# Question
Title: Are there any EEG procedures currently available/in development that can formulate letters/words from deliberate, internal monologue?
I am thinking of the combination of an EEG-like device and software to monitor and analyze (very) deliberate thoughts of letters/words.

The input would be in the form of raw electrical brain activity from the EEG and the output from the software analysis would be in the form of text (the pattern-matched words/letters).

The software would be trained to recognize specific patterns of electrical impulses and form conclusions on what letter/word matches the best.

I have been interested in the idea of an input-less and effort-less HID such as this for a while now, mainly for personal enjoyment--I've entertained thoughts of working on documents with vim on the bed with a projector aimed at the ceiling--but realize that something like this would be of immense help to the disabled too.

I'm confident that teams are working right now on such problems, but my searches have yielded no results.

## Here are some of my questions.

* Can anyone direct me to some relevant articles and papers?
* What is the current state of progress regarding the formulation of useful information from neural firing patterns and raw brain activity?
* Are current EEG and other-brain scanning devices available right now capable enough to detect and form distinctions between impulses such as the internalization of, say, letters "K" vs "F"?.

+ Can something like the OpenBCI do this?
    + Can something like the Emotiv system do this? They have two models, the "EPOC / EPOC+" and "Insight". The former offers 14 EEG channels while the latter offers only 5. Is 5 sufficient for such purposes?
* Is it a problem of insufficient hardware sensing resolution or the inability to pattern match such noisy data?

I looked at this post too but it did not answer my questions: Can we draw conclusions about content of thoughts from neural firing patterns?

---

## Found some interesting links

# Answer
This is a really fascinating possibility, but to be honest right now we are not even close to having consumer-based technology like this. The challenge comes down to a few things:

1. The signal-to-noise of EEG is really, really bad
2. It's unclear how to map features of brain activity into linguistic features like phonemes/words/etc
3. Time is a crucial aspect of brain activity, and a crucial aspect of speech, however we're not sure how to map the "timescale" of the brain onto the "timescale" of a person speaking. (e.g., think of the sentence "all dogs go to heaven" and then say it out loud. It probably took you a different amount of time in each case).

The best example of state-of-the-art for EEG decoding is probably the P300 speller. Basically, this takes advantage of a signal that pops up in your EEG only when you see something that you were already attending to. They give you a block of letters, tell you attend to one of them, and then start flashing letters in succession. When the letter you were attending to gets flashed, your brain has a special signal that the P300 speller picks up on. However, this types at the rate of only a few characters per minute, so it is far from the lucid stream of words/thoughts that we'd like to have.

The work from Gallant's lab is really cool, but far from a feasible decoder of brain activity. If I remember correctly, their movie decoder was actually selecting from a bunch of movies they had in a database. They'd take the top 10/20/whatever movies that the decoder selected, and then average them together. This is a really clever idea, but isn't the full-fledged decoder that would let them decode arbitrary thoughts etc.

There is some work in electrocorticography (a version of EEG where the electrodes are placed right on the person's brain instead of on their scalp) that has interesting results, but they are still far, far, far from a consumer product. E.g. see this paper from the Stephanie Martin / Brian Pasley for an attempt to decode acoustic features from imagined speech. The ECoG signal is a much higher-quality signal than EEG, and they definitely show an improved ability to decode, but it still leaves much to be desired. (full disclosure, I'm a co-author on that paper)

so tl;dr - these ideas are really fascinating, and hopefully they'll be a part of our society in the future. However, before we get to that point, we have major problems to solve such as finding a brain signal with a better SNR, creating more clever language models, and figuring out how time-scales are represented differently in the brain vs. during speech. Lots of progress yet to be made, but such is the nature of science :)

ps: I didn't mention any commercial brain decoding systems because these are all almost laughably bad right now. I don't know of any researchers that really believe that a system like Emotive actually records abstract states like "attention" "arousal" etc. Be wary of companies that are trying to make money by capitalizing on people's inherent enthusiasm for neuroscience. Sorry if that makes me sound like a crotchety scientist.
> 2 votes

# Answer
What you are looking for is Imagined / Silent Speech Classification (my best guess). I'm interested in this for a few years (exactly to work with Vim) now and worked with some of the cheap EEG headsets like Emotiv EPOC and Neurosky MindWave Mobile.

A paper on it: http://www.scipublish.com/journals/ABSE/papers/1021

Patent applications: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/
To the above link, add these at the end:
WO2014066855A1.html
WO2014130571A1.html

(Due to a lack of reputation, I cannot post more than 2 links.)

The commercial and inexpensive headsets are good enough to detect what their APIs support: Neurosky: Attention, Meditation and Eye blink. EPOC: Please refer to their Cognitive Suit documentation. You can get 1-2 sets of detections done quickly. Good luck with detecting 4 states.

Search around for Silent Speech Classification. You should be able to find more details. There was a Japanese demo somewhere that uses classification on EEG or EMG to speak. I will post it if I can find it.
> 5 votes

# Answer
I can respond a little to your second question, in particular as it related to EEG: *What is the current state of progress regarding the formulation of useful information from neural firing patterns and raw brain activity?*

As far as I know, although there are groups working on this general idea (decoding from brain activity) using a number of neuroscientific techniques. In terms of EEG, the data has a very low signal-to-noise rate on single trials (this is far worse in commercial systems), although a search of "single-trial EEG/ERP analysis" would yield some papers, especially recently, largely on binomial classification problems.

At the level of individual words/phrases, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to use EEG to decode accurately. It is likely the case that there some evidence for a few broad classifications (car vs face) using EEG data, but as far as I know the best use of EEG for decoding "language" is using the decision-related P300 component in clinical settings (search "P300 speller", as well as the work by Emanuel Donchin, for more info).

Outside of EEG, I know of a number of labs who are using Magnetencephalography (MEG) to try to decode characters of conceptual and linguistic thought. For example, Tom Mitchell's lab is doing some work using individuals' reading entire passages of Harry Potter in an MEG machine, and then looking at ability to decode characters, characters' personality states and action, settings, etc. I know there are some interesting findings, but even with a $2MM machine it is pretty limited. (And, even if you were a research billionaire, you couldn't exactly walk around with a MEG on your head.)

Mitchell's work builds on work done using functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) with Marcel Just. This ended up on 60 minutes with Lezley Stahl and is on youtube. They were able to predict the category of items individuals were thinking of to a relatively high level after training the decoder. The coolest working in this area (IMHO) is in Jack Gallant's lab in Stanford?. Gallant et al have some ridiculous whole brain semantic mapping generated by having individuals watch movies that poor doctoral students coded scene by scene for *everything*. These maps show how the brain changes its receptivity/tuning/representational nature/who knows dynamically as we watch natural videos (e.g., people in a scene radically changes the brain's conceptual state, if that makes any sense). My point with Gallant's work is that we may first be better able decode concepts and categories at a fine level before we drop down to sentences and words, at least in any non-strongly-constrained system (one with 5 words).

But, I don't know anything, maybe next year they will pop a chip in the ventral pathways and start reading words like a typewriter...
> 4 votes

# Answer
Your thought has been first tested by Larry Pinneo (1975), he got absolutely nowhere in the DARPA Biocybernetics program. In 1981, Russian scientists have found specific waves for specific meanings, "for example, that waves for concepts such as chair, desk, and table are all overlapped by another wave that corresponds to the word furniture.” Check out this article, "Mind reading computer" by Staff Writer. https://sites.google.com/site/mcrais1/pinneo

* Pinneo, L. R. (1975). Persistent EEG Patterns Associated with Overt and Covert Speech. Bulletin of the Human Factors Society, 18(2), 1-2.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Unfortunately, EEG just isn't that high-quality of a signal. But electrocorticography, or basically EEG collected on the surface of the brain, is much better. Robert Knight's lab came out with a paper in (or around) 2012 that had single-trial generation of speech from brain activity.

Citation: http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001251
Reconstructing Speech from Human Auditory Cortex
Brian N. Pasley , Stephen V. David, Nima Mesgarani, Adeen Flinker, Shihab A. Shamma, Nathan E. Crone, Robert T. Knight, Edward F. Chang
> 2 votes

---
Tags: eeg
---


# Question
Title: What is the optimal exercise regime for improving cognitive functioning?
It seems that researchers agree that physical exercise increases cognitive abilities. This seems to work universally for all ages: children, adults and old people.

It is suggested that everyone should exercise for half an hour at least 3 times a week. I'm wondering if there are any studies which try to find dependencies between the amount of training and the effect of it on cognitive abilities?

# Answer
> 4 votes
Yes, there are several studies which found links between the amount of training and the effect of it on cognitive abilities. See the below for references and summaries of some of these:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

# Answer
> 1 votes
Yes, there is an interaction between physical fitness and the effect of physical exercise on cognitive improvement.

"The few available studies (Gutin, 1966; Weingarten, 1973; Zervas, Danis and Klissouras, 1991) suggest, on the whole, that an interaction between acute and chronic exercise effects exists. The interaction seems to consist of larger benefits of acute exercise on cognitive performance for highly fit individuals than for their less fit counterparts."

"Zervas, Danis and Klissouras (1991) examined the effects of acute physical exertion on performance on a visual discrimination task in pre-adolescent twins, who were randomly assigned to a six months training or nontraining period. At the end of this period, they performed the cognitive task twice, before and after an acute bout of 25 min treadmill running. A third group of age-matched controls performed the cognitive task twice, but resting between the two test sessions. Acute exercise led to better performances in the case of both trained and untrained groups and, more interestingly, the average improvement was largest for the trained group, suggesting the existence of interactive effects of acute and chronic exercise."

Source: Caterina Pesce: An integrated approach to the effect of acute and chronic exercise on cognition: the linked role of individual and task constraints http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470740668.ch11/summary

---
Tags: intelligence, performance, brain-training, exercise
---


title: Why are children afraid of the dark?

text:
# Question
Title: Why are children afraid of the dark?
Why are children afraid of the dark, in particular more afraid than adults? Is it an evolutionary mechanism? What causes this?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Human's fear of the dark comes from our evolutionary past. Scientists believe it is genetically encoded in our DNA to be afraid of the dark due to the attacks of predators on our ancestors mostly occurring at night. Our ancestors who were afraid of the dark survived predator attacks and thus lived, transferring that trait to us.

Fear is normal and usually occurs when we try something new, something unknown. Children, more than adults, are always experiencing new things so they have more fears which can get to them especially at night.

Fear of the dark is highest among children between 4 and 6 years old, and begins to decline at around 9 years old. Sigmund Freud believed that the fear of darkness is linked to separation anxiety from the absence of our mothers. But psychologists believe it comes from children's highly active imagination.

Fear of the dark forms at the age when children are able to use imagination but not distinguish fantasy from reality. Their heightened imagination allows young children to make a monster out of a shadow. Plus there are not many distractions in a child's mind compared to adults. Most of this fear in children comes from watching TV and reading books. The sounds and images on TV are too stimulating to their young brains and the images in a book might be misinterpreted and provoke an already active imagination.

So the general fear of the dark is natural and evolutionarily derived from our ancestors. But children are more afraid of the dark than adults because they have a more active imagination, they're at an age where they can't distinguish fantasy from reality, and they don't have as many distractions in their head to occupy themselves with so their imagination runs wild.

For more information, see the following links: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/why-are-we-afraid-of-the-dark.html http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/fear-of-the-dark

---
Tags: evolution, psychology, evolutionary-psychology
---


# Question
Title: Where are intrinsically bursting neurons found in the mammalian brain?
There are neurons in the brain that exhibit bursting behaviour. In some cases, this is due to interactions with the surrounding neural network. In other cases, it is due to intrinsic biological properties of the neurons.

In the case where it is intrinsic, where are these neurons found in the brain and what function to do they serve? How is their intrinsic bursting behaviour identified?

# Answer
One very notable example of intrinsically bursting neurons are the thalamocortical relay cells. They have a hyperpolarization-activated calcium channel which leads to periodic bursting at delta frequency. The hyperpolarization activation allows these neurons to switch from tonic firing (esp. during wakefulness) to burst firing (esp. during sleep). The bursting of these neurons has been associated with schizophrenia (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2802545/) and have even been fingered as the root of consciousness (see the work of Rodolfo Llinas).
> 2 votes

---
Tags: neuroscience, neuroanatomy
---


# Question
Title: Does inhibiting automatic processing requires attention?
It's seems very likely to me that it does, but I haven't found any research that tested this assumption directly.

# Answer
> 0 votes
# Terms - attention vs consciousness

I guess that by attention you mean:

> The focus of our conscious process.

Until recently, neither *attention* nor *consciousness* were rigorously defined. But now you may find the following definitions:

* **Selective attention** \- a subconscious process that selects from a multitude of candidates the most salient one.
* **Consciousness** \- a cortex-global top-down process that has access to ,and controls lower-level processes.

The latter is actually termed *conscious access* and the whole definition is over-simplified, but will suffice for now.

# On man, chicken and ANN

The problem with using the term *attention* is that while it's valid to say that a human attend to something (meaning that that something is the focus of consciousness), saying the same for a chicken is problematic - a chicken may attend to something yet we doubt it is conscious. We are pretty certain that worms aren't.

Further, it is fairly easy to build an artificial neural network that has a preference to this or that stimuli (by that given an impression of attentive selection), yet isn't capable of consciousness (ie, acyclic network).

# Inhibiting automatic processes

That's really a fancy name to a change in behaviour. You may argue that not all behaviour is automatic - some is conscious-controlled, so let's stick to automatic behaviour.

Whether with humans, more so with chickens, and definitely with ANNs, a change in automatic behaviour is possible with neither attention nor consciousness (well... we wouldn't be here otherwise).

With humans, for example, you may have never paid attention (consciously processed) to the lips size of your co-worker, but you will notice a botox procedure. Other examples include people with slow and gradual deterioration of a particular brain function - where these people may be oblivious to the compensation processes their brain develops.

So you can inhibit automatic processes without attention or consciousness.

# But consciousness is far more effective

However, our current understanding of consciousness also demonstrates that in its core is an **amplified process far stronger and global** than any automatic process. What's more, consciousness often involves many feedback iterations - so the process is not only stronger, **but also longer**.

This means that anything that have triumphed the selective attention competition and thus have entered our consciousness has a far greater potential to alter behaviour.

Levels of processing is probably a good demonstration of this.

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, attention, automaticity
---


# Question
Title: Epigenetics and serotonin (amygdala threat response)?
In this article it states that:

> Increased promoter methylation of the serotonin transporter gene predicted increased threat related amygdala activity.

I'm finding this somewhat difficult to understand. Increased promoter methylation would imply that the serotonin transporter gene is less expressed, so less serotonin is taken up by the presynaptic neuron, leading to increased serotonin levels in the synaptic cleft. Surely the increased serotonin levels would lead to decreased amygdala response to threat? After all, selective serotonin reputable inhibitors (SSRIs) are used to treat anxiety disorders and depression by reducing uptake of serotonin and increasing serotonin levels as well.

It seems like these two are suggesting two contrasting effects for the same cause? Have I misunderstood something?

# Answer
From my limited understanding...

First off, you're definitely interpreting this correctly. The authors note:

> \[…\] methylation of the proximal promoter of human SLC6A4 predicts threat-related amygdala reactivity, possibly reflecting decreased serotonin transporter gene expression and, consequently, reduced regional serotonin reuptake.

However, it's definitely true that increased serotonin signaling is associated with increased amygdala reactivity (e.g., Fakra et al., 2009).

Moreover, SSRI administration in neurotic (Simplicio et al., 2013) and healthy (Bigos et al., 2008) adults seems to initially increase amydgala reactivity to threatening faces. Simplicio et al. interpret this as facilitating "a process of decreasing emotional avoidance," which would be adaptive in the long-term through greater exposure (and habituation to) "benign 'threat' cues" like faces.

Both Fakra et al. (2009) and Bigos et al. (2008) suggest that acute effects of increased 5HT on amygdala reactivity may have to do with delayed effects on prefrontal cortex, which would otherwise exhibit control over amygdala reactivity. More specifically, Bigos et al. argue:

> While acute 5-HT reuptake blockade may potentiate stimulus-dependent amygdala reactivity, likely through stimulation of excitatory postsynaptic 5-HT receptors located on apical dendrites of glutamatergic neurons (McDonald and Mascagni, 2007), chronic blockade may lead to a more general increase in 5-HT neurotransmission via downregulation of negative feedback 5-HT autoreceptors (Blier and de Montigny, 1999). **This shift toward generally increased neurotransmission after chronic reuptake blockade may allow 5-HT to potentiate the response of pyramidal neurons in prefrontal circuits, via volume transmission at excitatory 5-HT receptors localized extrasynaptically (Jansson et al, 2001; Sharp et al, 2007), thereby mediating top-down regulation of the amygdala (Hariri and Holmes, 2006)**.

So SSRIs might have long-term adaptive consequences via effects on prefrontal cortex, otherwise not seen acutely.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: genetics, fear, serotonin
---


title: Learning to think?

text:
# Question
Title: Learning to think?
Do we need to learn to 'think' or is it an ability that we are born with? By 'think' I mean neurons firing in a certain way to provide useful information (although since I am not strong in this subject, this may make no sense).

# Answer
Allow us to include within the term "learning" the absorption of information, which contributes to creation of neural pathways within the brain. Admittedly, this is a rather liberal use of the term, "learning".

Human thought is an emergent behavior of the brain, which begins once sufficient neural pathways have formed. Therefore, we "learn" before we think, and such learning allows the brain to follow its natural course in creating the emergent behavior of thinking. This is very subtly different from saying that we "learn to think".
> 1 votes

# Answer
That is obviously depends on how one defines *learning* and *thinking*.

We need to learn how to walk, but do you know of any non-handicap 6 year old who didn't manage to?

Similarly, newborns' nervous system in neither fully 'formed' nor in full swing (for a very good reason), so they aren't exactly thinking like an adult and they need, at least, some stimuli to develop such ability - but again, show me a non-handicap adult who doesn't think.

Thinking in itself can be defined in different ways, involve levels and abilities.

I guess you can say that learning (a change in behaviour or beliefs) is a necessity for thinking, but it isn't voluntary - we are pretty much biologically destined to think, and in normal circumstances **can't help it**.

So if I understand you question alright, it is an innate ability.
> -1 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience, thought
---


title: Why do we need Life Partner?

text:
# Question
Title: Why do we need Life Partner?
We all get into relationship. We at times move out of them when the needs (emotional,physical,mental,monetary,etc.) are not met. We keep searching for that one life partner. Why do we(human beings) need that one "Life partner"?

# Answer
The root cause is almost certainly procreation. Our relationship tendencies developed along with our biology. Humans tend to have one child at a time, and human children mature very slowly. This suggests that during most of human history, it would be advantageous for a female to keep a male with her, helping to provide food and protection for herself and her children. The strategy for the male is either to play along, or to breed so quickly as to outweigh the devastating effect of a long maturation without sufficient protection. Others species, many of which breed in greater numbers, have different mating habits.
> 2 votes

---
Tags: social-psychology, perception, emotion
---


title: What is forward masking

text:
# Question
Title: What is forward masking
I am trying to understand what is visual masking (or more specificaly forward masking). I have read the explanation here, but still..

I understand that a background can interfere with a frontal visual stimulus. Anyone knows that. If I use whithe letters on white page I will see nothing. But, I assume the definition has more then that.. for example, in here, in figure 1b, are they describing an experiment? If yes' then what is the experiment? I mean, what is the stimulus, what is the masking, what is the experiment question, and what is the result (I assume that there are known results to what the figure is describing...)

Thank you!!

# Answer
> 4 votes
Visual masking has quite a few variations, and the source you've linked is by far the worst explanation I've seen.

In forward masking an early stimuli takes hold over consciousness (resulting in top-down activation) that prevents a later stimuli from overshooting the selective attention threshold, thus the latter remains subliminal (*limen* is threshold in Latin, so sub-liminal is literally *below threshold*).

For example, in the following frame sequence you'd be asked to find the letters in a sequence of numbers. Given there's less than 100ms between the two targets, your conscious attention to the first target will almost always prevent the second target from being perceived.

For a nice demo of this have a look at this attentional blink test video.

Another variation is to expose a frame for less than 30ms between various pre or post masks.

The principle, however, is always the same - paying attention to one stimuli 'saturates' our consciousness and prevents another from entering it.

---
Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, vision, visualization
---


title: Neural nets for cognition

text:
# Question
Title: Neural nets for cognition
I recently got into Neural networks. As much as I have understood, the learning process is based on the change in weights according to stimulus and algorithm used in learning. Does this in any way represent the real learning process of our brain?

# Answer
Yes and no.

Neural networks that use edge weights simulate synaptic plasticity - a key mechanism in the brain operation. But it isn't the only one.

In practice, cognition is the combination of various mechanisms, some we are still unsure of.

Perhaps the most obvious missing ingredient of weighted networks is the lack of **frequency/time** domains similar to that affecting the brain. Neurons involve time-dependent operation - for instance, both the **action potential** and the following **refractory period** are time-bound. The brain also involves **synchrony**, e.g. the phase-locked discharges of a neuron set.

There're also issues like different axon lengths that play a part. And many more.

In addition, and possibly above all, the actual **topography** matters a great deal - how everything is connected.

More advance brain simulations involve many of these extra components - mimicking more accurately a real biological brain.
> 1 votes

# Answer
The approach of the artificial neural networks that you describe and their application is called Connectionism. There are a number of cognitive architectures that have used this approach to explain cognition, such as Leabra.

The question about whether this is really what the brain is doing is another question entirely. Does the brain do back-propagation? This is currently up for debate. Does it contain structures such as LSTMs and other Recurrent Neural Networks? Probably not, as these aren't very efficient uses of memory and neurons. For a further discussion of biological plausibility, I would recommend reading "How to Build a Brain" by Chris Eliasmith.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, theoretical-neuroscience, neural-network
---


# Question
Title: How does listening to music decrease stress?
I'm interested in how listening to different types of music (such as jazz, classical, etc.) can help some people calm down.

More specifically, how does the brain form a link between music heard and processed to the stress system? Is it some cortical association area or a direct circuit?

# Answer
This may be happening due to beat entrainment. Different music genres have different beat and rhythm patterns. The ones that are calming will generally have a lower beat and rhythm frequencies. The lower beat and rhythm frequencies are similar to the frequency of heartbeat and breathing when a person is feeling calm and/or relaxed. Through the process of entrainment, the person's breathing and heartbeat may synchronize with the music, thus calming the person. The mechanism could be working by counter-acting the effects of shallow breathing.
> 3 votes

---
Tags: stress, music
---


title: cleanIAT function in R IAT package

text:
# Question
Title: cleanIAT function in R IAT package
Has anyone used cleanIAT (function in IAT package) to compute D-scores for their IAT data? Have you noticed any discrepancies between your D-scores and those of colleagues that used another program (e.g., SPSS) to clean the same data? Can anyone describe each column in cleanIAT s output?

While the manual says:

> "Outputs a dataframe that must be saved to an object. The variable IAT is the calculated D-Score for each individual. SUBEXCL notes any exclusion criteria, with 0 being inclusion data, 1 for exclusion due to fast response, and 2 for exclusion due to missing blocks. C indicates standard deviation for combined blocks (correct trial only), while A indicates standard deviations for combined blocks (all trials). M (mean), E (percent error), N (number of trials used), and F (percent fast responses), are reported for each block included in the original dataframe."

There are a number of columns that are in the output that aren't explained in the documentation. For example, there are three IAT scores (3 D-scores?). And there are 2 S scores and 2 C scores.

I'd like to start an ongoing discussion about this because the package isn't mentioned at all in forums and "cleanIAT" gives zero results in Google Scholar.

# Answer
So I'm the author of the IAT package in R. It's based on the original scoring algorithm outlined in this publication. Because the scoring algorithm is based on a standard 7-block IAT, the score IAT1 corresponds to the D score relative to the difference between blocks 6 and 3, while IAT2 corresponds to the D score relative to blocks 7 and 4. IAT is then simply the mean of IAT1 and IAT2, and represents the overall D-score of the test. In a simple applied example, you might use this variable as the outcome in a simple t-test to see if there is an effect of some treatment group versus a control group.

One thing to keep in mind when using the IATData loaded with the package is that there are order effects due to randomization of whether participants received stereotype congruent sorting first or stereotype incongruent sorting first. Thus, the D score needs to be calculated separately between these two groups, otherwise the D score would be flipped for half of the participants (see the example in ?cleanIAT to see what I mean).

As for discrepancies, I never tested against SPSS code, but it was designed to replicate the SAS macro used by the Nosek lab exactly.

Finally, a faster version using dplyr is available for download off of my github if you're interested:

```
library(devtools)
install_github("dpmartin42/IAT")

```
> 1 votes

# Answer
```
library(IAT)
library(psych)
cleaned_IAT <- cleanIAT(myData = IATData,
         blockName = "BLOCK_NAME_S",
         trialBlocks = c("BLOCK2", "BLOCK3", "BLOCK5", "BLOCK6"),
         sessionID = "SESSION_ID",
         trialLatency = "TRIAL_LATENCY",
         trialError = "TRIAL_ERROR",
         vError = 1, vExtreme = 2, vStd = 1)
head(cleaned_IAT[,c("IAT1","IAT2","IAT")])
        IAT1        IAT2        IAT
1  0.8555243  0.95158711  0.9035557
2  0.7539783  0.69624171  0.7251100
3  0.7563726  0.97124441  0.8638085
4  0.4719366 -0.01613619  0.2279002
5  0.3891048  0.88868891  0.6388969
6 -1.0321507 -0.59671619 -0.8144334
describeBy(cleaned_IAT[,c("IAT1","IAT2","IAT")])
     vars  n mean   sd median trimmed  mad   min  max range  skew kurtosis   se
IAT1    1 88 0.26 0.57   0.32    0.28 0.64 -1.03 1.28  2.31 -0.39    -0.63 0.06
IAT2    2 88 0.28 0.62   0.29    0.29 0.73 -1.09 1.41  2.50 -0.19    -1.04 0.07
IAT     3 88 0.27 0.54   0.27    0.29 0.67 -0.82 1.22  2.04 -0.19    -0.96 0.06

```
> 0 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, statistics, software, social-cognition
---


# Question
Title: Can a person's susceptibility to hypnosis be altered?
It is commonly quoted in popular literature that 10% of people are "highly hypnotizable". Given a set of 10 suggestions, such people would have 7 or more suggestions become active. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who are very hard to hypnotize and will have 0 out of 10 suggestions become active. Everyone else falls somewhere in between.

**I'm interested if the person's susceptibility to hypnosis can be altered?** Can a person who would previously respond to 7/10 suggestions be made to respond to 1/10, thus becoming hard to hypnotize (or vice versa)?

If so, what is the mechanism behind such change - is it localized to some brain area?

# Answer
There is no a single answer for this, but I will tell from what I have read of Milton Erickson's ideas.

Everyone is suceptible to hypnosis. The difficult in being hypnoized depends on the person's experience more than a specific part of the brain, and this implies that the most important thing is how the hipnotist is capable of capturing the person's unconscious attention, which is purely determined by the person's experience.

In conclusion, the person's suggestability is completely alterable. In my experience (not too much), if you fail hypnotizing someone and you do not handle ir properly, the next time that person will be less suggestable. This is only an example, there are many other factors that influence this process.
> 4 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, hypnosis
---


title: Possibility of increasing brain speed

text:
# Question
Title: Possibility of increasing brain speed
In science fiction stories, we often see the use of virtual reality, a 3d world that allows you to actually 'be' there. The writers often use a pod or helmet to signify the use of some sort of computer that reads and sends information to the brain. What many, if not all, of them have in common is that time is sped up. If it isn't double then it's triple or much more. Now, while this is science fiction and far removed from any real basis, I'm curious. Is it possible to speed up brain in such cases? I.e. Would we be able to make time move faster in a virtual space?

My gut, deduction, and the meagre amount of information I found online, says it's impossible. I know very little about the brain, but processing information at a much faster speed would force a much bigger strain on the organ, thus overtaxing it. Not to mention, if the brain could actually run faster, wouldn't it have it's own mechanisms for running faster, considering it would be quite the advantage when you want to survive as a cavemen against a lion that's in need of some breakfast.

# Answer
There are just too many ways to answer this question. But I suspect all of them will be proxies to the ultimate answer - **the goldilocks principle**.

To give an example, for the human brain to be faster, it would either have to be smaller, or would consume more energy. There is an optimal balance between the size of the brain and its energy ratio (to the rest of the body). Like many factors, these were heavily shaped by evolution (which in turn is heavily affected by our environment).

You can also argue that a faster brain will accumulate processing residues faster, thus we'll have to sleep more frequently, which may have adverse effect on survival chances. I know it sounds far-fetched, but you can actually argue that the size of the brain is correlated to the distance of earth from the sun. That's the goldilocks principle for you.

Would strongly recommend:

What is so special about the human brain? (TED Talk)

And the first chapter in:

Gibb, B., 2012. *The Rough Guide to the Brain*, 2 edition. ed. Rough Guides, London.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Generally speaking, stimulants make the brain process information more quickly, just as depressants tend to slow the processing down. In reality, things are more complicated since (a) many drugs increase activity of one part of the brain while decreasing activity in another and (b) the brain builds tolerance via various mechanisms, which often negates the net stimulatory effects of stimulants over time. Sympathetic hormones such as epinephrine also speed up parts of the brain responsible for processing of external stimuli. As you probably know, you cannot stay too healthy under prolonged stress. The more stress, the more quickly health will deteriorate. Presumably, the faster (beyond normal speed) that your brain is running, the faster it will age and or develop mental problems.

There are, on the other hand, ways of increasing the brain's potential to maintain itself and hence presumably its potential to handle being more stimulated for longer periods. One way is having proper nutrition for your body's specific needs -- just the right amount, not too much since build-up of certain substances can impair cellular function. Exercise is another essential since it keeps the blood flowing more smoothly and may help to provide more oxygen to the brain. Sleeping well is very important since memory consolidation happens mostly at night. Moreover, sleeping on your side has been found to improve waste removal within the brain, which would in theory allow it to process more information the next day without becoming overloaded with metabolic waste. Finally, avoid wasting your reserves stressing out about things that are not in your control or that do not really matter.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, theoretical-neuroscience
---


# Question
Title: How liking and disliking mechanism is developed?
Every one likes different things, places, people, colors, flowers etc. I am interested to know how this mechanism is developed in individuals. If we suppose that it is started from home.

**Then why siblings have different interests.**

If it is from society then living in same society still siblings have different interests. Like if two brothers are class fellows too and live in same people. still they will have different interests.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Considering the classical discussion of *nature versus nurture*, we can assume here that part of the causality is nature (genes, epigenetics) and part is nurture (environment, upbringing). We are all born with a whole bunch of instincts, probably hundreds. Not all these instincts are in effect at a given time, and a baby of course is not going to be displaying those instincts which are not important to its current circumstances, needs, and capabilities. As a child grows, he or she will learn how the world functions and what causes what. This person will slowly build associations between various desires (and urges) and those objects, actions, and places that satisfy said desires and urges. Because each person has different biological needs (different genes means slightly different nutritional needs, ideal temperature, physical needs, et cetera), each person, even if brought up in exactly the same environment, will build different associations with different stimuli and ideas over time. Through a long chain of trial and error with satisfying one's inner needs, each person will further differentiate in preferences.

Although I have no proof on the matter, I suspect that of the various specific (non-general) instincts a person can have, different people have different ones enabled and disabled. This would make perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective since you would not want everyone to react the same way to the world around them -- they might all go extinct at the same time if they all reacted disadvantageously to an occurrence that became common. Not everyone (probably nobody) is good at avoiding all kinds of danger and solving all kinds of problems. Plus, a society is far more productive if different people are good at different things, so there is strong selective pressure for a "rolling of the dice" on specific personality characteristics.

---
Tags: social-psychology, learning, measurement, developmental-psychology
---


# Question
Title: Why vision cannot count things instantly?
If vision can instantly "see" 30x30 grid, why does the brain often need to count rows and columns for understand there is 30 rows and 30 columns? Why does the brain fail to instantly count?

# Answer
> 4 votes
# You probably mean instant quantity recognition

Counting requires a rather complex high-level process. For an animal to count you'd need:

* Memory
* Consciousness (to access and manipulate that memory)
* Basic algebra skills
* Some basic semantic abstraction mechanism (ie, language) which will probably have to be recursive as well.
* Some symbolic mechanism

Honestly, even capable adult struggle counting in binary although on paper it should be far easier than counting in the decimal system.

Anyhow, counting will always be effortful and slow as it is a conscious process (ie, **system 2**, for which you can perform very roughly 5 calculation per second).

I guess what your really mean is **instant quantity recognition**.

# Useless for survival, useless in modern culture

One simple answer would be that such ability will add **little to none to your survival chances**. Furthermore, within modern cultural, such ability would give little advantage.

The brain is capable of many great things, for instance, the ability to comprehend this text is nothing short of a 'miracle' - despite decades of research, no computer is capable of such feat. But enter mirror reading (where the text is mirrored on the horizontal plane) and now the brain enters a slow, effortful manual mode. With enough practice, mirror reading should become an automatic process, but what benefit such skill give?

## Most animals can't count at all

All animals seem to have survived having no or extremely limited counting ability. For us humans, counting is a fairly **recent skill** (I'm pretty sure it is dated back to the beginning of the **trade era**) - us humans have survived without it for most of our past. Visits to uncivilised tribes revealed that some can only count to around 3 (then it's "more than 3" or "many") - odd to us as it may sound to us, *they* are baffled by why would anyone need to count more than 3 things.

One of the fascinating findings about **counting** is that it seems to be a **completely cultural** thing - experiments done with both young children and uncivilised populations suggest an innate **exponential**, rather than linear, sense of quantity. The explanation for this is that for **survival** it is much more important to know the **ratio** than the **precise count**:

> This tree has twice as many apples than this one.

Is more important than

> This one has 204 apple, this one has 408.

---

To summarise, there's no reason for our primal brain to be able to recognise precise quantities instantly, nor there is modern cultural advantage in having such skill.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Perhaps the visual cortex *is* "counting" them, but since this region is not responsible for language, it has no way of expressing this count in words. Numbers are handled more by the regions of the brain that handle language. For us all to have even had a chance of evolving this highly uncommon ability, we would have needed to have had words for high numbers in common tongue for perhaps millions of years, which was most definitely not the case.

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, vision
---


# Question
Title: Why is the sound of running water soothing?
What is it about the sound of running water that soothes the brain and the soul?

This is what I found on the internet:

> Our species evolved where trees met savannahs and where freshwater sources were present. Our brains are deeply encoded with the love of water – we revel in the delicious feel and noise of burbling brooks…

and

> I personal think we LOVE the sounds of running water because inside the womb of our mothers, that's what we hear...along with the sounds of her beating heart. I was told that we hear the blood running through her veins in utero.

# Answer
> 7 votes
There cannot be a single answer to this question which would be entirely correct. Different theoretical approaches to psychology will yield different explanations. This is evident from the other answers in this question (some which you provided) which all stem from different theoretical accounts:

* Evolutionary Psychology: Species evolving around water
* Developmental Psychology: Prenatal development in womb
* Sensory and Perception Psychology: White noise account
* Behaviorism, specifically Classical Conditioning: We develop a learnt association between the sound of water and relaxation.
* A prediction based on a cognitive science approach is less clear in my opinion. It would likely stem from a combination of sensory arguments (white noise) and from neural networks of association.

Why do we see so many different accounts for the same phenomena? Firstly, it is difficult to produce a falsifiable explanation for why such a perverse qualitative effect exists. In order for any given explanation to be scientifically valid, it has to be able to be tested. The explanations provided so far do not generate meaningful hypotheses which we can test using experimental studies. Therefore, it is difficult to form a single model accounting for why we find water sounds relaxing. Consequently, we see a range of explanations with little evidence for any of them (they are all just untested just-so stories). Note, even some of the better responses, such as this one (linked above), do not provide falsifiable or testable answers.

A second reason we see such variation could be that there is no simple answer. The "true" answer probably will draw upon a wide range of reasons for this phenomena. In this way, perhaps the best explanation at this point is that there are a variety of reasons why *certain* individuals find water sounds relaxing (those aforementioned). Although perhaps not the most satisfying conclusion - it is likely the most accurate.

# Answer
> 4 votes
It may have something to do with the manner in which the water flows. Disturbed or moving water has a frequency content/distribution that approaches noise (think ocean waves lapping up against the the shoreline/beach, which is close to white noise).

Our hearing system tends to tune out when presented with white noise, mainly due to there being no discernible pattern in the sound for the hearing system to focus on. The mind then starts to drift (excuse the pun) ...

# Answer
> 2 votes
I think the answer to this is on a question I did some time ago: Why does being in a natural environment induce some kind of "peace" state while mecha/tech ones induce the opposite?

We feel relaxed when listening to the sound of water, because we associate the sound to something like a beautiful waterfall, and to waterfalls/nature, the majority of us will associate peace, water has always been good to us, drinking water for example. Another example of "the things we use to consider good are the things that make us feel good" is the sound of birds telling there is no danger around, as Randy mentions in his answer to that question.

---
Tags: perception, emotion, brain-training, hearing
---


# Question
Title: Environmental factors that predict theism
Are there any environmental factors which can predict atheism or theism?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Your question specifically asks environmental factors which predict theism/atheism. Although your question is quite simple, it actually raises quite a few complexities.

Firstly, are we referring to religiosity, or specifically a belief in god? Many studies examining the psychology of the religion fail to make this distinction clear. Most probably because belief in a god is implied by active participation in religion - though I would say not an exclusive rule. It would be interesting to consider the multitude of pathways in which people get drawn into religion (a cultural institution) compared to a belief in god.

Secondly, your question specifies only the predictors of religious belief that are environmental. From my limited experience, this really closes off several of the most important predictors of religiosity (e.g. personality, attitudes). This makes it difficult to answer the question effectively. Most probably, religious belief can be predicted by a range of both individual level variables (e.g. personality) and environmental (e.g. parents religiosity) - and these variables likely interact with each other (i.e. some personality traits increase likelihood of being influenced by parents religious views).

Finally, the question is complicated as the predictors for belief in god may not be related to predictors of atheism. For instance, if low-socioeconomic status predicts theism, high-socioeconomic status may not be a good predictor of atheism.

I conducted a google scholar review using terms such as: "predictors of religiosity" "predictors of religious". From this, I focused on longitudinal studies and those which focused not simply on personality/cognitive traits. Examples of studies which I found were *Predictors of Religiosity Among Youth Aged 17–22: A Longitudinal Study of the National Survey of Children* which found

> The best predictors of youth religiosity were ethnicity and peers' church attendance during high school. Other predictors were, in order of decreasing magnitude: residence in the south, gender, religious schooling during childhood, maternal religiosity, church attendance during childhood, the importance mothers placed on childhood religious training, and an interaction variable identifying religious mothers who were very supportive.

and Explaining religiosity: towards a unified theoretical model.

> Individuals had a much higher probability of showing Christian religiosity if they had been strongly socialized by their parents, if they came from a mono-religious household and if they had Christian peer-socialization. Deprivation, social control, religious tradition of the canton as well as gender and age also played a certain role. Individuals with less education and income, living in smaller and rural communities and in traditionally Catholic (or mixed) cantons had a higher likelihood of showing Christian religiosity. The latter finding is very similar to that by Norris and Inglehart (2004) who were also able to show that religious culture was important on a collective (national) level. Furthermore, the study shows that especially older women had a much higher probability than younger women to be religious, while age was much less important for men.

A major criticism of the literature (as it currently stands) is that a large proportion of the quantitative work focuses on western, predominately Christian samples (see Vassilis and colleagues for more information). I would argue the book is open on this one. Clearly, thought has been placed into this field and there are some logical environmental predictors (i.e. parents religious views); however, few of these have been replicated in representative samples.

---
Tags: religion
---


# Question
Title: Is it possible for any arbitrary able bodied human to develop exceptional cognitive talent & genius across multiple disciplines?
Can any arbitrary \[able bodied\] human become a genius across **multiple disciplines** or **at least one discipline** assuming that they have some Secondary Eduction in these disciplines?

For example, the Graduate Management Admission Test assess (1)analytical, (2)writing, (3) quantitative(maths), (4) verbal, and reading skills of candidates. In order to get admission to Major B-Schools around the world, candidates have to excel in all the above mentioned 4 sections. The average GMAT scores of Harvard, Yale, Chicago and NYU’s is very high at 720 or more.

Similarly for admission to engineering colleges like MIT or Caltech a candidate has to secure a minimum of A grade in Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry at the undergrad level so that the average GPA is at least 4.13

Therefore,is it possible for any individual to develop ***exceptional cognitive talent and genius across all these subjects/topics*** (like Maths, Physics, Analytical etc) or at least one of these subjects/topics?

# Answer
> 5 votes
> Can any arbitrary \[able bodied\] human become a genius across multiple disciplines or at least one discipline assuming that they have some Secondary Eduction in these disciplines?

No, not all able bodied humans will be able to be become a genius across one or more disciplines. Assuming genius in this context means someone achieving international acclaim for their accomplishments in a specific discipline, only a very small number of able bodied humans will be able to achieve this. This kind of rare accomplishment requires an uncommon interaction of intellect, work rate and opportunity amongst other factors, which is why most people do not achieve it. I am happy to expand on this answer if you want further clarification.

Edit 1: Ok, let me reiterate what I said, but maybe make it clearer. Before I do that, I would just like to also add that one of the challenges with answering this question is the subjectivity involved. For instance, what are exceptional problem solving skills? For now, I will assume that you mean good enough for meeting the admission standards for one of these top level business schools. Assuming this is what you mean, I would still argue that not all able bodied humans will be able to develop exceptional problem solving skills across one or more disciplines.

Getting accepted to one of the business schools (i.e., demonstrating exceptional problem solving skills) is something that only the top x% of applicants will achieve. In developing these exceptional skills applicants will have benefited from the positive contribution of several different factors (what I referred to before as "the uncommon interaction") such as their intelligence, physical and mental health, network, discipline, confidence. For instance, probably few or none of the applicants will be of average intelligence (e.g., having an IQ of 100), have got severely, or regualarly sick, had severe depression, had to work extensively to support their family, had bad role models, had below average discipline or self-belief etc. While some may have been disadvantaged in some ways (i.e., maybe they did have to work to support their family), these applicant will likely have been able to counteract this through advntages in other factors (i.e., being exceptionally smart). In summary, as this example hopefully serves to show, those who are able to get exceptional scores are those who have had exceptional combinations of the different factors. By definition exceptional means not normal, therefore it would not be expected that such achievement would be within the reach of any able bodied human.

Having said all of this, what I will add is that most/many average individual ( interms of IQ/available time/movtivation etc) probably could probably become exceptional in one or more areas if given enough time - it is just that it would take a very long time for them to learn enough to be exceptional. Additionally, it would be most/many, but not certainly not all as some people (i.e., the unmotivated, the sick, the homeless etc) would have disadvantages that would prevent them from succeeding.

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience, intelligence
---


# Question
Title: Does neuroticism go hand in hand with introversion?
I'm reading this paper on relations between affect and personality.

It seems the personality domain has been characterized in terms of two dimensions: neuroticism and extraversion.

How does introversion fit into this? There is a clear association between extraversion and measures of positive affect; there is a clear association between neuroticism and measures of negative affect.

Does neuroticism therefore go hand in hand with introversion?

# Answer
> Does neuroticism therefore go hand in hand with introversion?

No, these are different dimensions of personality. One can be therefore be introverted and neurotic, or extroverted and neurotic \[1\].

With that said, there appears to be a relationship between introversion and neuroticism - a positive correlation of .3 \[2\]. Rather than one causing the other, it may be because both have a common cause \[3\].

\[1\] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1961.tb02931.x/abstract \[2\]http://www.tc.umn.edu/~cdeyoung/Pubs/DeYoung\_2007\_BFAS\_JPSP.pdf \[3\]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19263467
> 0 votes

---
Tags: introversion, neuroticism, extraversion
---


# Question
Title: Does smoking counterbalance the effect of Belladonna?
Atropine, the main ingredient of Belladona, is the stuff that makes you dump, by blocking the action of acetylcholine at muscarinic receptors.

Would smoking or applying a nicotine patch, by introducing additional nicotine, which also binds to the acetylcholine receptors to some extend counterbalance the effect of atropine?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Disclaimer: I do not work with receptor bindings very often.

First point binding sites... Both Atropine and Nicotine bind to Cholinergic receptors. However receptor binding is not competitive as the rector sites for each neurotransmitter is different (NT): Atropine is a direct-antagonist of Muscarine binding with AChRm (muscarinic receptors) while nicotine is a direct agonist of AchRn (nicotinic receptors).

Atropine however does inhibit the action of nicotine in mediating ion currents on cholinergic receptors in the Central Nervous System (CNS). However this depends on the concentration of each NT in the neural system, low does of Atropine are enough to block high concentrations nicotine. So while a high concentration nicotine, say from an e-lite might be enough to save your life from Belladonna poisoning, I wouldn't personally go out of my way to test the theory! However the Nicotine from a cigarette probably wouldn't be a high enough dose to counter 1um of atropine. However say you did drink some belladonna because you have evil 'friends', but then you smoked a cigarette with enough nicotine to save your life. You then encounter another problem...half-life. The half-life of atropine is 2 hours, the half-life of nicotine is 1-2 hours! Do you want to risk that last hour if it takes two hours to see a medic or if you are transported back in time to medieval england!? Incidentally if you were poisoned with belladonna being transported back to medieval England would make sense. Your only option at this point, after the first hour, is to keep smoking (nicotine metabolites have 20 hour half-life, but there action is reduced), this is one of only a few situations that smoking may prolong your life! Although you will need some pretty potent tobacco to achieve this, better make sure you land in Tudor England instead.

Moral of the story...don't time travel! I'm looking at you 'doctor' with the blue box.

If you do believe you are in medieval England or the Roman empire please ask someone to call a Neurologist or a psychiatrist! If they say "what's a neurologist/psychiatrist?" you are completely sane, congratulations you have achieved time-travel.

Specifically information about competition between atropine and nicotine concentrations...

"At the holding potential of 80 mV, 1 mM atropine inhibits 1 mM acetylcholine- induced inward currents mediated by rat a2b2, a2b4, a3b2, a3b4, a4b2, a4b4, and a7 nicotinic receptors by 12–56%. Inward currents induced with a low agonist concentration are equally inhibited (a3b2, a3b4), less inhibited (a2b4, a7), or potentiated (a4b2, a4b4) by 1 mM atropine. Effects on the more sensitive 44 nicotinic receptors were investigated in detail by systematic variation of acetylcholine and atropine concentra- tions and of membrane potential. At high agonist concentration, atropine inhibits 44 nicotinic receptor-mediated ion current in a noncompetitive, voltage-dependent way with IC50 values of 655nM at80mVandof4.5M at 40mV. At low agonist concentration, 1 M atropine potentiates 44 nicotinic recep- tor-mediated ion current. This potentiating effect is surmounted by high concentrations of acetylcholine, indicating a competitive interaction of atropine with the nicotinic receptor, and potentiation is also reversed at high atropine concentrations...The apparent affinity of atropine for the agonist recognition sites of the a4b4 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor is estimated to be 29.9 mM." Zwart and Vijverberg (1997)

---
Tags: neuro-transmitters, nicotine
---


# Question
Title: How does the order of words influence our ability to remember a question once it's asked again?
I'm about to send out surveys that I need for a project and these will be sent out every season - winter, spring, summer, fall - each supposedly having the same questions. It's quite likely some people partaking in these surveys will be those same people who partook in them before( previous seasons)

*So I'm wondering whether a changed order of words, though not the meaning - in the questions, would result in it being harder( or not?) to remember having been asked this question before.*

To put it in another way - *how does word order in a question influence the ability of the person( who is being asked) to remember the question, provided it has been asked before?*

I wasn't able to find StackExchange for Neuroscience, so I thought I'd ask here. Thanks in advance!

# Answer
> 2 votes
# No influence

There should be no influence given two text forms are semantically identical.

# Our memory isn't a tape recorder

Had our brain worked like tape-recorder, storing and retrieving information would be far less efficient - both in terms of resources (amount of neurons) and time (to store or retrieve). Remembering a full sentence gives us little - its meaning is what important.

# It is associative

So our brain and memory, being a network, is associative: Everything we remember is represented by a complex sub-network of links and neurons.

The exact words in a sentence quickly turn (as they move bottom up) into higher level verbal models which represent the actual semantics.

# Try it yourself, 40 seconds later

You don't remember every word in this answer (doubt you remember the starting word in the previous sentence - 'So'), but you do remember its overall meaning.

So, any changes to the text form, particularly if the exposure time between them does not allow them to stay in our working memory, should have no influence.

# Answer
> 0 votes
our brain maps out a series of keywords in any statement, and it is usually these keywords that we remember for a longer period of time. Given the parameters like, length of the sentence, audibility etc, the results may vary.

---
Tags: memory
---


# Question
Title: Are there mental states that make the mind more susceptible to other negative mental states?
I've recently read the following folk parable and am interested if there is any truth to it.

It is originally in russian(full version here), so I will translate the gist of it:

> The devil displays his Arsenal of tools used to corrupt mortals - anger, jealousy, greed, etc. Then he shows the "special" tool which can work when all else fails- depression (dismay or broken spirit). He suggests that once depression takes hold, the mind is open to all other tools (jealousy, greed, etc)

This got me thinking - **is there some equivalent of a mental "immune system" which keeps the mind healthy and keeps negative, unwanted, maladaptive emotions at bay?**

Are there conditions that make the mind more open to other disorders?

# Answer
Daniel Gilbert actually coined a term called **immune neglect** (Gilbert et al., 1998), which describes a common bias in affective forecasting. The idea is that when we try to predict how we'll feel following a negative situation, we fail to take into account (i.e., we neglect) that our psychological "immune system" will kick in and return us to some neutral baseline. So we overestimate how bad we'll feel.

Indeed, the idea that we have some **homeostatic** mechanism(s) (or really, **allostatic**; Sterling, 2014) that brings us back to some baseline has been thrown around in psychology for a while (e.g., Forgas & Ciarrochi, 2002), but emerging theory is starting to take this idea seriously (e.g., Barrett & Simmons, 2015; Craig, 2003; Sterling, 2014; Sterling & Laughlin, 2015).

So to your main question: what kinds of states make us susceptible to other negative mental states? One answer is a **negative prior** (e.g., Beck, 1979; Huys, Daw, & Dayan, 2015), which shapes your **predictions** about the world. For example, if you grew up in a threatening environment, you might develop a prior that yields predictions that the world will be threatening. Indeed, you might even discount evidence against your predictions (i.e., that the world is not threatening).

**This is actually considered adaptive--you're using your prior knowledge ("the world is/was threatening") to make predictions about the world ("the world will be threatening") and to guide how much you weight the errors in your predictions ("the world is not threatening").** After all, if you've only been exposed to threat, then it's good to be hypervigilant to more potential threat and hypovigilant to potential indications otherwise.

So--that's what happens in depression, for example. You get "stuck" in a negative state because your negative prior leads you to weight negative information more heavily (Garrett et al., 2014) and ignore "the full range of signals from many sources" (Sterling, 2014). **If you fail to change your prior in accordance with new evidence, then you'll behave maladaptively and remain depressed.**

I think my answer is *slightly* incoherent and not complete, and I think there's probably a whole lot more to explain…but I hope it gives you some idea of what's going on.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, emotion, depression, behavior
---


# Question
Title: Why is it that some (yet not all) people may struggle to retain information unrelated to what they are interested in?
It seems to me that some people find it difficult to retain information that is not naturally salient to them. This isn't the case for all people, however. There exist people that will put in the effort to retain and use information related to material that is inherently uninteresting to them, particularly in a school setting. Is it the case that the latter group has more of a conscious control over what is salient to them at the time? Is this phenomena 'traceable' in the brain?

# Answer
> 1 votes
# Preface

Your question can be phrased as: *what controls storage of information in Long-Term Memory? And more specifically, declarative memory?* And one answer to this is one of my favourite stories in neuroscience.

In the following, I'm ignoring a lot of important aspects about memory - especially the difference between encoding, consolidation and retrieval. But I hope it still answers the question.

# Psychology of memory

We generally distinguish between two forms of memory. Procedural memory is about sequential, a-then-b type of stuff - for example, movement patterns, like dancing, or calligraphy. There's basically only one way to get stuff into procedural memory: grind it in there. Do it a lot. Do it so much, it stops being under conscious control, and submerges into cerebellum and motor cortex. This is so for everyone; even the people who're absolutely the best at some sport or instrument will practice day after day after day to really get it down, to effortless perfection.

The other kind is declarative memory. This is a-is-b memory; the three branches of government are judiciary, legislative and executive, and the dorsal stream is where and the ventral stream is what, and your wedding anniversary is on 11.9. and so on. In contrast to procedural memory, declarative memory is conscious and controlled, it's largely subserved by different brain areas, and it is acquired in a much different way.
If you want to learn to rumba, you got to learn to rumba a lot. But when you're at the \[book store/nightclub/sports venue\] and the most attractive \[boy/girl\] you've ever seen walks by, and up to their friends, and is greeted with "Hi Alex!", you'll *immediately* store that name. You won't have to listen to the friends say "AlexAlexAlexAlexAlex" again and again. You'll hear it once, and remember it immediately, and possibly forever. This is because you're aroused.
Roughly the same thing happens if you eat something and get extremely sick afterwards, or if you get a shock after pushing one lever, and a treat after pushing the other. Why? Your arousal - be it positive, or negative - is high. Metaphorically speaking, your brain thinks "whatever is going on right now seems to be important, I better store what's going on".

One cool experiment in that regard I can't find the citation for right now goes like this: students saw either a neutral video, or a disgusting surgery video after the lecture. A few weeks later, those students who had seen the surgery video did significantly better on those questions of the exam relating to the lecture after which they'd been shown the video. Another example is how so many people know what exactly they were doing on 9/11, when they heard the news. Do you remember what you did two days before? 7? But 9/11 was uniquely arousing.

The reverse is, of course, that we don't remember boring stuff. You remember Alex' name, but not their 7 homely friends' names. You remember every detail of Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back, but not your math classes - or a boring movie (what *was* the plot of Star Wars Episode 2?). And why would they? Evolutionary speaking, there is very little point to storing memory about low-arousal situations; if they had been important, they would have been arousing, right? Memory formation is costly, so we only do it when we (think we) have to.

# Individual differences

And that's the gist of it, really: low-arousal situations are not conductive to declarative LTM formation. And the stuff we study is very often low arousal.
Now to get it right, there are two options. The first is: be aroused! If you truly care about math, you *will* remember this stuff. It will be much easier to memorize information you actually care about. And this is one way by which people differ: some are more, some less bored by abstract, complicated information.

The next one is that our ability to focus obviously differs. Some people have short attention spans, some longer attention spans. A bit simpler than your question about salience, simply paying attention vs. not paying attention makes a huge difference, and some people are much better at paying attention to boring stuff than others. These people are often much better at reading something boring again and again. Because the situation is low-arousal, chances of encoding are still bad, but better than when you don't look at it, and eventually, it'll get there via mere exposure.

That is, then, my answer: two main factors concerning inter-individual differences in declarative LTM formation are 1. different propensity to find abstract, complex information interesting/boring, 2. different ability to study even though something is boring.

# Neurological substrate

Surprisingly, the neurophysiology of this is relatively well understood. "\[E\]ntry of information into long-term memory", as the title of Lisman & Grace's paper goes, is mostly controlled by two sets of brain structures: an interaction between the medial temporal structures, especially the hippocampus, that controls the encoding of memories, and the mostly subcortical systems signaling salience and valence of events. The neighboring amygdala as the coder of valence, and, most importantly, the subcortical VTA (dopamine source) and the Locus Coeruleus (norepinephrine source) tell the hippocampus to "open its gates" for declarative memory formation in arousing contexts, to arousing stimuli. These systems are of course also generally relevant for setting the "tone" of the brain - from aroused to lethargic; this is under the control of the Locus Coeruleus. So, what's out there - arousing, novel, salient stuff? Dopamine/Norepinephrine up, hippocampus "gate" open, declarative memory in. Boring situation? Dopamine/Norepinephrine down, hippocampus shut.

You can still learn to rumba though. Just do it a lot. You don't need the hippocampus for that (as HM's ability to acquire new motor patterns shows).

# Some references

## Neurophysiology

Lisman & Grace, Hippocampus-VTA Loop/Dopamine

One specific experiment showing Dopamine is crucial for LTM persistence

Sara & Bouret, Locus Coeruleus/Norepinephrine

## Psychology

Arousal and memory

Single-exposure rich memory formation for arousing events

And another one, for 9/11

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience, motivation
---


# Question
Title: Structural neuroimaging processing with FreeSurfer or SPM?
I have a limited amount of time to analyse strucutural neuroimaging from a sample of patients. My objective is to simply extract volumes from selected fronto-parietal areas.

I have no previous knowledge on using SPM nor FreeSurfer. Which should I learn? Which has the fastest learning curve?

I usually prefer working with free and open source software in research, so if any of these two is able to plug into R, for example, it would be a plus.

# Answer
> 1 votes
SPM and FreeSurfer are similar in the sense that both are morphometry tools. However, they belong to different kinds.

SPM implements voxel-based morphometry while FreeSurfer represents surface-based morphometry. It is really difficult to do an objective choice here. I don't know a truly impartial comparison of both methods. As a disclaimer, I should say that I prefer surface-based morphometry, and I would suggest as a comparison for you the PDF An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Surface- and Voxel-based Morphometric Analysis and, as it is written by researchers at the home of FreeSurfer, it is somewhat inclined to FreeSurfer's approach. But its references are good for both SPM and FreeSurfer if you want to know them better.

Putting morphometric technicalities aside, other aspect setting them apart is that SPM is a MATLAB toolbox, so despite being free, it relies on a non-free software. SPM project, under request, are able to provide a standalone version, but this precludes contributed SPM toolboxes. This can be an option when core SPM is enough for your needs. Regarding FreeSurfer, it can be used on a mostly free platform (not free as in Free Software Foundation's sense but more like what you would find in Ubuntu's based software). FreeSurfer runs natively on POSIX-like operating systems (Linux and MacOS) and the project has virtual machine images for VirtualBox, so Windows users can run a virtualized XUbuntu with FreeSurfer installed.

Finally, in terms of integration with R, FreeSurfer project lacks an official integration as it tries to be self contained and includes some statistical analysis capabilities on its own. I have used R to analyze data from FreeSurfer and it wasn't particularly difficult as it is stored in textual form. I heard about an R package, freesurfR — I don't know if it is still maintained — that could do some things in a two-way fashion.

SPM, being aimed at MATLAB, makes an integration with R a somewhat challenging manual task. I heard about an attempt to implement it in R, by means of a package called spmR. When I have used SPM, I had access to a licensed MATLAB and R integration was not that important so I have not insisted. Perhaps it can be done on a more natural way.

In the context of my Master's, FreeSurfer was our choice.

---
Tags: neuroimaging
---


# Question
Title: Do some people possess more or more active mirror neurons than others?
Some people love watching people get hurt, they may find it humorous. Some people don't really like it but can watch it. Some, however, find it unbearable to watch. Why is this? Are the latter of the three categories of people listed have more mirror neurons than the average, or are they more dynamic, perhaps? Do the first type of people listed have less mirror neurons than most, similar to those with SM, who don't perceive fear, or are their mirror neurons less active? If we all have these mirror neurons hard-wired into us, as humans, why are the impacts of our mirror neurons so variant among differing individuals of the human race?

# Answer
An inability to watch others in pain can be described as an empathetic reaction, which mirror neurons aren't necessarily responsible for. Mirror neurons are hypothesized to facilitate 'action understanding'. In other words, they are able to recognize the intentions of others' actions, thereby allowing them to anticipate their future actions. What may be happening is that stronger activation in the mirror system for emotions may be a contributing factor to empathy and moral thought.

The VMPFC (ventromedial prefrontal cortex) is sometimes considered the 'moral network' of the brain, and mediates the automatic reactions which occur when one must face moral decisions \[1\]. Patients with emotion-related damage in the VMPFC have been shown to express more utilitarian judgments than average, which judges not based on the perceived harm of the individual but rather the negative objective impact on the world at large, and thus may be less readily affected emotionally by suffering, particularly at the individual level. \[2\] Other studies have shown that rational processes mediated by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) can override the moral network \[1\] and lead to utilitarian judgments.

## Sources:

\[1\] Marazziti, Donatella, et al. "The neurobiology of moral sense: facts or hypotheses?." Annals of general psychiatry 12.6 (2013).

\[2\] Moll J, de Oliveira-Souza R: "Moral judgments, emotions and the utilitarian brain." Trends Cogn Sci 2007, 11(8):319-321
> 2 votes

---
Tags: personality, neurology, mirror-neurons
---


title: Do people (under)value free stuff?

text:
# Question
Title: Do people (under)value free stuff?
I recently saw this Ted talk by Esther Duflo, and in it Duflo tells of how she tackled the question in the title head on, in the context of health and disease prevention.

I would like to know what other research has been done to answer the question: how do people value commodities, if given for free?

The question might have different answers to different kinds of commodities, which makes it all the more interesting, but not more ambiguous.

Note that in Duflo's research, for example, the question of how to define value is clear and totally unambiguous: did people use the bed nets that they got for free, a year after getting them.

# Answer
> Do people (under)value free stuff?

As you have mentioned, value can be conceptualized to mean different things. For the purposes of this answer lets just assume that value is measured by whether individuals are equally likely to use/chose free stuff as paid stuff - in line with the Ted talk by Esther Duflo.

Based on this assumption, I reviewed the literature and some competing narratives emerged.

First, research suggests that people actually value (i.e., choose/use) free things more than they should given the products utility - the so called zero price effect. As {1} state:

> People appear to act as if zero pricing of a good not only decreases its cost but also adds to its benefits.

They give this example:

> When Ben and Jerry’s offer free ice-cream cones, or Starbucks offers free coffee, many people spend hours in line waiting to get the free item, which they could buy on a different day for two to three dollars. At ﬁrst glance, it might not be surprising that the demand for a good is very high when the price is very low (zero), but the extent of the effect is intuitively too large to be explained by this simple economic argument.

There is a lot of additional research on this "zero price effect" which you can check out if you want (see here).

Second, research also suggests people use prices as a signals for value, and therefore will value things more highly if they are (i) more expensive or costly to procure, or (ii) more scarce. For instance in {2} Cialdini talks about how you can sometimes get people to buy more of a product by increasing the price. Additionally, some research suggests that people value things more as they invest more effort/money {3,4}. Additionally, in {2} Cialdini discusses how people generally value scarce things more highly, and things that are free, are less scarce, it appears to follow that they are not likely to be as highly valued as items one must pay for.

Third, research in developmental economics suggests that people will value products equally much when they are free/paid for. This research {e.g., 5} suggests that peoples usages of mosquito nets is not significantly, influenced by the amount of money they have to pay for them - that people are approximately as likely to use nets they got for free, and those they paid for.

I hope, that this is helpful, even if this isn't a definitive, or comprehensive answer.

References:

{1} Shampanier, K., et al. (2007). "Zero as a special price: The true value of free products." Marketing Science 26(6): 742-757.

\[2\] Cialdini, R. B. (2009) Influence: science and practice , 5 ed., Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson.

\[3\] Norton, M. I., Mochon, D. and Ariely, D. (2012) 'The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love', Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22, 453-460.

\[4\] Thomas, M., et al. (2004). When Do Higher Prices Increase Demand? The Dual Role of Price in Consumers’ Value Judgments.

\[5\] Hoffmann, V., et al. (2009). "Do Free Goods Stick to Poor Households? Experimental Evidence on Insecticide Treated Bednets." World Development 37(3): 607-617.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Based on my limited perspectives on this problem, let me try to answer this one. I think, valuing free stuff has got something to do with one's evaluation of self-worth while dealing with free stuff

1) People value free stuff, Ex: when it comes along with another commodity, like a 1 + 1 free trouser. They feel like they have earned it smartly

2) People value free stuff, when it comes as a recognition of their self-worth, like a gift from someone who admires you

3) People value free stuff, when it comes as part of an extra bonus reward for your effort in a project

People do not value free stuff if:

1) It comes as a manipulative gift: Ex A bribe to expect undue favors from you

2) It comes as a way to suppress your will and wish, Ex force you to do something against your will, going to a restaurant you don't like, while your friend pays the bills

3) things which underestimate your creativity and self expression. Ex: Someone paying for your music lessons when you are totally not interested in music

My ideas on this problem are based on my readings about Intrinsic Motivation.

Would love to see a more holistic treatment of the problem.

Reference Books:

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

The art of thinking clearly by Rolf Dobeli
> 1 votes

---
Tags: experimental-psychology
---


# Question
Title: How do our emotions toward a subject affect our brain activity within similar activities?
I'll bring an example: there are people who love to dance and could do it for hours. Yet, if you'd make them run a long distance they would get tired really soon just because they don't like running not because they wouldn't have the stamina. On the other hand there are people who love long distance running and could run for hours yet if they are forced to dance they get easily tired.

Both activities are physical so while doing either of them, our brain releases endorphins, which make us feel good. However it seems that just our emotion toward the activity we are doing defines whether we actually feel good.

So my question is: **Is there any difference in brain activity while doing something you love or doing something similar you don't like?**

If our emotions do affect our brain activity significantly, **would it be possible to psychologically train ourselves to like/dislike a certain activity we want to do more/less?**

# Answer
Ok, so since it has been two years and no-one has answered, and this is indeed a very interesting question, here is my attempt to shed some light on it.

> Is there any difference in brain activity while doing something you love or doing something similar you don't like?

Yes, without getting too deep into specifics - there certainly difference. Primarily these are that doing something that you love will produce more dopamine than doing something you dislike \[e.g., 1\]. Dopamine is linked to motivation to act and energy hence why it is easy to do more of the things that you enjoy \[1\].

> If our emotions do affect our brain activity significantly, would it be possible to psychologically train ourselves to like/dislike a certain activity we want to do more/less?

Yes, I think this can be done by managing the rewards involved. Think about the dopamine production - how do you maximise this, while minimising other detrimental factors (e.g., stress/cortisol).

Here are some ways to do this:

1. Break down the task so that you get a dopamine boost everytime you get one part done \[e.g., 1\]
2. Manage your expectations - much of reward is about expectations. If you want to be better than before when doing something, as opposed to be the best, then you are much more likely to find something.
3. Listen to music - in some cases this can raise dopamine levels to ensure that you have sufficient motivation to work \[2\]
4. Consume substances that will increase dopamine, like st johns wort, or its precursors, like Tyrosine.
5. This article \[3\] provides a set of potentially useful approaches that may be of use. However, before adopting them I would investigate the literature cited.

\[1\] Hoebel, B. G., Rada, P. V., Mark, G. P. and Pothos, E. N. (1999) 'Neural systems for reinforcement and inhibition of behavior: Relevance to eating, addiction, and depression'.

\[2\] Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A. and Zatorre, R. J. (2011) 'Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music', Nat Neurosci, 14(2), 257-262.

\[3\] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201112/the-neuroscience-perseverance

I am happy to clarify or expand on any part of this answer if you want, so just let me know.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: learning, emotion, developmental-psychology
---


title: Can depression be faked?

text:
# Question
Title: Can depression be faked?
Can depression be faked, and for what reason would someone do this? Is there a more accurate way of diagnosing it to tell when someone is just putting it on?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Although depression comes in many forms and presents itself somewhat differently in different individuals, one of the key features of major depression, as opposed to merely feeling sad, is that it literally slows down the brain's processing and reaction speeds. A heavily depressed person is not only down, but sluggish; and this sluggishness cannot simply be removed using a joke or other short-term positive stimulation. On a related note, a normal person could without too much trouble learn how to act like he or she has schizophrenia, but a real schizophrenic (without medication) could not act like a normal person very effectively, regardless of how hard it were tried.

One of the problems with diagnosing based on reaction times and other measurable features is that these measurements differ quite a bit from individual to individual. You would need historic data from a particular person to use for comparison to present measurements. Some people, after all, were basically born depressed while others were basically born manic.

Personally, I absolutely agree that the industry (and society) could really benefit from having real testing methods involving objective measurements rather than subjective observations and hunches.

Edit: To answer your question more directly, *yes* a person could fake depression. However, the quality of this impersonation, if you will, would depend on the knowledge and experience of the performer; and the quality of recognising this faking would depend greatly on the observer. As for reasons for faking, there are many possibilities -- this all depends on the person's agenda.

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology
---


# Question
Title: Can dendrite spines fire action potential toward the soma?
I am confused about how the signal propagates from the dendrite spines toward the soma. I believe it is commonly taught that the signal diffuses "passively", i.e. electrostatically with no amplification during its path towards the soma.

But can an action potential be generated sometimes with opening of voltage-gated channels to help it propagate if the dendrite is very long for example?

Can we have zones along the dendrite with more or less voltage-gated channels so the signal would be a combination of both passive and active propagation?

# Answer
This question shows a good amount of intuition. It is true that the signal is generally thought to diffuse passively. However, active propagation of dendritic signals is certainly an important property. As opposed to the axon, where the action potential is generated by voltage-gated sodium (Na+) channels, in the dendrites, the voltage gated channels are calcium (Ca2+) channels (VGCC -- voltage gated calcium channels) or non-specific cation (Na+, K+, and Ca2+) channels such as the NMDA channel. The voltage gated nature of these excitatory channels leads to a positive feedback effect similar to that of the action potential itself. However, the time course of these signals is much slower: on the order of 10s to 100s of milliseconds, as opposed to the 1ms time scale of the action potential. These dendritic spikes or calcium spikes or plateau potentials can lead to firing of bursts of action potentials.

As a side point, action potentials generated in the soma can actually be propagated backwards (backpropagating action potentials) into the dendrite using the same voltage gated channels. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8107777

References
Schiller, J. et al. (2000) NMDA spikes in basal dendrites of cortical pyramidal neurons. Nature 404, 285–9

Major, G. et al. (2008) Spatiotemporally graded NMDA spike/plateau potentials in basal dendrites of neocortical pyramidal neurons. J. Neurophysiol. 99, 2584–601

Cai, X. et al. (2004) Unique roles of SK and Kv4.2 potassium channels in dendritic integration. Neuron 44, 351–64

Wei DS, Mei YA, Bagal A, Kao JP, Thompson SM, Tang CM (2001) Compartmentalized and binary behavior of terminal dendrites in hippocampal pyramidal neurons. Science 293:2272–2275.

I actually have written a paper myself on the potential usefulness of dendritic plateau potentials in working memory:
Sanders, H. et al. (2013) NMDA and GABAB (KIR) Conductances: The “Perfect Couple” for Bistability. J. Neurosci. 33, 424–429 http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/doi/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1854-12.2013
> 3 votes

---
Tags: neuroscience, theoretical-neuroscience, neural-network
---


# Question
Title: Are there any ways to increase dopamine and serotonin levels when working or learning something complex?
There is much information regarding learning styles and ways to leverage them, along with boosting focus, alertness and concentration.

However, I'm looking for accompanying information that would be useful in addition to those answers.

**Witnessed countless times:**
When one is either learning or working with a new concept that is - complex, untangle, counter-intuitive, tedious, multi-dimensional, boring and difficult, it appears mood is altered to a lower state, very similar to that of a depressive state, however is temporary, until another concepts comes along (still new) that is simple, clear and straight forward.

Are there any studies that show correlation to dopamine and serotonin in such a case - and more importantly, are there any studies or know methods that reverse this, causing instead increased dopamine and serotonin during such events?

# Answer
> 7 votes
> When one is either learning or working with a new concept that is - complex, untangle, counter-intuitive, tedious, multi-dimensional, boring and difficult, it appears mood is altered to a lower state, very similar to that of a depressive state, however is temporary, until another concepts comes along (still new) that is simple, clear and straight forward.
>
> Are there any studies that show correlation to dopamine and serotonin in such a case

Yes, there are studies that suggest that failure can lead to reduced dopamine and seratonin. Essentially, dopamine production is argued to be produced by reward \[1\]. One type of reward is success at at something. By extension, where there is no success, less dopamine is therefore produced. As dopamine provides energy and a motivation to act \[1\] individuals have less motivation and energy. Further, in parallel more they may produce more cortisol, leading to a them developing a depressive state \[e.g., 2\]

> more importantly, are there any studies or know methods that reverse this, causing instead increased dopamine and serotonin during such events?

Yes, there are some known methods that you can use to increase serotonin/dopamine before/during these sorts of events:

1. Break down the task so that you get a dopamine boost everytime you get one part done \[e.g., 1\]
2. Manage your expectations - much of reward is about expectations. If you want to be better than before when doing something, as opposed to be the best, then you are much more likely to find something rewarding, and produce more dopamine \[4\].
3. Listen to music - in some cases this can raise dopamine levels to ensure that you have sufficient motivation to work \[3\]
4. Consume substances that will increase dopamine( e.g., st. johns wort) or dopamines precursors (e.g., Tyrosine).
5. This article provides a set of potentially useful approaches that may be of use for increasing dopamine. However, before adopting them I would investigate the literature cited\[4\].
6. Exercise prior to the task \[5\]

I am happy to clarify or expand on any part of this answer if you want, so just let me know.

\[1\] Hoebel, B. G., Rada, P. V., Mark, G. P. and Pothos, E. N. (1999) 'Neural systems for reinforcement and inhibition of behavior: Relevance to eating, addiction, and depression'.

\[2\] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201301/cortisol-why-the-stress-hormone-is-public-enemy-no-1

\[3\] Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A. and Zatorre, R. J. (2011) 'Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music', Nat Neurosci, 14(2), 257-262.

\[4\]https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201112/the-neuroscience-perseverance

\[5\] Young, S. N. (2007). "How to increase serotonin in the human brain without drugs." Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience : JPN 32(6): 394-399.

# Answer
> 6 votes
I'm guessing you don't want to generally increase the level of those chemicals in the brain, just in the reward-motivation area.
In order to do so, you need to be rewarded and motivated, obviously. The learning need to be exciting, with feedback and reinforcement. Socializing it will help, too.
There is a relatively new topic, called gameificatin, that try to do exactly that. It's the process of making the learning a game, so we can learn better,based on the reward-motivation effects.
In my opinion, there is no "hacking" the brain. Doing so is using drugs, and there is a price tag for that. If you want to use the normal brain pathways, there are no shortcuts.

# Answer
> 1 votes
This is more of a subjective opinion, (though there are some real world examples) but I feel that the concept of "gamification" (adding game-like qualities to non-gaming tasks) is quite relevant to this topic. Sites like khan academy or codecademy use this pretty effectively, and make the process of learning math or code more enjoyable because you are making small incremental achievements that would otherwise be invisible or ignored while learning through another medium. On another note, working with a friend or a group of friends to learn something complex seems to increase my level of enjoyment while studying the topic because the task is now cooperative and competitive simultaneously. You learn from the mistakes of others while getting different interpretations of complex ideas. The task becomes more of an adventure as you motivate each other to see just how much you can learn and aspire to show off what you know with new ideas.

Most of this is purely anecdotal, so I'll look for studies to confirm or deny these ideas.

---
Tags: learning, dopamine, serotonin
---