# Question
Title: Messy or fast handwriting related to high IQ?
Is any study that proof people with messy or fast handwriting have high IQ?

# Answer
> 2 votes
For handwriting quality (which is defined by factors like legibility, readability, leaving enough space between words), the opposite is true. In several scientific studies among school aged children it was found that there is a significant positive correlation between quality of handwriting and cognitive ability/academic achievement (McCarney et al., 2013; McCarroll & Fletcher, 2017). There's not a lot of research on handwriting quality among adults in general terms, but if you are interested you could look into research that focuses on adults with autisme spectrum disorder or down syndrome (although results are similar: handwriting quality is related to cognitive development).

Now speed is a different thing! Being able to write quickly is important in note-taking and other metacognitive processes (Peverly, 2006; Peverly et al., 2014). While there may not be a direct relation between handwriting speed and intelligence, it is quite likely that being able to write fast is helpful in cognitive development. In other words: you don't necessarily write fast because you are smart, but writing fast can help you become smarter. Not because writing fast in itself makes you smarter, but because it facilitates cognitive processes that do.

* McCarney, D., Peters, L., Jackson, S., Thomas, M., & Kirby, A. (2013) Does Poor Handwriting Conceal Literacy Potential in Primary School Children?, *International Journal of Disability, Development and Education*, *60* (2), 105-118, DOI: 10.1080/1034912X.2013.786561
* McCarroll, H. & Fletcher, T. (2017) Does handwriting instruction have a place in the instructional day? The relationship between handwriting quality and academic success, *Cogent Education*, *4*(1), DOI: 10.1080/2331186X.2017.1386427
* Peverly, S. T. (2006). The importance of handwriting speed in adult writing. *Developmental Neuropsychology,* *29*(1), 197-216.
* Peverly, S. T., Garner, J. K., & Vekaria, P. C. (2014). Both handwriting speed and selective attention are important to lecture note-taking. *Reading and Writing, 27*, 1-30.

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Tags: iq, writing
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# Question
Title: Is it unethical for a psychiatrist to invite a patient and her husband to a social function?
Suppose Emma is a patient of psychiatrist Dr. Jones, in New York State. In the course of their visits, Emma mentions that part of the stress and anxiety she feels is because of the pressure her husband puts on her and his intense personality.

Dr. Jones wishes to explore this more so he invites Emma to bring her husband to a local art gallery exhibit opening where Dr. Jones plans to attend as well, so he could meet them and observe Emma's husband and his interactions with her.

Are there any clear ethical issues with Dr. Jones invitation?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Yes, there is a clear ethical issue. If Dr. Jones wants to observe Emma's husband, he should obtain informed consent from him beforehand.

Various associations of psychiatrists have a code of ethics in which these types of principles are recorded. See for instance this code of the Royal College of Psychiatrists: https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/improving-care/better-mh-policy/college-reports/college-report-cr186.pdf?sfvrsn=15f49e84\_2.

Principle 5: Psychiatrists shall seek valid consent from their patients before undertaking any procedure or treatment.

However, if both Emma and her husband agree, after being adequately informed about what this observational research entails, I would see no problem.

Edit: Besides the consent issue, there is another ethical issue. By asking Emma to bring her husband to observe him, he is making her complicit, which could further damage their relationship.

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Tags: clinical-psychology, therapy, ethics
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# Question
Title: Are there gay and transgender hunter-gatherers?
A debate among many people of a more conservative, traditionalist bent is that being gay and being transgender are mental disorders. Despite the protestations by pediatricians and psychologists that they aren't, they insist that the pediatricians and psychologists are being political and not disinterestedly seeking the Truth.

However, there is a way to settle this question. Are there any gay or transgender hunter-gatherers?

It is known among anthropologists that mental disorders simply do not exist among hunter-gatherer tribes. Not schizophrenia, not bipolar disorder, not PTSD, etc.... Therefore, if hunter-gatherers do not have gay or transgender members, then that would be a slam-dunk proof that being gay and transgender are mental disorders. And if hunter-gatherers do have gay or transgender members, then that would be a slam-dunk proof that being gay and transgender are not mental disorders.

What is the verdict among anthropologists?

# Answer
Yes, there are many known hunter-gatherer communities that include transgender and/or gay individuals. See for instance this research paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24091924/ (Please be aware that the researchers use terminology that is deemed unacceptable in most scientific and social settings nowadays. For instance: they indicate transgender women as 'transgendered males').

Similarly, this paper discusses the presence (and absence) of homosexuality across many different societies and over time: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4534200/

Other research has found that homosexuality is less prevalent in hunter-gatherer societies than in agropastoral societies, but prevalent nonetheless. The author presents theory as to why this difference exists: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311913894\_Is\_Homosexuality\_more\_Prevalent\_in\_Agropastoral\_than\_in\_Hunting\_and\_Gathering\_Societies\_Evidence\_from\_the\_Standard\_Cross-Cultural\_Sample

Based on these sources, you can conclude that homosexuality and transgender identities are present throughout many cultures. You can also use Google to find more studies with similar results.

Lastly, your premise is faulty. Mental illnesses do occur in hunter gatherer societies. See for instance these papers: https://doi.org/10.14989/68393 (Free PDF & https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-71346-1\_6 & https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953600000125, or read chapter 5 of this book: https://books.google.nl/books?id=PdCIEAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA64&ots=OoYQKDwVze&dq=mental%20disorders%20hunter%20gatherer&lr&pg=PA64#v=onepage&q&f=false

Perhaps a more important question is why you would ask this. Especially in the context of psychology and neuroscience, it is strange to follow the (faulty) argumentation of conservatives, instead of following leading psychological and medical expert organizations like the APA (see for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality\_in\_the\_DSM#). I.e., saying homosexuality and transgenderism are mental illnesses is unscientific.
> 6 votes

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Tags: sexuality, anthropology
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# Question
Title: Does intention matter for positive reinforcement?
What makes something positive reinforcement: The intention or the outcome? I have two examples I'm trying to understand.

First, if I am teaching my dog a trick and I give her a treat whenever I say "sit" and she sits, I'm intending to reinforce that behavior. Let's say my dog is deaf, so she isn't learning from my verbal command, and she doesn't learn to sit when I say "sit". Is this still considered positive reinforcement because of my intention, or is it not positive reinforcement because it is not effective?

Second, say I'm trying to teach my dog not to bark whenever the doorbell rings. Whenever the doorbell rings, she barks, and I give her a treat to distract her. Instead of learning that the doorbell is no threat (which was my intention), she learns that if she barks she gets a treat. Does this count as positive reinforcement, even though I did not intend to reinforce that behavior?

Essentially, I'm trying to understand whether intention and/or effectiveness have any impact on what we can consider positive reinforcement.

Any sources related to this would be extremely helpful, thanks!

# Answer
> 1 votes
The short answer is that only the outcome matters:

> These terms are defined by their effect on behavior. ... Positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement increase the probability of a behavior that they follow ...

So:

* If your dog receives a treat from sitting, and sitting behaviour increases, then you have positive reinforcement.
* If your dog receives a treat from barking, and barking behaviour increases, then you have positive reinforcement.
* It doesn't matter if the dog is deaf, only if the dog sits or barks more. If the dog being deaf means she receives no treats, then no reinforcement has occurred.

However, intention does play a role in measurement. When evaluating reinforcement, you measure the frequency of the behaviour that you *intend* to affect - eg, barking. Thus, all other behaviours are effectively ignored - eg, running. So while unintended reinforcement might happen, if it isn't measured, then you won't know!

To use the example in the question, if you *intend* to affect barking behaviour in the presence of a doorbell ringing, then you measure the frequency of that behaviour throughout the conditioning process, and find that it does not change in frequency, and hence no conditioning has occurred.

But in doing this, you inadvertently increase barking frequency outside of the measurement context (no doorbell), which you don't know, because you are not measuring that! If you instead *intend* to affect *all* barking behaviour (with or without the presence of a doorbell), and measure that instead, and see that it has increased in frequency, then indeed, you have positive reinforcement.

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Tags: learning, terminology, behaviorism, conditioning, reinforcement-learning
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# Question
Title: What is the difference between brain parcellation and brain segmentation? (question based on Freesurfer)
What is the difference between brain parcellation and brain segmentation? (question based on Freesurfer that produces parcellation volume and segmentation volume measures)

# Answer
> 2 votes
Brain Parcellation in Freesurfer is splitting images of the brain into their defined partitions, mapping the brain

Brain Parcellation images from Eickhoff et al. (2018)

Thyreau & Taki (2020) points out:

> The parcellation of the human cortex into meaningful anatomical units is a common step of various neuroimaging studies. There have been multiple successful efforts to process magnetic resonance (MR) brain images automatically and identify specific anatomical regions, following atlases defined from cortical landmarks. Those definitions usually rely first on a high-quality brain surface reconstruction. On the other hand, when high accuracy is not a requirement, simpler methods based on warping a probabilistic atlas have been widely adopted.

## Brain Segmentation

Brain segmentation initially involves the removal of non-cerebral tissues like skull. But, segmentation is also (Despotović, et al. 2015)

> commonly used for measuring and visualizing the brain's anatomical structures, for analyzing brain changes, for delineating pathological regions, and for surgical planning and image-guided interventions. In the last few decades, various segmentation techniques of different accuracy and degree of complexity have been developed and reported in the literature.

Image from Lee et al. (2020)

McClure et al. (2019) describes

> a Bayesian deep neural network (DNN) for predicting FreeSurfer segmentations of structural MRI volumes, in minutes rather than hours.

## References

Despotović, I., Goossens, B., & Philips, W. (2015). MRI segmentation of the human brain: challenges, methods, and applications. *Computational and mathematical methods in medicine, 2015*, 450341. https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/450341

Eickhoff, S. B., Yeo, B. T., & Genon, S. (2018). Imaging-based parcellations of the human brain. *Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 19*(11), 672-686. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-018-0071-7

Lee B, Yamanakkanavar N, Choi JY (2020). Automatic segmentation of brain MRI using a novel patch-wise U-net deep architecture. *PLoS ONE 15*(8): e0236493. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236493

McClure, P., Rho, N., Lee, J. A., Kaczmarzyk, J. R., Zheng, C. Y., Ghosh, S. S., ... & Pereira, F. (2019). Knowing what you know in brain segmentation using Bayesian deep neural networks. *Frontiers in neuroinformatics, 13*, 67. https://doi.org/10.3389/fninf.2019.00067

Thyreau, B., & Taki, Y. (2020). Learning a cortical parcellation of the brain robust to the MRI segmentation with convolutional neural networks. *Medical image analysis, 61*, 101639. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.media.2020.101639

# Answer
> 1 votes
Segmentation is about *tissue type* and *anatomical structures*. It's mainly concerned with identifying the voxels of brain and cerebellum, separating gray matter and white matter, identifying subcortical structures such as the hippocampus, etc. It's typically *volumes*, rather than surfaces, that come up in this context.

Parcellation is about *neuroanatomy*. It's mainly concerned with defining regions based on architectonics, connectivity, function, or topography. Think "primary visual cortex," "Broca's area," etc. It's typically *surfaces*, rather than volumes, that come up in this context.

(The other answer is fine -- I am just adding a short and more direct answer to the question.)

# Answer
> 1 votes
Brain parcellation and brain segmentation are related, but different, approaches to analyzing the structure of the brain.

Brain parcellation refers to the process of dividing the brain into distinct, non-overlapping regions, or parcels, based on functional, structural, or connectivity criteria. This division results in a parcellation map, which assigns a unique label to each parcel, indicating its functional or structural identity. In Freesurfer, the parcellation volume is a map that assigns a unique label to each voxel in the brain, indicating its parcel membership.

Brain segmentation, on the other hand, refers to the process of dividing the brain into distinct, non-overlapping regions based on the tissue type (i.e. gray matter, white matter, or cerebrospinal fluid). The result of segmentation is a segmentation map, which assigns a unique label to each voxel in the brain, indicating its tissue type. In Freesurfer, the segmentation volume is a map that assigns a unique label to each voxel in the brain, indicating its tissue type.

So, in short, brain parcellation aims to divide the brain into functional or structural regions, while brain segmentation aims to divide the brain into tissue types.

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Tags: neuroscience
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# Question
Title: What is different between children and adults that cause children to forgive so quickly?
Today I observed three children at a birthday party become involved in an extremely serious altercation including the use of (toy) weapons.

Tears were dropping, threats issued, punches and kicks thrown and yet in the space of a few minutes the children had formed a new bond of friendship and were playing contendedly.

It made me consider the wider social impact; what is it that causes teenage/adult human beings to hold personal grievances and grudges for longer periods of time when children seem so willing to forget past transgressions?

I am sure there must be a biological mechanism at work from both the child and adult perspective so if any sociologists, child psychologists or behavioural researchers read this forum it would be great to get a detailed answer.

I suspect similar patterns of behaviour exist in other cub/child/young mammals in social groupings.

# Answer
> 3 votes
The short answer, kids live in the now. They tend to forget everything quickly. A child can be crying about their milk being spilled one moment, and playing the next. They don't think as much about past or future, just what is happening now, and NOW is a big deal. This can cause problems in some ways, but the plus side is they are quickly side tracked from whatever was bothering them before.

They don't hold grudges for the same reason you can make them forget how fun banging on the trashcan or drawing on the wall was. The moment something is out of sight it's quickly forgotten. The offense of 30 seconds ago don't matter, because that was back an eternity ago, and is not NOW.

That 'eternity ago' thing was only half a joke also. It's been argued that children actually experience time different, because of their length of life and perspective. A 2 year old has been alive for a tiny fraction as long as it's parent's have, it has less then a tenth the life experience. However, since they measure time relative to the length of time they have been alive that means that 30 minutes feels like it's 10 times longer to them, because that 30 minutes actually makes up more then 10 times the amount of their life that it does for an adult. If this is true it explains why a 15 minute wait is an eternity to a young child. However, it also means that something that happened a day ago feels like it was weeks ago to a young child. It's easier to forget pass offenses if it feels like they happened in some distant past of time.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I am neither a child psychologists nor a behavioral researcher, but a C++ programmer. Nevertheless I happen to have what I think is not a totally uninformed opinion on the matter, so here's my €0.02:

I think the biological mechanism at work here is intelligence. What children do is what you see among most of the social animals you can watch: dogs, crows, monkeys. They have a conflict (either over some resource or over their standing in the group), fight it out, and once it is solved, they will get along as if nothing ever happened. Only the members of very few, and rather intelligent, species will hold grudges against their peers. The big apes do, elephants do (although not as it is described in the old stories), crows do, dolphins might do. This is because holding grudges require a long-term strategy, long-term goals, and/or a system of morale and ethics.

If someone damaged your standing in the social hierarchy by taking away something from you, then this someone is threatening you climbing up one rung on the social ladder. Improving your place on the social ladder, however, is a long-term project. This is something apes work on for years, and humans work on for decades. You know that this person might forever be in your way if you let it get away with it, so you do need to fight this out. IMO, this is, if you cut it down to the bare bone, what holding grudges is about.

Of course, our societies are very complex even compared to those of the apes (you could switch your job and never run into that person again), and even the great apes have rather complex societies: Frans de Waal, in his book Peacemaking among Primates, describes how males chimpanzees pick their friends according to their political agenda ("If I manage to make Luke my mate, we could dethrone Harold, and while I might not be strong enough to be king myself, if Luke becomes king, he will have to give me a lot of freedom, or I'd side with Luke and dethrone him in turn."), while females stick to their preferences. ("I just don't like Lara. I never liked Lara. I will never like Lara. Lara is a bitch.") So it is not as simple as that. But I believe a lot of this is still in us, and this makes a big difference.

Morale and ethics, too, require intellect. De Waal argues that, to a certain extend, the great apes do have morale principles. He describes a scene where a new chimp was added to the group, and because he didn't know the rules yet (they *all* have to be indoors before *anyone* gets their evening meal), he caused everybody having to wait for their dinner. Knowing their chimps, once he was inside, in order to protect him, the humans overseeing the colony separated the one who caused the delay. However, they were very surprised that this didn't spare the poor chap a severe beating by the whole group when they met outside the next morning – because they remembered that the one individual did them wrong. IMO this is a perfect example of a scene that children up to a certain age will mostly have forgotten about in the morning, so they never act on what happened last night, let alone longer ago.

IIRC, human children only begin to overtake chimps intellectually when they are three or four. And, as I said before, our societies are much more complex than those of the other apes. So children have a lot to learn until they are able to have their own web of morale believes that resembles the one adult members of their society have. Until then, they just do not have enough knowledge to understand that someone did them wrong by their society's standards, or even to act upon that knowledge.

Of course, this is just one angle to look at the problem from, but it's the one that came to my mind immediately when I read your question. I am, however, very interested in what others will have to say about the issue.

P.S.: For a very interesting different angle on apes vs. other social animals I suggest Mark Rowlands' *The Philosopher and the Wolf*. (You do not have to be a dog lover to find this interesting.)

# Answer
> 0 votes
The key difference between children and adults in terms of forgiveness is **the development** of their emotional regulation and cognitive abilities.

Children have different brain development and cognitive abilities than adults, which can impact their ability to process and understand complex emotions and experiences. For example, young children have not fully developed their executive function abilities, which include regulating emotions and managing impulses, and as a result, they may have a more automatic and less reflective response to forgiveness. Additionally, children may not yet have developed the ability to hold grudges or to perceive the actions of others as intentional. As a result, they may have a tendency to forgive more quickly because they are not able to fully understand the situation or the motivations behind it. However, it is important to note that every child is unique and their capacity for forgiveness may be influenced by a variety of individual, cultural, and situational factors.

# Answer
> -1 votes
Children have short memories. They can't remember that their "friend" of this moment was someone who hit them a few minutes ago.

They also have limited understanding of cause and effect. Most adults will "attack" each other (verbally or otherwise) for a reason. Young children don't understand that, and even if and when they hit each other, there's usually no reason or motivating force behind it.

This has a biological basis in children and adolescence, the underdevelopment of the pre-frontal cortex specifically, and an imblance in the development of thinking processes, generally.

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Tags: behavior
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# Question
Title: Does a research area such as Psycho-Agronomy, Agro-Psychology exist?
Are there researchers studying how to apply (other animal than human) psychology to agronomy, and does such a research area has a name (and which one)?

Such a name would help in finding existing results/researchers in such area, so that to avoid reinventing existing results. Such research would fall under the umbrellas of agronomy, ethology, comparative psychology, etc., but it also falls under the wider umbrella of "science": a more specific name would be useful. If such a research area does not exist (yet), then finding the closest areas and results would help to argue its novelty (e.g. when applying for research funding or recruiting students and collaborators).

### Permaculture

I took several courses of Permaculture in the last 4 years, and it seems that all of them focus on

* actively
    1. choosing the right spot,
    2. sculpting the land in the right way,
    3. planting the right combination of plants at the right place; but
* passively
    + hoping that wild life animals will come and fill their ecological niche, in the manner that "their instinct dictates", eventually training a dog to keep predators at bay of some areas (but tolerating the predators as a necessary evil for the balance of all things).

### Culture in (Other) Animals (Than Humans)

Articles in New Scientist (2021) and Science (2013) are testimonies that the notion that a large amount of information is passed from the parents to their descendants (something that breeders (of dogs, among other things) were aware for centuries) is NOT restricted to humans (with "instincts" and "genetics" dictating the behavior of (Other) Animals (Than Humans)).

## Hypothesis

Could one durably shape the culture / psychology of the (Other) Animals (Than Humans) participating in an eco-system, both wild and domesticated, in such a way to improve such eco-system (whether in term of efficiency, robustness, resiliency, or any chosen desired measure)?

## Examples

Some examples of research questions and applications in "Agro Psychology" would be

1. Which animals (mammals but also insects) can learn to avoid eating some kinds of food, to which depths, with which retention and with how much ability to transmit to their descendants? (And later, what is the most economic and less frustrating (for them) way for them to learn this?). For instance:
2. What are the difference of perceptions between humans and other animals (this part ethology, but also part psychology as perception filters are shaped in the brain)? Can one, for instance, design unedible fake vegetables or fruits (e.g. stones painted to look like strawberries) which are easy to distinguish from the real stuff by humans, but difficult to distinguish from the real stuff by (some species of) other animals (domestic or wild), so that they learn to avoid eating the real stuff.

* An example of application (staying with Chicken, but the application holds for wild birds too) would be the ability to print fake lettuce (which look real to chicken) and use it to teach young chicken not to eat real lettuce, and mix it with real lettuce when they are adult, so that they continue to avoid eating lettuce.
    * Another example would be to build systems that frightens undesired species while desired species literally do not see the artifact of such system because of their distinct sensory abilities.

## Research Motivation

Supposing that the environment in which humanity tries to produce food becomes harsher and less stable (average temperature rise, extreme climate events, invasive species brought by the climate changes and climate migrations, etc.), it seems that extending the ability to control the conditions of an artificial eco-system from the land, water and plants to the culture of the (other) animals (than humans) acting within it might be a (much needed) advantage, if it can be done.

## Motivation of my Question

I find the idea so interesting that I find it hard to believe that others did not work on such ideas in the past (after all, training chicken to go back to their coop on their own, training dogs to take care of a flock of sheep on their own, kind of falls into such research area), and I wonder what are the closest research areas to this idea, so that I can 1) avoid "reinventing the wheel", 2) use the agreed upon vocabulary when describing my (potential) research on such topics and 3) know whom to describe it too.

# Answer
> 0 votes
It seems that the term "Agro-Psychology" have been used in the past for something else, but that the term "Psycho-Agronomy" has not been used (yet).

1. The term of "Agro-Psychology" has been used in the past, but with a different meaning, that of using agronomic tasks in psychology (e.g. to cure the mind): a 2008 post in the forum https://www.homesteadingtoday.com is referring to a now non existing blogpost summarizes the idea as "gardening/farming can heal the self", quoting the (now non existing) post as

> Let's face it: our world has become increasingly maddening. Bad news mounts each day: unending wars, financial crises, earthquakes, hurricanes and cyclones killing thousands, chaotic climate change, vanishing pollinating bees and polar bears, rising oceans, thinning forests and a host of human-created or -worsened threats. We live in uncertain times with an even more uncertain future. We face unprecedented, unpredictable converging threats. What can one do to remain somewhat sane? The ostrich approach of denial by burying one's head in the sand will not be effective or life-enhancing.

> It is a good time for an increasing number of people to return to the multiple benefits and pleasures of growing at least part of their own food by gardening and farming. In addition to satisfying the need to eat and drink, farming can also help deal with depression, passivity, and other forms of psychological suffering. It can help treat both the body and the soul. Farming can be done in ways that preserve the Earth and put humans in direct contact with it.

2. I would define "Psycho-Agronomy" as the science of using psychology results (on Other Animals Than Humans) in agronomy (e.g. shaping other animals than humans' behavior to improve efficiency in agronomy). There are already some results in this direction (from the ancient custom of breeding and training of dogs to pastor sheep to the modern one of "training" insects to selectively eat other insects), but that the area did not fully emerge yet.

Now to work on more results in order for a "new science" to be born, answering the challenges of civilizations working independently of fossil fuels on a planet with an unstable climate!

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Tags: learning, animal-cognition, cognitive, animal
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# Question
Title: Can someone get mentally retarded suddenly?
Can someone, after having anger to a large level or anxiety to a large level, develop mental retardation?

In simple words, can someone being normal and mental sound, become mentally retarded in just a moment?

Let me explain it more clearly.

Suppose someone is normal but suddenly he sees something, which makes him very anxious and tensed. He has developed anger and lost the happiness he was having.

The thing that I am trying to ask you is: can some psychological causes (thinking, anger, etc.) instantly lead to mental retardation?

## By retardation, I mean

the retarding of thinking ability, planning, cognitive behaviour, and all other parameters of a well-functioning brain.

I searched on Google & found in page 2 of https://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/intellectual-disability-mental-retardation that genetics, child birth/pregnancy problems, or head injuries are common causes, but with two-thirds of all children who have intellectual disability, the cause is unknown.

# Answer
> -1 votes
## Psychosis

"Mental retardation", as the answer by Shaire elucidates, is generally congenital or the result of physical trauma, but psychosis can have symptoms that significantly interfere with life and can be simply psychologically triggered, which is in the spirit of the question you asked.

#### More info

Psychosis, while not directly a cause of mental "retardation", can create inability to function in life \[0\] during the episodes and faster decline in IQ than control \[1\], and it can be caused by stressful life events \[3\]. It is also sometimes comorbid with anxiety \[2\].

\[0\] https://www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sd/news\_article/117360/\_PARENT/CC\_layout\_details/false

\[1\] https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/01/13/iq-takes-a-hit-with-longer-lasting-psychosis/

\[2\] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3283146/

\[3\] https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/psychosis/causes/

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, abnormal-psychology, clinical-psychology, mental-illness
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# Question
Title: What brain chemical(s) is attributed to the deep satisfaction of achieving an important, meaningful, or long-term goal?
What brain chemical(s) is attributed to the deep satisfaction of achieving an important, meaningful or long-term goal?

My understanding is that the shallow satisfaction of achieving an unimportant or short-term goal, such as

* Getting a handful of likes on social media
* Completing a mission in a video game
* Correctly answering a question in a classroom

is mostly attributed to dopamine.

Do larger-scale successes, such as

* Breaking a world record after $1000$ hours of unsuccessful attempts
* Winning a large chess tournament
* Learning a new skill

correspond to a different chemical or set of chemicals?

# Answer
## Serotonin and Dopamine

Serotonin contributes to satisfaction \[0\], and tends to have more background-level effects (so something that would be present while working on your project as well as after) than dopamine, while dopamine is associated with accomplishment in general \[1\], big or small (it's the "reward mechanism").

The most significant increase at the moment of accomplishment would be in dopamine, but serotonin would also increase.

\[0\] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449495/

\[1\] https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01589-6
> 2 votes

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Tags: brain
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# Question
Title: Research on recalling dreams after meeting with a participant
We very often don't remember dreams. But I met a phenomena and I would like to know whether it is addressed in research or exists as a topic of its own interest. I could not find it with the conventional web search

It goes like this. In the morning I don't recall having any dream at all. But then I meet someone or something in my daily activity and instantly I recall that there was a dream last night and this person or object or animal was in it. Not only I recall the mere fact of the dreaming but many details and the "plot". But this usually doesn't work if "the meeting" with the dream's participant is more than one day after the dream.

Why would I suggest that such brain trick might have already been of interest to science? Well, if it is widespread (so not only me having this) then it would make hypotheses like "The reinterpretation of dreams: an evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming" more relevant.

**Update 1.** Actually not only face to face meeting might trigger the recall, but also thinking consciously about some connecting entity may trigger it. For example, I used to sing in a choir, I don't return to thinking about those times very often, but sometimes I do. So I might recall an episode with the choir from the past during the morning or the day. And this can act as a cue to the recall. The dream events in this case usually has nothing to do with the episode that triggered the recall, the point is (possibly) that they're connected and about the same activity from my past.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I am answering my own question since I found some scarce pieces of research regarding the topic in question. I hope some will find these finding worth reading.

The well-known researcher Michaer Schredl in his book Researching dreams: fundamentals mentioned the work of prof. G. William Domhoff. The quote is this

> An object seen during the day can trigger the recall of a dream including the same topic (Domhoff 1969)

The mentioned work is a piece in an edited volume "Milton Kramer, Roy M. Whitman. Dream psychology and the new biology of dreaming" (pages 199–217). The chapter is called "Home dreams versus laboratory dreams – Home dreams are better".

I could not find the fulltext of this research, but the following is possible for obtaining the informations

* prof. Domhoff himself often cited this research in the works that followed. And many of his works are reprinted at the site that he created DreamsResearch.net.
* The link to the book above is to google books entry where preview is not available, but the search is possible

The the book Finding Meaning in Dreams: A Quantitative Approach (1996) Domhoff writes

> Domhoff's (1969) naturalistic study of the factors involved in everyday recall over a two-week period suggests recency and mundane memory cues figure in a large portion of our total recall. Six male and six female students at California State University, Los Angeles, were recruited from the student employment office to record their dreams and the events surrounding recall as soon as the dreams were recalled

> ..... Non-morning recall seemed to be related to one or both of two factors, neither of which concerns dramatic intensity. First, minimal external cues seem to suddenly bring back dreams in which the external cue triggering the dream memory may play only a small part. Second, non-morning dream recall seems to occur when the dream memories are in some way linked to thoughts and associations the person is having in a relaxed, sometimes daydreamy mood; often, as might be expected, he or she is alone.

Domhoff also mentions extracts from the reports of some of the participants that is related to this phenomena of "cued recall". The following fragment illustrates this

> Another male subject, telling a friend about his car, suddenly remembered a dream in which the paint was peeling off the car. In this case the recall was very fragmentary, consisting of two short images. A female subject about to sit down in chemistry class, spotted a friend and suddenly recalled in detail a dream about a person's supposed failure in the chemistry laboratory. Another time this same subject was watching a television ad about skiing that brought back a skiing dream.

The descriptions of theses recalls are very similar to my experience.

Final quote is from the small screen found when searching in the google books entry

> ... In fact, combining these "cue" and "associational" factors with length and recency, I would bet that spontaneously recalled dreams comprise a fairly representative sample of typical dream life

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Tags: reference-request, dreams
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# Question
Title: What is the mechanism that makes people more likely to act when provided with proof of non-new (and often trivial) information?
Is there a name for the psychological mechanism according to which a person is more likely to act when provided with proof of information they are already convinced about? Information which is often also trivial: e.g., smoking causes cancer. In fact, some studies find that graphical warning labels in cigarette packages affect implicit smoking attitudes (especially among the new smokers). Although comparatively smaller, text labels (compared to no labels) are also shown to have a similar effect.

# Answer
Probably best considered as an example of the availability heuristic: people tend to make decisions based on information that is most readily accessible/recent.

In plainer terms, the label is just a reminder.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, bias
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# Question
Title: Is there a name or any research on white flashing behind the eyes?
I have encountered anecdotal evidence that sometimes when people meditate, as they progress to higher levels, they sometimes experience flashing white light behind the eyes. And I have also experienced this, in a different context.

Google is only showing me results related to ocular phenomena like glaucoma or something. I am interested in knowing if there is any recognition of a neural phenomenon, rather. I think I once heard someone say it has to do with dopamine.

The hypothesis would be for some reason as the brain decides to increase its dopamine production (if people doing concentration meditation are possibly training their brain to have higher levels of concentration ability, which may mean increasing the amount of dopamine production), somehow as it creates more neural structure to do that, white flashing behind the eyes is somehow a byproduct of a neural kind of “spurt” of energy, for a moment.

The white flashing can come in short bursts yet can be fast. People say it is behind the eyes, it is a close eyed phenomenon, not a hallucination, and not something that appears to be in your visual field, but is somehow more directly in your mind/brain.

Can anyone suggest any known documentation of such a phenomenon or a similar one - a visual phenomenon that is not some kind of ocular malady, not the general idea of a hallucination, but a byproduct of a very particular neural phenomenon of some kind?

# Answer
By "behind the eyes" I assume you mean a flashing while the eyelid is closed.

As for academic explanations, the only one I could find regarding this phenomenon is a study by the religious and psychiatric and human behaviour institute at Brown University. (here) They claim that sensory deprivation is responsible for the white flash. They also posit that this could be responsible for the neuroplastic effects of meditation as the research they cite shows neuroplasticity increases during sensory deprivation (here). I'm not saying that these sources are true, but there is research out there.

(They also make several references to Charles Bonnet Syndrome in this paper, a neurologist would have to chime in to confirm if it would meet the criteria though.)

As for whether or not this is dangerous or a bad omen of a eye disorder, it seems very harmless. As far as I can tell, this is a regular occurance for meditators of all experience levels and the majority of those who experience this have healthy eyesight and neurological structure and biology.
> 1 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, vision, meditation, dopamine
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# Question
Title: What happens to the endplate potentials on the muscle fibre when the firing frequency of the motoneuron decreases?
A multiple choice question I came across which confused me a little. The options were:

A)The amplitude decreases

B)The duration decreases

C)The frequency decreases

I know that the force of contraction of a muscle fiber decreases when the frequency of the motor neuron decreases. Thus, I would assume that the frequency of the local end-plate potential would also decrease, in order for this to make sense. Following this logic, I answered C, but I am unsure if my reasoning is correct, this answer seems a bit too straightforward.

I considered the answer could be A, but I felt that it wouldn't make sense for the amplitude of the end-plate potential to have any effect on the force of contraction (because the action potential illicited by the end-plate potential is an "all or nothing" event).

I'm a bit stuck on this question and unsure if my logic makes sense, so I was wondering if anyone could help me out.

# Answer
The answer is A. **End-plate potentials (EPPs) are not action potentials**.

Action potentials are "all or none" potentials because they occur only for sufficiently large stimuli (White, 2002).

Increasing or decreasing the number of motor neurons active at any one time changes the amount of force produced by a muscle (Purves, et al. 2001). How?

EPPs are generated at the neuromuscular junctions, and are generated by a conductance increase in the end-plate membrane (Van der Kloot & Cohen, 1984).

Feher (2012) points out that:

> The end-plate potential is a graded potential (it is not all-or-none) that propagates electrotonically to the neighboring patch of muscle fiber membrane where it initiates an action potential on the muscle much like it does on unmyelinated nerves.

With higher current, you can activate more patches of muscle fibre through more action potentials, creating a stronger contraction.

A reduction in amplitude will result in failure to reach threshold in a proportion of muscle fibres, which results in muscle weakness (Vincent et al. 2007).

Therefore, the answer in your paper is A – The amplitude in the EPP decreases with a reduction in motoneuron firing frequency.

## References

Feher, J. (2012). 3.6 - The Neuromuscular Junction and Excitation-Contraction Coupling. In *Quantitative Human Physiology: An Introduction*, Academic Press, pp259-269. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-382163-8.00029-3

Purves D, Augustine GJ, Fitzpatrick D, et al. (2001). The Regulation of Muscle Force. In. *Neuroscience*. 2nd edition. Sinauer Associates. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11021/

Van der Kloot, W., & Cohen, I. S. (1984). End-plate potentials in a model muscle fiber. Corrections for the effects of membrane potential on currents and on channel lifetimes. *Biophysical journal, 45*(5), 905–911. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0006-3495(84)84237-X

Vincent, A., Buckley, C. & Burke, G. (2007). Chapter 90 - Neuromuscular Junction Disorders. In *Neurology and Clinical Neuroscience*, Mosby, pp1223-1234. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-03354-1.50094-8

White, J. A. (2002). Action Potential. In *Encyclopedia of the Human Brain*, Academic Press, pp1-12 https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-12-227210-2/00004-2
> 0 votes

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Tags: neurophysiology
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# Question
Title: What is Cortisols role in a chronically activated fight-flight-freeze response?
It is my current understanding that cortisol is released 20-30 minutes after the initial release of adrenaline to a stressor if the stressor has not been dealt with. (Source: '20 - 30 minutes' and 'a few minutes' and Approximately 15 minutes after the onset of stress, cortisol levels rise systemically and remain elevated for several hours)

Cortisol's role when an acute fight-flight response becomes chronically activated or prolonged is to:

1. Maintain the fight-flight response to help deal with the stressor, while also regulating the side-effects associated with the response.
2. Regulates and enhances the use of glucose/energy
3. Reduces inflammation during acute stress, but during chronic stress it suppresses the immune system (my textbook does not explain why, I'm pretty sure it's because of cortisol resistence developed)

However, my question is what happens when the ***freeze*** response becomes chronically activated? What hormones are secreted, does it have relevance to the general adaptation syndrome?

Source: Textbooks for Psychology for an Australian High School education certificate:

Psychology for VCE Units 3 and 4, 8th Edition Jacaranda

# Answer
The "fight-flight-freeze" response is not a list of three responses, it's a name for *one, general hyperarousal response*.

Often it was simply called "fight or flight" response, which is catchy, brief, and rhymed. However, it's been recognized that the same underlying condition of hyperarousal in response to threat is also associated with other behaviors like freezing (especially in small prey animals, like rodents), so the name "fight or flight" may be misleading.

So, to answer your question about the role of cortisol in the *freeze* response, you can use the same information you've found for "fight or flight", because "fight or flight" and "fight-flight-freeze" are two names for the same thing.
> 1 votes

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Tags: neurophysiology, stress, physiology
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# Question
Title: Why can I sometimes retrive memories when not thinking actively about it but can't when actively thinking?
To speed up time my efficiency on the computer, I had started to use key bindings. These are some keys you press together and you'll directly get a desired result. One common one I use is the windows snipping bind: logo key+ shift +S. I have often found it that, I am able to retrive the binding when I'm deep in work and doing tasks, but not able to when I directly try to retrive the the key binding of it from memory by active thinking.

Why is this?

# Answer
Motor tasks like key pressing are a form of procedural memory. This is an unconscious form of memory that doesn't require awareness in your conscious mind. Even if you start with a conscious understanding, as you repeat the task you're creating a procedural memory, and it's no longer necessary to recall the initial declarative memory. These different types of memory are stored in different brain/CNS areas.

The same is true for all motor actions you do: when you throw a ball or walk, you don't think about which specific muscles you need to flex or relax at any given moment, and given all the postural movements involved you'd really not be able to, there are dozens of muscles involved in any action.
> 2 votes

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Tags: memory, working-memory
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# Question
Title: Are there valid scientific bases for psychologist Taibi Kahler's Process Communication Model?
In a corporate training course on team work, I quickly realized that the whole course was based on Taibi Kahler's Process Communication Model. After a quick search, it seems to me that PCM is basically a commercial test used for convenience, that hasn't evolved or been updated since its conception. I don't have access to psychology publications (and wouldn't know how to read them).

Some specific claims that seem dubious to me, made by the teacher, are as follow:

* the basics of our personnnality is fixed by age three.
* NASA astronauts have high IQ (above 160), but very low emotionnal intelligence.

My questions are:

* Is there a valid scientific basis to PCM?
* Has it been updated since it was developped (in the 1980s?)?
* Is there somewhere where I can fact check that very specific claim about astronauts?

# Answer
I did not find any article validating the process com on google scholar. Psychologists don't have access to the underlying design of the test. there is no research about it.

What I found is that the only personality theory that has been validated by thorough research is the big five. The MBTI personality theory is not valid. i found also that psychologists agree that the personality does not change over time which is contradictory to the hypothesis of the process com which stipulates that the personality is like a floor building and that our personality does change (not the building but where in which floor we stand !).

I found it very disturbing that a new personality theory used by the NASA has not been extensively tested by researchers !
> 2 votes

# Answer
Yes, it has been updated. I suggest you read "Seeing People Through" by Dr. Nate Regier (2021) or Dr. Kahler's own book, "The Process Therapy Model" (2008) which described the development of the model from a clinical perspective. Both are available on Amazon. Regarding the NASA information, Dr. Terry McGuire, who was NASA's Lead Psychiatrist for Manned Spaceflight from 1959-1996 wrote a paper on the personalities of NASA astronauts and PCM, which is not publicly available. However, a listing (some with links) of books, articles, doctoral dissertations and other research that has been done on PCM can be found at https://www.atoire.com/copy-of-library. I hope this is helpful.
> 2 votes

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Tags: pseudoscience
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# Question
Title: Water rushing away causing a pronounced sense of movement -- is there a name for this?
I had never heard of this happening before nor can I find anything online but this happened to me years ago, did not try it again and I wonder if once you realize the illusion it no longer works.

As I recall, I was standing on the shore and I think simply the water suddenly receded very rapidly while my feet were at the edge. I immediately felt a sensation of very fast motion.

I wish (when I lived near the beach) I had experimented more, seeing if indeed I would feel this each time, despite now expecting it to happen. I also did not ask my friend to try it.

Is this a known phenomenon? If so, what is it called? And will everyone experience this effect, including people who have experienced it before and expect it to happen to them again?

As I write this, it seems unlikely that I in fact did not try this again. I am now wondering if the nature of the wave, perhaps due to chance, time of day or something about that specific beach (or some combination of factors) caused this illusion. One aspect of this is that the illusion was so pronounced that I think I felt like I was losing my balance -- this happened most of a lifetime ago and I am a little hazy on the details.

One final factor may have been exact timing -- perhaps I was looking not at my feet but into the distance and by chance I shifted my gaze to the ground at the right moment.

I suspect there are many situations where such illusions of movement occur.

# Answer
Self-motion can be perceived based on optic flow \- it seems most likely that you experienced an illusion based on this. If you are familiar with the "Star Trek" series at all, think about how the rapid movement of a spacecraft is depicted as stars flowing backward in the opposite direction to the ship (certainly the same trope is used in other media as well). That's a good example of optic flow: it's the stars that move on the screen, but you perceive the ship as moving. Stars are convenient as an illustration, but any visual object can cause optic flow.

If you think about perception as a process of predicting the causes of the things around you, if the "whole room" seems to move in one direction, the simplest explanation might be that actually *you* are moving. In this case, your perception briefly got it wrong, and that's the essence of illusions. The sense of loss of balance occurs because of conflicting information between your vestibular system and vision.
> 1 votes

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Tags: optical-illusion
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# Question
Title: How can sinusoid sound be perceived as having constant loudness?
To elaborate, given an audible, sinusoidal wave $A\sin(ft)$ with constant $A$ and $f$. That sounds constant to us.

Now from a few posts linked below, I understand that as stereocilia of the hair cells at the corresponding region moves, Spiral ganglion cells (SGCs) associated with these hair cells start to fire trains of neural signals with firing rate sinusoidally deviates from silent baseline rate.

Till this point, instead of something similar to power spectrograms, we just more or less have a fake "frequency axis", along with neural signal trains that are still vibration-like. I am guessing one of the following:

1. Groups of SGCs approximately cover all phases and the sum of their neural signal trains (due to rate coding) ends up with a approximately constant firing rate (and can be used as a amplitude reference)
2. Rate coding does not really go beyond giving a better vibrating train than individual SGC train. And cochlear nucleus and beyond are doing some hard work to convert the trains into something that sounds constant.

https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/39729/depolarization-and-hyperpolarization-in-stereocilia-of-the-inner-ear

How do hair cells recognize frequencies?

How does the inner ear encode sound intensity?

How is tone volume encoded?

# Answer
> 1 votes
The simplest answer to the question of

> How can sinusoid sound be perceived as having constant loudness?

is in the first line of your question

> given an audible, sinusoidal wave $A\sin(ft)$ with constant $A$ and $f$. That sounds constant to us.

If $A$ is a constant why should the loudness vary? The answer of course is that $\sin(ft)$ is not a constant. To really answer your question, lets start by considering a different signal $A\sin(f\_mt)\sin(f\_ct)$ a sinusoidally amplitude modulated (SAM) tone where $f\_m$ is the modulation frequency and $f\_c$ is the carrier frequency. At low, but not too low, modulation rates, and carriers within the audible range, the loudness of a SAM tone varies.

To go further, we need a piece of mathematical insight. The Hilbert transform lets us decompose a signal into a slowly varying envelope and a rapidly varying fine structure. In the case of a SAM tone the envelope would be $A\sin(f\_mt)$ and the fine structure would be $\sin(f\_ct)$.

We have known for a long time that the auditory system is sensitive to both the temporal fine structure and the envelope. In fact, this is a key part of how cochlear implants work. While there are earlier, and more relevant, examples, Smith, Delgutte, & Oxenham (2002) is a really nice example of this duality.

The Hilbert transform is not the only way to get the envelope of a signal. You can also get the envelop by bandpass filtering, followed by half-wave rectification, followed by low pass filtering. We know the basilar membrane acts as a bandpass filter thanks to Nobel prize winning work of von Bekesky. The inner hair cells in the cochlea provide the half wave rectification. I think the field is still divided about where/how the low pass filtering happens, but there is pretty good agreement that the auditory system has a representation of the envelope.

So back to your question, to the extent that the loudness of $A\sin(ft)$ is a constant (adaptation will make the loudness decrease over time), it is because its envelope is a constant.

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Tags: perception, hearing
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# Question
Title: How are participants kept awake in total sleep deprivation studies?
I've been searching around Google Scholar (e.g., https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2869.2009.00767.x, and https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0894-4105.21.6.787), and studies don't seem to mention what methods are used to keep participants awake. Are there any sources where I could find this information, or does anyone know? It seems particularily important to control for possible episodes of microsleep.

# Answer
This is necessary information to include in the methods section of a paper. You should assume they've done what they say they've done and nothing else.

For the first study, it doesn't seem like they did anything except tell the participants to stay awake. They refer to use of an "actiwatch" to make sure no one napped between their sleep and arriving at the laboratory, and then they watched them:

> For the TSD condition, they were kept under constant supervision for a further 25 h to ensure that they remained awake

This is a fairly mild sleep deprivation, so it doesn't seem like they needed to do anything else.
> 1 votes

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Tags: methodology, sleep
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title: How does understanding happen

text:
# Question
Title: How does understanding happen
What is the psychological basis of understanding a subject?

I have observed cases where a person in anxiety reads a chapter of a book and doesn't grasp anything after 1 hour.The same person was given SNRI and he grasped the things in under 15 minutes. Somehow just by focusing on the subject understanding happens automatically.

Are there any good research/books etc on this?

# Answer
> 1 votes
One's understanding is basically training of the brain's neural network to be able to reproduce the results being learned. You can somehow compare with how machine learning algorithms work where a large array of data is used to train the artificial neural networks via backpropagation of errors, over time the network is able to reproduce that data.

In humans the learning is perhaps lot slower, as we don't have tools such as derivatives to allow backpropagation. In comparison a robot is able to walk by training over RL in as short as a few hours.

Now you can combine this understanding with what @AlicdD mentioned

> cover wide areas of research, from antidepressants and anxiety, focus to cognitive function and learning new tasks

There are numerous factors involved that give rise to understanding, one can however theorize that if the mind is less distracted then learning can be improved.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I assume comprehension is or at least has some overlap with what you are looking for. There is a field called discourse psychology, where comprehension is a big thing. There are many types of comprehension: reading comprehension, narrative comprehension, etc. Here're some papers that may provide you an insight into it.

McNamara & Magliano, 2009 introduces several classical models for comprehension.

Loschky, et al., 2019 introduces a theory about visual narratives (perception + comprehension).

Graesser, et al., 1997 introduces what discourse psychology does.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, learning, meaningful-learning
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# Question
Title: How is psychohistory theory of deMause viewed in academia?
I've recently came across the psychohistory theory of deMause. To best of my understanding, it roughly tries to capture the common psychology of an era by analyzing the childbearing practices of that era. See the summary below.

I'd like to know how credible this theory is. Briefly, how is it viewed by academicians, what is the summary of some different opinions surrounding it etc. The wiki is rather silent on such discussions.

# Answer
On the subject of criticism and how psychohistory is viewed by academicians, you stated that

> The wiki is rather silent on such discussions.

Yet, the Wikipedia article outlines the criticism with plenty of citations. The criticism in the article is laid out below, although I was not able to find url links for some of the journal articles referenced.

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Psychohistory remains a controversial field of study, facing criticism in the academic community (DeMause, 1988; Stannard, 1982; Pomper, 1973; Paul, 1982), with critics referring to it as a pseudoscience (Hunt, 2002). Psychohistory uses a plurality of methodologies, and it is difficult to determine which is appropriate to use in each circumstance. In 1973, historian Hugh A. Trevor-Roper dismissed the field of psychohistory entirely in response to the publication of Walter Langer’s The Mind of Adolf Hitler. He contended that psychohistory’s methodology rested “on a defective philosophy” and was “vitiated by a defective method.” He also contended that

> Instead of proceeding from demonstrable steps, from fact to interpretation, from evidence to conclusion, psycho-historians move in the opposite direction. They deduce their facts from their theories; and this means, in effect, that facts are at the mercy of theory, selected and valued according to their consistence with theory, even invented to support theory (Shepherd, 1978).

DeMause has received criticism on several levels. His formulations have been criticized for being insufficiently supported by credible research (Demos, 1986). He has also received criticism for being a strong proponent of the "black legend" view of childhood history (i.e. that the history of childhood was above all a history of progress, with children being far more often badly mistreated in the past) (Aries, 1975). Similarly, his work has been called a history of child abuse, not childhood (Heywood, 2001). The grim perspective of childhood history is known from other sources, e.g. Edward Shorter's The Making of the Modern Family and Lawrence Stone's The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800. However, deMause received criticism for his repeated, detailed descriptions on childhood atrocities:

> The reader is doubtless already familiar with examples of these psychohistorical "abuses." There is a significant difference, however, between the well-meaning and serious, if perhaps simplistic and reductionistic, attempt to understand the psychological in history and the psychohistorical expose that can at times verge on historical pornography. For examples of the more frivolous and distasteful sort of psychohistory, see Journal of Psychohistory. For more serious and scholarly attempts to understand the psychological dimension of the past, see The Psychohistory Review (Kohut, 1986).

Recent psychohistory has also been criticized for being overly-entangled with DeMause, whose theories are not representative of the entire field (Comtois, 2005).

## References

Aries, P. (1975). De l'enfant roi a l'enfant martyr. *Revue Psychologie. 68*, 6.

Comtois, M. (2005) *Introduction to Historical Method* https://web.archive.org/web/20071130222935/http://cliopolitical.blogspot.com/2005/08/introduction-to-historical\_112482482753969170.html
Updated 2010 at http://cliopolitical.blogspot.com/2005/08/introduction-to-historical\_112482482753969170.html?m=1

DeMause, L. (1988). On writing childhood history. *The Journal of Psychohistory, 16*(2), 135. https://search.proquest.com/docview/1305588616

Demos, J. P. (1986). Child Abuse in Context: An Historian's Perspective. In *Past, Present and Personal: The Family and The Life Course in American History*. NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 68–91.

Heywood, Colin (2001). *A History of Childhood*. Cambridge: Polity Press. p. 41.

Hunt, L. (2002). Psychology, Pschoanalysis and Historical Thought -The Misfortunes of Psychohistory. In Kramer Lloyd S. and Maza, Sarah C. (ed.). *A Companion to Western Historical Thought*. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing. pp. 337–357.

Kohut, Thomas A. (1986). "Psychohistory as History". The American Historical Review. 91 (2): 336–354. https://doi.org/10.2307/1858137

Paul, R. A. (1982). Review of Lloyd deMause's Foundations of Psychohistory. *Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology, 5*, 469.

Pomper, P. (1973). Problems of a Naturalistic Psychohistory. *History and Theory. 12*(4): 367–388. https://doi.org/10.2307/2504699

Shepherd, Michael (1978). Clio and Psyche: the lessons of psychohistory. *Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 71*(6): 406–412. https://doi.org/10.1177/014107687807100604

Stannard, D. E. (1982). *Shrinking History: On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory*. Oxford University Press, USA.
> 4 votes

# Answer
The long and short of it is that DeMause's writings are not to be trusted in the slightest, due to the late author's utter lack of scholarly rigor and honesty. This is precisely why it is nearly impossible to find a single credible scholarly refutation of his claims, since their scientific quality is so low that few if any scholars have engaged with them.

I can however, showcase just how bad his "scholarship" is by simply going through his own sources and showing how unscholarly his conduct is:

He does 3 things that are appallingly dishonest and perfidious, and that's just what I've been able to find out, and I'm just an incompetent student who isn't even studying history:

1. He uses good sources, but twists and misrepresents his sources in extremely dishonest ways.
2. He uncritically swallows the most absurdly untrustworthy publications you could possibly imagine, so long as they conform to his monomania, and dutifully conceals from his readers that he has gotten that particular data point from the 1880s equivalent of a 4chan board.
3. He regurgitates obscenely outdated but popular historical falsehoods that have long been debunked by historians in their respective fields, if they can be instrumentalized to support his narrative.

Just to give you a taste of each of these three things that I have been able to find:

He cites "The Baiga" by Verrier Elwin to claim that the Baiga completely normalize incest. These are his exact words from "The Universality of Incest":

> In some endogamous Indian groups, such as the Baiga, actual incestuous marriage is practiced between men and their daughters, between women and their sons, between siblings, and even between grandparents and their grandchildren. “My impression is that most of them have little or no innate repulsion towards incest,” Says Elwin, their ethnographer, the viability of their society disproving by itself all theories about the impossibility of incestuous marriage.

He even calls them "a fully incestuous society"(his articles are mostly only available online, without page numeration, and these particular passages from "The Universality of Incest" can be found between his footnotes 118 and 121. The hyperlink on the word "articles" links to that particular article.)

The rest of the Elwin quote, as well as many anecdotes Elwin goes on to describe, make it ***aboundantly*** clear that incest is a stygmatized exception, not the rule, that there are real social punishments for incest, which are collectively enforced by the community, as well as showing that the community has a decent grasp of sexual consent and the moral depravity of raping anyone, but children in particular. This latter point is the clincher. There are indeed tendencies within Baiga society to be lenient towards incest, but ***only if it's between consenting adults.*** This blows a massive hole in DeMause's theory, since for him, incest is essentially synonymous with "adult brutally raping their own child".

At least in the abstract, the Baiga believe that incest is a sin that brings on its perpetrators disease and suffering, or invites natural calamities on the society that tolerates it. The book is available online if you want to rummage about it yourself, and I made a blogpost showcasing screenshots of some anecdotes the Baiga told about incest and rape, which convey a much more realistic and much more humane and sane society than DeMause would have us believe exists among the Baiga. Just scroll downwards until you get to the screenshots from the book which I inserted directly into the blogpost. If you want to doublecheck me, the relevant pages in Elwin's work are 188-194.

So much for mangling genuine sources. Now let's see the man use absurdly bad sources uncritically, so long as they serve his preconceived notions.

He claims that doctors once advocated for fathers to "have sexual intercourse with their three-year-old girls “in order to familiarize them with carnal matters"."

His source for this particular claim is: A Woman Physician and Surgeon, Unmasked , or, The Science of Immorality. Philadelphia: William H. Boyd page 88. 1878 Now, this book really does claim this, but it cites absolutely no names, no specifics beyond "one instance of it happened in New Orleans" no witnesses by name, no perpetrator, no victims named absolutely nothing. We just have the anonymous author's word for it. This is generally the level of DeMause's scholarship, and it's bad enough, but when you actually rummage through the book, you will find an absolute plethora of ***comically*** inaccurate absurdities which reveal it was *written by someone who had absolutely no idea what they were talking about.* Basically, at the very beginning of the chapter DeMause cites, which is entitled: "Social Evil"(p.71) the anonymous author lays out her theory of sexuality, work and morality, which sounds like it was made up by a 12-year old boy from 4chan, occasionally blending with some sort of superlatively anti-sex feminist: "Women spread their legs for easy money, but this damages their brains and "nervous powers" making them ever more incapable of productive work. Also, dresses compress blood-flows unnaturally, which causes lots of blood to go through women's vaginas and wombs, which also makes them, like, super-horny. And they also become super-horny and sex-crazed if they don't constantly wash their pussies... while also avoiding all stimulation of them! Oh! Oh! I almost forgot, when men cheat on their wives, with younger girls, the hornieness infects their nerves, which then infects their wives through sex, which makes them insane. And this guy called Barnum paid some worn-out hookers to get fucked by horses, and the horses totally fucking died. It happened twice! Trust me bro, I seen it! Also, this one time, a queen from the Pacific Islands grew teeth inside her vagina, to protect herself from excessive dickery. It's just nature taking revenge for the oppression of women, bruh!" These are the kinds of publications DeMause freely cites to bolster his worldview.

He rehashes the tired, old idea that everyone was overjoyed to join WWI, that people went happily to their deaths, because dolce et decorum est, pro patria mori, which, supposedly, was a result of social psychosis stemming from childhood abuse\*.\* Michael Nyberg absolutely ***eviscerates*** this idiotic old trope about giddy, suicidal WWI militarism, and explains much better than I ever could that people back then knew how horrific the war was going to be, and were horrified of it, but thought for a wide array of credible reasons that they were being forced to defend themselves from external aggression.

Again, these are just representative samples, not by any means exhaustive. There's plenty more where that came from in the aforementioned blogpost. And that blog-post is just based on the stuff I found on the internet, before losing interest.

If you're really interested in seeing even more of his vicious lies debunked, I'll oblige:

For instance, in "The Origins of War in Child Abuse" -\> "Chapter 7: Child Abuse, Homicide, and Raids in Tribes" he claims that all Australian Aborigines cut open the penises of all the boys when they're twelve, and then rape the holes. His citations for this are 109 and 110. ***The two sources refer to two different tribes.*** Seeing as Australia is extremely diverse in every way, this does not bode well for DeMause's thesis. One is a reputable source on the Mardudjara tribe: *The Mardudjara aborigines : living the dream in Australia's desert New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1978* by Robert Tonkinson. It mentions ***absolutely nothing about children*** on the page (page 23) given in DeMause's citation. And yes, that's the same edition DeMause is using, marked in his footnotes under 109.

But the book has a section on childhood, which describes them as a child-centric society where parents are chastised for letting their children cry without giving into their demands, where children are allowed to scream at and curse their parents without consequence, and where adults are generally expected to be extremely gentle and forgiving in their attempts to get children to behave more pro-socially, even if the child is throwing sticks and rocks at them. Yeah, not lookin too god there, Lloyd ole chap!

The other source (*The Women's history of the world* by Rosalind Miles, Topsfield, Mass. Salem House) really does mention the mutilation on page 38, just as DeMause claims, but not the raping. And that source is piss-poor, as it cites an anecdote ***from a single tribe***. The footnote for that anecdote leads to a note at the end of the book (page 252) which mentions the supposed authors of whatever publication the anecdote was supposedly sourced from without saying ***anything*** about the publication itself, which is a serious instance of sloppy citation, if nothing else. Nevertheless, you will find that particular book in Miles' bibliography section.

The book in question is *Man's rise to civilization as shown by the Indians of North America from primeval times to the coming of the industrial state*

A reminder for those of you who must be confused by this sources within sources maze, since I sure as hell am: DeMause ***accuses all Australian aborigines*** of cutting holes into little boys' penises and then raping those holes. This allegation is made in "The Origins of War in Child Abuse" Chapter 7, citation 110. His source for this is Rosalind Miles *The Women’s History of the World. Topsfield: Salem House, 1988, p. 38* On that page, Rosalind mentions the mutilation, but not the raping, and it refers ***to only one tribe on the entire continent of Australia***. She backs this claim up with footnote 4. We find footnote 4 on page 252 of her book. Here she tells us to consult 2 publications. The first one is about North America: *Man's rise to civilization as shown by the Indians of North America from primeval times to the coming of the industrial state by Farb, Peter 1968 p.72* On page 72,(a different edition from the one Rosalind Miles uses, but the same disturbing content on the same page.) the author really does claim that the Aranda people(the same people mentioned by Miles) of Australia engage in frankenfurterting the penises of young boys. ***Let's just remind ourselves that this is a single tribe, and not all indigenous Australians*** He doesn't have any citations in the text itself, but if you flip to the end of the book, you will find that he uses Bettelheim (1954) as a source for an this claim. These references can be found on page 296. of Farb's book. Fine, let's go through *yet another* source within a source, within a source, withi... you get the picture. Farb cites two sources of so called "interpretation" Bettelheim and Greenway. Let's start with Bettelheim: *Symbolic wounds; puberty rites and the envious male by Bruno Bettelheim* Once again, I couldn't find the exact edition, but the book does exist and is available online.

Our dear Mr. Farb tells us that the above book is where he is getting his alleged frankenfurtering information from(This is all about ***just one*** tribe in Australia, let's remember that). He tells us the title of the book and the year, but ***not*** the publishing house, ***nor the page*** on which the particular claim of frankenfurtering is made. Which is conspicuous, since most of the surrounding data-points are provided with both typed of information. Extremely sloppy scholarship. Let's try to find the frankenfurtering allegation, shall we? We'll be looking in the edition of the Bettelheim book I can find online, the 1962 Collier Books edition from New York. On page 100 of Bettelheim, we really do find that subincision/frankenfurtering, does happen, ***but even Bettelheim emphasizes that this is relatively rare among hunter-gatherers, even within Australia.*** Notably, there is still no question of adult men or women using the hole thus created in a boy's penis for sex, as DeMause claims. Also, Bettelheim describes no insertion of a bone into the penis - this seems to have been simply made up by Farb - and it's also made abundantly clear that this ritual is done at the initiative of the teenaged guy being initiated, and that he is allowed to set his own pace, given time to recover between operations etc. Farb on the other hand describes the ritual as being essentially forced onto the initiated youth, who is described as being violently restrained by many other men. This harsher description ***cannot be found anywhere in Bettelheim*** So just a quick reminder. DeMause claims the ritual of subincision is essentially universal among Australians and forced onto the young man in question, and that it includes the insertion of a bone into the penis. These claims he gets from Rosalind Miles, who in turn gets them from Peter Farb, who claims to have gotten then from Bettelheim.

> and then sub-incising them with “a slit made on the underside of his penis” that is said to create a powerful vagina.109 ***The men then have intercourse in the split on the underside of the penis***, “like a split-open frankfurter.”110

Those are DeMause's exact words, and even his immediately cited sources don't back him up on this bizarre sex thing.

Bettelheim in turn makes it clear that subincision is not universal, voluntarily accepted by the pubescent boys it is performed on(Bettelheim, 102.) and makes no mention of bone insertion. This is a game of Chinese whispers, adding more and more horror with each retelling.

Let's look into Bettelheim's source for this claim. The "source-ception" continues. He cites Ashley Montagu, *Coming into being* p.293 No year, no publisher. But it is available online, and p.293 does in fact have information about subincision. The intensity of the ritual mutilation varies widely, and gets smaller the farther away one is from the center of Australia. It can be anything from a horrible gashing open of the entire male urethra - a la DeMause and his immediate sources, or a minimal cut at the base of the penis.

The practice of subincision does appear to be real, but it's both less widespread and usually far less cruel than DeMause would have us believe. Crucially, it's something the pubescent boys and later adult men ask to have done to them. There are also female forms of ritual cutting, which are similarly varied.

Montagu goes on to cite some guy named Basedow, claiming that subincision is probably a superstitious folk-remedy, designed to protect the subject from certain kinds of diseases. It probably only makes diseases worse, but humans are horribly adept at creating horribly bad folk-remedies for just about everything. There is probably an entire anthropological study somewhere on the internet about counterproductive folk remedies around the world.

In summary, subincision exists, but it is neither universal in Australia, nor necessarily as physically extreme as DeMause claims, nor is it forced onto children by adults who use the occasion to sexually pleasure themselves.

It is something pubescent boys and often adult men(Bettelheim p. 102.) choose to have done to themselves, out of a tradition which probably sprang from an idiotically misguided desire to protect one's health, which has become purely customary and magical in significance, marking a transition into adulthood.

Basedow's article also notes that the age when the ritual incision is performed varies, and that it is sometimes performed on adult men who already have children. It's almost never performed on anyone under the age of 14 (124-125) So, on average, it likely happens in one's mid to late teens. Still an idiotic, vile and harmful tradition, don't get me wrong, but it's about superstition and blind adherence to custom, not sexual sadism or anything like that.

(Just for the sake of pedantic sadism and pettiness, let's look at Rosalind Miles' other alleged source for the practice of sub-incision. She calls this source "Lewenhak p. 36" (p.252) Her bibliography section has the book "Women and Work" by Sheila Lewenhak. She cites a London edition from 1980, without telling us the publishing house. More sloppy scholarship.

I did however find another edition of "Women and Work" by Sheila Lewenhak. It has a hunter-gatherer section, but it's all about manual labor, about producing various kinds of goods, about how men hunted and women prepared and preserved the food and so on. From page 30 onwards, the author remarks on how unperturbed women were about aborting unwanted pregnancies or infanticiding unwanted newborns. She also mentions how strongly everyone valued sexual consent, and that women deeply loved any children they actually, willingly chose to birth and raise. Shocking as this might sound to us, this apparently caused no cognitive dissonance. But it shouldn't be all too surprising, seeing as many women today are often extremely blase about abortion as well. Then you add the fact that even desired and cared for neonates often died before modern medicine was a thing, so it was easy for these primitive peoples to delude themselves into thinking it's no big deal to kill a newborn baby you don't want to bother raising. Hence all their religious nonsense about spirits and the afterlife. Not at all different from modern people with their nonsense about an afterlife. Her data is supposedly from an anthropologist living with a woman named "Xhooxham" of the San. So that data-point is from some primary source, but I cannot be bothered to go into that one as well. I mention this part, because that's about as close as this book comes to discussing parenting in any way.

I'd also like to point out that this is also at odds with DeMause's general claim that ***all hunter-gatherers*** treated ***all children*** like scum. They didn't. They murdered the unborn for convenience, same as modern people do, they discretely murdered newborns they didn't want, but they lovingly raised every child they ***did*** want to raise. And the sources of his sources prove that. Another important point; when discussing infanticide, Lewenhak describes how it is done in private, with the assistance of an older woman who has experience. DeMause also has this weird claim that hunter-gatherer mothers love to force their existing children to participate in infanticide, and to then force them to eat the dead baby. The private nature of infanticide quite flatly contradicts that. Yet more evidence that DeMause loves to ignore evidence contrary to his thesis.

I know it's a different edition, since Rosalind Miles claims to be citing from a 1980 London edition(no publishing house given), and this is a New York edition, also from 1980, from St. Martin's publishing house so it's **extremely** unlikely that the two editions - printed in the same year - are going to have any differences in substance, as opposed to just different page numbers due to adding or removing pictures, or due to having larger or smaller pages or something. So yeah, Rosalind Miles had two sources for subincision and one of them doesn't even mention it. Poor choice of sources Lloyd.)

\[9\]:Basedow, H. (1927). Subincision and Kindred Rites of the Australian Aboriginal. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 57, 123–156
> -1 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, developmental-psychology, history-of-psychology
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title: Is there a theoretical maximum for IQ?

text:
# Question
Title: Is there a theoretical maximum for IQ?
In "Eugenics: A Reassessment" Richard Lynn writes:

> The intelligence level of the population would be expected to stabilize at its theoretical maximum of around 200 after six or seven generations.

The "intelligence level" here refers to IQ.

Lynn's work has been criticized in many ways. What I am interested in specifically whether there is a theoretical maximum for IQ and whether its value is 200. Have any other scientists commented on this point?

Considering IQs as a normal distribution the order of magnitude of the chance of a 100 point deviation is 10^-11. There is many more distinct coding DNA sequences than 10^11 (not sure about phenotypes) so it is not inconceivable that higher IQs would exist.

# Answer
There are a few ways that you could answer this question.

First, IQ is defined with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. But this is a normative score and relative to a given target population typically defined by time, geography, and various inclusion criteria. In particular, IQ scores have increased over time (i.e., Flynn effect). So by this definition, the meaning of a 200 IQ has changed over time. That said, you could pick a date and place (e.g., 1900 United States or the year 2000 United States) to define as the normative sample and that would give you a normative metric to work with.

You then have the issue of conceptualizing the standard deviation of intelligence. In general, there is a reasonable basis for assuming that such psychological traits are roughly normally distributed. But presumably, quantifying this as the high end is more difficult.

More generally, conceptualizing and measuring intelligence at the very high end is challenging. Most normal measures of intelligence max out at about 3 standard deviations above the mean (i.e., around 145). They generally would not be very reliable at distinguishing a 145 from a 160 IQ person.

It is also not immediately clear whether just making intelligence tests harder is sufficient to validly measure intelligence at the very high end. But it is presumably the starting point. Nonetheless, these difficulties in measurement and definition make conceptualizing a theoretical maximum quite difficult.

Another approach to this question is to consider geniuses throughout history. E.g., Einstein, Leonhard Euler. You will sometimes see projected IQs for such figures. It seems likely that these people who achieved eminence in highly cognitively demanding fields had very high intelligence. But disentangling intelligence, domain specific abilities, devotion to their discipline, training, disposition, and good fortune is challenging. So in general, determining whether they had a 150 or 180 IQs or something else is difficult.

More generally, presumably the eugenics argument is that humans are modifiable through selective breeding (and related processes), genetic modification, and possibly technological and pharmaceutical augmentation. This presumably opens up a whole, and potentially scary, world of possibilities for cognitive enhancement.

Another perspective to this question comes from artificial intelligence research. Presumably, as such technologies evolve to replicate and exceed more of what we consider to be uniquely human functionality, we may be better able to judge what is the conceptual limit of intelligence of any entity (biological or otherwise).
> 7 votes

# Answer
IQ is a human constructed / defined concept in which a person answers various questions under a time limit and they are given a number derived from the way they answered the questions.

If we take some specific IQ test (to hold constant, for consistency), and observe that people get different numbers as they take the test, then I don’t think there can be recourse to a strong law of the universe as to why a “human” could not answer the questions faster or more accurately, except regarding:

* physics
* the definition of a “human”
* the range of numbers the IQ test allows (in its scoring rules)

For example, perhaps it could be argued that in order to add some numbers, there has to be some physical system carrying representations of those numbers and performing an actual physical process - a transformation or a “computation” - to produce the output, their sum. Maybe a neuroscientist would know the maximum speed at which the physical brain is able to carry out such an operation (however it does that). For example, maybe the speed of electricity in the brain, neural actions, or the speed of light, and also taking into account the size of the task (the number of computations needed to obtain the result).

As you suggested about DNA, the possibility that we are not strictly concerned with what kind of thing is doing the test, makes the physical limit described above seem possibly to be relevant to answering the question instead of dismissably ideal. If you wanted to ask specifically about biological forms close in similarity to currently existing ones, it’s still basically the same type of question, just bounding the set of possible “thinking” systems to certain physical types (i.e., brains, with various parameters and constraints on what they’re like).

So, in some way, while a good question, it may have the issue that it is tautologically self-answering, because it depends on how you interpret it, or what you mean. If an IQ test is some test, the theoretical maximum of performance of whatever will be taking the test will simply be by whatever you choose to allow to take the test, in your thought experiment.

The question of a “score” also trivially depends on the scoring conventions of the test itself; so, again, trying to lay down some assumptions to make the question something more concrete and definite and not as flexible, you probably mean something like mental / neural / cerebral capability, where IQ is just meant to be an attempt at observing that.

So the question is more about if there any known physical hard limits to the functioning of “the” brain - which is actually the respective brains of a number of different people. So I think - as you indicated - the real question might be the probability of any particular brain being born, right now, or at some time, given the brains and the DNA of the people living and reproducing at that time. A brain with some aspects like Ramanujan’s might be less common; someone else’s more. At that point, I think we should ask neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists how DNA interplays with the architecture of brains, and try to come up with an estimate for how likely a certain functional substructure with particular “performance” characteristics would be.
> 0 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, neuroscience, measurement, intelligence, genetics
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# Question
Title: Can an EEG response be phase-locked but not time-locked?
In EEG, there are two commonly encountered notions of linkage between a stimulus and a response, usually encountered in literature surrounding event-related potentials (ERPs) or evoked potentials (EPs):

* Time-locking: the response happens at a fixed time from the stimulus
* Phase-locking: the phase of the response is always the same (in the more general sense, for instance in electronics, phase-locked means the phase of the output is fixed relative to that of the input)

This source states that in order for a response to be phase-locked, it must be time-locked.

However, I see no issue in a response having the same phase every time, but happening at various times relative to the stimulus. Is the statement correct? If so, why? Is it due to some hidden reason that just makes it impossible to be any other way?

# Answer
When people talk about phase-locked within EEG, they mean at the same phase relative to some index time (e.g., stimulus onset). I'm having trouble imagining anything 'real' that would be phase-locked (that is, appears in the time-domain average across trials) but not time-locked. Such a signal would have to "know" what amplitude it "should be" at some given point in time, without having made any perturbation to the system you are measuring beforehand.

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Let's back up and use a different terminology (also used in your source) and consider EEG responses as *evoked* or *induced*, with a third case of *phase-reset*:

*Evoked* responses are those that are most easily detected by averaging the time-domain signal across stimulus presentations. Evoked responses are *additive* to the ongoing signal, so over many trials if you average then the background disappears whereas the added response is revealed.

*Induced* responses are those that affect the amplitude of ongoing activity. If you average an induced response across presentations, you get a flat line, because the phase is random on different trials. If, however, you do some measurement of signal *amplitude*, like calculating power, and average that resulting signal, you'll see the response.

*Phase-reset* is when ongoing activity changes in phase. If you average the time domain signal, a phase-reset will appear like an evoked response, but if you look carefully at individual trials, the magnitude of response depends on the phase of ongoing activity. If the ongoing activity is already at the 'target' phase, there is no effect.

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Back to the source you are reading, let's think in terms of evoked and induced signals. Importantly, EEG signals are usually *tiny*, so describing EEG signals often involves discussing what sort of averaging you might need to do to measure them.

Evoked signals, being additive, can be described as time-locked and phase-locked, though I'd be careful with overinterpreting "locked": there is always going to be some jitter in latency when you deal with biological neural responses.

Induced signals, on the other hand, are those considered *not* to be phase-locked, in that when you average the time-domain response on multiple trials you won't see any signal. They'll still need to be time-locked to some extent, though, otherwise you again will not detect them across trials. But really, that's where this conversation ends: the discussion about phase-locked activity is really about the difference between evoked and induced. Personally, I prefer the evoked/induced terminology.

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These are some good papers on evoked and induced activity. I think David is good with the concepts and has a more formal mathematical treatment, but I like the illustrations of things in the complex plane by Martinez-Montes which I find very intuitive.

David, O., Kilner, J. M., & Friston, K. J. (2006). Mechanisms of evoked and induced responses in MEG/EEG. Neuroimage, 31(4), 1580-1591.

Martínez‐Montes, E., Cuspineda‐Bravo, E. R., El‐Deredy, W., Sánchez‐Bornot, J. M., Lage‐Castellanos, A., & Valdés‐Sosa, P. A. (2008). Exploring event‐related brain dynamics with tests on complex valued time–frequency representations. Statistics in medicine, 27(15), 2922-2947.
> 1 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, eeg, event-related-potential
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# Question
Title: Recovery program alternatives to the 12-step program
I have been looking at recovery programs for alcohol and/or drug addictions and I came across the term *12-step recovery program* which seems to be a standard.

Looking at what the steps involve on the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) website, they seem to have a religious base:

> 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
> 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
> 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
> 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
> 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
> 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
> 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
> 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
> 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
> 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
> 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
> 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

While agnostics may concede there **may** be a higher power of some sort, atheists totally disagree there is a higher power all together (see: Atheism and Agnosticism - Standford University). I realise that AA state that:

> Newcomers are not asked to accept or follow these Twelve Steps in their entirety if they feel unwilling or unable to do so.

But, I wonder if there is a non-religious version of the 12-step program.

# Answer
> 3 votes
### Alternatives to the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) Twelve-Step Program

While AA is certainly a leading (and, in the US, the dominant) self-help recovery program for alcoholism and is noted for its religious flavor, alternatives do exist. I have no relationship with any of these programs.

* LifeRing Secular Recovery: "LifeRing Secular Recovery is an abstinence-based, anonymous organization dedicated to providing a safe meeting space where you can experience a non-judgmental recovery conversation with your peers. We do this through the lens of LifeRing's 3-S philosophy of Sobriety, Secularity, and Self-Help." LifeRing is explicitly non-religious (no god or higher power to acknowledge), but follows AA's model of expecting complete sobriety.
* Addictive Voice Recognition Technique, formerly Rational Recovery: A set of commercial (i.e. not from a non-profit organization) self-help products designed to allow people to recover on their own, without groups or meetings.
* SMART Recovery: A non-profit offshoot of Rational Recovery, SMART (Self-Management and Recovery Training) Recovery rejects the "medical" model of addiction as a disease over which a person is powerless and instead teaches that a person has the power within themselves to control their substance use and teaches how to use that power.
* Moderation Management: Unusually, this program does not expect or require complete abstinence as a goal, but allows people to focus on reducing a harmful level of substance use to a more moderate level.

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Tags: addiction, therapy
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