motivation “without need”. If nobody bakes bread and you want to eat some, then you *need* to bake it. In fact, no matter what monetary income you might provide, if nobody produces anything then this money is worth nothing and certainly won't be enough to buy bread and live comfortably. The “problem” therefore takes care of itself and it makes these things-that-need-to-be-done-but-that-nobody-needs-to-do purely theoretical. This is why “income high enough to make their lives reasonably comfortable” is kind of begging the question. We just live in a particular time, place, and society. You cannot meaningfully abstract that away and say anything interesting, let alone get “empirical” evidence on some abstract situation that bears no resemblance with actual human experience.
> 8 votes

# Answer
i think death is what motivates people to work:

working is doing something and trying to be remembered, much like Picasso, Einstein... Every human would want to do something in his life, something to be remembered for, everyone wants to make a change, make a difference, the ultimate dream of every human being able is to change the world. And that's why they work.

Every human on this earth is somewhat egoist, our ego tell us to work, be remembered, be one of the greatest ever been, we work for the hope that someone will remember us after dying, and not just disappear, like we have never existed.
> 7 votes

# Answer
Doing creative and unique(new) things will motivate you. But only if there is another person or living/virtual "creature" that can appreciate that or you can tell/show it to that "creature".

I don't consider taking drugs or other stimulants/inhibitors to make you do something, because it's a distorted will or changed behavior and not your own will.

Human brain will probably loose all reasons to continue supporting the body etc. when you start loosing the "purpose" of life. Which is basically to replicate (have children etc.) or help others.

E.g. when you are isolated very long time alone, you might start to have suicidal thoughts. That's why a lot of prisoners that are being sentenced to 20 or more years often commit suicides.

But every other answer to this question from others is valid too.

**Feeling and being important is what is important ;)**
> 3 votes

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Tags: motivation, io-psychology, well-being
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# Question
Title: What evidence is there that the adult brain can produce new neurons?
At school I was taught that the adult brain did not produce new neurons. That we had the maximum number of neurons and this would only diminish over time due to events, like head injuries, drinking excessive quantities of alcohol, various other processes, not to mention the general atrophy the body experiences through the process of aging.

I remember sitting through a Neuroscience lecture (about 15 years ago), and learning, that studies had shown that whilst exercising enabled the brain to produce new neurons.

What is the latest evidence that the adult brain can produce new neurons?

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*Please note the link is not to the lecture I refer to.*

# Answer
For a comprehensive review, see:

Berg, D.A., Belnoue, L.,Song,H., Simon A. (2013) Neurotransmitter-mediated control of neurogenesis in the adult vertebrate brain. Development, 140(12), 2548-2561. \[DOI\].

Briefly,

> active adult neurogenesis is confined to two distinct locations: the subventricular zone (SVZ) of the lateral ventricles in the forebrain; and the subgranular zone (SGZ) of the dentate gyrus (DG) in the hippocampus

These areas contain radial glial-like cells, which act as neural stem cells, and the growth of which is modulated by the respective neurotransmitters. For example, cells which are GABAnergic will be modulated (enhanced in the SVZ and inhibited in the DG) via GABA that has diffused out of the synapses of neighboring cells

> GABA is released from parvalbumin-expressing interneurons in the adult dentate gyrus (DG) and inhibits the activation of quiescent RGLs through activation of the γ 2-subunit-containing GABA A receptor.
>
> In the SVZ, GABA also signals to and depolarizes neural progenitor cells, but the mechanism of release is different from that in the DG (Wang et al., 2003; Liu et al., 2005). Migrating neuroblasts release GABA in a non-synaptic, non-vesicular fashion, which tonically activates signaling in progenitor cells.

There are mechanisms through which the progenitor cells are stimulated that rely on neurotransmitters, but are not specific to cell subtype:

> Neurotransmitters control neurogenesis without subtype specificity. If NSCs have restricted potential, transmitters could act on both NSCs and/or amplifying populations.

It's still a complicated story, but the long and short of it is, in specific regions of the brain, adult neurogenesis is known to be possible and some of the neurotransmitter-based growth factors are now being elucidated.
> 11 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, neurogenesis
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# Question
Title: Why do some people only work well under pressure?
It is common for people to procrastinate. Putting off tasks until the resulting deadlines get closer and there comes a point at which the person will fire into action. (whether this point leaves the person with enough time to complete task is another question).

Why is it that some people seem to only work well under pressure? Why is it that people find it difficult to discipline themselves and have all their task complete well before deadlines are due?

# Answer
> 8 votes
I have often wondered about this, as I know I do this, even setting myself arbitrary deadlines, not always with the best results. The following is *not* an opinion, but based on some information found while, ironically, taking a 'break' from my PhD drafting.

According to "In Search of the Arousal Procrastinator", (Pychyl, 2008), the notion of 'working under pressure' could be based on their cognitive dissonance, concluding (in part):

> a common theme about self-deception and task delay. We often rationalize our current delay because we don't feel like working on the task by evoking (irrational) beliefs like, "I'll feel more like it tomorrow" or "I work better under pressure." Although this may be the case on rare occasions for some tasks, on the whole these thoughts are simply rationalizations to justify further delay and make us feel good in the short run.

However, according to "Procrastination or 'intentional delay'?" (Novotney), there could be benefits in the procrastination, as it may lead to better planning of what is needed to be done, so the pressure of the deadline is not necessarily entirely harmful.

Other resources cited in the above links:

Ferrari, J. R. (1992). Psychometric validation of two procrastination inventories for adults: Arousal and avoidance measures. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 14, 97-110

Ferrari, J.R., Johnson, J.L., McCown, W.G. (1995). Procrastination and Task Avoidance: Theory, Research, and Treatment. New York: Springer.

Schouwenburg, H.C., Lay, C., Pychyl, T.A., Ferrari, J.R. (Eds.) (2004). Counseling the Procrastinator in Academic Settings. Washington, DC: APA.

Burka, J.B., & Yuen, L.M. (2nd Edition). (2008). Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It Now. New York City: Da Capo Lifelong Books.

# Answer
> 6 votes
I think it is often a myth that people work better under pressure. Most people who say they work better under pressure have not really tried working under normal conditions. Even if a person thinks he works better under pressure, he may work **better** under normal conditions. That being said, pressure (more specifically time pressure) helps in providing closure to tasks.

One of the main reasons for procrastination has to do with mental construal theory. Basically goals that are far from a person in time, space or both seem very abstract. So it is difficult to initiate abstract goals. Goals that are close in time and space are more specific. Thus they are easier to implement. To make abstract goals more concrete one should use implementation intentions and mental contrasting. That is, form specific "if then" plans to initiate a goal. Mental constrasting provides both a idealistic and realistic picture of your goal accomplishment.

As an example, suppose you want to get started on some assignment. Mental contrasting would mean that you visualize yourself completing the assignment and the feelings associated with it (e.g. happiness, pride, etc.). Then you would visualize the obstacles preventing you from reaching the goal (e.g. feeling tired, hungry, good tv show on). This provides a sort of "energization" to initiate action. Then you would form the implementation intentions based off these obstacles. However, forming too many implementation intentions could be counterproductive. Note that this assumes that the goal intention is strong in the first place.

**Sources**

Simpson, W.K., & Pychyl, T.A. (2009). In search of the arousal procrastinator: An investigation of the relation between procrastination, arousal-based personality traits and beliefs about procrastination motivations Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 906-911.

The effect of temporal distance on level of mental construal Nira Liberman,a,\* Michael D. Sagristano,b and Yaacov Tropeb

W Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Vol. 109. pp 168-181.

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Tags: motivation, problem-solving, procrastination, self-discipline
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# Question
Title: What is the psychological basis for people coming together during a disaster or major event?
Something I have witnessed several times, and got me wondering, what is the psychological basis for people coming together in response to a disaster or a major event? Be it large scale or local.

An example is one that I was right in the middle of (and at one stage was in very serious danger) - the Queensland floods of 2011, which is encapsulated nicely in this video-editorial "Hope Lives Here". Now, a couple of points from the editorial - the narrator states that as the city of Brisbane has grown, people have become more distant and are not likely to even know their neighbours' names.

This is obviously not just pertinent to the example above, but is repeated in many places.

However, when push comes to shove, and when a community of strangers are faced with a catastrophe, destruction, loss and are basically 'forced into a corner' - this is when the community comes together. Following the example, a 'Mud Army' started up of people helping strangers get back on their feet (I was involved in that, despite just coming out of surgery a few weeks before).

When the danger passes, life goes back to normal (generally) and we all seem to go our separate ways.

What is the psychological basis (more in depth than the linked editorial) for why we come together in a disaster or major event?

# Answer
This article might be helpful. In particular, humans need social connections (according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs). Stress initiates people to come together. It was thought that women would come together during disaster and men would fight (i.e. the fight and flight response). However men also come together during disaster.

A distinction must be made between acute and chronic stress. Acute stress (e.g. once in a life time natural disasters) promote social bonding and connection. Chronic stress (e.g. smoking, ruminating a lot, etc.), however, does not seem to produce the same effect. When the acute stress is removed, there is no imminent need for social bonding with strangers.

From a biological basis, it seems that oxytocin might play a key role. In particular, oxytocin is released as a **reaction** to a social experience. So if a people see others in distress they may release oxytocin which promotes prosocial behavior.
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, prosocial-behavior
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# Question
Title: The psychology of humility. Why do we not value our efforts?
This question has crossed my mind a few times, and quite recently on reflection it came up again.

Why is it that we rarely value the worth of our efforts?

By this I mean, why do people often have difficulty in valuing their own work, contributions, sacrifices and in many cases, themselves. Yet, many are quick to praise similar work, contributions and sacrifices of others.

An example is that I don't see my work as a teacher as being of any value, I am not really fussed about my PhD and the published papers, don't accept compliments well, and even (as some may have noticed) don't feel that I am a particularly good contributor here or on my other SE sites, and as for my own self-value, I literally don't think about it. But will seek to praise others on their good work etc (note, this is strictly an example)

# Answer
According to this article, jealousy may cause a person to view themselves more as the person he is jealous of. So if you work hard, write great papers, etc. you may be jealous of another person who has similar attributes. Thus you would view yourself more like him.

Also in social comparison theory there is the idea of upward and downward social comparisons. If you compare yourself to someone who similar to yourself or more "fortunate" than yourself, you will feel bad. On the other hand, if you compare yourself to someone who is less fortunate than yourself you will feel good. This is why facebook often makes people feel bad about themselves. They see people with trip photos and smiling photos and compare that to their "boring" lives.

**Source**

Changing Me to Keep You State Jealousy Promotes Perceiving Similarity Between the Self and a Romantic Rival
> 3 votes

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Tags: social-psychology
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# Question
Title: Improved Typing as a result of slight movement
I've found that my typing performance (speed, accuracy, flow) are noticeably improved if I am swaying slightly, mostly side to side, in a non-regular manner. I would estimate that the overall movement side to side is less than an inch.

This occurs for all typing tasks, and surprisingly also affects my piano-playing performance. It is not necessary to be listening to music (though it can help), and only sometimes does the movement correspond to the actual typing itself. I also find that if mistakes are made, this movement is disrupted, and that consciously re-starting the movement helps restore the induced state.

**What could account for this effect?**

I would personally suspect that it's acts to induce a sort of 'flow' state, but I'd like to know if this has been studied or even noticed elsewhere...

# Answer
> 4 votes
I personaly also play piano and see myself into that flow easly,

Check out what I just found

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow\_(psychology)

> Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does
>
> (...)
>
> # Components of flow
>
> Nakamura and Csíkszentmihályi identify the following six factors as encompassing an experience of flow.
>
> 1. intense and focused concentration on the present moment merging of action and awareness
> 2. a loss of reflective self-consciousness
> 3. a sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
> 4. a distortion of temporal experience, one's subjective experience of time is altered
> 5. experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as autotelic experience
>
> (...)

Check this out:

> **Roy Palmer suggests that "being in the zone" may also influence movement patterns** as better integration of the conscious and subconscious reflex functions improves coordination.
>
> (...)
>
> # Music
>
> Musicians, especially improvisational soloists may experience a similar state of mind while playing their instrument. Research has shown that performers in a flow state have a heightened quality of performance as opposed to when they are not in a flow state. **In a study performed with professional classical pianists who played piano pieces several times to induce a flow state, a significant relationship was found between the flow state of the pianist and the pianist’s heart rate, blood pressure, and major facial muscles. As the pianist entered the flow state, heart rate and blood pressure decreased and the major facial muscles relaxed. This study further emphasized that flow is a state of effortless attention. In spite of the effortless attention and overall relaxation of the body, the performance of the pianist during the flow state improved.**

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Tags: motor, neurology
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# Question
Title: Is the concept of neuroplasticity applicable to visual cortex and how does it affect visual perception?
I've been searching about this but all I found was this presentation, which is a bit too technical for me to understand, e.g: Visual Cortical Plasticity

In what way does neuroplasticity affect the visual cortex?

For example, a person that wears glasses, if he/she stopped using them completely or from time to time, will the visual perception and interpretation of blurred data get better by just training? Will that blur also be reduced with training?

# Answer
> 5 votes
Yes, the visual cortex is plastic, even in adults:

> We measured adaptation in the responses of populations of cat V1 neurons to stimulus ensembles with markedly different statistics of stimulus orientation. We found that adaptation served two homeostatic goals. First, it maintained equality in the time-averaged responses across the population. Second, it maintained independence in selectivity across the population.

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v16/n6/full/nn.3382.html

> Plasticity is invoked for encoding information during perceptual learning, by internally representing the regularities of the visual environment, which is useful for facilitating intermediate-level vision--contour integration and surface segmentation. The same mechanisms have adaptive value for functional recovery after CNS damage, such as that associated with stroke or neurodegenerative disease. A common feature to plasticity in primary visual cortex (V1) is an association field that links contour elements across the visual field. The circuitry underlying the association field includes a plexus of long-range horizontal connections formed by cortical pyramidal cells. These connections undergo rapid and exuberant sprouting and pruning in response to removal of sensory input, which can account for the topographic reorganization following retinal lesions.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22841310

# Answer
> 5 votes
One great example of such plasticity is the ability of early-blind people to utilize their V1 area to read Braille:

Functional relevance of cross-modal plasticity in blind humans (Cohen et al., 1997)

Excerpt from the abstract:

> We conclude that blindness from an early age can cause the visual cortex to be recruited to a role in somatosensory processing.

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Tags: vision, plasticity
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title: Learning a language by Immersion

text:
# Question
Title: Learning a language by Immersion
Immersion is the process by which children learn their native language, but it can also be used in educational settings. Apparently in some countries, where the official language is not the language that is actually spoken, immersion is used in schools to teach the official language. Some companies (like Rosetta Stone) also use the method of immersion in their language programs. From reading the Wikipedia article it seems that learning (a second) language by immersion is mostly used for children and does take quite a long time.

* Are there studies that compare the learning of a language by immersion and the learning by other approaches?
* Is immersion equally useful for adults and for children?

# Answer
This is a part answer. According to "Immersion Education for the Millennium: What We Have Learned from 30 Years of Research on Second Language Immersion", (Cummins, 1998), based on the Canadian example of French language immersion state:

> For immersion education to attain its maximum potential it must be integrated into an educational philosophy that goes beyond just the discipline of Applied Linguistics. Students must have opportunities to communicate powerfully in the target language if they are going to integrate their language and cognitive development with their growing personal identities.

I noticed this as well when I was a teacher in Japan (I am Australian), where (and this is an anecdotal observation) multilingual students seemed to pick up the language by immersion, rather than the classroom. The same applied to me, in Japanese classes I did not do too well, but immersing myself into the surroundings, I was able to pick up the language (at least the functional parts) very quickly.

A great reference is "Integrating Language and Content in Immersion Classrooms: Research Perspectives" (Swain, 1998), making an important point that the traditional way of teaching aspects of language, e.g. grammar in isolation, i.e. without a context is not a particularly effective means of language development.
> 8 votes

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Tags: learning, language
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# Question
Title: What are the real life applications for Probability Learning?
> Probability learning is a principle that states probability of a response tends to match the probability of the reinforcement.

How does one achieve such rationality under uncertainty? What are the real-life applications of this concept?

I'm looking for lucid answers as I'm a lay person.

Reference: http://implab.hu/wiki/images/8/81/Aczel\_-\_Strategy\_Analysis\_of\_Probability\_Learning.pdf

# Answer
It's actually much simpler - on the surface - than what that quoted item implies!

Probability learning is literally "learning" what the "probability" is of certain things, the study of how people and other animals learn about real world probabilities outside a statistics classroom, and in cognitive science (like in the PDF you linked) the concern is about strategies, methods, and the real world mechanics of how intelligent creatures actually manage to figure this stuff out; of course, sometimes the answer is just "wow, people are really bad at this!"

When your quoted text says that "probability of a response tends to match the probability of the reinforcement", this is not a maxim to live by - it does not describe, necessarily, how you *should* behave. Put in jargon, it's *descriptive*, not *prescriptive*. It's not a question of rationality at all.

What it does correctly describe is that many animals are pretty good at modifying their behavior to match the unpredictable nature of our world. In the real world, this means things like:

* what route to take to work to avoid delays or accidents
* how to dress for the weather (hot/cold, rain/snow, etc)
* gambling games of all kinds ("come on Box Cars!")
* where to eat to avoid food poisoning

In animal research, that paper by Aczel mentions experiments where rats have a T-maze, where they look for food to the left or to the right. Originally behaviorists were just interested in learning and unlearning of things like "the cheese is always on the left side", and they found that rats figured this out and would (sensibly) usually go to the left side first in expectation of the food.

Then some smarty-pantses wondered what would happen if there was only a certain probability of food being in a certain place, and how this might effect the rat behavior. It turns out that they end up figuring out what the best place to go is and altering their behavior according to how lopsided the observed probability seems (so if it's 60:40 they might hardly prefer one side to the other at all, but with 75:25 they don't exclusively search the one side that is more likely - they just prefer it according to the probability). This means that the probability of the response (choosing the left side) tended to match the probability of the reinforcement (getting food). Makes sense, right?

This also explains why most people aren't compelled to run along every vending machine they see to search for forgotten change; sure, sometimes you do get change this way, but you usually don't, and from this we can reasonably predict that most people won't engage in this sort of change-tray-obsessed behavior. Obviously this system is open to peculiarity, like the lottery or insistence on behavior that no past experience indicates will work.

And this leaves us to cognitive research, where enterprising folks try to figure out the HOW of dealing with the probabilistic nature of life, where you never know what you are going to get - yet we do seem to get a 'feel' for how likely something is without having a statistician run 10000 trials and give us an analysis a year later. How do we do that, anyway? I dunno - I haven't read enough probability learning research!

As to how to use this in your everyday life, it would I suppose be about how to get better at doing it yourself by avoiding poor strategies (though you'd probably be better learning more about statistics directly), or about teaching others to get better at the same. I don't know if learning about the 'how' of probability learning is as useful as the 'how' of memory, but this is pretty well outside my field of interest so I can't say.
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-modeling, statistics
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# Question
Title: What is the difference between drug withdrawal and sleep deprivation effects?
**Personal sleep-deprivation study:** Recently, I posed a question that I'm sure many people find tough already: ***"Do I really need to sleep?"***, and so I tested myself, I spent two days without sleeping. **The result was**:

1. I just can't handle this anymore, gonna sleep;
2. Eyes and hand trembling;
3. Random muscle contraction;
4. High blood pressure;
5. Headaches;
6. Head overheat;
7. Pain, pain everywhere;

**Theorising:** The symptoms of sleep deprivation seemed similar to symptoms of withdrawal associated with drug addiction. Thus, What if sleep is simply just another addiction? What if we are too used to sleeping since we were born, and in the reality we don't need to ? What is the reason for sleeping?- If the main reason is the brain heating, wouldn't a brain cooler or some refreshment system do the job? It is known that sleeping state is different from simply lying down, still that does not prove that sleep isn't an addiction, am I right?

**Questions**

* **Is sleep truly necessary?**
* **Are the effects of sleep deprivation analagous to withdrawal symptoms following drug addiction?**
* **Can we learn to function without sleep?** (i.e., after the withdrawal symptoms disappear)

# Answer
This reminds me of something one of my psychology professors said to me: "the body needs rest, but the brain needs sleep" (it's a common enough saying, but that's where I heard it). And this is pretty well borne out by extensive research in a variety of fields.

First, is sleep a habit or addiction that can be kicked? Well, people have managed this, actually. And the results are quite clear: severely reduced performance, PTSD, hallucinations, psychosis, and eventually catatonic states. The military and old psychiatric studies do a thorough job of cataloguing the more severe end of the spectrum wit real world examples.

In common parlance, lack of sleep can be attained, and it universally drives people stupid right up until it drives them insane. This is the result not just of sleep-deprivation torture techniques, but with pharmaceuticals that interfere with the drive or ability to fall asleep. There are naturally occurring illnesses that make people unable to sleep, and these all end the same way: if a person does not sleep they lose their ability to function first effectively, then rationally, and finally one cannot function at all.

In this way, sleep is like eating, and far harder to find an alternative. Some research I recall studied meditation and some methods to induce a sleep-like state that partially reduced the need for sleep - but it was a minor reduction that did not even hint at the possibility of elimination.

But why do we need to sleep? Well, not being a sleep scientist myself, I defer to a nice Harvard write-up that says, in short "we don't really know for sure." But there are plenty of theories supported by research, and one of the most recent (and perhaps critical) is the role in brain plasticity:

> One of the most recent and compelling explanations for why we sleep is based on findings that sleep is correlated to changes in the structure and organization of the brain. This phenomenon, known as brain plasticity, is not entirely understood, but its connection to sleep has several critical implications. It is becoming clear, for example, that sleep plays a critical role in brain development in infants and young children. Infants spend about 13 to 14 hours per day sleeping, and about half of that time is spent in REM sleep, the stage in which most dreams occur. A link between sleep and brain plasticity is becoming clear in adults as well. This is seen in the effect that sleep and sleep deprivation have on people's ability to learn and perform a variety of tasks.

As to why the symptoms you experienced seem similar to drug withdrawal, this is partly a coincidence; there are many illnesses and body states that produce the exact same symptoms - ask anyone who's experienced "abdominal pain". This is actually how medicine use to work up until the modern age, where illness and disease was categorized based on symptoms. It just 'feels' like a good system, but this is also why looking up any system online will indicate you might have cancer; a fever has dozens of common causes, twitches even more, and pain has countless more.

As an aside, this is also a major area of growth in the clinical psychology/psychiatry field, where someday in the future we may learn enough about mental illness to no longer define conditions according to systems but by underlying causes and treatments. But I digress...

There is also partial similarity due to underlying physiology/psychology. Pain, for instance, has an extremely strong mental component (some would argue that it is the largest component on day-to-day pain), but also sleep seems to have a role in bodily maintenance tasks like tissue/muscle repair as well. So if you aren't sleeping you are miserable, and that makes pain worse and seem to emanate from everywhere, and if your body is repairing muscles at a lower rate than normal then you are experiencing a genuine increase in communicated muscle/tissue pain to make things even worse.

Finally, I would note that sleep is an addiction - but so is breathing. Just because it is an addiction doesn't mean it's something you can - or at least should - try to defeat :)
> 2 votes

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Tags: sleep, physiology
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# Question
Title: Does intoxication ever improve reaction time?
**Background**: As I write this I am rather "tipsy." I wanted to do some experiments and test my reaction time. I noticed that ironically, my reaction times were a lot quicker than when I am sober. Is there a reason for this? Perhaps slight intoxication may improve reaction time?

I know that slight intoxication can improve creativity according to Jennifer Wiley.

**Are there laboratory results backing up the fact that reaction time could actually be *faster* under these circumstances?**

# Answer
> 6 votes
In short: none that I could find. Indeed, it's a very one-way relationship - the more you drink the worse reaction time gets. However, there is a starting point, which is generally put around .02-.06 depending on your chosen study - below that threshold the effect of BAL on reaction times is difficult to pin down. Most studies I found showed that below .05% often showed no change in cognitive functioning regarding reaction times, though it was often theorized that intoxicated people are able to compensate for their impairment under normal testing conditions, as in this study: Alcohol increases reaction time and errors during decision making

This suggests a possible answer, however - you knew if intoxicated your reaction times could be worsened, so you focused extra resources on maximizing them.

Also, studies in general are statistical in nature - none say that "no one ever showed improved reaction time while intoxicated", because sometimes its just a fluke, sometimes people are especially trained at compensating for intoxication (even at a subconscious level), and a host of other similar factors.

What this all indicates is that even if your reactions were repeatedly tested under measured circumstances, you might very well be able to show improved reaction times under varying level of intoxication; however this is extremely likely to require more of your mental resources, so that under stress or complicated situations you would find real-world performance to be poorer.

Finally, I would also warn that reaction time does not necessarily correlate with any/all other cognitive tasks. Those with even .05 BAL are often found be twice as likely to be in an automotive accident, even though most reaction time studies and general cognitive ability tests would show low/no impairment.

But, still I cannot say there is any literature I can find that studies specifically the effect of low-moderate levels of intoxication on a variety of individuals, especially with the goal of identifying potential enhancement of any cohort within the study. At least if there was such a study it could have been considered to have failed to find any result worthy of publishing, or be rephrased to be a study that showed reduce reaction time in fitting with other similar research.

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Tags: measurement, experimental-psychology, reaction-time
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# Question
Title: As for future mind control/reading technology, can humans fight it?
As of recent times, rats have communicated through wireless brain implants, from across the globe. Also, recent fMRI technologies have allowed prediction of movements (or intention), and the visualization of brain waves (or 'seeing' your thoughts, images, etc.)

Rats have been used for testing, and some advances allowed scientists to predict intention, induce and/or subdue emotions and thoughts.

Reading or controlling the mind requires modifying/reading neural oscillations on neurons, and doing so on certain parts of the brain. Since the neural oscillations are the base of thought and cognition itself, how can we fight our own oscillations? This question stems from the possibility of mind control/reading in humans.

If the technology directly modifies our thoughts.. how can we fight that very structure? In science fiction, people "fight" against implants and control, but in reality, is that even possible? Can we fight our own oscillations?

For example, your mind is being read for a thought that you consciously know, like a password, and can you fight this attack? Another example, your mind is being controlled, you are being coerced, and since neural oscillations are thought itself, you can't have objections.

Can we have objections?
Can we fight our neural oscillations if they are hijacked?

# Answer
For the question of whether humans could fight neuro"mind-reading", I can only say that there is very little evidence that information we know but are not thinking about could be extracted using current methods. This means that the old scifi mind-reading-fighting standby of thinking of something else might work--although then we have the "don't think of a pink elephant" problem of ironic processing.

For the question of whether we could fight externally induced neural activity, I'm going to assume that it would be similar to fighting intrusive thoughts in obsessive compulsive disorder. Currently, our best bets there are exposure, cognitive behavioral therapy, and drugs. Since exposure is primarily involved with reducing the strength of the association between the anxiety-creating obsession and the comforting compulsion, I'm not sure it applies here. Similarly, since the drugs used for OCD are generally anxiolytic or antidepressant, I'm not sure they would help in this case. It might be possible to create a variant of cognitive behavioral therapy that treats the imposed neural activity as a compulsion. . . but since the technology to impose neural activity on humans (or animals who are good analogs of human compulsion) doesn't exist, all this is speculative!
> 3 votes

# Answer
I would say that not all "mind control" is necessarily a bad thing. For example, using decoded neurofeedback, it may be possible to implant knowledge into a person's brain without that person being aware of it. This would be especially useful for certain motor skills that are required for sports.

This would be similar to the scene in *The Matrix* where Neo learns Kung Fu. I would think that with this technology there would be certain security requirements that would have to be met.

**Source**

\[A new neuroscientific approach using decoded neurofeedback (DecNef)\]. \[Article in Japanese\] Shibata K.
> 0 votes

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Tags: theoretical-neuroscience, neural-network, reading
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