# Question
Title: Why Is It That We Have Blindspots in Our Eyes?
> **Introduction:**

We humans have an eye resolution of about $576$ megapixels, but just like how nothing is perfect, our eyes have **blindspots** where we can't sense any information.

In fact, you can find your blindspot by covering one eye, focusing on an object in front of you, set your thumb out in front and translate it until you can't see it.

> **Questions:**

1. Why do our eyes have blindspots?
2. If we have blindspots, why do we still sense information in that area?

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What I mean for $2$ is that even though we have blindspots, we are still able to pick up information (put in simpler terms, why is our vision perfectly smooth instead of riddled with "dark" holes where we can't see anything).

This has baffled me for some time. Any ideas?

# Answer
> 5 votes
The blind spots are scotomas (areas of degenerated acuity) found in all mammalian eyes, and are due to the way the optic nerve crosses the retina (back of the eye):

> Because there are no cells to detect light on the optic disc, the corresponding part of the field of vision is invisible. Some process in our brains interpolates the blind spot based on surrounding detail and information from the other eye, so we do not normally perceive the blind spot.

Scotomas can result from eye damage as well, and the result is the same:

> There is no direct conscious awareness of visual scotomas. They are simply regions of reduced information within the visual field. Rather than recognizing an incomplete image, patients with scotomas report that things "disappear" on them.

As photoreceptor density in our eyes is not evenly distributed, and changes over time due to ageing and cell damage, the way our brain processes the visual field is probably an adaptation, so it is not useful to think of it as "pixelated":

> In vision, filling-in phenomena are those responsible for the completion of missing information across the physiological blind spot, and across natural and artificial scotomata. There is also evidence for similar mechanisms of completion in normal visual analysis.

There are three main perspectives on how this happens in the brain. The first is "bottom-up" - called isomorphic filling-in \- which is done by early visual systems using information from neighbouring areas. Think of this like the "magic healing brush" in Photoshop. The second is "top-down" - called symbolic filling-in \- which is done by downstream areas of the brain filling in the missing parts with higher-level knowledge. The third is that filling-in is a fallacy called the homunculus argument, that is based on the false notion of a Cartesian theatre \- that the visual system "projects" an image from the eye onto an observer inside our brain. However this does not make any sense, and so there is no reason to suppose that any kind of "filling-in" process actually needs to happen.

PS: The eye holds an interesting place in the history of evolution, as it has been used to support the case for both intelligent design - due to its amazing complexity - and evolution by chance - due to its flawed design. In mammalian eyes, the optic nerve delivers neurons to photoreceptors from in front, requiring it to pass through the retina. In cephalopod (eg, octopus) eyes, the optic nerve delivers neurons to photoreceptors from behind - a design that results in no blind spots.

# Answer
> 3 votes
The reason we have a blind spot is basically because the retina is installed backwards.

There is a layer of blood vessels, then a layer of long neurons that carry signals to the brain, then several layers of processing neurons, then the actual receptor cells that detect the light.

The problem is that to get out of the eye, the blood vessels and long neurons have to pass through the layer with the receptors. There can't be any receptors where this happens, the blood vessels and long neurons take up all the space. So in this spot, we cannot see at all.

The reason we don't notice it is because our brains fill in missing information in our eyes. Even though we don't notice it, our eyes are constantly moving around. Our brain then combines what we see from various eye positions to fill in holes in what we can see and increase the perceived clarity of our vision. Further, we have two eyes, and the blind spot is in a different place in our visual field between the two eyes, so we can take what we see in one eye to fill in holes in the other. This isn't limited to the blind spot, diseases that cause a loss of vision like macular degeneration are also filled in. Whether this is somehow adaptive or is a side-effect of the processing that fills in the blind spot is not known.

It is thought that this is filling-in is done in the early visual cortex, where regions of the visual cortex that are active fill in areas nearby that aren't receiving any input.

# Answer
> 2 votes
We have a blind spot in each eye because there are no receptor cells where the optic nerve connects to the retina of the eye.

Rather or not we "sense" anything there can be difficult to answer. Technically, no information from receptors come from that area, but the brain does fill in information to provide a complete picture.

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Tags: perception
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title: Short term effects of alcohol on IQ

text:
# Question
Title: Short term effects of alcohol on IQ
I am looking for some references on the short term effects of alcohol on "IQ". I am particularly interested in what aspects of "intelligence" is affected (e.g., cognition/reasoning/memory). Essentially, I am looking for studies that compare performance while sober and drunk in moderate drinkers.

# Answer
> 3 votes
In Maylor, E. A., Rabbitt, P. , James, G. H. and Kerr, S. A.. (1990) *Comparing the effects of alcohol and intelligence on text recall and recognition*. British Journal of Psychology, Vol.81 (No.3). pp. 299-313.

> Forty male subjects were divided into two groups on the basis of their scores on a computerized intelligence test administered in a preliminary session. They then participated in a text recall and recognition experiment in which they received alcohol (1.0 ml/kg body weight) in one session and no alcohol in another session (the order being counterbalanced). Subjects were required to read a short passage, immediately recall as much of it as possible and then select from sets of four sentences the ones that appeared in the original passage (recognition). Although two different passages were used, and subjects knew about the memory tasks in advance, there was nevertheless a significant practice effect: subjects recalled 10.6 per cent more propositions on the second occasion than on the first, but this could be at least partly explained by the fact that they spent 10.0 per cent longer reading the second passage. There was also a significant 7.8 per cent slowing of reading time due to alcohol. Practice did not interact with either intelligence or alcohol on any measure of performance. Alcohol impaired the performance of high intelligence test scorers more than low scorers.

Pihl, R. O., Peterson, J. B., and Lau, M. A., (1993) *A biosocial model of the alcohol-aggression relationship.* in Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Supplement, (11), pp. 128–139 reported results from human subject experimentation showing that alcohol affects cortical functioning and reduces the ability to deal with threatening or novel occurrences.

# Answer
> 2 votes
This is not a complete answer, but Abbey et al (2006) might be a good starting point. They summarise some literature:

> Recent research has focused on alcohol's effects on executive cognitive functioning (ECF) and the capacity to plan, initiate, and alter goal-directed behavior (Bartholow et al., 2003; Curtin and Fairchild, 2003; Giancola, 2004). Acute alcohol consumption impedes response inhibition, particularly when the task requires suppression of a compelling, predominant response (Abroms et al., 2003; Curtin and Fairchild, 2003; Fillmore et al., 2000).

### References

* Abbey, A., Saenz, C., Buck, P. O., Parkhill, M. R., & Hayman Jr, L. W. (2006). The effects of acute alcohol consumption, cognitive reserve, partner risk, and gender on sexual decision making. Journal of studies on alcohol, 67(1), 113-121. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4477198/

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Tags: intelligence, alcohol, cognition
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# Question
Title: Are there any modern mechanistic theories of motivation?
I remember hearing about the old 'drive' theory of motivation in Psych 101, and despite continuing my cognitive science education for another 4 years, that's the last theory of motivation I've heard about.

**Are there any modern theories of motivation at mechanistic level of explanation?**

The only stuff on motivation I find these days are along the lines of Pink's book "Drive", which talks of "purpose" and "mastery" as motivators, but doesn't discuss the actual mechanisms underlying them.

# Answer
> 12 votes
Motivation is a massive topic, and it's difficult for me to know what would count as a 'theory' of motivation as it's currently construed. For instance, at one level, we might consider motivation to be the processing of incentive salience on perceived stimuli: you see a cheeseburger, something makes you want it, and so you pursue it. One way of talking about what it means to want this cheeseburger is called *incentive salience*; see Berridge 1998 for a great review on this topic with a focus on the contentious role of dopamine, and some pretty amazing experiments that pry apart wanting from liking.

Coming from the opposite direction, Carver and Scheier's cybernetic model has proved quite influential in describing motivation, and its hedonic consequences, in terms of progress during goal pursuit. This goal-centrality dovetails with some of the achievement goal theoretic constructs, one of which (mastery) you mentioned with regard to Pink's book; Andrew Elliot did a nice review here. For an even more meta computational formulation, Juergen Schmidhuber has for years been proposing an all-encompassing model that might be grand enough for your tastes, although it is woefully untested by empirical work and, from what I can tell, seems to be considered kind of fringe.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that theories of motivations -- or pieces of theories -- are nearly as numerous as the stars. The real trick is in unifying them in a coherent system that makes sense at multiple levels of abstraction and isn't just some hodgepodge collection.

# Answer
> 2 votes
I know this is an old question, but I just found it so...

My understanding is that Pink is explaining and expanding on the concepts of Self Determination Theory. SDT largely refuted the mechanistic explanations of motivation, and evidence has been gathering evidence for over 40 years now. It might be helpful to differentiate between motivation and behavior. You can get someone to color between the lines by giving them a marshmallow or cheeseburger, but you can't make them want to color between the lines when no marshmallow or cheeseburger is offered, behavior vs motivation.

So the only mechanistic explanations that are valid within SDT are the the ones describing what is happening to your brain when you feel like you are gaining mastery over a subject, feeling like what you're doing is purposeful or that you have autonomy in your decisions.

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Tags: motivation, computational-modeling
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# Question
Title: Development of social cognition as an alternative to the obstetrical dilemma
Human infants are strange in that they are born more helpless than the infants of other great apes. They are born with about 25-30% of their brain developed, compared to the 40-50% of other great apes. Leutenegger (1982) showed that although human infants have the largest cranial capacity of all primates, the relationship between newborn human cranial capacity and body size is not different from that of other newborn primates. The ratio increases after birth to become 3-to-5 times of other great apes. To achieve this the infant undergoes accelerated brain growth (compared to apes) called the **secondary altriciality**.

The leading hypothesis to explain this has been the **obstetrical dilemma** which suggests that there is a trade-off between keeping hips small to allow efficient upright walking, and making the brain large. A recent alternative suggests that there is no measurable handicap from having wider hips, and that the reason for the early birth is **metabolic considerations** (too expensive for the mother to continue feeding the fetus internally).

To me both these hypotheses seem fundamentally flawed in that they assume it is beneficial to be born with a more (or fully) developed brain. Although we know that the brain shows development, self-organization, and activity in the fetus this is not as efficient as the development possible once the organism is capable of receiving richer stimulus outside the womb. In particular, a fetus is incapable of learning in a social setting. If you subscribe to Dunbar's Social Brain Hypothesis, then this social learning is what our brain is for. Thus, it seems natural to expect that it is more adaptive for a human to be born with a smaller brain (past a certain min threshold) to allow more development and social learning outside the womb.

In a commentary on the new article, Karen Rosenberg suggests the same thing:

> Maybe human newborns are adapted to soaking up all this cultural stuff and maybe being born earlier lets you do this. Maybe being born earlier is better if you’re a cultural animal.

This *development of social cognition* (my name; comments with historic name for this hypothesis are appreciated) approach was suggested by Adolf Portmann in the 60s, but without much evidence to support it. **What is the current evidence on the development of social cognition hypothesis?**

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### References

Leutenegger W. (1982) Encephalization and obstetrics in primates with particular reference to human evolution. In: Armstrong E, Falk D, eds. Primate Brain Evolution. New York: Plenum. 85–95

# Answer
> 2 votes
Doing some research on this interesting question, I can point you towards a few articles and books which can give you a start. From my research, there are 2 possible reasons for early childbirth compared to infants of other great apes.

1. The **maternal heat stress hypothesis** (Wells et al., 2012) (mentioned in your question as **metabolic considerations**) put forward as a challenge to the Obstetrical Dilema is a plausible reason. It is well established that the brain uses more energy than any other human organ, accounting for up to 20% of the body's total energy use.

Through **secondary altricity**, babies only have a third of the brain size relative to mature adults (Walker and Ruff, 1993), and in the article within Scientific American you linked to, it states that

> by one estimation a human fetus would have to undergo a gestation period of 18 to 21 months instead of the usual nine to be born at a neurological and cognitive development stage comparable to that of a chimpanzee newborn.

Apart from the idea of a woman giving birth to a baby the size of a 9 to 12 month old baby being hard to imagine, a larger brain mass in the newborn corresponds to more energy needed to sustain it. It stands to reason that when pregnant, a human having 2 fully developed brains to provide energy for, will have problems.

2. The hypothesis, variously dubbed the ‘Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis’ or the ‘Social Brain Hypothesis’, depending on what theorists take to be its most important features (Adolphs, 1999), is also plausible.

In support of this idea, there is a correlation between mean group size among various primate species and their neocortex volume (specifically, the ratio of neocortex volume to the rest of the brain).

Clearly, the emotional and social development of humans is extraordinarily complex, involving a multi-factorial interplay between genes, parental behaviour, and the influence of culture.

When looking at developmental issues, there are 5 models of development which theorists – and people in general – often disagree. (Miller, 2010) (Sigelman & Rider, 2012). When we are looking at social development in the context of social environments we are looking at the nurture argument of nature vs nurture. When looking at human development through other angles, along with goodness vs badness of human nature, there are other debates such as

* **Activity vs Passivity** (Humans shape their environments vs environmental forces shape humans),
* **Continuity vs Discontinuity** (Changes are gradual vs dramatically through life), or
* **Universality vs Context Specificity** (Development is similar between people and cultures vs considerable differences between people and cultures)

Carol Sigelman and Elizabeth Rider in their book *Life-Span Human Development* (Sigelman & Rider, 2012) states that

> Development is characterized by lifelong plasticity. Plasticity refers to the capacity to change in response to both positive and negative experiences. Developmental scholars have long known that child development can be damaged by a deprived environment and optimized by an enriched one. It is now understood that this plasticity continues into later life—that the aging process is not fixed but rather can be altered considerably depending on the individual’s experiences. For example, elderly adults can maintain or regain some of their intellectual abilities and even enhance them with the help of physical exercise like John Tatum’s swimming, a mentally and socially active lifestyle, or training designed to improve specific cognitive skills (Hertzog et al., 2009; Willis et al., 2006).

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## References

Adolphs, R. (1999). *Social cognition and the human brain* In: Trends in Cognitive Sciences 3(12) pp 469–479. doi: 10.1016/S1364-6613(99)01399-6

Hertzog, C., Kramer, A. F., Wilson, R. S., & Lindenberger, U. (2009). *Enrichment effects on adult cognitive development: Can the functional capacity of older adults be preserved and enhanced?* In: Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(1), pp 1–65. doi:10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01034.x.

Sigelman, C. K. & Rider, E. A. (2012). *Life-Span Human Development*. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Walker, A. and Ruff, C. A. (1993). \*The Reconstruction of the Pelvis\** In: The Nariokotome Homo Erectus Skeleton. Edited by A. Walker and R. Leakey, pp 221-233. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Wells, J. C. K.; Desilva, J. M.; Stock, J. T. (2012). *The obstetric dilemma: An ancient game of Russian roulette, or a variable dilemma sensitive to ecology?* In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 149(s55) pp 40–71. doi:10.1002/ajpa.22160. PMID: 23138755

Willis, S. L., Tennstedt, S. L., Marsiske, M., Ball, K., Elias, J., Koepke, K. M., Morris, J. N., Rebok, G. W., Unverzagt, F. W., & Stoddard, A. M. for the ACTIVE Study Group (2006). *Long-term effects of cognitive training on everyday functional outcomes in older adults*. In: Journal of the American Medical Association, 296(23), pp 2805–2814. doi:10.1001/jama.296.23.2805

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Tags: developmental-psychology, evolution
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# Question
Title: Is neurogenesis driven by prediction error?
Various Deep Learning algorithms \[1\] and neural models \[2\] make use of neurogenesis to reduce prediction errors. How much evidence is there that neurogenesis is driven by prediction error or novel inputs?

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1. Neurogenesis in Deep Learning
2. The mechanisms for pattern completion and pattern separation in the hippocampus

# Answer
> 4 votes
This question is very difficult to provide a satisfactory answer to because the technical neuroscience definition of prediction error is murky and since your question brings up machine learning then the answer is going to depend on what you're trying to do. I'm going to assume you're referring to neurogenesis in an adult brain and not the process that happens immediately after conception because that process is more analogous to deep learning.

**From the neuroscience perspective:** I'm not aware of much direct evidence that neurogenesis is a response to prediction errors because we understand very little about the phenomenon. However, it seems bizarre to think that neurogenesis just occurs spontaneously and randomly, so we come to the nature vs. nurture debate. Pure logic would tell me that neurogenesis in adults is something more of a maintenance response to DNA pressures and has little to do with any prediction errors generated by external environmental stimuli. Will explain why in my concluding paragraph.

Keep in mind that even the death of a neuron can be considered prediction error because the machine learning equivalent of "prediction error" in biology is simply a signal that communicates a "deficit" that needs to be filled in some way. In fact, to answer this properly, we must first make it clear that there are potentially dozens, hundreds, or an arbitrarily high number of other "prediction error types" in use by the brain. Here are just a few major ways, hypothetically:

* Lots of different neurotransmitters
* The opening/closing of various ion channel species that regulate the membrane potential
* Synaptic vescicles/receptors
* Neuronal firing rates (as in bursting, a rapid succession of action potentials)
* Temporal coding (relative firing times to the firing of other neurons)
* And I can think of 10 other more-subtle and harder to explain possibilities, but that are just as important, off the top of my head

Keep in mind that each neuron also seems to have its own differentiated mechanisms for, both, interpreting and signaling prediction error. This complicates things further. For instance, one neurotransmitter may communicate prediction error to one particular neuron, but has no effect (or a different effect) on a different neuron. It may even be that neurotransmitter X must be present while temporal code Y happens for the event to be interpreted as a prediction error.

**From the machine learning perspective:** In machine learning, we tend to oversimplify prediction error but the brain conforms to no such simplicity. I didn't want to mislead you by saying "yes" to your question because prediction error in artificial neural networks is traditionally a singular concept and not multiplexed like it is in neuroscience. So there is no analogy between prediction error in deep learning and prediction error in neuroscience evidence.

You might need to clarify the reason you are asking so that I can provide a more applicable response.

Deep learning is not biologically plausible, and it sounds like you are trying to discover a more accurate biological solution. If that's the case, looking into neurogenesis as a way to reduce prediction error may not be very fruitful because the new neurons created in adulthood only account for an incredibly tiny portion of the neurons that already exist, and humans encounter prediction errors potentially every second of every day. If we simply created new neurons for all prediction errors, then why are we born with pretty much all the neurons we will ever have? The brain overwhelmingly seems to have a way of learning and retaining the important information without having to create new neurons in response to prediction errors.

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Tags: theoretical-neuroscience, neural-network
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# Question
Title: Does the brain generate identical words in different languages similarly?
Saying (or even just thinking) a word or phrase results from activity in multiple regions of your brain. Of course, we can measure/'map' this activity to some degree; From wikipedia:

> EEG measures the brain's electrical activity directly, while other methods record changes in blood flow (e.g., SPECT, fMRI) or metabolic activity (e.g., PET, NIRS), which are indirect markers of brain electrical activity.

The question is, just how *precise* is this mapping? Is it precise enough to answer the following question? (and if so, has anyone examined it)?

**I'm curious if the same word or thought in different languages is produced by the same pattern of brain activity**?

* For example: does "hello" for a native English speaker generate the same signal response as a Spanish speaker saying "hola"?

More generally, I guess the question I'm asking is: **are the signals/activity generated by the brain to create language driven more by the phonetics/orthographics/structure of a word or the meaning/connotation of that word/concept?**

* Can we quantify that person x speaking the greeting "hello" is more/less similar to a Spanish speaker saying "hola" than, say, both speakers saying "a" (in English *a* is an article; in Spanish *a* is equivalent to the English "to")?

Two notes / caveats:

* I would assume that the same word in different languages would generate different signals in the *same* individual (i.e., one who comprehends the meaning of the word in both languages). Though perhaps this isn't true (which could also be very interesting).
* Of course perhaps sex, gender, age, or even just general variation between individuals (or even variation *within* an individual) might produce slightly different activity signals for the same task/word.

# Answer
Here's an article talking about exactly what you are asking: EEG decoding of spoken words in bilingual listeners: from words to language invariant semantic-conceptual representations

I can say that the brain obviously has the ability to invariantly represent different stimuli as being the same abstract concept, not even from stimuli in the same domain (such as auditory to auditory) but even across different domains of knowledge (identifying astract conceptual relationships between visual signals and motor signals)! Whether this can be derived purely from EEG, I doubt it because it lacks the precision necessary (which would require single cell recordings of millions of cells at the same time). I should also note that EEG can't tell us much on how the brain generates the spectral graphs that we record, just what the electrical activity is. We also don't even know what exactly causes the signals. Electrical activity may not even be the only indication of invariance, because other underlying mechanisms may be involved. But the idea of invariance, itself, is the very idea of what you are talking about and this phenomenon is found in lots of ways. In fact, anytime anyone relates two different stimuli as the same concept, it's clear that somehow the brain has an invariant representation of the event. There exists some kind of mechanism in the brain to recognize and store abstract concepts, removed from the concrete signals from which the concepts are learned.

"Mirror" neurons are an example of the domain crossing invariance, and something you can Google. These neurons demonstrate invariance by being similarly activated when an animal witnesses another animal performing an action and when the animal performs the action itself (e.g. eating).

However, your question about bilingual invariant representations and the mirror neurons are simply specific examples of a more general phenomenon. In fact, the ability for humans to have such incredible invariance is a major substrate that makes our intellectual capabilities so distinctly advanced compared to even the latest and greatest artificial intelligence attempts.

In the auditory language vs. language example you provided, the differences in auditory signals are ignored and our perception of the concept being communicated remains invariant. The same thing happens in vision. Even though the objective visual signals received by the brain are different, objects can be conceptually related. Just look at one face, then look at another one. You will still be able to identify both objects as the singular concept, "face". You might say "but the general structure of the face is still there". Yet, if you actually look at firing patterns of the neurons, they are still completely different. It's just as mysterious how the brain does this as it is that we can identify differing audio signals as the same concept. Humans possess a variety of invariant abilities in object recognition, such as scale invariance (different sizes), rotational invariance, translational invariance, skew invariance, color invariance, contrast invariance, and many others.

Just keep in mind that even though we possess these invariant abilities, we also maintain the distinctions in parallel. So the answer to your question is both yes and no. We generate both an invariant representation and a variant representation of whatever the stimulus is. Theoretically, both representation types are present in the EEG. However, EEG is not powerful enough to identify the specifics of how this works in language and whether this is even true.
> 3 votes

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Tags: language, linguistics, language-processing, brain
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title: seeing every interaction as a conflict

text:
# Question
Title: seeing every interaction as a conflict
What could cause someone to see every interaction/conversation as a battle that they have to win. whether it be with strangers or close family members, including their children, and they have to 'win' regardless of the physical, emotional or financial cost to themselves or the person they are interacting with, even if it is entirely out of proportion.

Is there a name for this type of behaviour ?

# Answer
> 1 votes
This is Unilateral Control Model of Behaviour. The opposite is "Give Up Control Model" and in the middle, you have "Mutual Learning". You can see another copy of Unilateral Control's definition here.

> Having goals is essential to being effective as an individual, team, and organization. But when you use a unilateral control mindset, you see challenging situations as a contest in which there are winners and losers.

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Tags: diagnosis
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title: Basic definition of incongruence

text:
# Question
Title: Basic definition of incongruence
# Question:

Regarding Carl Rogers' Person Centered Therapy, which of the following is the correct definition of incongruence:

1. Inconsistency between ideal self and **real self**.
2. Inconsistency between ideal self and **self-image**.

# My Understanding:

Self-Worth: How we value ourselves.

Self-Image: How we see ourselves.

Ideal Self: Who we'd like to be.

Real Self: Who we actually are.

# Problem:

The explanations I'm finding online interchangebly use real-self and self-image as part of the definition of incongruence however it is my understanding that these are these two terms mean different things.

# Answer
The terms **congruence** and **incongruence** are used in the 2nd and 3rd core conditions in Person-Centred Therapy.

Carl Rogers developed PCT, and outlined in a Journal of Consulting Psychology (1957) that 6 core therapeutic conditions are needed for constructive personality change and that all 6 must be present in therapy. Rogers considered that no other conditions are necessary. The 6 core conditions are:

1. 2 people are to be in psychological contact
2. The client is to be **incongruent**
3. The therapist is to be **congruent** or integrated in the relationship
4. The therapist experiences Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR) for the client
5. The therapist has empathetic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference and endeavours to communicate the empathy to the client
6. The communication to the client of the therapist’s empathy and UPR is to a minimum degree achieved.

**Incongruence**
This term used in the 2nd core condition refers to a discrepancy between the client’s perception and the reality of the situation. The client will be aware of the reality but perceives it differently.

It refers to a discrepancy between the actual experience of the organism and the self picture of the individual insofar as it represents that experience… \[An\] instance would be the mother who develops vague illnesses whenever her only son makes plans to leave home. The actual desire is to hold on to her only source of satisfaction. To perceive this in awareness would be inconsistent with the picture she holds of herself as a good mother. (Rogers, 1957, p. 2)

**Congruence**
This term used in the 3rd core condition refers to the exhibition of genuineness, transparency and wholeness. The therapist will not give perceptions of professionalism which disguises the humanity of the therapist. However, the therapist will convey any feelings of confusion, dislike or any other feelings arising within themselves through advanced empathy, in order to be transparent and genuine.

> Can I be real in the relationship? This has come to have an increasing amount of importance to me over the years. I feel that genuineness is another way of describing the quality I would like to have. I like the term congruence by which I mean that what I am experiencing inside is present in my awareness and comes out through my communication. In a sense, when I have this quality, I am all in one piece in the relationship. (Rogers, et al., 1965)

## -- Edit to clarify more as requested in comments --

The situation with the mother in Rogers' example shows that the mother sees her **ideal self** to be a good mother but her **perception** of her **self image** is that she is not a good mother as she develops vague illnesses whenever her son plans to leave home.

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## References

Rogers, C., 1957. The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Therapeutic Personality Change. \[Online\] Available at: http://www.shoreline.edu/dchris/psych236/Documents/Rogers.pdf \[Accessed 15 March 2016\]

Rogers, C., Perls, F. & Ellis, A., 1965. Video: Three approaches to psychotherapy. \[Online\] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgiX0QLnpBM \[Accessed 15 March 2016\].
> 4 votes

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Tags: person-centered-therapy
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# Question
Title: Delay time of Transmitting the information from one neuron to another in brain
Inside the brain the electrical signals are transmitted from one neuron to another by using special chemicals, called "neuro-transmitters" from the axon terminals.

Could anyone can tell me how to calculate the approximate value of the delay time of transmitting the information from one neuron to another. I am thinking that it will less than pico-seconds!

If there are any relevant articles/research papers related to it then I really appreciate it. Thanks

# Answer
> 6 votes
You mentioned the neurotransmitters released at the synaptic cleft, but seem to be interested in the complete picture. An action potential is actually very slow to propagate down an axon with a conduction velocity from 0.5 to 150 m/s, depending on how myelinated the axon is (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10921/). A toddler can run faster than the slowest signals! The length of axons in the brain varies greatly as well, from a few micrometers to a few centimeters, but only a fraction of a percent actually grow longer than one centimeter.

We will make a very rough calculation. Pretending the average axon length is half a centimeter (5 millimeters), and the average conduction velocity is 25 meters/second (or 25,000 millimeters/second), then the delay incurred from the action potential down the axon will be 0.005 seconds (or 5 milliseconds).

This doesn't include the time it takes the presynaptic cell to release neurotransmitters, the postsynaptic cell to absorb the neurotransmitters and transduce them into electrical impulse again, and propagate the electrical impulse to the soma for integration. For that, the delay is somewhere around 0.5 to 4 milliseconds (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14980200).

Obviously there are lots of variations in all these numbers. So how long does it take for a signal to be transmitted from the soma to the neuron's axon terminal to another? A few milliseconds. How long does it take for release and absorption of neurotransmitters? Perhaps another few milliseconds. If you're the type who wants a simple, idealized, singular number that ignores the complexity of the facts, then I would estimate something like 7 milliseconds for the total process.

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Tags: theoretical-neuroscience, neural-network, brain
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# Question
Title: Which personality traits are proved to correlate with any facial features?
I pretty certain I have read somewhere about certain personality traits that correlate with certain facial features, but I can't remember just what or where I read. I think the personality traits may have been measured with Big 5 or something close.

**I'm not looking for cranial or racial correlations, but facial feature correlations within cultures/ethnicities. I.e specific types of wrinkles. I'm also not looking for perceptions from other people, but measured personalities**.

This might be a broad topic, but could someone give me some clues? It would be nice if I could see some research reports **with measured correlations**.

# Answer
> 5 votes
Reading people's faces to determine their character is called **physiognomy**.

Some might downplay the idea that it is real but

> scientists are nowadays starting to accept that there may be a correlation between the shape of the face and characteristics. In fact, a recent study showed that men with a wide face tend to feel more powerful. The scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee also noticed that men with this characteristic had a tendency to lie more in business in order to make more money. Find out more: The Royal Society Publishing (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2011.1193).

Paunonen, S. V., Ewan, K., Earthy, J., Lefave, S. and Goldberg, H. (1999), *Facial Features as Personality Cues.* Journal of Personality, 67(3): pp 555–583. doi:10.1111/1467-6494.00065

Talked about 2 studies which

> examined the effects of the appearance of specific facial features on attributions of personality. In Study 1, photographs of men and women were computer-manipulated to have larger than average or smaller than average eye size, and wider than average or narrower than average eye spacing. In Study 2, eye size and mouth fullness were similarly altered. Although it was found that neither eye spacing nor mouth fullness had any effect on perceptions of the targets' personality or physical characteristics, eye size had strong effects in both studies. Analyses of covariance revealed that the personality trait ratings that varied with eye size were mediated primarily by perceived differences in the targets’ masculinity-femininity and babyfacedness, and to a lesser extent by attractiveness.

There is also

Kramer, R. S. S. and Ward, R. (2010) *Internal facial features are signals of personality and health.* The Quarterly Journal Of Experimental Psychology, 63(11) DOI: 10.1080/17470211003770912

> We investigated forms of socially relevant information signalled from static images of the face. We created composite images from women scoring high and low values on personality and health dimensions and measured the accuracy of raters in discriminating high from low trait values. We also looked specifically at the information content within the internal facial features, by presenting the composite images with an occluding mask. Four of the Big Five traits were accurately discriminated on the basis of the internal facial features alone (conscientiousness was the exception), as was physical health. The addition of external features in the full-face images led to improved detection for extraversion and physical health and poorer performance on intellect/imagination (or openness). Visual appearance based on internal facial features alone can therefore accurately predict behavioural biases in the form of personality, as well as levels of physical health.

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Tags: personality, physiology, correlation
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# Question
Title: Are any kinds of behavior proved to correlate with estrogen levels?
Are any kinds of behavior proved to correlate with estrogen levels? Any studies done on this? Any indications of such correlations?

Various research has shown correlations with testosterone and behavior, and I suppose there should be something for estrogen as well: Are any kinds of behavior proved to correlate with testosterone levels?

# Answer
Ehrhardt, A.A. (1978) states that

> A review of the behavioral effects of estrogen has to be divided on the basis of different time periods. During the critical phase of brain differentiation (which is species specific and takes place either before birth or neonatally), various sex hormones have long-term and permanent effects on behavior. Therefore, their action has been termed developmental or organizational. In contrast, hormones in adulthood, after the critical phase has passed, affect reversible changes in behavior and have been called activational.

An article in the Scientific American links to other several studies including Smith, C.T., et al. (2014) revealing that

> greater increases in estrogen levels across the menstrual cycle led to less impulsive decision making.

whilst Kritzer, M.F. and Kohama, S.G. (1999) states that

> estrogen increased dopamine innervation in the primate prefrontal cortex.

---

## References

Ehrhardt, A. A. (1978). *Behavioral Effects of Estrogen in the Human Female* In: Pediatrics, 62(6);
PMID: 724354

Kritzer, M.F. and Kohama, S.G. (1999). *Ovarian hormones differentially influence immunoreactivity for dopamine beta- hydroxylase, choline acetyltransferase, and serotonin in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of adult rhesus monkeys* In: The Journal of Comparitive Neurology, 409(3): pp 438-51;
PMID: 10379829 DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1096-9861(19990705)409:3\<438::AID-CNE8\>3.0.CO;2-5

Smith, C. T., Sierra, Y., Oppler, S. H., & Boettiger, C. A. (2014). *Ovarian Cycle Effects on Immediate Reward Selection Bias in Humans: A Role for Estradiol* In: Journal of Neuroscience, 34(16): pp 5468-5476; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0014-14.2014
> 1 votes

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Tags: behavior, correlation
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title: Classification of EEG Signals

text:
# Question
Title: Classification of EEG Signals
I am working on a project related to Brain-Computer Interface & I came across this problem.

What are the tools and techniques used to classify the EEG signals which are extracted from brain using a device which in my case is Neurosky Mindwave Mobile Headset. I needed an abstract view of what should be the design of the system?

The signal which are extracted using the electrode planted on the brain consists all type EEG signals present in the EEG Spectrum i.e delta, alpha, beta, gamma, mu. How can I classify it?

I read about some of the techniques like using Discrete Fast Fourier Transform and then extraction of band powers but I didn't understand it quite well so can someone point me in right direction. I really appreciate your help.

Thank You.

# Answer
BCI has rougly two different approaches to extract features. I will address them both.

When EEG is recorded, you can see an pattern of activity in a particular channel over time. This is the time-domain. The time domain is predominantly used to analyze Event Related Potentials. One application within BCI is the P300 speller. A matrix of letters is shown and letters are highlighted one at a time. Whenever the letter you thought of (i.e. attended to, i.e expected) a component called the P300 will show a larger deflection.

The P300 (or P3) is a positive deflection around 300-400 milliseconds after presentation of a stimulus. The amplitude of the P300 is highers when you perceive something you expected, and smaller when something unexpected (or unattend) is seen. The P300 speller is a neat and simple way to spell out one letter at a time thus (see also Brain-computer interface with EEG: how to name imaginary movement of a non-self object?)

The Fast Fourier Transform (FTT), which you asked for, is used to transform the time-domain to the frequency domain. Every signal in the time-domain can be subdivided in simple sinusoids with different frequencies, amplitudes and phases. The amplitudes are also referred to as the power of the frequencies. The frequencies are grouped (see also Does stimulus-independent ERP make sense/ exist?) and the power is correlated to many many different cognitive states (sleepiness, attentiveness, etc. See also Are brain waves electromagnetic waves?)

BCI in the frequency domain makes use of the power of a frequency band. By focussing more or less attention, thereby de- or increasing the power in the alpha band, you can for instance move a cursor over a screen (also discussed here: Brain-computer interface with EEG: how to name imaginary movement of a non-self object?).

There is a third domain, namely the time-frequency domain (see How to compare brain waves?) and there are many more other ways to look at the data, such as coherence and synchronization, and I bet (but do not know) that it is used for BCI applications.

For some more reading on BCI see Is EEG brain-computer interface reliable?
> 3 votes

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Tags: theoretical-neuroscience, eeg, brain-training, brain-computer-interface, brain-waves
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# Question
Title: Why are the ERP amplitudes recorded and analyzed from different software so different in voltage?
Here are the two ERPs from the same study design, though different subjects. The largest amplitude in the 1st one goes up to 25 uv, while only goes up to 6 in the 2nd figure.

Differences: The 1st one were recorded with 60-channel Easycap, analyzed in Brain Vision, nose referenced; while the 2nd one were recorded with EGI 128-channel Geodesic Net, analyzed in Net Station, averaging referenced. Are these sufficient to explain the big difference in the voltages? Thank you!

# Answer
The short answer is yes, probably.

Referencing is the process of subtracting a referent signal from all of your channels. While recording, the EEG data are typically online referenced to a vertex electrode, earlobes, back of the neck etc. During post collection processing EEG are most often rereferenced to the average reference, or the linked mastoids. The reference that is selected changes the shape of the signal simply because the reference channel (or average signal if using more than one) are subtracted from every channel. This means that comparing results across data that have different references is not direct. Since referencing is linear it can typically be undone and the reference channel can be changed. I never use a nasion reference so I can't say for certain why the amplitude is so large but I would guess if you looked at the signal at that channel you would see how it is adding (if channel of interest is positive and referant is negative then amplitude goes up) to your electrode of interest or subtracting from it (if both are positive). For a P3 response 6 micro volts is reasonable. If you want a more detailed explanation of referencing I recommend Nunez's book, or another book on EEG data analysis and theory.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, experimental-psychology, eeg
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title: How do inside jokes work?

text:
# Question
Title: How do inside jokes work?
I've been discussing about humour and how things become funny for people with a friend, and we got stuck at this point. What is the process behind laughing at inside jokes? They don't necessarily break expectation, use sarcasm/irony nor are surreal.

We have no experience in psychology, but this seemed like the best place to ask.

# Answer
Check out the two articles below:

1. Meyer, J. C. (2000). Humor as a double-edged sword: Four functions of humor in communication. Communication Theory.

Two of the functions unite communicators through identification and clarification of norms, while two other functions divide communicators through differentiation of unacceptable behaviors and enforcement of norms. "Inside jokes" unite communicators.

2. Flamson, T., & Barrett, H. C. (2008). The encryption theory of humor: A knowledge-based mechanism of honest signaling. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 6 (4), 261–281.

They posited that humor acts as a high-accuracy signal of shared but tacit background knowledge, including social norms. To “get” a joke requires understanding tacit knowledge assumed by the joker, and “getting” a joke virtually guarantees shared tacit knowledge. "Inside jokes" signal you're on the inside.
> 6 votes

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Tags: humour
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# Question
Title: "Cognify". Does it describe awareness or confusion?
I understand that the term *"Cognify"* in cognitive psychology means that you are made aware of something but not yet have sufficient insight to act.

Does the term describe the insufficiency of insight or does it describe the fact of being made aware of something (which presumably will eventually become cognitive comprehension)?

I'm asking because the term is being used marketing wise at our company, and I want to make sure that it actually describes something positive.

**Edit:**

Which would you say is the more appropriate synonym for cognify?

* Being made aware of.
* Inadequately understood to make a decision.

# Answer
> 2 votes
I did a quick google search for you and cognify only returned new, hip, modern, trendy websites and apps. So that was no use. Cognify just appears to sound cool in the industry.

When I looked at google scholar citation I again did not find many results, let alone studies that explicitly study cognify or cognification. As a matter of fact, only 14(!!) results were produced with just the word cognify. Within these results, I was able to find some papers that had used the word.

Bentrop (2014) appears to use cognify like your first translation: to become aware or to make explicit.

> “Teachers need to “cognify” their curriculum—examine their subject matter to identify and explicitly teach the thinking skills which are embedded within their subject

Vakalo (1978) uses cognify as "building a fitting (mental) picture" or, similarly to the former study, "becoming aware".

> When one visits an area for the first time he expects evidence of the presence of some phenomena and absence of others. The mechanism he uses to perceive and cognify spatial phenomena is comparison.

It seems thus that cognify means "becoming aware", more likely by yourself (through the act of deliberate thought) instead of "being made aware of". The fact that Vakalo used the word in 1978 already, but is not that well known still, shows that the word hasn't gained much traction in psychological sciences. It is thus likely that cognify is not an official term.

If you would like to read more on becoming aware, you should have a look at situation awareness (being aware) or situation assessment (becoming aware; e.g. Endsley, 1995; Wickens, 2008).

---

## References

Bentrop, S. M. (2014). Creating an educational app rubric for teachers of students who are deaf and hard of hearing.

Endsley, M. R. (1995). Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 37(1), 32-64.

Vakalo, E. G. G., & Plessas, D. J. (1978). A conceptual framework for the estimation of opportunity loss at the regional-sectoral level with an application to Greece. Επιθεώρηση Κοινωνικών Ερευνών, 32(32), 117-126.

Wickens, C. D. (2008). Situation awareness: Review of Mica Endsley's 1995 articles on situation awareness theory and measurement. Human factors, 50(3), 397-403.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, terminology
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# Question
Title: How does architecture impact cognition and mental health?
Research indicates that scenic, natural environments positively impact human health and mental well-being\[1\]\[2\]. But what about the impact of **man-made architecture** and various architectural styles on human cognition and well-being - has any empirical research investigated this? Are there any arguments in cognitive science that support the claim that we respond differently to different architectural surroundings? Moreover, is there anything known about the validity of the concept of *universal/objective aesthetics* in architecture, grounded on neurobiology?

Specifically, I'm interested in comparing the impact of various architectural styles and their inherent philosophies on our cognition (health, creativity, pro-social behavior ...). Personally, I noticed that I feel much more calm, focused and creative in cities with classical architecture and its many derivatives, e.g. historical Vienna or Venice - the architecture itself seems to impact my perception of the world. In contrast, more contemporary architecture that represents, roughly, primarily pragmatism - think megalopolis like NYC or industrial Chicago - invokes in me much more negative feelings of alienation and nihilism, to put it shortly. I wonder how common this is, and to what extent it could be explained with nature rather than nurture.

# Answer
> 3 votes
I managed to find some newspaper articles and research that touch this topic, claiming that indeed more traditional architecture has positive influences on health and well-being, although these statements would likely require a more careful evaluation for the sake of rigor.

Sources:

1. Beautiful urban architecture boosts health as much as green spaces
2. Classical architecture makes us happy. So why not build more of it?
3. Quantifying the Impact of Scenic Environments on Health

Some key points:

> We find that inhabitants of more scenic environments report better health, across urban, suburban and rural areas, even when taking core socioeconomic indicators of deprivation into account, such as income, employment and access to services.
>
> There is a fair amount of research suggesting that traditional architecture, such as Georgian and Victorian terraces and mansion blocks, contributes to our wellbeing. Beauty makes people happy.
>
> A brisk walk in the countryside or a stroll along the beach is a well-known mood booster and health experts have long recommended getting out of the city improve physical and mental wellbeing. But a new study suggests that beautiful urban architecture, the sweep of docklands, or a gritty suburban river bank can have just as much impact on health and happiness levels. The findings imply that it is the overall cohesion of architecture and design which boosts people’s health and happiness, not just the number of parks and trees.
>
> Crucially, the researchers found that areas rated as most scenic and uplifting were often not green areas.

# Answer
> 5 votes
Although this paper is not grounded in neurobiology "Up speeds you down. Awe-evoking monumental buildings trigger behavioral and perceived freezing" by Joey et al. should be a good starting point for further research into the domain of environmental psychology with a focus on human-made environments.

In the paper, subjects are shown to have slower reaction times when faced with larger buildings, which they relate to behavioural freezing.

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Tags: creativity, health-psychology, aesthetics, nature-nurture
---


# Question
Title: How accurate is this explanation of memory?
I'm no cognitive scientist, and this video I'm about to cite is certainly not claiming to be a good cog sci resource, but I have done some studying up on neurology and some of the parts of this guy's (detailed) explanation of how memory works seems different from what I understood.

The video: Film Theory: How to KILL DEADPOOL! (at 6:03) probably gave 85% (or 99%?) of the 7.7 million viewers who watched it the most detailed explanation they'd ever received of how memory works. I'm just curious to know how much of his explanation is accurate.

**So, how accurate is this explanation of memory?**

# Answer
> 6 votes
Really nice video and pretty much seems to be correct. The only thing that i am questioning is about the patterns. He says they won't exist after regeneration. However, just a thought: if you would replace one neuron of a network with a new (exactly the same but younger) neuron, it would receive the same input and produce the same output right? Then why would a memory be lost. Taking a step further, if an entire network is replaced, wouldn't the hippocampus with Long Term Memories (LTM)s still be able to give the same input to that network, which would then show a similar activation pattern, thus remembering?

To finish my short argument. Assuming that the hippocampus indeed stores the patterns for LTMs and the cells in Deadpool regenerate in an identical way, then I believe that LTMs may still exist after regeneration. Only when the hippocampus is affected, LTMs may be lost. I base this just on my thought experiment however and have no scientific proof. Maybe you can ask the YouTube guy for some references.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Well, aside from the mention of there being only 100 million neurons in the brain (there are actually 86-100 billion of them), the general idea that he communicates is correct. The activity pattern of a neuron through time (i.e. temporal activation) is how cognitions are encoded. NeuronA firing 5 milliseconds before NeuronB is a VERY different pattern than NeuronA firing 5 milliseconds after NeuronB. We see this very easily in the low-level retinal bipolar cells.

This is seen most readily in so-called "center/surround" cells. Although the idea of center/surround is simplified to the point that it ignores some of the more complex aspects of the phenomenon (even by renowned scientists), it still teaches us an interesting thing about how brains work.

It has been shown that certain Retinal Ganglion Cells possess very idealized center/surround properties. This means that some of them react to light stimuli in a way that causes rapid action potentials when the light is shone only in the center of the RGC's receptive field. Other RGCs demonstrate a reaction of rapid action potentials only when light is shone in the surround field of the RGC's receptive field, with no light in the center. This causes both cells to have inverse properties, where one cell is active when the other one is not. Then after a small delay, the activity of each cell flip-flops so that the one that was active is now inhibited and the other cell becomes active.

Other RGCs also react very complexly to strange patterns of light stimuli. After studying these phenomena for a while, it becomes clear that the timing (onset or delay) of the action potentials from a neuron communicates very important codes to the postsynaptic neurons. So yes, a huge part for neurons to interpret information from a string of action potentials is largely rooted in the temporal code, relative to other neurons.

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Tags: memory
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# Question
Title: What is the best way to reduce measurement biases when studying topics that can evoke insecurity?
I'm interested in measurement biases relating to self reporting in surveys.

To add more context:

Under some circumstances, people have been known to add a positive spin when surveyed regarding goals which have significant social status attached to them. One example is how survey subjects over report the number of sexual partners they have or the amount of money they make.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would assume that if someone is struggling to reach the social standard (ie: having less than what they think is the average number of sexual partners) it will be even harder to get them to be honest, since they are trying to conceal their insecurities to the researchers.

Under what experimental conditions are these people most likely to be honest? Are there any good studies out there that shed light on this question?

# Answer
> 1 votes
This isn't the exact answer to your question, but one way in which you can assess a person's likelihood of answering a measure honestly is the Social Desirability Scale (SDS). The SDS measures a participant's tendency to self-report responses that are viewed positively by society. Multiple versions of the SDS exist- here's an example of one.

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Tags: social-psychology, reference-request, methodology, bias, experiment-design
---


title: Father hunger syndrome

text:
# Question
Title: Father hunger syndrome
I found the father-hunger syndrome. Does anyone knows if there is another, maybe more official term for that?

Any sources that someone could use for the particular syndrome?

# Answer
> 6 votes
This is a large subject area, but I will outline a strong starting point for you to do more research where needed.

James M. Herzog's (1980) term *Father Hunger*, sometimes referred to as a syndrome, and sometimes referred to as the *Father Complex* may have its roots in many theories developed over the years.

Those who subscribe to Psychodynamic theories, the roots of *Father Hunger* could be from Freud and his Oedipus Complex, or Carl Jung and his Electra Complex. Both of these are in Freud's Psychosexual Theory of Development during the Phalic Stage of development, (around the age of 3 to 6 years), which also equates to Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Theory of Development stage of Initiative vs. Guilt (Sigelman & Rider, 2012: p38).

The *Father Complex* Wikipedia article, which has plenty of source links, states that

> The father complex also stood at the conceptual core of Totem and Taboo (1912-3). Even after the break with Jung, when "complex" became a term to be handled with care among Freudians, the father complex remained important in Freud's theorizing in the twenties; — for example, it appeared prominently in The Future of an Illusion (1927). Others in Freud's circle wrote freely of the complex's ambivalent nature. However, by 1946, and Otto Fenichel's compendious summary of the first psychoanalytic half-century, \[in The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946)\] the father complex tended to be subsumed under the broader scope of the Oedipus complex as a whole.

Alongside the shift from a Freudian emphasis on the role of the father to Melanie Klein's beliefs surrounding object relations theory stressing upon the mother, what psychoanalysis tended to single out was the search for the father, and the negative effects of the switched-off father. In postmodernism, the father complex surrounds the loss of paternal authority — the absence of the father. The father could be absent due to death, marriage separation, divorce or simple withdrawal by the father.

> Father hunger is the result of receiving too little quality fathering as a child or young adult. Some argue that even grown men and women need fathers or father surrogates and that the absence of such role modeling and support is associated with less fulfillment in life. In general, father hunger results from too little intimacy between child and father. (Schaller, 1995)

There is a mixture of psychosexual development theory and postmodernist theory within an article stating that

> The tween years find daughters writhing into a sea of hormones as puberty overtakes their bodies. They become extremely emotional. Girls edging into womanhood want to know how to act. They question “Am I attractive?” “Am I loveable?”
>
> Fathers are looked to for answers to these developmental questions. Young adolescent girls bring an intensity to dads as they want to talk about these things. Girls long to understand the opposite sex and how they rate. And girls do all this in a style that is over the top – from giggling to screeching, from restless to rebellious. Uncomfortable with emotions to begin with, fathers resist daughters who feel overwhelming to them.
>
> Add burgeoning sexuality to the mix. As girls physically morph into curvaceous women, fathers often withdraw because the change makes them uncomfortable, unsure if those old hugs or kisses are inappropriate somehow. (Sagarese, 2014)

---

## References

Herzog, J. M. (1980). *Sleep disturbance and father hunger in 18-to-28-month-old boys: The Erlkönig Syndrome*. In: Solnit, et al., eds. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 35(1): pp 223-230
PMID: 7433580 DOI: 10.1080/00797308.1980.11823111
URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00797308.1980.11823111

Sagarese, M., (2014) *Dads, Daughters and Food* \[Online\]
Available at: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2014-05-16/features/sfp-dads-daughters-food\_1\_father-and-daughter-dads-yo-yo-dieting

Schaller, J. L., (1995). *The Search for Lost Fathering: Rebuilding Your Father Relationship*
Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H Revell Co. ISBN-13: 978-0800755522
**Chapters 1, 3 & 8 free to read on the author's website**

Sigelman, C. K. & Rider, E. A., (2012). *Life-Span Human Development.* 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, developmental-psychology
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# Question
Title: How do you decide how many trials to have in an experiment?
I'm currently designing an experiment with several conditions - how do I decide how many repetitions / stimuli within each condition?

I know that I can justify sample size with an a priori power analysis...is there any common way to choose how many trials within each of my conditions?

I was using sample size/power as an example of something where there is a particular approach to help decide.....what I am actually asking about is the number of **trials** i.e. if I have three conditions in my experiment, how many stimuli should I design for each of the conditions?

# Answer
> 1 votes
A power analysis is typically based on the difference in the mean to be detected and the expected standard deviation of the data. The amount of variation in the data (i.e., the size of the standard deviation) typically depends on individual differences in the subjects and measurement noise. The measurement noise depends on a number of things, but in many experiments can be reduced by running more trials. In the minimal risk experiments I am most familiar with, we run so many trials that we reduce the trial related noise to inconsequential amounts. We tend to use wildly inefficient methods for collecting the trials also (our stimuli and response interval are too long, we use multiple intervals, and our adaptive procedures are not optimized).

In order to minimize the data collection/maximize power (and this should not be the only goal) the stopping rule generally cannot be a number of trials, but rather a precision criteria. There are procedures (e.g., ZEST) which can be set up to use a fixed number of trials or a target precision.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, experimental-psychology, experiment-design
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# Question
Title: How to denoise and get rid of 1/f trend of a PSD in an EEG synchronization experiment
I'd appreciate some help from you guys.

I'm currently analyzing an experiment where I've entrained participants to these frequencies:

Condition 1: 4.16Hz-8.33Hz
Condition 2: 2.77Hz-8.33Hz
Condition 3: 2.4Hz

For each condition I passed 8 trials of 26 seconds at Fs = 500Hz. I'm analysing the data using FieldTrip and some toolboxes in Matlab. I calculated the **Power and PSD** using **pwelch** function after processing the data in Fieldtrip.

I want my data in dB units and get rid of the $1/f^\gamma$ trend where $0\< \gamma\<2$ (Demanuele et al., 2007)

I have 2 problems:

1) I don't know how to remove the 1/f trend correctly since I don't understand how the article that I mention does it (see below) in the frequency domain (I have tried fitting $1/f^\gamma$ with best $\gamma$, using the **lsqcurvefit** function. Using the **medfilt1** with order 15 gives me the best results. Though I think there should be a better way, also that can be defended on an article).

> "the spectrogram of one EEG channel was calculated. The median across all time windows was then found for every frequency point. Thus, a graph of the median PSD value for every frequency was obtained. The same procedure was repeated for all the EEG channels. Then, the overall median of the median PSD curves of all the channels was calculated. The same was done for each of the 'task' and 'rest' condition. The average was then calculated across all conditions and this was used as our normalisation curve."

---

**EDIT** I thought it might be helpful to provide the code I made. Sorry for the inefficiencies you may find since I am no developer:

```
% Choose subject

load matfiles/Subject05
% loading subject5 where (channel,samples,trial,condition) is a 4D matrix

samples = numel(subject5(1,:,1,1)); % number of samples

% Number of samples per window, the less windows the better frequency resolution and worst time resolution. I tried different windows.
nsc = floor(samples/4.5);

nov = floor(nsc*0.75); % overlap of 75%

fr = 0.5:0.05:15; % foi

fs = 500; % sampling freq

%initialize variable
medps = zeros(291,28,21,3);

% loop conditions
for cond = 1 : length(subject5(1,1,1,:))

    %loop trials
    for trial = 1 : length(subject5(1,1,:,cond))

        % loop channels
        for chan = 1 : length(subject5(:,1,trial,cond))

            % calculate spectrogram for each channel, trial and condition
            %gives t(time) and ps (PSD estimate for each freq and time in Amplitude^2/Hz units)
            [~,~,t,ps] = spectrogram(subject5(chan,:,trial,cond),hamming(nsc),nov,fr,fs);

            % calculate median over time points per channel, trial and condition
            medps(:,chan,trial,cond) = median(ps,2);
        end
    end
end

%Calculate median over channels per trial and condition
medchan = median(medps,2); %this produces matrix freqx1channelxtrialsxcond
medchan = permute(medchan,[1 3 4 2]); %get 4D into 3D

%Calculate median over trials per condition
medtrial = median(medchan,2);
medtrial = permute(medtrial,[1 3 2]); %Get a 2D matrix freqxcond

%Mean over conditions is our Normalization Curve
normalizationCurve = mean(medtrial,2);

```

---

2) Once I transform the data to dB units (i.e. $10\*log10$) it gets really noisy, making the peaks at the foi (frequencies of interest) as big as the background or almost. I've looked into SNR but really don't know how to apply it here. The only thing I've done and still doesn't remove all the noise is the **medfilt1** mentioned in 1).

I hope any of you with experience in this can help me solve this issue!

# Answer
Apparently the paper you mention is simply evaluating the median in the EEG spetrum. Say that for all your channels you get a 3D matrix PSD, with dimension 1 the number of channel, dimension 2 the time windows, and dimension 3 the frequencies. In pseudocode the article computes M = median(median(PSD,2),1), then removes the trend with CorrectedPSD = PSD - M. Which is actually fairly simple.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, eeg, synchronization, analysis
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# Question
Title: What kind of data structuring is conducive to healthy debate?
I was just thinking, if we as humans want to sort out our differences of opinion on, say, politics or religion, what would be a good means to debate such a concept while at the same time make everyone feel they're on board?

Most sites on such things are either:

* Biased or unbiased (but usually persuasive) writings or studies that are written by a single individual or group (one way communication)
* Organised Q&A, forums, expert's opinion, etc. (two way communication, but often between those who have a good understanding and those who do not)
* Unorganised and random chatting between fellow users (one to one communication, or group chatting within a small group/anonymous users)

Has there been any research or thought given to the idea of a collective idea generating mechanism, where everybody provides their inputs, and is more likely to accept the results of such a debate (if results do come up)?

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Maybe a huge online wiki organised as a nodal network, where claims are supported or questioned. Evidence is put up on both sides, and further threads can be opened to debate the validity of given evidence. Bigger claims are made based on the validity of smaller claims, etc. etc. (But that's just my thoughts)

# Answer
> 2 votes
I've been fascinated by this question for years, but unfortunately don't have a conclusive answer. So instead, I'll make an ad-hoc list of the things I've found/explored about this topic and hopefully this will give you a starting point until someone else can create a better answer with better references.

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My current approach to this is MindMaps, which is similar to nodal network you propose. I've used Mindmaps in various scenarios, including trying to determine an appropriate scope for this site. However, I know of no formal study of this format of discussion and if it's better than linear forms of discussion as supported by forums.

Other models include Federated Wikis, which seems closer to your idea of an interconnected Wiki for discussion. However, these seems more targeted to spontaneous cross-fertilization of ideas, rather than debate. This is a new platform, so it's not surprising that there has been no formal study of the ideas that culminate from this form of digital interaction.

In terms of the content of documents, Bret Viktor has been investigating this and is trying to create a paradigm of Explorable Explorations. Explorable Explanations rely on manipulable data-driven proofs rather than rhetoric based argumentation to prove their point. See the link for further examples. There is a collection of Explorable Explanations available online, which address a variety of topics, including CBT. However, I know of no evidence that these forms of explanations are more effective than traditional narrative-driven explanations.

Finally, to unify all of these approaches philosophically, Joe Edelman is putting forth a philosophy which dictates that shared values are the root of empathy and understanding. I know of no system that implements this philosophy of finding common values between participants, but it does seem like a useful framework to guide design.

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That's all I've found so far. I know lots of people doing research in Human Computer Interaction, but I've seen very little work in the domain of consensus building. I really hope further posters can provide superior references.

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Tags: social-psychology, social-networks, sociology
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# Question
Title: What makes something relevant to an argument and how can people improve in determining relevance?
Are there any books that examine questions about relevance in general like the following? Relevance Theory seems something else and inapplicable.

1. What makes something (ir)relevant to an argument or discourse?
2. How can humans improve on deciding whether something is (ir)relevant?

# Answer
> 3 votes
The Wikipedia article on relevance references a couple of books and a few journal articles.

The Wikipedia article says

> ## Cognitive science and pragmatics
>
> **Further information: Relevance theory**
>
> In 1986, Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson drew attention to the central importance of relevance decisions in reasoning and communication. They proposed an account of the process of inferring relevant information from any given utterance. To do this work, they used what they called the "Principle of Relevance": namely, the position that any utterance addressed to someone automatically conveys the presumption of its own optimal relevance. The central idea of Sperber and Wilson's theory is that all utterances are encountered in some context, and the correct interpretation of a particular utterance is the one that allows most new implications to be made in that context on the basis of the least amount of information necessary to convey it. For Sperber and Wilson, relevance is conceived as relative or subjective, as it depends upon the state of knowledge of a hearer when they encounter an utterance.

The books referenced are:

Sperber, D. & D. Wilson (1986/1995). *Relevance: Communication and Cognition* 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN-13: 978-0631198789
Available from:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Amazon Canada

and

Sperber, D. & D. Wilson (2004). *Relevance Theory*, In: Horn, L.R. & Ward, G. (eds.) 2004 *The Handbook of Pragmatics* Oxford: Blackwell: pp 607-632. ISBN-13: 978-0631225485
Available from:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Amazon Canada

There is free access to this part of the book on Dan Sperber's website

When going to the amazon pages for the relevant books, it also suggests other books other people have bought with these books along with other possible related books.

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Tags: language, language-processing, speech-comprehension
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# Question
Title: How to get started with the glba R-package?
I am struggling with getting started using the glba package in R.

Often, the program will not fit the data at all. It immediately converges, but not really, and then instead of estimating it gives the starting values that I gave it, or it generates absurd values, such as negative non-decision times.

I tried to fit the data that is given as an example (bh08) and it worked great, however, with my own data that seemed superficially at least very similar (the RT distributions were in the same ballpark, and with a similar distribution shape) it did not work (converged immediately). I started with the suggested starting values, but also changed them.

Any smart advice?

(I guess RT should be in seconds and accuracy is a 1:0 variable. By the way, the program worked and did not stop when RT was in milliseconds, but the estimates were bizarre).

# Answer
It appears as if the problem was caused by pre-processing using (the amazing) tidyverse package. When I (a) wrote the dataframe as a .csv file and then uploaded it, the LBA worked (in most subjects) nicely, converged quickly, and yielded sensible estimates.

Thank you!
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-modeling, software, reaction-time
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# Question
Title: Are we able to simulate pain through the brain?
I have like 0 experience or knowledge about brain signals and all that stuff but I'm curious about how much we know about the brain in terms of like tricking your brain that with simulation of pain. The reason why i got curious is because I love video games and I just started imagining like some sort of real life game or even just using virtual reality where if you were to get hurt in the game in some spot you would feel pain in real life. I'm not sure if there's some sort of article or like something online where it explains this sort of stuff that I'm talking about.

# Answer
## Short Answer

It appears that stimulation of the thalamus would invoke feeling of pain:

> Direct deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the VP thalamus from patients without pain typically evoked nonpainful, paraesthetic sensation. DBS at the core and posterior inferior region of the VP thalamus can evoke pain sensation without specific topographic distribution. However, warm sensation was more frequently evoked in the posterior than in the core region. Intensity of sensation was dependent on current and frequency of microstimulation. (Yen and Lu, 2013)

The trouble is that deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a surgical procedure, so it would not be viable for any sort of virtual reality gaming, however it seems that Trans-cranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) could possibly be used if it could be developed and proven to be safe enough for this purpose.

It would have to be proven to target the specific parts of the brain required. It would have to be proved not to be stimulating other areas that could cause unwanted and possibly dangerous consequences.

## Long Answer

As I have very small amounts of knowledge on what happens in the brain neurologically compared to some people here, I have had to do a lot of reading to start with and I believe I have a basic idea of how this possibly could be done.

First of all we need to look at how pain is registered in the brain.

### Nerves as pain sensors

A nociceptor is a type of sensory receptor at the end of a sensory neuron's axon that responds to damaging or potentially damaging stimuli by sending signals of pain to the spinal cord and brain. This process is called nociception.

The peripheral terminal of the mature nociceptor is where the noxious stimuli are detected and transduced into electrical energy. (Fein, 2012) When the electrical energy reaches a threshold value, an action potential is induced and driven towards the central nervous system (CNS). This leads to the train of events that allows for the conscious awareness of pain.

### Message transfer to the brain

**Afferent** nociceptive fibers (those that send information to, rather than from the brain) travel back to the spinal cord where they form synapses in its dorsal horn — the posterior grey column of the spinal cord.

After reaching the specific lamina within the spinal cord, the first order nociceptive project to second order neurons. The second order neurons then send their information via two pathways to the thalamus at the centre of the brain: the dorsal column medial-lemniscal system and the spinothalamic tract (or otherwise known as the anterolateral system). The first is reserved more for regular non-painful sensation, while the lateral is reserved for pain sensation.

### Reaction from the thalamus

The sensory information is relayed from the thalamus upward to layer IV of the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) of the postcentral gyrus.

Initially, Brodmann areas (BA) 1, 2 and 3a and 3b (Brodmann, 1909/1994; Vogt, 1919; Kaas, et al., 1979) of the Cerebral Cortex were considered to make up the primary somatosensory cortex of the human brain, however, BA 3b is now conceived as the primary somatosensory cortex because:

1. it receives dense inputs from the NP nucleus of the thalamus;
2. its neurons are highly responsive to somatosensory stimuli, but not other stimuli;
3. lesions here impair somatic sensation; and
4. electrical stimulation evokes somatic sensory experience. BA 3a also receives dense input from the thalamus; however, this area is concerned with proprioception.

### Reaction from other parts of the brain

The primary somatosensory cortex contains cells that project to the secondary somatosensory cortex (S2). This is divided into several "areas". An area at the entrance to the lateral sulcus, adjoining the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), is called the parietal ventral (PV) area.

Area S2 is interconnected with BA 1 and densely so with BA 3b, and projects to BA 7b, insular cortex, amygdala and hippocampus.

The insular cortex, which is in both hemesperes of the brain, are believed to be involved in consciousness and play a role in diverse functions usually linked to emotion or the regulation of the body's homeostasis. These functions include perception, motor control, self-awareness, cognitive functioning, and interpersonal experience.

One thing I knew before the research is that it is the amygdala and hyppocampus which initiates the 5F response (fright/flight/fight/freeze/fawn response) to threats.

## References

Brodmann, K. (1909/1994). *Localisation in the Cerebral Cortex, Translated by Laurence J. Garey* (New York, NY:Springer Science): pp 106—110 ISBN-13: 978-0387269177
Free PDF available from http://www.appliedneuroscience.com/Brodmann.pdf

Fein, A. (2012). *Nociceptors and the perception of pain* (Farmington, CT:University of Connecticut Health Center)
Free PDF available from http://cell.uchc.edu/pdf/fein/nociceptors\_fein\_2012.pdf

Kaas, J. H., Nelson, R. J., Sur, M., Lin, C. S., and Merzenich, M. M. (1979). *Multiple representations of the body within the primary somatosensory cortex of primates*, In: Science 204(4392): pp 521—523 DOI: 10.1126/science.107591 PMID: 107591

Vogt, C., and Vogt, O. (1919). *Allgemeinere Ergebnisse unserer Hirnforschung*, In: Journal of Psychology and Neurology (Leipzig), 25: pp 279–461. OCLC: 671560835 Google Books: BJcXAAAAYAAJ

Yen, C., and Lu, P. (2013). *Thalamus and pain*, In: Acta Anaesthesiologica Taiwanica 51(2): pp 73—80. DOI: 10.1016/j.aat.2013.06.011
Free PDF on Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) at http://www.e-aat.com/article/S1875-4597(13)00066-0/pdf
> 6 votes

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Tags: vision, signal-detection, pain, brain
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# Question
Title: Why do battered persons love their partners?
Many persons who have been beaten by their partner, no matter how violently, claims that they do not want to leave their abusive partner because they still love them. A common phrase is: "I love him/her more than anything."

Is there research into why these abused partners do not "fall out of love"?

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I am specifically interested in the feeling of love, not in other reasons to stay with an abusive partner, such as the fear of further escalation of violence, common children, or material dependence.

# Answer
> 3 votes
I long pondered the answer to this question myself. The short answer is: Cognitive Dissonance\*

("Cognitive Dissonance" is a hypothesized mental process in which two conflicting ideas are resolved through rationalization / attitude change, instead of addressing the underlying source of the conflict that the person may not be consciously aware of. So here, we see two conflicting ideas - "I am being abused" and "I am not leaving" - resolved through a rationalization - "I love him", instead of addressing the underlying source of the conflict that the woman is not aware of - eg, "an addiction to the good times in the relationship." More detail and references below.)

Long answer:

Research approaches to answering such a question are limited by ethical concerns, so most data on abusive relationships comes from self-reports, and most studies are conducted after the fact, though a few studies do examine self-reports during such relationships.

Reports of "love", "romantic narrative", or "emotional attachment" are common in such interviews, and often cited as the primary reason for staying. However, like many other reasons for staying, victims often change their mind ("what was I thinking?") after break-up and recovery. This suggests the possibility that emotional attachment may be a rationalization.

Real reasons for staying:

The likelihood of remaining in or returning to an abusive relationship is well predicted by other factors, such as economic dependency, social support, cultural factors, and characteristics of the abuse and the abuser. This further supports the possibility that emotional attachment is a rationalization of an underlying reason that the victim is either unaware of or suppresses.

Consider another factor: In behavioural experiments, an intermittent reinforcement schedule is considered the most powerful schedule for addiction. Abusive relationships typically involve a "cycle of abuse" (ie, intermittent) pattern. Thus, "addiction" to the "good" periods of an abusive relationship may constitute the real reason for staying in some cases.

Rationalized reason for staying:

Dutton and Painter (1993) report that in their sample base, emotional attachment was highly correlated with intermittent abuse. As is typical of addiction however, victims do not usually recognize the real reason behind it (eg, an intermittent schedule of abuse), and rationalize other reasons instead (eg, emotional attachment).

Dare, Guadagno, and Muscanell (2013) review the role of Cognitive Dissonance in abusive relationships:

> Women in abusive relationships may experience high levels of dissonance resulting from their negative attitude towards the abuse in the relationship and their inability to leave the relationship. If they feel "trapped" in the relationship, they may be inclined to change their negative attitude pertaining to the relationship or the abuse, whether they know it or not. ... Once the woman commits to an attitude change that results in her adopting positive feelings towards the abusive relationship, she will continue to have those positive emotions due to the human nature of wanting to remain consistent with our thoughts and actions; therefore, reducing dissonance. ... Eventually, her experienced dissonance will be at a minimum because her actions and attitudes have become consistent – she remains in the abusive relationship while developing a progressively more positive outlook on the relationship. This does not mean she thinks abuse is acceptable and wishes to be in a violent relationship, rather she feels most comfortable within the relationship whenever her cognitive dissonance is at a minimum.

Victims effectively convince themselves that they "love" their partner as a rationalization of their real reasons for staying in order to reduce their Cognitive Dissonance.

\*-Note that Self-Perception Theory is an alternative to Cognitive Dissonance Theory that makes essentially the same prediction in this context, so there is no particular reason to prefer one interpretation over the other.

# Answer
> 0 votes
The word "love" in this sense represents an addiction to strong emotional stimulation. As the provider of that stimulation the abuser is "loved". Continued abuse brings with it familiarity with the feelings and intensity generated, which may be interpreted as love.

Love is not necessarily a healthy thing as evidenced by cases of abuse.

# Answer
> -1 votes
There is a cycle to an abusive relationship. During this cycle, there are extremely happy moments (usually when the abuser is repentant and loving to the victim), fantasy segments (where the abuser fantasizes about abusing him/her again--s/he won't always admit to this section), the abuse (you know this part), and the apology and promise to never do it again. The last section is where the abuser promises all kinds of things to get the partner to stay--counseling, moving...whatever it is that the other wants.

In reality, abusive behaviors can be addictive. The abuser feels powerful when abusing the other person. Even before the cycle begins, the abuser is laying the ground work through manipulative arguments and psychological/emotional manipulations; then, when the abuse begins, the victim believes that it might actually be his/her fault. As odd as it sounds to those who have not been in this situation, the thought patterns have been slowly changed over time in order to achieve this.

It is a terrible cycle that takes a monumental amount of work to combat. For counseling to really work, both parties have to buy into it and really work at it. Even then, both parties may conclude that they bring out the worst in each other and dissolve the relationship.

Love does not mean abusing, nor allowing oneself to be abused. Sometimes, two people bring out the worst in each other. In these situations, it is better to part ways.

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Tags: social-psychology, love, forensic-psychology
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