# Question
Title: The psychological effects of answering Stack Exchange questions
I was interested in the effects of answering questions on Stack Exchange and/or Stack Overflow. Has there been any research on this (or similar types of roles), and the effect they have upon the answerer?

> ##### Anecdote
>
> I'm asking because I've been answering questions on Stack Overflow for a few months now, and while it's been fun helping people, I've noticed myself being less patient with people over time, growing frustrated with others more easily, despite not really wanting to feel that way, what with it being counter to the reason why I was answering questions in the first place.
>
> I would think this was just a me problem, but I used to volunteer at a bike shed, where I saw the same phenomena in the other volunteers there, where they would become quite spiky while dealing with members of the public, so I thought there might be more to this phenomena than I first thought.

# Answer
**SHORT ANSWER**

This phenomenon is obviously not limited to Stack Exchange, but can also happen to some professors (and teaching assistants) answering students' questions (or salesmen answering clients', or volunteers helping people in a workshop, as you describe).

I am not aware of any formal study of the phenomenon, and I would not expect one to exist (but I might be surprised!) as I think it is quite simple to explain: helpers who fail to connect with the people they help (not necessarily because they are "bad" helpers: connecting can take more energy than reasonable when helping a large volume of people in less than ideal conditions) will unconsciously feel that they help the same person over and over, and get frustrated.

The solution is to connect more deeply with each person helped (even if it means helping less people, under better conditions), and to celebrate each success as distinct of all the previous ones.

**LONG ANSWER**

Among academic professors, there is a running joke which, I think, puts light on the phenomenon you describe:

> I have been explaining this for 20 years, and the students STILL do not understand it and commit the same mistakes again and again!

This is a joke in the sense that, even though the students change every semester, a (mediocre?) professor teaching the same material again and again without connecting personally with the students gets the (irrational) feeling to be teaching the same (group of) person(s) again and again, and gets frustrated.

The solution to such feeling, of course, is to connect with each student, customer or stack exchange user rather than to treat them as an anonymous member of an anonymous crowd. If you focus on the particular background of each individual, and try to help each of them (rather than just deciding in which category to place them in order to give them the same "pattern" answer as all others individuals in the same category), in my experience each "aha" reaction from someone who was enlightened by your answer becomes a victory shining on your day/week/month. Failing to connect with individuals, you are dealing with an infinite flow of indistinct "dummies" and will ineluctably feel frustrated.

**References:**

I have been teaching in various universities since 2002. I tried to think about references to justify my answer, to not much avail. I do hope that this answer, based on my experience both as a student and as a professor, will be of help to you, and that you will find back the pleasure to help fellow human beings, on Stack Exchange and everywhere else!
> 1 votes

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Tags: social-psychology
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title: Why engage in intellectual activities?

text:
# Question
Title: Why engage in intellectual activities?
**What is the evolutionary psychology explanation of people engaging in intellectual activities (like mathematics, science or philosophy)?**

All I can think of is that such activities lead to models of the world that are closer to the way the world really is — hence the evolutionary advantage is that those people are more likely avoid danger, survive and pass on their genes. This is just speculation, though.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. The core idea is that "psychological traits and mechanisms are either functional products of natural and sexual selection or non-adaptive by-products of other adaptive traits".

*Thesis*

Homo sapiens subjects seem to be inherently bad with probabilities, and current humans seem to "suck at math" in general, so "evolutionary psychology would argue" that mathematical skills are not selected by natural nor sexual selection at the individual level. I guess the same could be told of philosophy, or science, for some formal definition of it.

*AntiThesis*

But if you define "Scientific skills" as the ability to learn from your environment and history in order to be able to make accurate predictions for the future in the short term (e.g. this place has good fruits, this place is dangerous), medium term (e.g. winter comes after autumn, one should migrate to a place with a warmer climate) and long term (e.g. clean a wound with water otherwise it will get infected), being able to do basic Science is definitely a psychological trait selected by both natural selection (an individual with such a trait would be more likely to survive) and sexual selection (an individual with such a trait would be able to offer more and better food to their mates). Some even claim to have found some genes related to learning.

*Conclusion*

So, I think that your explanation (even though you do not seem to think much of it, "All I can think of") is the right one, that "the evolutionary advantage is that those people are more likely avoid danger, survive and pass on their genes". If it seems to you that it lacks rigor, I think that most evolutionary psychology arguments are of the same order: it is much more difficult to prove things formally in social sciences than in Mathematics!

Hope it helps!

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Tags: intelligence, evolutionary-psychology
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# Question
Title: Averaging across electrodes in P300 to make a figure
I have a dataset in which we expect to evoke P300 peaks in an oddball setting. My part of the project considers building a machine learning model to classify whether a participant saw a relevant stimulus (eliciting a P300) or a distractor. The model works, so that's good. However, I wanted to include a figure showcasing the data for one subject.

* Is it OK to display the evoked response (so averaged across all trials), but also averaged across all electrodes? This would mean I have essentially only two curves on the plot, one for "target" and one for "distractor".
* Another option is to only use the occipital electrodes to make the plot, as we expect the subject to have visual activation.

# Answer
> 1 votes
From what I understand from the Q and comments is the following scenario:

* The graph is solely for informative purposes only;
* The model uses single-epoch data from many scalp electrodes at once;
* Single-epoch waveforms are to noisy too be of any value in a graph;

Thus, the data in your recordings that were fed in your AI don't lend themselves for visualization, because of the low signal-to-noise ratio. Hence you need averaging of epochs to make sense out of it for us human readers. In this situation I reckon it doesn't matter too much what you show in your sample data; whatever looks best. Assuming you'll bunch up multiple epochs and multiple electrodes from one or a few locations, make sure to:

* Check whether your ensemble-averaged waveform shows a feasible P300 representative for the P300 values that are being fed into the model;
* Mention which electrodes were averaged, with how many epochs and under what conditions so as to make sure the reader understands where the waveforms come from.

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Tags: neuroscience, methodology, neurophysiology, eeg, p300
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# Question
Title: How would a human baby's brain develop if born in a sensory deprivation chamber?
According to Scientific American, people who are blind can learn to use their sense of hearing more efficiently. Similarly, deaf people, may learn to utilize their vision more effectively. While the 5 senses that we are taught in school are the most obvious to perceive, The New York Times says that humans have more than 5 senses. Naturally, the brain is the organ that governs over every known sense. I read on The Conversation that partial ectogenesis has already been achieved. What I'm wondering is this:

Assuming that absolute ectogenesis will be feasible in the future, imagine a baby being born in a sensory deprivation chamber, provided it is receiving the nourishment, water, oxygen, and space it requires to survive. Since it is being deprived of many of its senses, would its intellectual abilities shoot through the roof as it develops? Would the outcome be the drastic opposite: a child whose brain simply does not function, due to the impossibility of receiving a sufficient amount of sensory inputs? Are sensory inputs needed to survive?

# Answer
> -1 votes
I'm not an expert, but I came across this when I asked Google a similar question. It's a great thought experiment.

I think the answer depends heavily on how long it is in there. If it's simply growing from a zygote to a viable fetus and then being removed, I think the results could be positive. Not that its intellect would be affected at all, because intellect, except perhaps the genetic component, doesn't develop in the womb. It mostly develops as a result of learning from the environment.  The brain should develop pretty much like any other human fetal brain. However, it would experience far less trauma during the birthing process and it wouldn't have learned its mother's voice, so it may not be looking for her at birth, which means it wouldn't be traumatized if it didn't immediately find her. The absence of trauma is a beneficial thing.

If it was left in there longer, past viability, it would likely be to its detriment. A few days probably wouldn't make much difference, but longer than that would likely cause cognitive impairment. Humans are associative learners; we learn through our senses.  Without sensory input we would not learn anything. If left in there for a longer period of time, (how long is too long, I don't know) the child would emerge as profoundly cognitively disabled, since the development of cognition depends upon sensory input and experience, as well as thought.

I hope this lends some insight.

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Tags: developmental-psychology, brain, brain-training, brain-development, cognitive-development
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# Question
Title: Why is it so difficult to use a "true mirror" as a mirror
This Youtube video shows what a "true mirror" is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSxCZCy5Wsk

In short, when you look into a true mirror you look at yourself (among other things) as you really are, instead of as a mirror image. That is what looking at real time video recording feels like.

But as anyone ever tried shaving or doing their makeup using a live video can tell, a true mirror makes you clumsy, to say the least. From my own experience, I find myself constantly confuse both left-right and front-back in such a case, which is interesting because a true image is just a mirror image that reverses left-right and front-back. So it seems to me some part of my brain in some sense recognizes my true image as a mirror image, and summons whatever pertinent mirror image circuits to automatically take on from there. Any other thoughts on how to explain this difficulty?

Think about this: suppose a person grows up never seeing a mirror reflection, will he be able to use a mirror for the first time? will he not be better off with a "true mirror" than with a mirror? If he grows up using true mirrors, will he be as clumsy with mirrors as we are with true mirrors? We feel natural and at ease dealing with mirror images. Is this just the result of practice and experience? I'm curious if a true mirror will become as natural as a mirror if one uses it for long enough.

# Answer
> 8 votes
*This answer supports the comment by Krysta that we are simply used to the mirrors we have and could just as easily learn to use a "true mirror".*

In 1950, Theodor Erismann and Ivo Kohler performed a famous self-experiment in Innsbruck, Austria. Kohler wore a pair of glasses that turned his view of the world upside down continually for 124 days (sic). After about 8 days his perception had adapted and he was able to ride a bike or paint just like before.

The image below shows Kohler wearing the glasses:

Here is the original documentary movie created by the two researchers (in German) on the website of the Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Würzburg, Germany: http://www.awz.uni-wuerzburg.de/archiv/film\_foto\_tonarchiv/filmdokumente/th\_erismann\_ikohler/die\_umkehrbrille\_und\_das\_aufrechte\_sehen/

Here is an article from the German Wikipedia describing the glasses and showing an image of a current (self-built) model: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkehrbrille I don't know what this "Umkehrbrille" ("turn around glasses") are called in English.

# Answer
> 3 votes
I am struggling to recall the scientific term for what you are describing, but it is a simple cognitive phenomenon that guides and informs the design of physical, real-world interfaces.

Let's look at a mouse on a computer. The motion of the mouse in the real world corresponds to the motion of the cursor on the screen. As an experiment, try to use the mouse sideways. (not upside-down). Notice how clumsy it is? It is because the motion does not at all correspond to what is happening in the real world. You are engaging another layer of your brain, a layer that is 100 times slower than the automatic layer engaged in movement of the mouse along its normal axis. This is irrespective of practice - it would still be more difficult if you had used the mouse in this manner for many years (unless you had a brain disorder).

The same problems confront folks who design computer interfaces for aircraft, spacecraft, and other complex physical systems. We have to design to decrease the cognitive load required to operate the device, and that involves, among other things, designing so that motion corresponds to the natural direction it does in your head. A mirror already complies with this principle (at least in the side-to-side plane), but a "true mirror" does not. That is the reason for the difficulty.

# Answer
> 0 votes
As the maker of the True Mirror, and with over 30,000 individual showings over the last 30 years, there's a big reason to get over the strange hand/eye dis-coordination that occurs (and also the unfortunate doubling effect of any asymmetries): It's really "us" looking back, our face works this way, and stops working when reversed. We can see how we are, not just what we look like.

The person that is looking back with a reversed set of eyes is not able to communicate naturally. This is because the messages within our face that augment our words (and/or our non-verbal messages as well) are easily read by anyone looking at us, forming a key component of communication. Tke key here is the messages are different left to right, just as the brain hemispheres are different left to right.

When you flip your face in a mirror, indeed the left and right sides are swapped...the argument that mirrors only flip front and back and the mirror left side is still on "your" left side is not correct or relevant. The fact that you are facing yourself means that the right side needs to be on the opposite of your right side and vice versa for the left. (you can't shake your own hand in a mirror, the left hand of the mirror person comes out to meet your right hand)

In a True Mirror, you are seeing your face with the eyes and features correctly positioned, just like anyone looking at you, and therefore the messages read correctly and your expressions communicate accurately. Your subsequent responses can then be normal, just as another person communicates with you. In any mirror, you are in an incredibly dynamic communication feedback loop with yourself. But in a reverse mirror, there is information distortion introduced into the message, which causes them to be read differently, and in practice causes expressions to fade very quickly. It manifests as more of a stare, especially in the eyes. In the True Mirror, the feedback loop is still there, but without the information distortion, and expressions stick around and even grow.

The key expression that is impossible to keep for more than a second or two, and which works marvelously in the True Mirror, is our genuine smile. Its the light in the eyes that is so different when you reverse them - they just don't carry the reason for the smile, causing them to fade rapidly. Whereas in the True Mirror, it actually can grow, just as they do in real life when we are talking with others. Smiles are amazing vehicles for communicating so many elements of empathy, humor, understanding, being ok and beauty.

We all have been living with a literal doppelganger in our own personal experience, a version of us that only we see, and which is missing so many parts of our expressive personality. We are used to it, but at some level, it is causing strange and unexamined effects on our self-image, understanding, awareness, esteem, confidence, and other self-ism, and possibly is a root cause of feeling different than others. With a feedback loop with distortion, you don't know where its going to go, so everyone seems to have a different relationship with themselves, usually at odds with how others relate to them.

So yes, in a True Mirror, the physical effects are challenging, but easily overcome with familiarization. I can shave in it now, and find a spec of stuff on my shirt without thinking, and likewise if I put on makeup, it would also become normalized (though I might wait a while before working on my eyes!)

But so much more important is the idea of getting familiar with and learning about the person that I am in real life, the person that everyone else sees, the person that has many expressions. And through the exquisite communication tool that is my face, this true reflection can clue me into who and how I am doing. It also suggests to stop looking in mirrors and having an altered being with a non-expressive face inform me of the same.

For the last two years I have been posting reactions on social media (@truemirroco), and so you can see for yourself how much more dynamic people can be with themselves in a non-reversing mirror, and how much gets lost within seconds when they meet their eyes in reverse.

Let me know if this makes sense and you have comments or questions!

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, theoretical-neuroscience, neural-network, brain-development
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# Question
Title: Name for the psychological tendency to lying to onself
Does anyone know if there is any research or a name for the psychological tendency to lie to oneself?

# Answer
> 0 votes
You are trying to delineate George Vaillant's classification of pathological **unconscious** defense mechanisms (delusional projection, denial and distortion), which differ from **conscious** coping mechanisms (meditating, seeking social support). One can't escape from using defense mechanisms because it's out of cognitive regulation's reach. However, coping mechanisms can alleviate the distortions of these aforementioned defense mechanisms. Freud's daughter (Anna Freud) studied these defense mechanisms thoroughly.

Defense mechanisms take us away from the reality of the situation, whereas coping mechanisms let us adhere to objective reality. This kind of parallels the idea of emotional coherence (cognitive dissonance or other reality-distorting fallacies) which is taken into account in coherence therapies.

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Tags: deception
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# Question
Title: Best practice for comparing data between completers and non-completers?
I conducted a study which collected data on a brief one-time intervention at 3 timepoints (pre, post, and one-week follow-up). There were some participants who dropped out between these 3 timepoints. In a second version, I also compared 2 groups doing the same intervention, but under different conditions. Would the recommendations change in these circumstances?

**I ideally want to only use data from participants who completed the surveys at all 3 stages, for the most 'accurate' idea on how effective the intervention was. So, what is considered best practice to ensure there were no significant differences between participants who dropped out and those who completed all 3 stages?**

I searched around and the current plan is to use MW-U/independent t test to compare age, and chi-square for gender, SES, occupation to ensure there are no significant differences between dropouts and completers, and potentially a mixed ANOVA for the study using 2 conditions in addition to the 3 timepoints. Eyeballing the data at this stage, nothing looks drastically different, but worth noting in the results section perhaps. And if something does come up, would I just acknowledge in results section that certain demographics (for example) were more likely to not complete, then continue my analysis only using data from people who completed all stages?

# Answer
> 1 votes
A few quick ideas:

You can compare completers and non-completers using a range of statistical tests. Ultimately, the choice of test will typically depend most on the type of outcome variable. For instance, if it is binary or unordered categorical, you would most commonly use chi-square. If it is a typical numeric variable, you would most commonly use an independent groups t-test. That said, there are many other tools for looking at group differences, which might be justified in some cases. For instance, if the outcome variable was numeric but distributed non-normally, you might use non-parametric tests. If you had a bunch of numeric outcome variables, you could do an overall test of group differences using MANOVA.

You may also want to consider your alpha level. If you are comparing many different outcomes, you may want to correct your alpha. For instance, you could divide your alpha by the number of outcomes that you look at.

More generally, you may also want to look into "intention to treat" analysis.

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Tags: social-psychology, measurement, methodology, statistics
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# Question
Title: Which of IQ or personality traits best predict job performance?
IQ seems to be an important predictor of job performance (close to 0.6 correlation coefficient), see here.

It is said that: "Evidence from more than 100 y of research indicates that conscientiousness (C) is the most potent noncognitive construct for occupational performance." (Wilmot et al. 2019)

Comparing directly IQ and personality traits, which of IQ or personality traits best predict job performance?

**References:**

Wilmot, M. P., & Ones, D. S. (2019). A century of research on conscientiousness at work. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(46), 23004-23010.

# Answer
You can find a recent updated review in Sackett et al (2022). It provides a range of validity estimates from r = .31 to to r = .36 for cognitive ability tests and r = .19 to r = .22 for conscientiousness, depending on what corrections are applied for measurement error for job performance and range restriction. Note that these are practical validities based on imperfectly measured conscientiousness and intelligence. The latent relationships are likely stronger.

A well-established finding is that the size of the correlation of cognitive ability and job performance increases as the cognitive complexity of the role increases.

So in summary, both cognitive ability and conscientiousness are important. Cognitive ability is typically more important, and this is particularly true for cognitively demanding jobs.

### References

Sackett, P. R., Zhang, C., Berry, C. M., & Lievens, F. (2022). Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: Addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range. Journal of Applied Psychology, 107(11), 2040. PDF
> 2 votes

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Tags: personality, iq, performance
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# Question
Title: What is the difference between a psychopath and sociopath?
The Internet is of course full of memes from Sherlock Holmes show, based on one of the episodes having Sherlock self-diagnose:

> I'm not a psychopath, I'm a highly functioning sociopath

**But what exactly is the difference?**

Wikipedia does not actually seem to offer any meaningful distinction between the two, including seemingly indicating that they are synonymous in DSM but not actually named there.

> The DSM and International Classification of Diseases (ICD) subsequently introduced the diagnoses of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and dissocial personality disorder, stating that these have been referred to (or include what is referred to) as psychopathy or sociopathy.

# Answer
Ironically enough, Wikipedia *does* offer as meaningful a distinction as any of the answers here so far:

> The term *sociopathy* may have been first introduced in 1909 in Germany by biological psychiatrist Karl Birnbaum and in 1930 in the US by educational psychologist George E. Partridge, as an **alternative to, or a subtype of,** the concept of **psychopathy**.\[137\] It was used to indicate that the **defining feature is violation of social norms, or antisocial behavior**, and has often also been associated with postulating **social as well as biological causation**.\[139\]\[140\]\[141\]\[142\]
>
> There are various contemporary usages of the term. Robert Hare, who may believe that biological factors are predominant in causing psychopathy,\[143\] claimed in a 1999 popular science book that **sociopathy and psychopathy are often used interchangeably**, but in some cases the term sociopathy is preferred because it is less likely than is psychopathy to be confused with psychosis, whereas in other cases which term is used may "reflect the user's views on the origins and determinates of the disorder". Hare contended that the term sociopathy is preferred by those that see the causes as due to social factors and early environment, and the term psychopathy preferred by those who believe that there are psychological, biological, and genetic factors involved in addition to environmental factors.\[78\] Hare also suggests another possible distinction: he defines psychopathy as not having a sense of empathy or morality, but sociopathy as only differing in sense of right and wrong from the average person.\[144\]\[145\]\[verification needed\]\[bolding added for emphasis\]

While this largely echoes the existing answers, it includes references to published books and articles, involves the idea's history, and gives the impression that the distinctions between psychopathy and sociopathy are largely in the mind of the authors. They vary somewhat from one author to the next, and don't seem to have much empirical support as distinct diagnoses.

One also ought to question the utility of the proposed distinctions. Secondary psychopathy is also meant to imply social etiology, but also lacks empirical support somewhat. Defining a disorder by violation of social norms is a particularly poor approach to abnormal and clinical psychology, because social norms are typically subjective and ill-defined themselves, and do not necessarily apply outside a contemporary cultural context. Such a definition must possess very limited reliability across time and space.

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**References**
78. Hare, R. D. (1999). *Without conscience: The disturbing world of the psychopaths among us*. New York: Guilford Press.
137. Rutter, S. (2007). *The psychopath: Theory, research, and practice* (pp. 37). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
139. Partridge, G. E. (1930). Current conceptions of psychopathic personality. *The American Journal of Psychiatry, 1*(87), 53–99.
140. Felthous, A., & Sass, H. (2008). *International handbook on psychopathic disorders and the law*, Vol. 1. Wiley.
141. Hildebrand, M. (2005). *Psychopathy in the treatment of forensic psychiatric patients: Assessment, prevalence, predictive validity, and clinical implications*. Rozenberg Publishers.
142. Partridge, G. E., & Hamblin Smith, M. (1930). Epitome of current literature: Current conceptions of psychopathic disorder. *The British Journal of Psychiatry, 76*, 838. Retrieved from http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/76/315/838.1.extract.
143. Ronson, J. (2011). The psychopath test (pp. 225). Riverhead Books.
144. Hare, R. (2006). *Snakes in suits: When psychopaths go to work*. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers.
145. Skilling, T.A., Harris, G. T., Rice, M. E., & Quinsey, V. L. (2002, March). *Identifying persistently antisocial offenders using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist and DSM antisocial personality disorder criteria*. American Psychological Association.
> 13 votes

# Answer
Psychopathy is a diagnosis with high reliability and validity, which is based on research originally begun by psychologist Robert Hare and now continued by many others. It is often used in forensic settings, and its use requires specialized training.

Sociopathy isn't a diagnosis and has no generally accepted clinical definition (unless it's in the ICD, which I don't use); but it's often associated with Antisocial Personality Disorder in the DSM-5. APD has less research behind it, and lower reliability and validity. It is more likely to be used in clinical settings.

As someone else noted here, there is some overlap between the two, but they are distinctly different diagnoses.
> 6 votes

# Answer
My understanding of the distinction is that psychopaths are the way they are from birth, while sociopaths become antisocial due to upbringing or other environmental factors. As well, psychopaths have a high tendency towards violence but generally low impulsiveness, while sociopaths may not be as violent but have high impulsiveness. Diffen has a nice and fairly comprehensive comparison of the two terms.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Here is very nice article about difference: http://knowledgenuts.com/2013/11/03/the-difference-between-psychopaths-and-sociopaths/

Here is some history of psychopathy diagnosis: http://law.jrank.org/pages/1884/Psychopathy-What-psychopathy.html

In short APA made fusion of sociopathy and psychopathy diagnosis in DSM, but lot of researches was conducted in prisons. So they omited "snakes in the suits" whicha are very inteligent and charming and often climb very sucsesfully on corporate ladder.
> 2 votes

# Answer
The main difference between a psychopath and a sociopath is that you become a sociopath , while you are born a psychopath.Psychopaths cannot feel pity for others or remorse , while sociopaths dont.This video from Psych2Goers explains it very well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLdf7nQDiIo&t=121s

Highly functioning sociopaths dont exist.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Well, neither a psychopath nor a sociopath is actually an official diagnosis. The main difference is that 'sociopath' is an unofficial term to describe someone with antisocial personality disorder in general while psychopathy is a series of behaviors associated with antisocial personality disorder, including:

* shallow emotional responses
* impulsivity
* lack of empathy
* increased chance of antisocial behavior
> 0 votes

# Answer
A sociopath merely doesn't care about others. A psychopath isn't able to care because they are disconnected from reality.

If you really want to be sane, ditch the DSM and stop trying to categorize human beings, because that *itself* tends towards psychopathy. The only term that matters is **insanity** and that can (should) be defined as a "disconnection from reality" (calling yourself a horse, when you're actually a human, for example).
> -3 votes

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, terminology, empathy
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# Question
Title: Scientific references and experimental protocols for identifying emotions in animals other than mammals?
**QUESTION:**

Which experimental protocols can be used to study formally the presence or absence of emotions in non verbal beings, such as other animals than humans? Is there a survey about such results and/or experiments?

**BACKGROUND:**

In a recent (June 2023) video, the eminent Stanford neuro endocrinology professor Robert Sapolsky states (at 1:36) that emotions are "*very much a mammalian specialty, lizards are not well known for their emotional life*". I was surprised, as I thought that it wad well known that non mammals (such as birds) do display a wide range of emotions.

On the other hand, a (dubious?) recent article titled "*Deciphering Avian Emotions: A Novel AI and Machine Learning Approach to Understanding Chicken Vocalizations*" (June 2023, researchsquare.com) claims to describe an experiment in using AI to translate the sounds emitted by 80 chicken into emotional states as varied as "*happiness*", "*hunger*", "*tiredness*", "*pain*", and "*fear*".

**PERSONAL SEARCH:**

An online search yields (non scientific) articles stating that "*There is no scientific agreement about whether or not birds have feelings*" and confusing arguments opposing emotion and instinct (The Spruce.com, 2019-04-11); or asking whether "*Birds Have Feelings and Emotions?*" (learnbirdwatching.com, undated) with a mitigated answer (without references) that "*it’s widely acknowledged that birds have basic emotions like fear and pleasure, what about more complex emotions like love or grief?*":

> This is a question that has been debated for centuries, as there is no scientific evidence to definitively answer it. However, it is widely accepted among pet owners and birdwatchers that they do indeed possess feelings and emotions. Animals, including birds, are capable of exhibiting behaviors such as love, pleasure, fear, joy, excitement, anger, depression and sadness – all of which can be interpreted by humans as emotional states.

Among the scientific articles, the best I could find was a 2019 article by Papini et al. titled "*Avian Emotions: Comparative Perspectives on Fear and Frustration*". It states that "*Comparative psychologists have struggled with the problem of emotion because, as many other important concepts, they cannot be directly observed or measured.*" (and refers to Darwin's study of facial expressions), and concludes that "*the evidence for fear in birds seems stronger than the evidence for frustration*", all based on a survey of previous results.

**MOTIVATION:**

I find it hard to believe that those are the only results known about emotions in other animals than mammals (and in particular in birds). As I am studying some Quaker parrots using home-made video games, in which the subjects do exhibit (what I interpret as) both positive emotions such as satisfaction and negative emotions (which I do my best to reduce) as frustration, studying more formally their emotional states seems like a good research opportunity, but I would like to avoid re-inventing the wheel...

# Answer
> 1 votes
Q: Do non-human animals experience emotions?

I believe the closest we have to a scientific consensus on the matter is "The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness":

> Mammalian and avian emotional networks and cognitive microcircuitries appear to be far more homologous than previously thought. ... Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.

Q: Is it possible to reliably detect emotion X in individuals of non-verbal species Y (or birds in general)?

Kremer et al (2020) provide a great review of emotion research in general. The problem is that whether detecting emotion X in individuals species Y where Y is *human* is reliably possible non-verbally, depends on the theory of emotion that you subscribe to. The field of emotion research remains divided about the existence of reliable non-verbal assessment of emotion even in humans! Thus, it is more conservative to concentrate on what is known as "core affect" - a 2-dimensional subjective state that universally underlies all emotion (though even this has been disputed!) - as exampled below.

Q: What experimental protocols can be used to detect core affect or general mood states in birds?

For a broad overview of general research protocols in animal emotion, try Wikipedia. The Kremer et al (2020) paper mentioned above also contains an extensive review.

One well-researched approach is the "judgement bias test":

> For example, on many trials, if the animal presses lever A after a 20 Hz tone it gets a highly desired food, but a press on lever B after a 10 Hz tone yields bland food. The animal is then offered both levers after an intermediate test stimulus, e.g. a 15 Hz tone. The hypothesis is that the animal's "mood" will bias the choice of levers after the test stimulus; if positive, it will tend to choose lever A, if negative it will tend to choose lever B.

This test is often used to assess how environmental factors affect the mood of subjects, and has been evaluated in several species of birds (eg, Lagisz et al, 2020; Paul et al, 2022). The discrimination power of this test for small differences in affect is limited, and different variants of the test also vary in power, so the most appropriate alternative for a given context may be worth further investigation.

Another popular approach for measuring general animal emotional welfare is a "qualitative behavioural assessment":

> Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA) is a method that relies on the ability of human observers to integrate perceived details of behaviour, posture, and context into descriptions of an animal’s style of behaving, or ‘body language’, using descriptors such as ‘relaxed’, ‘tense’, ‘frustrated’ or ‘content’. Such terms have an expressive, emotional connotation, and provide information that is directly relevant to animal welfare and could be a useful addition to information obtained from quantitative indicators. Previous research with pigs, cattle, sheep and poultry consistently showed QBA to have high inter- and intra-observer reliability and to be coherent with quantitative behavioural and physiological measures, both when animals were assessed individually and at group level.

This method has also been used with several species of birds (eg, Vasdal et al, 2022; Rose & Riley, 2019; Souza et al, 2021; Fleming et al, 2016).

Other options include:

* Consumer demand: Mood affects subject choices between interchangeable resources.
* Preference tests: Subjects select their preferred environment directly.
* Psychoactive drugs: Subjects self-medicate more when stressed.
* Physiological tests: An assortment of physiological stress indicators are available.
* Attention bias: Mood affects attention to threatening stimuli.
* Play behaviour: Most species of birds play more when less stressed.
* There are many other potential indicative behaviours applicable to birds, such as exploration, problem-solving, and social grooming.
* Neurological correlates of emotion states are under development, as are AI-based methods.

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Tags: emotion, measurement, methodology, reproducible-research, animal
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# Question
Title: If hippocampus grid cells A,B,C encode a location, then do grid cells A,B,D (similar pattern) encode a nearby location to the first?
I don't completely understand the advantage of having grid cells as a navigation aid. I know they are called the 'GPS' of the brain. I also read that they can encode locations in a large space, and I saw that a paper came out recently showing how to do 'path integration' with grid cells. But usually in the brain, similar patterns code for similar things. I don't think this is true of grid cells. Is it true that if - lets say - 3 grid cells encode a particular location, that a similar pattern (maybe sharing 2 of the 3 cells), will encode a nearby location?

# Answer
> 1 votes
First, a comment: **Place cells**, not so much grid cells, are thought to reflect a positional signal in the brain. Each place cell specifically activates in 1 or a few locations in a given environment. For example, place cells A, B, C will be active in location 1 and place cells C, D, E will be active in location 2. Note that a place cell can be active in multiple locations (called 'place fields'), like C in our example, which is still fine as the *ensemble* of place cells firing in that location will still be unique.

> similar patterns code for similar things

Indeed, two similar subsets of active place cells, say ABG vs ABE, are likely to reflect nearby locations, as the regions of activity of place cells are gaussian-like and nearby place fields overlap.

Then, **Grid cells**, unlike place cells, have many, repeating active regions of interest ('grid fields') and as such it is more difficult to retrieve precise location information from them. The combination of active grid cells XYZ, unlike for place cells, will occur many times in a given environment, due to the repeating nature of their firing. However, with enough co-recorded grid cells, it is probably possible to extract accurate position information from their population firing, especially since each grid field might have a different firing rate, but I'm not aware of any experimental work doing that (the most related seems to be Gardner et al., 2022 but they do not decode 2D position). With that in mind, it should still be the case that similar patterns of firing will correspond to similar locations, but you will need to observe the activity of a lot more cells for this to be true, compared to place cells.

Additional material:

PS: Grid cells are not found in the hippocampus but in the (monosynaptically connected) Entorhinal Cortex; place cells are the ones found in the hippocampus.

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Tags: hippocampus
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title: Books to understand autism?

text:
# Question
Title: Books to understand autism?
Are there any books for non-professionals to better understand autism? I would also accept a cheatsheet with things to do or remember. This does not need to be academically accepted, as it is for my own personal use.

To provide some context to the above - I have heard autistic people struggle to understand questions such as: "You understand, no?" incorrectly interpreting it to mean say yes if you have not understood.

I vaguely remember someone say that, some autistic people once focusing on an instruction might forget something just discussed, so will struggle to apply this new knowledge to what was aforementionly discussed. I am not sure how true this is.

Otherwise, feel free to pin this question and hopefully as a bright community we can compile a list of common pitfalls, nuances, and problems autistics might have.

Disclaimer: I am the autistic person, I am doing this to better understand myself and my flaws, and will provide this to my friends (so far they have been very supportive).

# Answer
> 2 votes
I'm no expert, but I found Jennifer Cooke O'Toole's *The Asperkid's (Secret) Book of Social Rules* helpful in understanding parts of autism. It has cheatsheets that may be helpful.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Temple Grandin is an academic researcher in animal husbandry, on the Autism spectrum. While she is not doing research on autism per say, she has published various books to explain autism to a public of neuro-typical people: you can find a list of such books on her website. I read many (if not all), and I recommend in particular the following ones about autism:

1. Different ... Not Less, for some Stories of Achievement and Successful Employment about Adults with Autism;
2. Visual Thinking and Thinking in Pictures for some insights about her visual based thinking; and
3. Calling All Minds for some more general thoughts about the creative thought process from the point of view of a neurodivergent mind.

Only indirectly related to autism, but which I found still very interesting, are the two following books about other animals than humans and the similarity of (what we know of ) their way of thinking with Temple's introspection of how her mind works (and her generalisation to how the mind of people on the autism spectrum works):

I hope it helps!

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Tags: language, philosophy-of-mind, autism, language-processing, theory-of-mind
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# Question
Title: Is the mathematician's activity psychologically healthy?
I am a professional mathematician, and I regularly meet other mathematicians.
I have come to wonder if there is something like a slight neurosis, specific to this activity.

To be more precise, let me grossly describe the mathematician's activity:
The mathematician tries to solve a problem. This problem is usually sufficiently hard to not be solvable without an intense concentration. There are two types of concentration here:

* A local type: the intensity in the moment (i.e., all the thoughts are focused on this single problem).
* A global type: the commitment in time (i.e., work on this problem for months, even years).

Usually, the local concentration can be sufficiently intense so that the mathematician loses the feeling of hunger, thirst or sleep. In this state, there is usually no room for a healthy relationship with others.
It is almost as if the mathematician has a state near that of autism (see Asperger syndrome).

The global concentration permits one to develop in the time a more and more intense concentration on the problem. The mathematician is committed "body and soul" into solving the problem and could neglect all other aspects of his life like social relationships, married life, children...
It is almost as if the mathematician has become more and more autistic.

So ok, autism is a severe neurosis and it's usually irreversible. It's the reason why I speak about a slight neurosis specific to mathematicians, because it's usually reversible...

In light of what I wrote:

> Is the mathematician's activity psychologically healthy ?

# Answer
> 10 votes
Well that looks like the behavior of any person with a strong passion and focus for his work. There are plenty of these around!

I guess it would be more common in any field of work were people already have dedicated a significant part of their life to it, and where it is almost a prerequisite. Being a mathematician selects and cultivates people able to display consistently that kind of behavior. Otherwise you just don't succesfully study high level maths, or fail at it. That is why you may observe many occurences of this phenomenon in your environment, when you work with other mathematicians.

Nothing to worry much about i think, there are plenty of people like you around, and this is not directly related to mathematics.

# Answer
> 7 votes
This kind of behaviour also occurs in fields that use/rely on mathematics, such as my 2 of my main fields - physics and programming. Both employ a significant amount of maths concepts to understood and applied, often overlapping in places.

As an example, I have been known to work for over 12 hours in a single block to solve a problem.

Is this healthy? If it impinges on necessities such as sleep, eating, social life - then yes, it can potentially be somewhat harmful; however, people with a passion for what they do, often achieve great results that no only benefit themselves, but potentially others too.

# Answer
> 5 votes
If you define **mental disorder** as any behavior not applying to (more or less arbitrary) social norms, then yes, the activity you describe would probably be considered mental disorder. However, the same would apply for example to:

* homosexualism
* most hobbies
* asceticism and religious devotion
* playing and listening to music

The last may seem odd, but Plato have written in 'The Republic' that musicians are not needed in his ideal state, because there's no use of them.

As for now, being common or being social norm is not the crucial part of determining if something is mental disorder or not. The most important parts are that some behavior is causing **objective suffering** and it has the nature of **disability**.

Is your mathematical drive causing you objective suffering? Well, sometimes you are frustrated for sure, but objectively it makes you happy and gives you aim in life. Has it disabiliating nature? No way, mathematics are so important in contemporary society!

Some symptoms are similar, but it's just like suspecting ADHD because you don't sleep a half of the day.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Simon Baron-Cohen developed a relevant tool for this question: the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ).
A test is available here.

Here are the abstracts of two papers of Baron-Cohen et al.:

"The Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ): Evidence from Asperger Syndrome/High-Functioning Autism, Males and Females, Scientists and Mathematicians":

> **Abstract**: Currently there are no brief, self-administered instruments for measuring the degree to which an adult with normal intelligence has the traits associated with the autistic spectrum. In this paper, we report on a new instrument to assess this: the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Individuals score in the range 0–50. Four groups of subjects were assessed: Group 1: 58 adults with Asperger syndrome (AS) or high-functioning autism (HFA); Group 2: 174 randomly selected controls. Group 3: 840 students in Cambridge University; and Group 4: 16 winners of the UK Mathematics Olympiad. The adults with AS/HFA had a mean AQ score of 35.8 (SD = 6.5), significantly higher than Group 2 controls (M = 16.4, SD = 6.3). 80% of the adults with AS/HFA scored 32+, versus 2% of controls. Among the controls, men scored slightly but significantly higher than women. No women scored extremely highly (AQ score 34+) whereas 4% of men did so. Twice as many men (40%) as women (21%) scored at intermediate levels (AQ score 20+). Among the AS/HFA group, male and female scores did not differ significantly. The students in Cambridge University did not differ from the randomly selected control group, but scientists (including mathematicians) scored significantly higher than both humanities and social sciences students, confirming an earlier study that autistic conditions are associated with scientific skills. Within the sciences, mathematicians scored highest. This was replicated in Group 4, the Mathematics Olympiad winners scoring significantly higher than the male Cambridge humanities students. 6% of the student sample scored 32+ on the AQ. On interview, 11 out of 11 of these met three or more DSM-IV criteria for AS/HFA, and all were studying sciences/mathematics, and 7 of the 11 met threshold on these criteria. Test—retest and interrater reliability of the AQ was good. The AQ is thus a valuable instrument for rapidly quantifying where any given individual is situated on the continuum from autism to normality. Its potential for screening for autism spectrum conditions in adults of normal intelligence remains to be fully explored.

and "Mathematical Talent is Linked to Autism":

> **Abstract**: A total of 378 mathematics undergraduates (selected for being strong at “systemizing”) and 414 students in other (control) disciplines at Cambridge University were surveyed with two questions: (1) Do you have a diagnosed autism spectrum condition? (2) How many relatives in your immediate family have a diagnosed autism spectrum condition? Results showed seven cases of autism in the math group (or 1.85%) vs one case of autism in the control group (or 0.24%), a ninefold difference that is significant. Controlling for sex and general population sampling, this represents a three- to sevenfold increase for autism spectrum conditions among the mathematicians. There were 7 of 1,405 (or 0.5%) cases of autism in the immediate families of the math group vs 2 of 1,669 (or 0.1%) cases in the immediate families of the control group, which again is a significant difference. These results confirm a link between autism and systemizing, and they suggest this link is genetic given the association between autism and first-degree relatives of mathematicians.

**Questions**: Is the AQ of a mathematician high (in average) because of his/her activity? Or was it high before? Or, was it slightly high before and then increased by the activity?

I discovered that in the following extract of the book on Grigori Perelman by Masha Gessen "Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century":

> More than forty years after Hans Asperger, a British psychologist named Simon Baron-Cohen came to study autism and Asperger’s syndrome and figured out several things that seem to me to be very useful in understanding Grigory Perelman. First, Baron-Cohen suggested that the autistic brain was lopsided in a particular way. Where a neuronormal brain has the ability to both systemize and empathize, the autistic brain might be excellent at the former but is always lousy at the latter - causing Baron-Cohen to dub the autistic brain “the extreme male brain.” Baron-Cohen defined systemizing as “the drive to analyze and/or build a system (of any kind) based on identifying input-operation-output rules” and theorized that great systemizers might be at increased risk for autism. When he tested this theory on a population of Cambridge University undergraduates, it turned out that the mathematicians among them were three to seven times more likely than other students to have a diagnosis of an autistic condition. Baron-Cohen also developed the AQ, or the autism-spectrum quotient, test, which he administered to adults with Asperger’s or high-functioning autism as well as to randomly selected controls and Cambridge students and winners of the British Mathematical Olympiad. The correlation between math and autism and/or Asperger’s was proved again: mathematicians scored higher than other scientists, who scored higher than students in the humanities, who scored roughly the same as the random controls. I took the AQ test too when Baron-Cohen e-mailed it to me, and scored as high as Baron-Cohen would probably expect a former math-school student to score, which is very high. Grigory Perelman, as far as I know, never took the AQ test and certainly cannot be diagnosed by someone who has not talked to him, though after I spent an hour on the phone describing Perelman to Baron-Cohen, the famous psychologist volunteered to fly to St. Petersburg to evaluate the famous mathematician - who sounded so very much like many of his clients - thus joining the long list of people who had volunteered help that Perelman did not welcome.
> Had Baron-Cohen chosen Russian rather than British mathematicians as his subjects, the results would probably have been either the same or even more clearly pronounced. After all, Russian mathematical prodigies are often grouped with others of their kind in environments that are especially tolerant of their particular brand of weirdness. The tradition of forgiving mathematicians their autistic rudenesses dates back as far as anyone can remember. Many memoirs of Kolmogorov cite his peculiar manner of walking away in midconversation, demonstrating both his utter disregard for social convention and his pragmatic approach to socializing, which is typical of Aspergians: once he had received the information he sought, he had no further use for communication. In one instance, Kolmogorov, then a dean at Moscow University, was accosted in a hallway by a man who said repeatedly, “Hello, I am Professor Such-and-Such.” Kolmogorov did not answer. Finally, the professor said, “You do not recognize me, do you?” Responded Kolmogorov: “I do, and I realize that you are Professor Such-and-Such.” In the Aspergian world, conversations are exchanges of information, not exchanges of pleasantries. Most of Kolmogorov’s students cited another of their teacher’s typically Aspergian traits: what they called his “temper” and what were actually frightening episodes of apparently uncontrollable rage. That Kolmogorov’s marked social problems did not impair his career is a measure of the degree to which a sort of Aspergian culture was built into the larger Russian culture of mathematics.

This extract should be balanced with the following extract coming from the Book Review for *Notices of the AMS* by Donal O’Shea:

> Gessen argues that the people who surrounded Perelman sheltered him from ordinary reality, allowing him to mistakenly believe that the world is as he thinks it should be. This elaborate narrative is totally conjectural—Gessen has no evidence about what Perelman believes. Undaunted, she goes on to diagnose Perelman with a full-blown case of Asperger’s syndrome. I simply don’t know enough to evaluate these claims and am entirely unconvinced. Everyone agrees that Perelman lives simply, so why not make the simpler assumption that he wants privacy and does not want to be encumbered with fame or money? Perelman’s recent refusal of the million-dollar Clay Millennium award suggests this, particularly since the Clay Institute made it clear that Perelman would not have to participate in any public ceremony.
> Even putting aside the evidentiary questions, I found the second half of the book offensive. I felt uncomfortable reading about a living individual who wishes to remain out of public sight. Publicly diagnosing someone with a serious psychological disorder without consultation seems ethically questionable, not to mention presumptuous. Doing any sort of mathematics requires precision, careful attention to meaning, and concentration. Gessen’s account of British psychiatrist Simon Baron-Cohen’s autism-spectrum quotient test, and the purported strong correlation between high-functioning autism and mathematical ability in a test population, runs dangerously close to medicalizing precisely these traits. Gessen’s presumption does not end with psychiatric expertise. She opines freely on Perelman’s work, characterizing it as solving the “very, very complicated olympiad problem” into which she has Hamilton casting Thurston’s geometrization conjecture. She cavalierly ranks top mathematicians in descending order from those who open new fields by posing questions no one has thought to ask (such as Poincaré and Thurston) to those who devise ways to answer those questions (such as Hamilton) to the bottom of the top, those poor souls (such as Perelman) who take the last steps in completing proofs. Mathematicians will easily discern the depth of Gessen’s mathematical ignorance, but others will not, and it is depressing to see Perelman’s inspiring achievement and powerful new ideas reduced to psychobabble: “Speaking of the imaginary four-dimensional space, he referred to things that could and could not occur ‘in nature’. In essence, he \[Perelman\] was able to do in mathematics what he had tried to do in life: grasp at once all the possibilities of nature and annihilate everything that fell outside that realm - castrati voices, cars, anti-Semitism, and any other uncomfortable singularity.”

# Answer
> 1 votes
In recent years, autism has been expanded to the autism spectrum conditions, not just encompassing severe autism, and it has become a common issue. Therefore, you do not need to claim that autism is a serious problem. Some mathematicians, especially the top ones, fully meet the criteria for mild autism spectrum. However, at the same time, we do not consider the autism spectrum conditions to be mentally unhealthy, unless the person involved is really troubled by it. If you are not troubled by it, and the autistic-driven behaviors of other mathematicians haven’t hurt you, you absolutely do not need to consider this unhealthy or seek a diagnosis.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, abnormal-psychology, autism, mathematical-ability, aspergers
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title: SAD Therapy Light Specifications?

text:
# Question
Title: SAD Therapy Light Specifications?
I keep running into alternative theories and facts about what specification of light to use in sun lamps for light therapy treatment.

Many actual afflicted people seem to just swear by just pumping as much light as humanly possible onto a person's eyes. I am talking up to thousands of watts, commercial LED flood lights. Other articles seem to place more importance on the color, and sometimes even on the exact frequency graph. And all consumer products seem to be small tablets you place about 6 inches from your face.

What, according to research, is the best setup for treating SAD? Is there an optimal color and intensity or is it just about increasing light available?

# Answer
All I know is u want a SAD lamp with: at least 10,000lux a reasonable distance away-like 12”,full spectrum, up to 6500K, and a CRI over 95.

Those are all for the best kind of SAD lamp..which is also hard to find ALL those specs in one light..so it’s gonna be spendy to find that.

If u want cheaper u can certainly find 10,000lux at a 4-6” distance away, full spectrum up to 6000K, and a CRI around 90..that would make for a decent SAD lamp, just not the best.

Also, a light that projects downward(like the sun does) is best-but also hard to find along with all those other specs.

I’ve spent hours n hours trying to find the best(but also not so expensive) one, and I’m sick of it. So if anyone has recommendations, please share!
> 0 votes

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Tags: vision
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# Question
Title: Methods for comparing extracellular neural response structure to auditory stimulus structure
I have two arrays, one representing an auditory stimulus and the other representing neural activity from auditory cortex. The auditory stimulus has known temporal and spectral structure. The neural data has unknown structure, but visual inspection suggests that some stimulus types elicit neural responses with temporal structure similar to that of the stimulus. I'm wondering how best to compare stimulus structure to the response structure in a way that allows me to quantify the degree of structural coupling, thus which stimulus type causes the strongest coupling. I'm assuming that a cross-correlation method could be appropriate, but I'm not sure if it's the best method, or if there are good alternatives.

# Answer
A common method for this is called "reverse correlation", see for example https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as\_sdt=0,50&q=reverse%20correlation%20receptive%20field

The technique is most popular with visual stimuli (movies, spatiotemporal receptive fields) but can be applied to auditory stimuli (spectrotemporal receptive fields, unfortunately the same "STRF" acronym) as well.
> 1 votes

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Tags: statistics, data, electrophysiology, analysis, auditory-discrimination
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title: What is meant by increased vagal tone?

text:
# Question
Title: What is meant by increased vagal tone?
Smiling ,for example,can stimulate vagus nerve as written in the following quote:

> Whether it’s through mindfulness, paced breathing, sports, sex or simply smiling, increased vagal tone is important for good health and wellbeing. There is a lot of hype online and some of it may be over the top. But reduced stress and greater relaxation are safe for everyone and have positive effects for our body and brain.

In above quote vagus nerve is stimulated by increased vagal tone.

My question is - What is meant by increased vagal tone ? Can pain also stimulate vagus nerve and increase vagal tone ?

# Answer
"Tone" here refers to tonus or tonic activity. Wikipedia says:

> Tonic in physiology refers to a physiological response which is slow and may be graded. This term is typically used in opposition to a fast response.

I'd go a step further, and say that "tonic" or "tone" to a neurophysiologist is often synonymous with activity that is so slow that it's the *baseline*, in contrast to *phasic* responses which are evoked by some sort of stimulus.

When someone says "increased vagal tone" they mean "there are more action potentials being fired in axons in the vagal nerve when the person recording the activity isn't doing anything to produce/evoke/stimulate it". This is more of an observational quality than anything specific; it doesn't say *which* particular fibers are active, or whether activity is increased in all fibers a little or in a few a lot. However, vagal tone is often not measured directly, instead it's measured by vagal effects on the heart rate:

> In most cases, vagal tone is not measured directly. Instead the processes affected by the vagus nerve – specifically heart rate and heart rate variability – are measured and used as a surrogate for vagal tone. Increased vagal tone (and thus vagal action) is generally associated with a lower heart rate and increased heart rate variability.

So, you're right, when someone tells you "increased vagal tone", the next question you should ask them: "What is meant by increased vagal tone? How did you measure it?" - otherwise you don't know for sure what they mean. If they can't tell you, then possibly they don't know what they're talking about.
> 2 votes

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Tags: neuroscience
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# Question
Title: The relationship between sunlight and depression
Background information: I recently had a discussion with my friend about a disagreement when renting an apartment and whether or not he should rent a house that faces the sun. My friend has a diagnosis of depression, and he was concerned that a room facing west would cause him to not receive enough sunlight and back aggravate his condition.

Question: I do understand that there is a link between sunlight and depression, but I'm more interested in knowing exactly what factors affect depression and if they exacerbate it.

1. Light intensity
2. Duration of sunlight
3. ...

# Answer
According to (my personal experience and) Wikipedia, your friend is right in that the amount of sun exposure might affect their mood: "The incidence of melancholic depression has been found to increase when the temperature and/or sunlight are low."\[Melancholia@Wikipedia\]

Nevertheless, there are other ways to increase one's exposure to the sun (and to fight depression), from scheduling a daily walk at sunrise to the use of light therapy lamps every morning ("Light therapy has also been suggested in the treatment of non-seasonal depression and other psychiatric mood disturbances" \[LightTherapy@Wikipedia\]).

In any case, there are many types of depression (and many factors which can cause such mental disorder, of which lack of sunlight exposure is only one among many, such as lack of aerobic exercise, unbalanced nutrition, lack of social interaction, inappropriate amount of sleep, etc.) and I would recommend discussing the issue with the specialist who diagnosed your friend rather than "people on the Internet", even if through a collaborative interface such as Stack Exchange.

I hope it helps!
> 1 votes

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Tags: depression
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# Question
Title: Is functional Near Infrared spectroscopy supported by quality evidence?
I came across a reference to Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in a news article. https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/smartphone-brain-nov14-1.7029406

According to Wikipedia,

> fNIRS is an optical brain monitoring technique which uses near-infrared spectroscopy for the purpose of functional neuroimaging.\[1\] Using fNIRS, brain activity is inferred by using near-infrared light to estimate cortical hemodynamic activity which occurs in response to neural activity.

I understand this to mean hemoglobin saturation (as measured at the surface of the scalp) is used to infer metabolic activity of the underlying cerebral cortex.

Given that light is highly diffused by soft tissue, and bone is virtually impenetrable to light, I can’t imagine how fNIRS measurements can penetrate highly vascular scalp and skull tissue to give useful resolution of brain tissue.

The only plausible research I could find with a Google-search showed its utility for lateralizing language dominance.

Is fNIRS supported by evidence? Is there any good research on its clinical utility? Is this phrenology all over again?

# Answer
> 1 votes
From the same Wikipedia page you reference:

> The technique takes advantage of the optical window in which (a) skin, tissue, and bone are mostly transparent to NIR light (700–900 nm spectral interval) and (b) hemoglobin (Hb) and deoxygenated-hemoglobin (deoxy-Hb) are strong absorbers of light

The page also has detailed information about the history of the technique and its advantages and disadvantages, mentions studies comparing to other modalities like https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3021967/ \- these would be good places to start for validation.

However, I'd also caution you that even fMRI which is extremely popular has questionable relationships with neuronal activity, and the BOLD signal in some circumstances may not show what is assumed or validated in other contexts; the same applies with fNIRS, see e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4791590/. If you were going to use this technique I'd recommend validation for your specific use case.

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Tags: pseudoscience
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# Question
Title: Is there a way to study the effects of Ex-Post Facto variables using Single-Case Experimental Designs?
Suppose we want to compare patients in different stages of cancer in terms of the dependent variable X. One way is to group them with large sample sizes and compare them using parametric statistics. But if access to the sample is limited, what other ways can we use to obtain preliminary evidence of the effects that each stage produces? In an alternating treatment design, we change the conditions of the intervention, but the subject remains the same. Is there a way to change both the **c**onditions (stages of cancer) and **s**ubjects (i.e., Phase 1: C1/S1, Phase 2: C2/S2, Phase 3: C3/S3)? Note that we cannot follow a patient from stage zero to the final stage.

```
                        |      |        | ,,,,, |      |
   dependent variable   | **** | ...... |       |''''' |
                        | C1/S1|  C2/S2 | C3/S3 |C4/S4 |

```

# Answer
> 2 votes
I don't really know what you mean by "single case design" since this doesn't seem to be what you describe in the rest of your post. It sounds like your design would be appropriately modeled using mixed effects regression, using a random effect for subject and fixed effect for cancer stage, assuming you have multiple measures in each subject (just multiple; not necessary for it to be every stage). You'll probably need at least around 10 participants for it to make sense to use a random effect. If you don't have multiple measures in each subject then you don't need anything fancy at all, you just have a model with one fixed effect, the cancer stage. In that case this design can be modeled statistically just like if you had randomly assigned participants to a cancer stage in an experiment (if such a thing were possible, or desirable).

However, there isn't anything magic about these models and no method to have more data than you actually have. If you have few participants, your estimates will be imprecise. There is no way around this, you can't know whether differences between individuals are because of random differences between people or because of the variable you're tracking, until you have a large enough sample. Pilot studies are a poor source of effect size estimates, see for example https://www.nccih.nih.gov/grants/pilot-studies-common-uses-and-misuses

I'd be wary as well that there is some confounding between the stages you're able to observe and the unmeasured qualities of the case, that is, someone's stage 3 where you also have a stage 4 measurement is probably not directly exchangeable with someone else's stage 3 who never progresses to stage 4. I don't have a good solution to recommend for that problem, though.

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Tags: methodology
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# Question
Title: Is there any research on "victim mentality" or is this a made-up expression with no scientific equivalent?
I am interested in learning more about what it means to be a victim vs. what it means to have a "victim mentality." My understanding is that not all people who are traumatized think of themselves as victim. Another way of saying that is not all people who have been victimized before have a victim mentality of seeing themselves as constant victims of situations and people.

So, in order to examine the causes of difference between these groups of traumatized people, I tried to do some online search in psychology journal but I was not even able to find a definition of victim mentality. No luck finding a definition for a more common expression, "victim role," either which may or may not be the same as victim mentality.

Therefore, I decided to make a post here and hopefully someone more knowledgeable can shed light on this for me. Thank you.

# Answer
Below are some papers along with direct quotes in which they use they use the term "victim mentality".

Kets de Vries, Manfred. (2012). Are you a victim of the victim syndrome? *Organizational Dynamics. 43.* 10.2139/ssrn.2116238.

> "Most of us, when faced with life's obstacles, do something about them and get on with it. But people with a **victim mentality** are incapable of doing so. Their negative outlook on life transforms every setback into a major drama."

> ". . . people with a **victim mentality** are very difficult to handle. They have an extremely fatalistic outlook on life. Because they believe they have no control over the way events unfold, they have a poor sense of responsibility. Every negative outcome in their life is attributed to people or circumstances beyond their control. Every effort made to help them, or to present a solution to their predicament, is met by a huge arsenal of reasons why it will not work, some of them quite ingenious. Their problems are apparently unique and therefore insoluble. They appear always to be trying to prove the helper wrong. Anyone prepared to help them is left with a sense of utter frustration."

Andronnikova, O. O., & Kudinov, S. I. (2021). Cognitive Attitudes and Biases of Victim Mentality. *Changing Societies & Personalities. 2021. Vol. 5. Iss. 4, 5*(4), 654-668.

> ". . . the studies of **victim mentality** as a manifestation of specific cognitive processes indicate such obvious distortions connected to the perception of oneself and the world as catastrophizing, exaggerating consequences or difficulties and helplessness."

> "We assumed that a person with **victim mentality** has the corresponding cognitive victimogenic characteristics that reduce their adaptability and make them more vulnerable in dangerous situations."
> 2 votes

# Answer
This mentality is related to one’s locus of control

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unraveling-the-mindset-of-victimhood/

There is a self perpetuated belief that things happen to them rather than within their control.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=victim.mentality+peer+reviewed&hl=en&as\_sdt=0&as\_vis=1&oi=scholart#d=gs\_qabs&t=1700519789690&u=%23p%3DwlBjU3Kz8WAJ

On the other hand there are those who consider enduring trauma as surviving and adapt a survivor’s mindset.

https://nataliarachel.medium.com/survivor-versus-victim-mentality-as-a-response-to-complex-trauma-ec5927c377d7
> 0 votes

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Tags: trauma
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# Question
Title: Why do certain individuals struggle to memorize song lyrics?
Some people have a hard time memorizing song lyrics, even after repeated listening.

What individual factors contribute to the difficulty in remembering song lyrics?

# Answer
> 0 votes
Because there are different kinds of memorizing mechanisms, such as visual, aural, short term, long term, etc.

Most people have an average memory (which may mean high visual memory and low aural memory or vice versa or average both visual and aural memory).

Also they may be more interested in the melody to the lyrics and they just do not pay attention to the lyrics.

It can be a combination of both.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Music is a specific form of memory assistance called a mnemonic device. For some it creates connections. Those connections may not be articulable but the brain finds them.

How often one hears a song, the context, and any emotional attachments to the meaning can affect how well lyrics are retained. Active listening takes practice as does memorization, doing both at once with unfamiliar material is an understandable challenge.

The inability to recall this way means that your brain is relying on different connections. For more visual people reading the lyrics or creating a mental image may make them “stick” better than just listening.

The consolation is usually such that when your mental functionality appears lacking in one area it is stronger in another to compensate.

https://lesley.edu/article/stages-of-memory

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Tags: neuroscience, learning, psychology, long-term-memory
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# Question
Title: What is the "official" stance on the theory of structural dissociation?
From what I have heard, Nijenhuis's research is questionable, and ridden with abusive practices. Moreover, lots of the information that I am finding on this subject is sourced to biased seeming sources, that make a number of questionable claims about D.I.D (such as that D.I.D is not a result of trauma, that it is not rare, or that alters to talk to one another in a mental "headspace"). So I am curious, how does clinical psychology react to the theory of structural dissociation, and more broadly, what is the official stance on D.I.D?

# Answer
The most recent DSM recognizes DID but there is still controversy regarding existence and diagnosis.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/202302/the-debate-over-whether-dissociative-identity-disorder-is-real?amp

“Dissociative identity disorder is part of the larger dissociative disorders spectrum; however, it has more specific criteria outlined by the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Edition-5. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5)criteria for DID include at least two or more distinct personalities.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK568768/#:~:text=%5B10%5D%20Dissociative%20identity%20disorder%20is,two%20or%20more%20distinct%20personalities.
> 1 votes

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Tags: personality, abnormal-psychology, dissociation
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# Question
Title: What is the highest SAT score on record for someone with moderate intellectual disability?
What is the highest SAT score on record for someone with moderate intellectual disability?

> The SAT standard deviation is 217 points, which means that most people scored within 217 points of the mean score

Has anyone with moderate ID ever scored 1600 or near to that?

# Answer
This is not information that is generally disclosed during testing. It is difficult to determine such a thing without proper testing. Research would mean either finding a pool of participants who met some defined standard of an “intellectual disability” and administering the test, or locating the results of tests taken by people vetted as such. I do not know how you would go about determining that, however.

I realize this doesn’t answer the question but I hope it helps understand why it has not been answered.
> 0 votes

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Tags: intelligence
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title: Why is "bad" perceived as "cool"?

text:
# Question
Title: Why is "bad" perceived as "cool"?
The existence of the phenomenon that "bad" is considered "cool" is attested by a simple search on the Internet (here, here, and here).

It can be also attested by the success of movies depecting anti-social but popular heroes (Scarface, Fight-Club, many films by Tarantino, etc.).

Research seems to indicate that the positive association between popularity (a proxy for "cool") and anti-social behavior (a proxy for "bad") is identified during adolescence, but not before of after this period (Estell 2019; Lansu et al. 2022).

But I was not able to find why "bad" is perceived as "cool", overall (in adolescents and non-adolescents).

**Edit:**

In the study mentioned in the answer below, the data are made of people suffering from personality disorders, so I am not sure the results would still be verified in a non-pathological population. I mean, relatively to other Personality Disorders, Impulsivity is positively correlated to reproductive success. It is not necessarily the case when compared to non-pathological individuals. It indicates, yes, that impulsivity (aka "bad") can have some appeal.

**References:**

Estell, D. B. (2019). Popularity/antisocial goals. *Social goals in the classroom*, 154-170.

Lansu, T. A. M., Findley-Van Nostrand, D., & Cillessen, A. H. N. (2023). Popularity According to Emerging Adults: What is it, and How to Acquire it. *Emerging Adulthood*, 11(2), 331-345. https://doi.org/10.1177/21676968211066668

# Answer
> 2 votes
The “rebel” has appeal from an evolutionary perspective. Traits that are contradictory to monogamy are beneficial for procreation.

Mates who are perceived as virile, independent, and strong are desirable for reproduction. This makes prospective partners attracted to them and contemporaries envious, hence the “cool” factor.

https://hellogiggles.com/attraction-to-rebels/

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Tags: behavior
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# Question
Title: Does somebody maybe know the name of this psychological phenomenon?
Suppose that I need to take medication because of my symptoms. When taking medication, then I'm better. Then I think that I do not need medication because I am feeling well. So I stop taking medication. Now my symptoms get worse because I stopped taking medication for them. So I go back to taking medication.

Does somebody maybe know what this psychological phenomenon is called? ChatGPT says it is the "non-compliance circle" but I can not find anything when I google for that term. Thanks for any ideas and replies!

# Answer
> 0 votes
This rebound cycle is relatively well known but often considered a result of the flawed thinking involved in a mental illness. Some call it noncompliance, others non-adherence but it is understood in psychology that patients often feel better and stop taking medication on a cycle. The key is learning that you’re doing better because of medication not in spite of it. It is not really considered a phenomenon as much as a learning curve to overcome with clients.

https://natashatracy.com/treatment-issues/noncompliance/why-mental-illness-stop-taking-medication/

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Tags: medication
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# Question
Title: Does Consciousness require a Structured Physical System?
I have been studying Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory, and there he mentions 5 characteristics of human conscious experience (source: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Integrated\_information\_theory):

One of the 5 characteristics is that human conscious experience is *structured*: each experience is composed of multiple phenomenological distinctions, elementary or higher-order. For example, within one experience I may distinguish a book, a blue color, a blue book, the left side, a blue book on the left, and so on.

Now my question is, does the fact that human conscious experience is structured provide strong evidence that all conscious experiences require structured physical systems?

The argument for my claim goes as follows: suppose that there are two possibilities-

1. consciousness can arise from any physical system, structured or unstructured
2. consciousness can only arise from structured physical systems

Because there are many more unstructured systems in the universe than structured systems, thus with high probability we would expect our conscious experience to be unstructured.

But since our conscious experience is in fact highly structured, thus by the Anthropic Principle it much likely that consciousness requires a structured system rather than merely an unstructured system.

# Answer
In the context of the IIT framework, that human conscious experience is structured, is an axiom, not a fact.

Going forward, they then assume that this aspect of conscious experience (structure) must arise from an underlying physical system; they somehow assume that there exists a physical counterpart of this aspect (axiom) of conscious experience.

Since they then assume that a cause and effect relationship exists between these two systems, it follows that the physical counterpart must be structured too; it's part of their postulates.

Note though, that this is a theoretical framework, based on assumptions and axioms, it's not fact.
> 0 votes

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Tags: theoretical-neuroscience, consciousness, dynamic-systems
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# Question
Title: Are there any papers on the neurobiology/ neuroscience of hyper-industriousness?
I'm quite intrigued by this topic, and, unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any interesting papers on the subject...More specifically, I'd like to know more about the mechanisms that regulate industriousness, and whether there are any prospects of making people more industrious using drugs. Thanks for your help.

# Answer
I’m not sure what you mean by “hyper-industriousness” exactly. There is some recent evidence to suggest that small amounts of hallucinogenics create a productivity or creativity boost.

https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12954-019-0333-3

The government experimented with methamphetamines on soldiers but the long term effects are detrimental. Of course, notably so is sending an 18 year old to battle so it difficult to claim the resulting shell shock was only related to one variable.

https://projectknow.com/blog/three-of-the-craziest-government-drug-experiments-ever/

The problem with the benefits of drugs is their curvilinear effectiveness. There is essentially a window of proper dosage that is both difficult to maintain and highly variable.
> 0 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, personality, neurophysiology
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# Question
Title: How do Terence Tao's "three stages of rigorousness" relate to cognitive science?
This is an excerpt from There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs of Terrence Tao:

> 1. The “pre-rigorous” stage, in which mathematics is taught in an informal, intuitive manner, based on examples, fuzzy notions, and hand-waving. The emphasis is more on computation than on theory. This stage generally lasts until the early undergraduate years.
> 2. The “rigorous” stage, in which one is now taught that in order to do maths “properly”, one needs to work and think in a much more precise and formal manner. The emphasis is now primarily on theory; and one is expected to be able to comfortably manipulate abstract mathematical objects without focusing too much on what such objects actually “mean”. This stage usually occupies the later undergraduate and early graduate years.
> 3. The “post-rigorous” stage, in which one has grown comfortable with all the rigorous foundations of one’s chosen field, and is now ready to revisit and refine one’s pre-rigorous intuition on the subject, but this time with the intuition solidly buttressed by rigorous theory. The emphasis is now on applications, intuition, and the “big picture”. This stage usually occupies the late graduate years and beyond.

Does this have any stance in the context of cognitive science? A comment in Mathematics Education says that this idea can't be broaden in other fields/jobs in any level of academic, since:

> Tao is using the word rigor in a way that's fairly narrow and specific to math. Namely, rigor means proving every statement one makes or uses, in full detail, from some list of axioms. One cannot rigorously work on cars, any more than one can rigorously eat one's dinner. It also does not make sense to talk about "post-rigorous" in the context of solving geometry exercises, because "rigorous" doesn't mean being good at something.

But I still don't understand this. Sure, it does not make sense to say "eat dinner rigorously", but it is possible for a good cook to know the hidden ingredients, the recipe or the taste of it by just looking and smelling the food, and I think this is equivalent to "proving every statement one makes or uses, in full detail, from some list of axioms".

So how is this phenomenon described rigorously in cognitive science?

# Answer
**Mathematics** is the

> abstract science of number, quantity, and space, either as abstract concepts (pure mathematics), or as applied to other disciplines such as physics and engineering (applied mathematics)

**Cognitive sciences** are

> the interdisciplinary, scientific studies of the mind and its processes

I think that mathematics is a way to achieve something, to put it bluntly, it's a tool. A tool to, for example, model certain brain processes. Further, math is an abstract tool; cognitive sciences is an applied science. Cognitive sciences can use math to accomplish its goals. By contrast, math can never use Cognitive Sciences to prove anything.

Now you say that rigor means

> \[an\] emphasis \[on\] theory; comfortably manipulat\[ing\] abstract mathematical objects without focusing too much on what such objects actually “mean"

I don't think one can study the mind without focusing on what it means. Instead, studying the mind is often done exactly to try to find out how it works and what certain findings mean! Now -

**Scientific rigor** **in general** means

> the quality of being believable or trustworthy

While in maths it has a specific meaning:

> logical validity or accuracy

So in terms of semantics the answer is that it is indeed a matter of meaning. Rigor can mean a lot of things, which is different across disciplines.
> 4 votes

# Answer
I can recognise similar processes in psychological science as a researcher.

For instance:

* Throughout your life you generate a lay theory of how people work and how human psychology works. The source of all these beliefs are complex and generally not well understood by people.
* When you study psychological science, you learn about measurement, statistics, research methodology. You also get exposed to various theories. Gradually, you are training in how to reason about how psychological knowledge is generated. This can involve many different things (e.g., how to interpret a t-test or factor analysis; how to judge a measurement instrument; how to critically evaluate a research design). The focus on these detailed steps can make it difficult to see the big picture.
* But if you spend enough time updating your theories of human psychology based on a rigorous understanding of methods and the theories that such methods support, you can, in theory, begin to operate intuitively with this knowledge, to generate expectations and novel hypotheses.

So I think this is just an example of the idea that a true expert needs to have learnt the rules in order to effectively break the rules.
> 1 votes

# Answer
I am only an undergraduante on physics, but I would like to give myself a shot to answer this, because I've read and applied some knowledge to increase my cognitive perfomance on my tests -such as chunking and retrieval routine- and I think I can contribute- with my perspective about your question.

Terence Tao affirmations look very related to how crystalized intelligence shapes the behavior towards an subject wich one has increasingly more and more experience. For a mathematician and for a physicist, for example, those subjects would be planar and tridimensional geometry, matrix operations and etc., wich are basic topics on mathematics and physics.

So, the more one works with different subjects and acquires more experience, more results of some calculations wich one did, in undergraduate years as example, can be easily recalled later on. So, the routes to work on questions and problems in your field become more optimal to a point you can "comfortably manipulate mathematical objects", because it is easier to predict the results of mathematical problems.

It reminds me the article "Recall of random and distorted chess positions: Implications for the theory of expertise" by Gobet and Simon (1996). It affirmes -based on a computer simulation- that a Chess Master has about 50 000 chunks of memory associated to patterns of chess positions. Thus, it is intuitive to also apply that notion to a experient mathematician, because both had learned and acumuled lots of results. Consequently, the mathematician can manipulate mathematical elements with proficiency such as Chess Master can do with chess positions.
> 0 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, terminology, methodology, educational-psychology, intuition
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# Question
Title: Would it be possible to directly block dopamine release in the mesolimbic area?
Thinking about the treatment of (drug induced) psychosis I'm having the following thoughts.

Drug induced psychosis makes up for 25% - 50% of cases of patients experiencing psychosis . Nevertheless treatment options seem to mainly target psychosis independet of drug use and treatment is based on the **d**opamine **h**ypothesis.

So the main treatment option is to block D2 in the mesolimbic area in order to treat the symptom of D2 hyperactivity which can cause the positive symptoms of schizophrenia e.g. auditory hallucinations.

In my mind, I think if substance (ab)use releases dopaine in the mesolimbic area and causes a D2 hyperactivity than the dopamine being released should also cause a hyperactivity of D1,3,4 which might have other side-effects.

I wonder why we solely block the effects of excessively released dopamine on D2 rather than preventing dopamine from being released in that area to begin with? or would that introduce additional problems?

Would there be a mechanism that causes dopamin to be released upon taking recreational drugs like THC, MDMA, Psylocibin, LSD, Cocaine, DMT, etc.. where you could hook into?

I think a refined strategy could increase the efficiency of antipsychotics used to treat drug-induced related diseases.

# Answer
If you want to have a drug affect only a certain area of the brain, your options are:

1. Deliver the drug locally
2. Use a very specific drug that only affects a specific receptor found in a specific location

Those are the only physical possibilities. For option (2), there is an important biological constraint: this method is only plausible if there is in fact a specific receptor found in the specific target location. No amount of drug discovery can help you if the receptors in the target area are also found something else; the perfect drug is going to affect them both.

D2 receptors are not found only in the mesolimbic area. From Wikipedia you can expect to find them in:

> striatum, substantia nigra, ventral tegmental area, hypothalamus, cortex, septum, amygdala, hippocampus, and olfactory tubercle

There are splice variants but I'm not aware of one that is exclusive to mesolimbic areas.

That leaves you with local delivery. You can do local delivery simple enough with a tube and a syringe: put the tube in the brain region you want, put your drug in the syringe. However, if you want to use this in a human rather than a laboratory animal, you'll have to consider the possible side effects of drilling a hole in the skull and having a long-term catheter present. Those procedures might be worth doing in emergency and extreme situations, but it's not going to be a feasible solution for most cases. The risks of infections inside the brain and direct damage to surrounding brain tissue if the tube moves around are going to be too great. You'll also have to deal with an immune response that will disrupt and eventually clog your catheter. All that said, if you want to answer the question of whether it's even *possible* to do what you want (prevent psychosis by specifically targeting D2 receptors in mesolimbic structures), this is probably the way to start in animal models: deliver your antagonist physically to the target brain region.

For cancer treatments, researchers have been working on other options for targeted drug delivery such as using antibodies. The idea is that while you may have a drug that's toxic to all cells, if you use an antibody that binds to something on a cancer cell, the concentration of your toxin that the cancer cells are exposed to is much higher than the rest of the body. This might be technologically plausible for your use case, but likely not a real solution without extensive research (you'll need to find an antibody that binds specifically in your target areas) and it's unclear whether the risks and problems with introducing an antibody are worthwhile for your purpose. If your goal is to avoid drug-induced psychosis it would be far simpler to avoid exposure to the psychosis-inducing drug in the first place.
> 1 votes

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Tags: psychiatry, drugs, dopamine, psychosis
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