# Question
Title: What is the difference between social anxiety disorder and shyness?
It seems that there are similar symptoms shown by people who suffer social anxiety and shyness, but what is actually the main difference between them? Thank you.

# Answer
It's a matter of degree.

First of all, "shyness" is not a psychological or psychiatric term, but an everyday English word denoting a commonly observable personality characteristic on a par with courage, cheerfulness, or honesty. The meaning of "shyness" is not exactly defined, and people may use the word "shyness" to refer to different kinds of behaviors, from being introverted (and not interested in social interaction) to being afraid of social interaction.

"Social anxiety disorder", on the other hand, is a psychiatric and clinical psychological term, the meaning of which is clearly and exactly defined by the scientific community. That means that while there is of course some debate about what social anxiety disorder is, there is agreement about what the term currently means.

As for the relation between shyness and social anxiety disorder, shyness is generally conceived as a mild from of social anxiety, which leaves the person able and functioning in his or her life, while social anxiety disorder is such a strong anxiety that the person suffering from it cannot partake in a normal way, is disabled by this anxiety, and suffers from its effect.
> 11 votes

# Answer
The accepted answer is correct, it is basically a matter of degree, plus some other things.

Adding more details, refer to the following definition of Social Anxiety Disorder (previously known as Social Phobia) taken from The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition:

> A. A persistent fear of one or more social or performance situations in which the person is exposed to unfamiliar people or to possible scrutiny by others. The individual fears that he or she will act in a way (or show anxiety symptoms) that will be embarrassing and humiliating.
>
> B. Exposure to the feared situation almost invariably provokes anxiety, which may take the form of a situationally bound or situationally pre-disposed Panic Attack.
>
> C. The person recognizes that this fear is unreasonable or excessive.
>
> D. The feared situations are avoided or else are endured with intense anxiety and distress.
>
> E. The avoidance, anxious anticipation, or distress in the feared social or performance situation(s) interferes significantly with the person's normal routine, occupational (academic) functioning, or social activities or relationships, or there is marked distress about having the phobia.
>
> F. The fear, anxiety, or avoidance is persistent, typically lasting 6 or more months.
>
> G. The fear or avoidance is not due to direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., drugs, medications) or a general medical condition not better accounted for by another mental disorder

Perhaps more specifically, it is written in this DSM-5 Social Anxiety Disorder Fact Sheet, that (emphasizes are from me):

> **Social anxiety disorder is about more than just shyness and can be considerably disabling**. A diagnosis requires that a person’s fear or anxiety be out of proportion—in frequency and/or duration—to the actual situation. The symptoms must be persistent, lasting six months or longer ... **To be diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, the person must suffer significant distress or impairment that interferes with his or her ordinary routine in social settings, at work or school, or during other everyday activities**

It's also important to note that there's been a great deal of effort in defining abnormality (disorder). I don't own any version of DSM (I do have a physical copy of Clinical Psychology by Andrew M. Pomerantz and Abnormal Psychology by Nolen-Hoeksema, but they are currently borrowed by friends), but the criteria for abnormality usually involves (as seen here and here):

* Emotional distress
* Impaired functioning in day-to-day life
* Deviance from cultural norm
* Statistical infrequency
* Behavior that places people at risk for personal suffering, pain, disability, or death

And it usually has to last for a certain period of time before it can be diagnosed as a disorder.

**DO NOTE**, however, that no matter how much you feel that you or anyone you know seems to fit with one or more of the above criteria, you **CAN'T** simply conclude that he/she/they have a mental disorder. Diagnosis of mental disorder should only be done by someone who is certified by law to do so, such as psychologist or psychiatrist. And even then, it should be done only after complete, thorough, and proven analysis.
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, abnormal-psychology, personality, psychiatry, clinical-psychology
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# Question
Title: How is an emotion different from a thought or a sensation?
I don't know any good definition of emotion. I don't know what they really are, subjectively. I don't understand what makes an experience an emotion, as opposed to a thought or a sensation.

* What is a good definition of emotion?
* How is an emotion different from a thought or a sensation?

# Answer
Right. No need to reinvent the wheel, so let me Google that for you...

## Emotion

> a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.
> "she was attempting to control her emotions"
> *synonyms*: feeling, sentiment; reaction, response
> $\quad\quad\quad\quad$"she was good at hiding her emotions"
> $\quad\quad\quad\ $ **·** passion, strength of feeling, warmth of feeling
> $\quad\quad\quad\quad$"overcome by emotion, she turned away"
>
> **·** instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge.
> $\ \ $"responses have to be based on historical insight, not simply on emotion"
> $\ \ $synonyms: instinct, intuition, gut feeling; sentiment, the heart
> $\quad\quad\quad\quad$"responses based purely on emotion"
> 2 votes

# Answer
It is hard to delineate emotion completely from thoughts or sensations, because emotion can contain both. If you're in a certain emotional state, that means you're reading your bodily state via a series of sensations (so called interoception, as opposed to sensations originating from the world around you). You can also think about the fact that you're feeling a certain way, and having a concept for your emotional state becomes part of the state as well. What makes emotion different from thinking about some other sensations (such as: 'this is green') is that emotions are fueled by an underlying feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness. However, even this is difficult to completely delineate from some sensations. It is difficult to feel emotionally neutral about the sensation of physical pain, for example.
> 2 votes

# Answer
In terms of thoughts vs emotions, from a clinical psychology perspective, I conceptualize an emotion as a single word or an image (e.g. anger or "seeing red") while I conceptualize thoughts as sentences. So, if I ask a client what he was thinking, and he says "I was angry," I would label that an emotion and encourage them to expand on the thought ("I thought she was being mean, and felt angry.") Again, this may be more relevant to clinical settings than from a basic research perspective.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Technically speaking, an emotion is not different from thought the way it is processed in brain, both involve neurotransmitters. But a thought may not always be an emotion as it may include logical thinking too.
> -1 votes

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Tags: emotion, terminology
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# Question
Title: Record an eye blinking waveform signal from EEG signals
I want to Record an eye blinking waveform signal from EEG signals , but it need to make a quiscent periods of recording , So how to make this quiescent periods(i.e the signal has a zero amplitude at all time in the quiescent recording except the eye blinking time)?

# Answer
You can't.

1. Flatline EEG is how brain death is defined, and while it may be possible to induce an eye blink in a deceased human, I am sure ethics will not approve, and it won't be scientifically satisfactory.
2. even in the case of a real flatline EEG, there will always be some remaining residual activity (albeit very weak), such as line noise.

However,

1. the eye blink is a few orders of magnitude stronger than the ongoing EEG
2. you can isolate eye blink activity using techniques such as ICA
> 3 votes

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Tags: eeg, signal-detection
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# Question
Title: What kinds of information can (and cannot) be extracted from connectome?
Several scientific projects are trying to map the connectome, such as The Human Connectome Project. The connectomes of other organisms, such as *C. elegans*, have been mapped already.

Having an organism's connectome, what information can we extract from it? And, most importantly, what information will still be missing?

For example, can we extract the following functional information from the connectome:

1. Is the synapse connection excitatory or inhibitory?
2. Which ions does the synaptic connection use?
3. What is the strength of the synaptic connection?

For simplicity, let's assume that we're using the best imaging and data gathering techniques available (including combinations of techniques).

# Answer
First at all, the connectome must be interpreted like a static picture of the brain. So anything related with plasticity and dynamical processes will be lost in this map. There are connectome at macroscopic areas using fNMR but I'm going to focus in the cellular level.

We can define three types:

* Dense Connectome - It is the classical idea of connectome that consist in mapping all the neuronal connections of the whole nervous system or a part of it.
* Functional Connectome \- It is focus only in the connections that play any role in a process (i.e. perception of a color, motor action,...)
* Saturated Connectome \- It is the most wide definition. It is the mappping of all the cells and organelles in the nervous system.

Before answer your questions I need to advise that all of this is limited by the technology. The most extended technique is the electron microscopy (EM) because we obtain a nice resolution for mapping, the problem is that is very hard automatize the annotation step (Characterize different cells and processes). The last year a new technique was released called Clarity this can be used in the connectome but it's too early to see results. In response to your questions:

1. Yes, with techniques like Clarity we can use markers for the different neurotransmitters. I'm not completely sure if we can characterize the vesicle type with EM, but we can define the pre and post synapses and know the strength (via the amount of vesicles).
2. Do you mean the amount of ions in the synaptic terminal and in the extracellular space? I think that it could be realize with markers but it is out of the connectome purpose. (Maybe in the Saturated connectome)
3. Yes. (Answer 1)

In my opinion the most interesting part of the connectome is the mathematical analysis of the network topology.

Check the authors bibliography in the 3 connectome kinds for more info.
> 3 votes

# Answer
An answer to Question 1 about synapse connections might possibly be found in a New Scientist article earlier this month on brain maps of human foetuses using laser microdissection:

*the team has already found that a collection of genes associated with autism is particularly active in the newly developed excitatory neurons in the cortex.*

Ed Lein et al "Transcriptional landscape of the prenatal human brain" Nature, DOI:10.1038/nature3185

"Brain map to zoom in on neural blips" New Scientist, 5 April 2014
> 0 votes

# Answer
It's also possible to extract functional information on a larger measurement scale (especially cognitive function, which depends on the interaction of many parts) from the connectome by running some neurocomputational simulations. This is what the Human Brain Project aims to do, for example, even though it's been getting a lot of criticism lately (one of the reasons being a lack of detail in current connectome information). Some of the areas that are challenging for connectomics to dive into are the dynamic ones, such as neural plasticity - in reality we all have physically unique brains that have learned from experience.
> 0 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, neural-network, neuroimaging
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# Question
Title: What does double dissociation really tell us?
In psychological research, a single dissociation is when a manipulation leaves one cognitive function (say, A) intact whilst severing another (say, B). This indicates the functions A and B are at least partially independent. A double dissociation is when there exists, in addition, a manipulation that does the reverse (i.e. leave B intact whilst severing A). On the Wikipedia page for dissociation in neuropsychology/cognitive neuroscience (I'm assuming the "manipulation" is a brain lesion now) it says that "establishing a single dissociation between two functions provides limited and potentially misleading information, whereas a double dissociation can conclusively demonstrate that the two functions are localized in different areas of the brain." This can't really be true, can it? Consider the following Venn diagram, where the (necessary) neural substrate of A and B are represented, including their intersection:

A double dissociation could consist of a manipulation in A \ B and another in B \ A. The functions would still be partially dependent, however, and not localized in completely different areas of the brain. So, in effect, the only thing a single dissociation proves is that the circles for A and B are not identical, and the only thing a double dissociation proves (in addition to the fact that they're not identical) is that one is not a subset of the other. Is that about right?

# Answer
Double dissociation does not prove the independence of certain cognitive functions and their neural substrates. What it does is provide stronger evidence for which the best explanation is the independence of certain neurocognitive systems. The brain is on many aspects not a marvel of engineering with many areas being responsible for a spectrum of functions and behaviours or for different aspects of a seemingly unitary cognitive faculty. On top of that, it is often difficult to make a proper classification and distinction between certain functions and behaviours (examples are episodic/semantic memory and perceptual/semantic priming) which, in many cases, limits the validity of the conclusions drawn.

So I don't know if a "conclusive demonstration" is possible. However, under properly defined terms, a double dissociation can provide strong support for independence with little possibility of an intersection between neurocognitive systems because if an intersection existed, it would be highly possible for a function to be retained at some level even after the hypothetical brain system responsible for it, suffers a lesion.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: What's the difference between a "mental disorder" and a bad personality trait?
Most people are held accountable for their actions. If diagnosed with a "mental disorder" however, they are often forgiven/treated more leniently and exempted from punishment.

The same thing couldn't be said about a bad personality trait however. No one is exempted from murder for say "not being very compassionate" or "being an asshole".

Mental disorders however only seem to be a term of describe a set of bad personality traits that are displayed concurrently though. So why the special treatment?

What's the difference between a mental disorder and a bad personality trait?

# Answer
> 8 votes
I don't want to address the issue of defining mental disorders in general here, because just about any malfunctioning system in the brain can be considered a disorder. However, **some disorders affect the set of processes in the brain which ultimately determine whether or not someone takes an action** (the neural basis of volition, or "free will", if you will...). If these decision processes are broken, people shouldn't be held responsible for what they do, because they *really* have no control. So, a "mental disorder" which exempts one from responsibility can be considered one which consists of damage to the following processes:

Of course, there is the philosphical objection that mechanistic explanation (deterministic or random, doesn't matter) means nobody has free will - but the issue in society is really about free will as the ability to learn rules and follow them. A bad personality trait usually doesn't affect the above processes, and therefore doesn't impede someone's ability to make their own decisions.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I Upvoted @StrangeLoop's excellent answer. I did want to point out that the law is applied unevenly across the United States.

Are people ever exempted from prosecution for being a$$holes? Absolutely. The California Highway Patrolman who beat the homeless woman trying to cross the highway was supported by his commander (I haven't heard the latest; I know she's suing.) The video is here. The CHP beat her up to "protect her from injuring herself". Read about police killing mentally retarded, unarmed teenagers, little old ladies, etc.

Most people in prison have a mental illness called *Conduct Disorder*. The key deciding factors in prosecution of people with mental illness are 1. does the person know right from wrong, and 2) can they control their behavior. In Conduct Disorder, the answer is yes to both.

There was a fascinating case in the news of an epileptic who had a part of his brain removed to control his seizures. After the surgery, he began to buy pornography, then child pornography. Neurosurgeons testified that the part of the brain they removed was indeed responsible for this predilection, but because he knew better than to put the porn on his work computer, he was judges to be in charge of at least some of his behavior. He got half the usual sentence and drugs have rendered him back into the nice guy he was before (and he really was. You can listen to his story on Radiolab.)

An entire field called neurolaw has cropped up to deal with how the law should treat criminals with neurological conditions.

To answer your original question, many people with bad personality traits have mental disorders. Borderline Personalities drive people crazy. So do kids with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. These people, as long as they are "rational" aren't spared from the law (Jodi Arias, for example, probably suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder. Still, she knew killing someone wasn't really a reasonable option.)

Andrea Yates, though, suffering from severe post-partum depression with psychosis, really believed that the only way to "save" her children from hell was to drown them. The most responsible person in that case - her husband - got off scott-free. (He was warned after her PPD/P with her fourth child that she should **never** get pregnant again. He wanted a basketball team of children (he actually said this). He stopped her psychiatric visits and meds, got her pregnant again, and in the midst of her psychosis, even though she admitted she felt the need to kill her children (which his family and the psychiatrist she was seeing knew; he stopped those visits, too), he left her alone with the kids.

Th point is the law (courts) is not consistent or even consistently necessarily rational. Often, though, it does the right thing.

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Tags: personality, terminology, clinical-psychology
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title: Neural robots vs conventional robots

text:
# Question
Title: Neural robots vs conventional robots
My friend is working on a robot that can be mind controlled.

He basically wears a headset, and that headset translate brain signal into control signal to move a robot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XewJh\_0nLvM

What could be the potential advantage of these kind of robots versus robots controlled by remotes (99.99% of all robots nowadays)?

# Answer
The advantage (at the current state of the technology) is that you don't need to use a remote with your hands, so the paralyzed could move their exoskeletons, for instance. For now, there is still the downside that the the device needs to be trained and the commands that can be read are rather simplistic. **However, in the future these types of devices will greatly enhance human-computer interaction by allowing the brain the communicate in the same way as it communciates naturally with the environment.** So, imagining yourself as the robot moving around (and the robot following your imagined moves) is a lot more fluent, intuitive, and precise than pressing a bunch of buttons! The technology still needs to get to this stage, however.
> 2 votes

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Tags: eeg, artificial-intelligence
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# Question
Title: For what kind of concepts do we really need an analogy?
Literature suggests that analogies are helpful in teaching and learning science concepts. But every concept can not and should not be taught using analogies as there are some concepts that can be better taught using examples and learning by doing .

My question is " for what kind of concepts do we really need an analogy ?" Answers may include a reference to a piece of literature / some insights from teaching experience /blogs etc.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Loosely defined, analogy is the process by which "novel situations and problems can be understood in terms of familiar ones". By this definition, a number of cognitive scientists would and do say that analogy plays a role in acquiring just about any new concept - they would say that *especially* examples and learning by doing are means of refining one's ability to map from the known to the unknown and uncover the latter's structure/properties. In addition to the linked book, which offers a collection of papers/essays in cognitive science on analogy, you could check out Douglas Hofstadter's Surfaces and Essences: "Analogy-making, far from happening at rare intervals, occurs at all moments, defining thinking from top to toe, from the tiniest and most fleeting thoughts to the most creative scientific insights." In the appendix there is a *very* long list of scientific publications supporting his assertions.

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Tags: learning, educational-psychology
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# Question
Title: How do people respond to auditory warning signals?
I am working on a literature review of total reaction time to an auditory alert, in a transport context. All of the literature I can find about perception-response times are in the context of visual obstacles while driving, but in this case I'm interested in perception-response times to auditory-only warning signals (and not specifically drivers).

These are the best sources on PRT I have found so far, all to visual stimuli:
Olson, P.L. & Sivak, M. (1986) Perception-response time to unexpected roadway hazards. Human Factors, 28, 96-99.
Olson, P., "Driver Perception Response Time," SAE Technical Paper 890731, 1989, doi:10.4271/890731.
Summala, H. (2000). Brake Reaction Times and Driver Behavior Analysis. Transportation Human Factors, 2(3), 217-226.

What are the equivalents examining perception-response time to auditory stimuli?

# Answer
Often, very similar phenomena have different names when studied in different modalities, because they are studied by different communities. That's why searching for perception response times + auditory doesn't yield great results (Although I did find \[1\] this way).

Something else to try, is to pick a highly cited paper that you did find, and then search within paper citing it for relevant terms. I started from Olson's 2000 paper which you mentioned, and searched for "auditory" within citing papers, and quickly found \[2\] and \[3\].

You can also look for other papers by the same authors - people tend to keep studying similar questions for a while, and often keep using the same methodologies.

---

\[1\] Cheng, B., Hashimoto, M., & Suetomi, T. (2002). Analysis of driver response to collision warning during car following. JSAE review, 23(2), 231-237.

\[2\] Fitch, G. M., Blanco, M., Morgan, J. F., & Wharton, A. E. (2010, September). Driver braking performance to surprise and expected events. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (Vol. 54, No. 24, pp. 2075-2080). SAGE Publications.

\[3\] Cao, Y., Mahr, A., Castronovo, S., Theune, M., Stahl, C., & Müller, C. A. (2010, February). Local danger warnings for drivers: The effect of modality and level of assistance on driver reaction. In Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces (pp. 239-248). ACM.
> 3 votes

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Tags: perception, human-factors, reaction-time, hearing
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# Question
Title: Why does munching sound unpleasant to most people?
When someone who eats food is munching, it sounds quite unpleasant for most of the people. What is the reason for this?

# Answer
I have speculated that it arises from two cognitive biases — but pardon that I will present my conjecture without citations. (This isn't my focal area)

1. our bias for music shows we dis-prefer arhythmic noises.
2. the arhythmic noise is unpredictable.

I think there may also be dissonance between a sympathetic response (to hunger at food odors and others' savoring of flavors), against a conscious choice not to be eating at that time. (only in the case where the person(s) experience misophonia are not also eating)
> -6 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, evolution
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# Question
Title: Is there a standard list of Default Answers which are used in Likert 'type' Scales
I have always had some trouble deciding what to use as the default answers when using Likert 'type' scales.

**Is there a default list of accepted answers to particular types of questions which are used by survey designers?** e.g. "Level of effect", "Amount you agree with", "Make you act" "Level of Awareness" type questions.

I accept that there is a huge range of types of questions but if there was some sort of semi standardised list of 5, 6 and 7 point answers it would be very handy. In many cases I have difficulty thinking of just one of the answers or the correct terminology or syntax which should be used to ensure that each of the answers are 'appropriately distributed'... if that makes sense

For many types of questions there are existing examples online e.g.

> What most clearly reflects your political leaning?
>
> * Strong Democrat
> * Not so strong Democrat
> * Independent leaning Democrat
> * Independent
> * Independent leaning Republican
> * Not so strong Republican
> * Strong Republican
> * Other
> * Don't know

Or

> The county is on the right economic path
>
> * Strongly agree
> * Agree
> * Neither or N/A
> * Disagree
> * Strongly Disagree

However in other instances it is more difficult to figure out what answers should be used

> In your opinion, does a perceptible level of bias in a particular news story affect the overall level of credibility the story has?
>
> * Yes, most definitely
> * Yes, to some degree
> * Yes, a slight effect
> * No, ????
> * No,not really
> * No, not at all

Any help or links to resources would be seriously appreciated. Thanks

# Answer
Here are links to several lists of common Likert-type response anchors (the first link provides a nice variety):

http://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/tourism/documents/sample-scales.pdf

http://www.rpgroup.org/sites/default/files/Surveys%20Interactive%20Activity%20-%20Examples%20of%20Likert%20scales.pdf

And these links provide suggestions regarding designing these scales and may help you determine how to adapt the anchor options from the first set of links: http://www.uwex.edu/ces/4h/evaluation/documents/wordingforratingscales.pdf

http://surveynet.ac.uk/sqb/datacollection/likertfactsheet.pdf

http://academics.lmu.edu/spee/officeofassessment/surveysevaluation/surveydesign/step3determinetheformatoftheresponseoptions/

http://www.dism.ssri.duke.edu/pdfs/Tipsheet%20-%20Response%20Scales.pdf
> 1 votes

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Tags: survey
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title: Finding consciousness through EEG

text:
# Question
Title: Finding consciousness through EEG
I've read an article about the consciousness in vegetative patients. Adrian Owen is one of the neuroscientist making research on this field. The article published on "Le scienze" was about the usage of fMRI before and EEG later, to check the presence of a consciousness.

Do you know of similar group of research in Italy? Is their work consolidated enough to be applied in the clinical practice by another neurologist?

# Answer
> 3 votes
I don't know any such group in Italy but there is a group in Liege, Belgium which is called Coma Science Group. It consists of scientists of various disciplines and their main interest is understanding disorders of consciousness. Also their work has a clinical orientation as well. From your description, I think it will be interesting to you. Their website is http://www.coma.ulg.ac.be

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Tags: consciousness, eeg, fmri
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# Question
Title: Are there any serious neuroscientific theories of emotional valence?
Could anyone tell me if there are any serious neuroscientific mechanisms that have been proposed to explain how feelings of body states take on a positive or negative character (valence)? An example biocomputational approach based on Bayesian inference can be found here. Also related to the Bayesian brain: there is evidence that dopamine communicates prediction error, which has been proposed as a unifying principle for cognition - so I was wondering whether there were any comprehensive theories applying predictive coding to emotion (i.e. valence as prediction error of interoceptive (body) perception). Of course, any theories of valence with similarly broad import would be interesting too.

# Answer
There is no such universally accepted model. It seems to me that this a specific instance of the hard problem: how can matter have a subjective experience at all?

Of course we know positive experience is associated with dopaminergic action, and often the mechanism has the evolutionary function of surviving and reproducing... and we can argue the same for noxious stimuli - they signal danger in the environment and lead to aversive behaviors.

But this still ignores the phenomenology step, between stimulus and behavior; the nature of the subjective experience. Friston's approach is interesting. I wonder if there is any relationship to be found betweem it and Tononi's model of consciousness (integrated informatiom theory).
> 3 votes

# Answer
With regard to the body perception question, I hope you have read this (doi: 10.1073/pnas.1321664111)
> 0 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, emotion
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# Question
Title: Are there any fMRI decoding papers examining the relationship between attentional cueing and activity in V1?
I'm interested in reading on the influence of exogenous attention on cortical representations in early visual areas, but so far my google-fu seems to be failing me.

There seems to be some literature involving *endogenous* attention (Kamitani & Tong 2006, for instance), but nothing involving cueing, for instance.

**Does anybody know of any papers demonstrating either of the following?**

1. fMRI decoding of the effects of attentional cueing on V1?
2. fMRI decoding of (cued) attentional effects on V1 activity using at-threshold stimuli?

Thanks very much in advance!

**Edit:** Okay, so I found two that hit the topic center-mass:

* Kok et al., 2011 *Less Is More: Expectation Sharpens Representations in the Primary Visual Cortex*
* Kok et al., 2012 *Attention Reverses the Effect of Prediction in Silencing Sensory Signals*

Anything else?

# Answer
Ha, I was going to mention the Kok Neuron paper :) The Cerebral Cortex one does not use decoding however.

This one may also be of interest to you: Vetter, P., Smith, F. W., & Muckli, L. (2014). Decoding Sound and Imagery Content in Early Visual Cortex. Current Biology, 24(11), 1256-1262.

Lars Muckli is in general someone who might have more of the same.

I also know this lab does decoding and attention and V1, so maybe some of those publications will capture all three.

I'll edit later if I think of something else.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, attention, fmri, cueing
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# Question
Title: Can prosopagnostic (face-blind) people draw other people recognizably?
Is it possible for people with face blindness / prosopagnosia to draw other people (whose faces they cannot recognize) such that non-face-blind people can recognize the people being drawn ?

# Answer
According to Bruce & Young model (1986), face recognition is composed of 2 main sub-processes, one more "perceptive" (called structural encoding) and the other one more "associative" (fru, pin, name generation). Bruce & Young model

A person with "apperceptive prosopagnosia" cannot create a precise percept, that is a mental representation of who he's looking at. He's unlikely to be able to draw other people face.

A person with "associative prosopagnosia" can create a percept of who he sees, but he cannot understand who the person is, deficit is semantic not perceptive. In this case, he is able to draw other people face, even though he cannot recognize it.

This subdivision can be found also in object recognition process and its related impairments: apperceptive agnosia and associative agnosia.

It's important to note that all this stuff is heavily theoretical. Reality is much more complex and sometimes unclear.

Bruce, V., & Young, A. (1986). Understanding face recognition. British journal of psychology, 77(3), 305-327.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Apparently at least some are able to portrait people realistically, some like Chuck Close even photorealistically:

* http://www.slhuang.com/blog/2012/12/19/prosopagnosia-a-tale-of-someone-with-face-blindness/

> One of the weirdest things about all of this is that I’m an artist—a pretty good artist—and when I draw a portrait, it looks like that person’s face. So I’m clearly able to see distances and features the way I would on an inanimate object. But for some reason, the “recognition” part of facial recognition in my brain is broken.
* https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/faceblind/conversations/messages/1648
Unfortunately, the linked GeoCities image of the drawing seems to be unavailable, at least not on archive.org and the GeoCities mirrors I consulted.
* https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/faceblind/conversations/topics/3012

> I draw really well, even though I can't necessarily remember a face. Drawing it helps. \[...\]
>
> My life drawings don't emphasize the face, though, and what I usually do with a face is the significant gestures of the nose, eyebrows, and mouth, rather than a full rendering. I would hate to do a lot of portraits. My flower portraits, however, are right on!

This post also seems to indicate that drawing other people *might* help face-blind people to better / more quickly recognize characteristic facial features by training observation skills *(assumption mine)* although the author admits to struggle with considering *all* features as I understand it.
* http://legionofhonor.famsf.org/blog/invisible-man-self-portrait-chuck-close

A famous example for the assumption above is photorealist painter Chuck Close who himself says that creating portraits of people helps him remember faces better.

> CHUCK CLOSE: Yes. I have a great deal of difficulty recognizing faces, especially if I haven’t — if I have just met somebody, I — I — it’s hopeless. I will never remember them again, unless it’s reinforced over and over and over.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception
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# Question
Title: Is there a psychometric tool for measuring the difficulty of mental activities?
It is often stated that Alzheimer's disease can be prevented to some extent when a person engages more often in challenging mental activities (http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alzheimers-disease/basics/risk-factors/con-20023871)

Although I can imagine that solving mathematical problems is more difficult than watching reality shows on TV, the criteria for this classification are vague to me (Ok not so vague because mathematics requires more cognitive load, but this may not be the only factor). I am interested in how could a psychometric scale that quantifies level of difficulty in a broad range of activities be constructed as it would be useful in research on prevention and rehabilitation of certain neurocognitive disorders.

Has such a scale been developed?

# Answer
There is a workload measure called the NASA-TLX (Task Load Index), one component of which measures mental workload. It is self-reported workload, however, and also requires interrupting most tasks, so it has some theoretical as well as practical weaknesses.

There is also decently good data that working memory load can be extracted from theta-band activity in the frontal regions, possibly due to the parieto-frontal circuits between the anterior cingulate, inferior frontal, and posterior parietal cortices.

(All of this, however, assumes that working memory load and "difficulty" are the same thing.)

Nasa-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX); 20 Years Later. Hart, S. (2006). Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting October 2006 vol. 50 no. 9 904-908 doi: 10.1177/154193120605000909

Evidence for effects of task difficulty but not learning on neurophysiological variables associated with effort. Brouwer, A. & al. (2014). International Journal of Psychophysiology Volume 93, Issue 2, August 2014, Pages 242–252. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2014.05.004

Working memory load modulation of parieto-frontal connections: Evidence from dynamic causal modeling. Ma, L.; Steinberg, J.; Hasan, K.; Narayana, P.; Kramer, L.; et al. Human Brain Mapping 33.8 (Aug 2012): 1850-1867. doi: 10.1002/hbm.21329
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, measurement
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# Question
Title: What differences of opinion led to the Kahneman-Gigerenzer feud?
I have found many allusions to this feud, e.g. from http://nickdunbar.net/2012/05/23/thinking-fast-and-slow-by-daniel-kahneman/ and in Kahneman's trade book "Thinking, Fast and Slow". However, I have not found any concise explanation of what Kahneman and Gigerenzer actually disagreed on, other than that Gigerenzer felt that some of the Kahneman/Tversky biases were artefacts of their method and Kahneman/Tversky disagreed with this.

# Answer
> 12 votes
I have been quite astonished by this nonsensical yet lasting quarrel. You didn't find how they disagree because they don't disagree. The sole difference is that if asked "***are human rational ?***", Gigerenzer answers "***yes***", Kahneman answers "***no***".

However, their model of human reasoning are consistent with each other. They just don't use the word "rational" in the same way.

When asked whether humans are rational, Gigerenzer understands the question as "***Are human cognitive mecanisms fitted to the environment ?***", whereas Kahneman understands this question as "***Are human taking decisions that maximize their utility function ?***". Kahneman study decisions, and he finds that they are not good/not efficient (i.e., not rational). Gigerenzer study reasoning mechanisms (his heuristics), and he argues that those mechanisms are good/efficient (i.e, rational). Decisions and mechanisms are not the same thing.

If you ask Gigerenzer whether humans take decisions that maximize their utility function, he will happily answer "***No***". Indeed, Gigerenzer wants people to take better decisions, but he will not call those "more rational decisions". If you ask Kahneman whether human cognitive mecanisms are adapted to the environment, he will happily answer "***Obviously, because evolution is true***". To me, Kahneman's definition of rationality makes much more sense.

For a more extended discussion, you can find the following paper which settles the question on google scholar : Samuels, R., Stich, S., & Bishop, M. (2012). Ending the Rationality Wars. Collected Papers, Volume 2: Knowledge, Rationality, and Morality, 1978-2010, 2, 191.

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Tags: bias
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# Question
Title: How to test for malingering in criminals trying to deny capacity for criminal responsibility?
Psychiatrists and psychologists are often tasked with assessing a criminal defendant's competency to stand trial or his capacity for criminal responsibility. What objective tests are useful for assessing whether the person is malingering or faking symptoms to appear not competent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity?

I am a prosecutor in the US. We are getting more cases where the defendant's competency to stand trial is called into question by defense counsel. Many of the forensic examiners are concluding that defendants are not competent without seeming to use objective measures to rule out malingering.

# Answer
> 4 votes
More comprehensive ones than the abovementioned memory test include the Miller Forensic Assessement of Symptoms and the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms. These assess a wide variety of psychiatric symptoms and are supposedly very hard to fake.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Tests for malingering are founded on the following assumption: there are symptomps that even the worst illness doesn't include. These tests aim at assessing these symptomps, that are unrealistic, fake.

A famous memory test for malingering is Digit Memory Test (Hiscock et al., 1989) It is a very easy test, even a person with Alzheimer can perform well. Moreover, the subject is told that is very difficult and everyone has some trouble in aswering some questions (this is an alternative way to say: if you are going to fake, do your best!) They worked out that by answering randomly there is 50% probability of correct answers. Thus, the hypotesis is that one who gets a lower score is simulating.

Stef from Italy

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Tags: measurement, methodology, forensic-psychology
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title: Annoyance in animals

text:
# Question
Title: Annoyance in animals
When my dog (an English Cocker Spaniel, for what its worth) is behind some glass (e.g. a glass door or a car window) and someone taps on the glass, even just a little bit, she gets into a fit of rage. She has always been treated quite well, so I can't imagine what causes her to behave like this.

The first thing that came to my mind is that she perceives whoever is tapping the glass as teasing her, and she feels disrespected, or something like that. This sounds far fetched, but could there be any merit to this theory? If not, what else would cause her to do this?

I believe we know that monkeys interpret teasing correctly (I don't know this for a fact). That is, they know when they are being teased and they (correctly) interpret it as being disrespected. Could the same thing be true for less intelligent animals like dogs?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Teasing generally seems to have two components. First, as mentioned in the title of your question, it is a matter of becoming *annoyed*; specifically at behavior that is (often repetitively) enacted towards oneself. Furthermore, to know that someone is teasing you it is necessary to be able to conceptualize their intentions (otherwise known as having a "*theory of mind*"), which is necessary in order to potentially feel disrespected. It is uncontroversial that dogs can feel annoyed, just try relieving one of its food (or tapping on the glass it is behind ;). **However, the extent to which dogs are able to conceive of the mental states of others is debated in animal psychology**. It has been shown, for instance, that certain populations of dogs are unable to spontaneously adapt to human social cues. However, naturally, many pet domestic dogs are great at adapting to their owners behaviors. Dogs are not "man's best friend" for no reason - they do possess the ability to learn social cues. However, it seems that this has to be taught, whereas it seems that humans have a much greater innate predisposition to TOM/mentalizing. In conclusion, dogs' TOM seems to be a significantly more superficial ability than it is in humans. This leads me to suggest that tapping on the glass causes your Cocker Spaniel to either a) want to play oh-so-badly, or b) get (really) annoyed. They surely don't understand teasing with the full social capacity of a human.

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Tags: animal-cognition
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# Question
Title: Are there NP-Hard or NP-Complete problems that humans a really good at solving?
It has been noted that humans are good at solving the travelling salesmen problem under certain constraints. Are there other NP-hard or NP-complete problems that human beings are good at solving? Has there been other research (psychological, neurobiological) on this?

One lead I'm currently investigating is how humans are good at playing Minesweeper, despite the fact that is it is NP-Complete.

# Answer
With regard to the relationship between the brain and complexity theory, I think it's important to remember that the brain hardly ever comes up with exact solutions to problems and seems to prefer inductive reasoning to deduction. (How to induce a minesweeper strategy computationally) Furthermore, we mostly conjure up approximations. Précis of Bayesian Rationality: The Probabilistic Approach to Human Reasoning discusses problem solving in inexact (probabilistic) terms. I believe that one of the follow-up articles (Identifying the optimal response is not a necessary step toward explaining function, page 85) is relevant to your question:

"An explanation requiring an optimal response function must also consider that: (e) for problems of inductive inference, the optimal response is often analytically intractable to determine with exact methods, and will not be unique; (f) behavioral responses are typically approximately optimal, revealing a tendency rather than a correspondence"
> 1 votes

# Answer
Collective responses can be aggregated to combine common solution fragments into a global solution. Maybe a key to solve NP-hard/complete is having enough diversity, hence working in a collective sense. Check out The Wisdom of the Crowd in Combinatorial Problems, from Sheng Kung Michael Yi,a Mark Steyvers,a Michael D. Lee,a Matthew J. Dryb
> 0 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, reference-request, problem-solving
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# Question
Title: Can our auditory perception be used to trick our visual perception?
"Our consciousness lags 80 milliseconds behind actual events...The 80-millisecond rule plays all sorts of perceptual tricks on us. As long as a hand-clapper is less than 30 meters away, you hear and see the clap happen together. But beyond this distance, the sound arrives more than 80 milliseconds later than the light, and the brain no longer matches sight and sound. What is weird is that the transition is abrupt: by taking a single step away from you, the hand-clapper goes from in sync to out of sync." source

This made me curious - say we have the following experiment based on the above:

* A **subject (listening subject)** wears headphones synchronized with the **hand-clapper**
* the **hand-clapper** starts from 5 meters away and slowly moves to 60 meters away
    + during this time, the **listening subject** would hear a clapping sound as they would naturally hear the sound *based on* the distance of the **hand-clapper**

If, once the **hand-clapper** reaches 60 meters, the audio is *tweaked* such that the **listening subject** would hear the hand-clapping sound *as if* the **hand-clapper** were only 5 meters away:

> Would your typical **listening subject** visually perceive the **hand-clapper** as having suddenly moved closer (similar to the concept of how we perceive the moon as being "larger" when it's closer to the horizon)?
>
> In other words -- under what circumstances, if any, can sound influence our visual perception of depth/proximity?

# Answer
I don't buy it the claim made in the quote. The speed of sound is roughly 1 foot per millsecond so even if you take a large 3 foot step you are changing the audio visual onset asynchrony by only 3 ms. What this means is that if you present a flash and a click with various onset asynchrony to subjects you would expect there to be a narrow range of lags (less than 3 ms) over which they stop reporting that the flash occurred first. This study was run by van Eijk et al (2008):

The relevant data are the temporal order judgements (TOJ) and it is clear that it is a smooth transition between thinking the flash was first and the click was first and not an abrupt step. Further, the transition takes around 200 ms or to get back to the original claim, about 100 steps. The 80 ms claim seems reasonable in that you do not consistently report the visual stimulus as occurring first more than 70% of the time until it occurs more than 80 ms before the sound.
> 3 votes

# Answer
The answer is definitely yes, if you take a slightly different example MacDonald & McGurk (1978). The McGurk effect in linguistics is quite well-known: given video of a mouth pronouncing a bilabial consonant, and synced audio of a nonlabial consonant, the viewer will generally report hearing a consonant whose place of articulation is roughly the average of the bilabial vs nonlabial POAs. (The audio of the nonlabial consonant alone is generally identified accurately.) Speech is often a bit of a special case when it comes to perception, though.

MacDonald, J., & McGurk, H. (1978). Visual influences on speech perception processes, *Perception & Psychophysics* May 1978, Volume 24, Issue 3, pp 253-257. DOI 10.3758/BF03206096
> 2 votes

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Tags: perception, cognitive-neuroscience
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title: Perception of abrupt noise

text:
# Question
Title: Perception of abrupt noise
First question - sorry Cognitive Science is a closed book to me so I hope someone can give me an insight into this phenomenon.

We have a child's toy that is activated by clapping of the hands. To me, I always perceive the activation of the toy to take place a split second **before** I perceive the sound of the hand clap - even, perhaps *especially*, when it is me that is doing the hand clapping.

I recognise that this must be a perception issue because the sound has to travel, perhaps 12 times the distance to the toy compared to my ears, then be processed by the electronics before the sound of the toy reaches back to me. How is it possible that I hear the sound of the toy before the sound of the handclap?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Judging from your description I think it has to do with the predictability of a certain event (the activation of the toy in this case) after a certain action (the hand clapping), altering your perception of temporal order between the event and your action. David Eagleman has done some research on this suggesting that when one has the intention of generating a certain event that has a high probability to occur, this event can be perceived to happen earlier than the action that caused it. That maybe explains why it especially happens when you are the agent. At least that is what I got from reading this paper http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/staff/alexh/research/papers/EaglemanHolcombeTiCS2002.pdf Feel free to correct me if you think my description is wrong.

Nevertheless, the field of time perception has generally revealed many illusions in human timing and if you are interested in more you can read the work of Benjamin Libet as well on time and conscious awareness http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Time-Consciousness-Perspectives-Neuroscience/dp/067401846X

# Answer
> 2 votes
It is possible that the acoustics of the situation can explain the perception. If the clapping of your hands acts as a highly directional sound source (I cannot quickly find any measurements of the acoustic directionality of hand claps) then it is possible that very little direct sound reaches your ears and you are only hearing the "echo" of the clap. In other words the sound waves propagate from your hands to a reflecting surface like a wall and then to your ears. Depending on how far away these reflecting surfaces are could mean the sound reaches the toy substantially before it reaches your ears. A way to test this would be to see if your perception changes in an anechoic chamber where there are no reflecting surfaces. If you do not have an anechoic chamber in your basement, and I pity you if you don't, then you can go outside away from any buildings and walls.

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Tags: perception
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# Question
Title: Why is MATLAB so common in Neuroscience?
It is common knowledge that neuroscience -- particularly experimental neuroscience -- uses MATLAB more than any other programming language. I have always just taken this as a given, and pointed to existing toolboxes, legacy lab codebases, and social pressure as the reasons why this continues to be the case, even though concrete reasons to switch are widely known.

I want to go past these general reasons and pin down the exact causes of MATLAB's stronghold in Neuroscience. Things like

* file formats that can only be read in MATLAB
* acquisition systems that are highly coupled to MATLAB
* toolboxes that are widely regarded as the "gold standard" for something
* labs or companies that train many researchers on MATLAB and advocate for it
* introductory neuroscience programs / textbooks that teach concepts through MATLAB examples

or any other tangible things to point to would be excellent.

# Answer
I think the major reason is inertia, in the sense that many labs use Matlab, so many Matlab toolboxes are available, so many labs train people in the use of Matlab...

However, as a trained software engineer turned Neuroscientist who has been programming in various languages for close to 30 years, there are several reasons why I actually enjoy using Matlab. One can also make arguments for why it's a good fit for labs filled with people who aren't programmers.

(As an aside, the `.mat` file format is actually a standard file format called "HDF". So I don't think that file format lock-in is a real reason.)

# Things Matlab does well

1. **Very good cross-platform support.** Matlab runs out of the box on every major platform. In research, when you want something to *just work*, spending days getting a python distribution configured with a mutually-compatible set of package versions is just ridiculous. Caveat: I haven't tried anaconda, which hopefully has solved this problem.
2. **Very low housekeeping overhead.** No other serious language (is BASIC a serious language?) lets you start writing code without having to include headers, define namespaces, allocate memory... For biologists without programming experience, this is a godsend.
3. **Integrated debugging environment.** Non-programmers will not easily be able to learn a language that does not come with an IDE. R, I'm looking at you. Python has very nice options now.
4. **Intrinsic vectorisation of operations.** `for` loops are kind of ugly and error-prone, when what you really want to do is perform an operation on every element of a matrix or perform matrix operations. I know that Python has some add-ins to accomplish matrix operations, but Python itself is not vectorised.
5. **Support for object-oriented software design.** As a legacy language, Matlab has a whole bunch of baggage. Mathworks is slowly improving the design of the language and adding other niceties (the parallel computing toolbox is pretty great): the class system; `table`s with named columns; the ability to ignore return and input arguments in function calls; function handles; namespaces...
6. **Ability to work across machine abstraction levels.** Matlab used to be slow, but the JIT compilation works wonders and keeps improving. You can operate at a very high level of abstraction with classes and objects; if you need something fast and low-level, you can write a small amount of C code and call it natively from Matlab.

# Things Matlab does badly

1. **Graphics and GUIDE.** Oh my god. Handle graphics is pretty horrible. I know they are working on version 2, and it can't come soon enough. `matplotlib` in Python looks much better, and R makes amazing graphs out of the box. GUIs are pretty ugly to design in any language, but GUIDE makes it very easy to write some really horrible code.
2. **Global namespace.** This is sort-of true, and sort-of makes sense for convenience's sake. It's an inherent tradeoff between ease of use and nice encapsulation. Matlab does provide namespace support now, but I think it's still true that the vast majority of toolboxes don't use it.
3. **First-class functions.** If the anonymous function system could be upgraded slightly to handle multiple return arguments and to handle currying... Also, intrinsic support for named arguments and parameters would be greatly helpful, especially considering that many Matlab functions accept named parameters as part of their calling syntax.
> 5 votes

# Answer
I completely agree with most the factors you've identified, but before I suggest some additional points, **I'd like to correct one of yours:**

> file formats that can only be read in MATLAB

Unless you're talking about some obscure format that I'm unaware of (entirely possible!), MATLAB files *are* readable by non-MATLAB tools. In particular, scipy.io provides flawless I/O from/to .mat files (especially since yours truly submitted a minor patch ;) ).

I mention this because it's an excellent argument for making the switch towards the scientific python stack; my Ph.D advisor only knows MATLAB, but she has become much less reluctant to work with Python since I explained that everything I did could be trivially made to interact with existing MATLAB code.

**Additional (Python-centric) reasons why MATLAB remains king:**

1. **There's what I call "battered spouse syndrome":** researchers are used to the pain and suffering caused by MATLAB and wrongly assume that it's just part of the programming landscape. In other words, **they don't know any better**. They don't realize that there are tools that are more pleasant to use, more robust, (often) faster, more reliable, free and extensible. It's a classic case of thinking that all programming languages (eligible bachelors) are as abusive as your current tool (spouse).
2. Researchers are put off by IDLE and aren't aware of such great tools as:
    1. IPython
    2. IPython Notebook (this will really rock your socks if you haven't seen it yet)
    3. Spyder (for those seeking a MATLAB-esque graphical interface)
3. People haven't seen the Pandas library in action. I know it's a bit presumptuous to claim that a single library can convert steadfast MATLAB users, but Pandas, especially when combined with the IPython notebook, makes dealing with labeled matrices downright enjoyable. It offers such things as:
    * string-labeled columns and/or rows
    * groupby, split & merge operations
    * baked-in plotting with fine-grained control
    * baked-in summary & inferential statistics
4. Python has historically been quite a pain in the ass to install on windows and OSX, and most potential users are still unaware that the Anaconda distribution has all but completely solved the problem.

My reason for bringing up point `3` is more than just a shameless plug for the Pandas library. I wanted to draw your attention to the fact that Pandas manages to combine MATLAB's most sought-after features (fast numerical arrays, logical indexing, plotting & myriad 3rd party libraries) with some of the most useful features of the R language (DataFrame-like structures, summary stats, split/combine/apply operations, missing data management (e.g. fill-forward, interpolation, etc). With this library, you can essentially make the argument that you're replacing *two* languages for most common purposes.

---

And now a *real* shameless plug: I'm one of the moderators on Reddit's /r/pystats. Anybody trying to ditch Matlab is more than welcome around these parts ;)
> 4 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, software
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# Question
Title: What is the effect of irrelevant reading after study on memory consolidation?
I heard and experienced a little that unconscious mental processes involved in storing memories work really well when you are not thinking about your study subject during rest. However, I'm not sure mental effort such as reading a novel is as effective as physical effort for consolidation of studied information. What is the effect of irrelevant mental exercise on memory consolidation?

# Answer
> 3 votes
First off, a citation on the neurochemical effects of exercise beneficial to memory consolidation. Certain activities (post-study) that modulate neurotransmitter systems have generally been shown to affect how well the brain stores memories, such as caffeine consumption. Regarding the topic of your question, i.e. the effect of mental exercise on memory consolidation, it seems that post-study mental exertion has a **negative** effect on consolidation. This work cites a number of studies which generally show something along the lines of: "wakeful rest provided a more favorable condition for memory consolidation than the non-verbal cognitive task." Generally speaking, memory consolidation seems to work best under the influence of specific neurotransmitter release (induced by physical activity, for instance) or **rest**. After all, one main theory of why we sleep is that it is for the purpose of storing memories.

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Tags: learning
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# Question
Title: Why is it easier to search memory for words starting with a particular letter than for words with that letter in a later position?
Tversky & Kahneman (1974) asserts that it is so, and some scrabble-playing experience convinces me that it's true. However, I've never seen an explanation of why it is true. I assume it has something to do with how the lexicon is organized, but I haven't been able to find any sources on that point.

# Answer
> 1 votes
This is a very interesting question. Unfortunately, I was not able to find something that would give you a clear answer.

In essence, I think this question is asking for a cognitive mechanism underlying word generation in phonemic/phonological verbal fluency test which is a matter that has rarely been addressed (Robinson et al, 2012). Studies such as the previous and this have revealed that the neural systems for word generation by letter and by semantic cue are different, so one can assume that the explanation for the phenomenon you mention is probably not relevant to semantic properties of the word.

Also, studies by Troyer et al (1997, mentioned here) have shown that in a phonemic fluency test, a person often uses a strategy called "clustering". In this case, it is phonemic clustering and "clusters are defined as successively generated words that begin with the same first two letters, differing only by a vowel sound, or are homonyms". This may be indicative of how words are organized and represented in verbal memory.

However, the question remains as to why this form of organization and representation occurs instead of another. A possible explanation may lie in the ways we use to learn words, namely in what has been named as statistical learning. This correlation I am making is certainly a speculation and I don't know if it is a valid one but I imagine that because syllables form into words according to the transitional probabilities from one to another, a phonological representation of a word might be more easily activated by the first letters while a parallel activation might also occur throughout a certain phonemic cluster for successively generated words.

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Tags: bias, linguistics
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# Question
Title: Is there a name for having an obsessive interest in new topics for short periods of time?
I have the tendency to get obsessively interested in a subject for 2 weeks, get bored, and then move on to something else. For instance I have just started learning about chess and find myself extremely interested in it at the moment but know it will most likely pass soon. In the last year I have looked at window farms, cooking, entrepreneurship (I started a muse business), tea, classic books (such as huckleberry Finn and Waldon), graphic novels... you get the idea!

The point is that most the time I do not find myself repeating the same topics again or express much interest towards them. It might be more that I enjoy learning the topics but not going in depth.

I was wondering, is there a name for this tendency? Is this a trait found more often in men than women? I don't really find it a problem, if anything it is beneficial because it pushes me to learn new things. But nonetheless I am curious if there is a name for this behaviour.

# Answer
That's great that you have this ability -- it's your "special power".

I don't believe there is a special term for "intense preoccupations with narrow subjects", but such behavior is a common, but not necessary, feature of Asperger Syndrome or AD.

AD does occur more often in men than women. According to this paper, prevalence in men is between 2-4X greater than in women.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, abnormal-psychology, terminology
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# Question
Title: Study of recollection of drawings based on labels
I remember stumbling across a very interesting study/experiment a few months ago. Now I want to try to find it again. Unfortunately I cannot for the life of me recall the name of the experiment nor the names of the experimenters. I was hoping somebody here could help me.

The study went something like this:

Two groups of subjects are shown the same set of images, but with different labels on them. Later they are asked to draw the same images from memory. The results showed that they tended to draw a picture that more closely represented the label that was on it than the original.

I am not sure if this was meant to show perceptual sets, priming, context effects or what have you.

Does anybody know which study this was?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Based on your description I was able to find the following:

-Klatzky, R.L. & Rafnel, K. (1976).Labeling effects on memory for nonsense pictures. *Memory & Cognition, 4*(6), 717-720. (there is a pdf version on researchgate.net, I couldn't upload it here)

-Bower, G.H., Karlin, M.B., & Dueck, A. (1975). Comprehension and memory for pictures. *Memory and Cognition, 3*(2), 216-220. (pdf here)

However, the design and results of those studies are a bit different from what you describe. Labeling facilitated free recall (reproduction) better than no labeling when someone was presented with droodles (images with no meaning). Also, in the Klatzky and Rafnel study, it was shown that meaningful labels contributed to significantly better free recall of images than meaningless labels. So I am not sure if this is what you are looking for, but you can take a look.

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Tags: perception, memory, reference-request, experimental-psychology
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# Question
Title: How similar are human brains within the same haplogroup?
I've read about neuroscience and listen to talks like this one Juan Enriquez: Will our kids be a different species, I'm starting to realize that humans are not all the same, and are instead quite different.

My question is: how "different" are humans from each other from a point of view of neuroscience and neurobiology?

One of the talks at TED.com gave a number that Homo Sapiens is 0.004% different from Neanderthal genetically. Another example given that olympic powerlifters have a certain genetic marker that the general population might not have.

To refine the question: **just how different from the perspective of white matter tract anatomy or the distribution of receptors within our neuronal populations are humans of the same haplogroup from one another?**

# Answer
> 2 votes
The following comes from my research experience using fMRI to study the human visual system.

Overall, peoples brains are similar to each other on higher scales, and become very different from each other as the scale becomes smaller.

Differences between different people start with brain size and sulci patterns. Also male and female brain anatomies will be slightly different.

Wiring patterns within same brain regions will be similar between people, but as you get to individual neurons, it starts to look very chaotic. Dendrites will have stereotypical tree shapes for certain neurons (i.e. Pyramidal cells), but individual branches will be somewhat randomly distributed within their stereotypical areas.

As you get to the synaptic receptor/ion channel level, their distribution will be even more chaotic. Keep in mind the receptors themselves will behave stochasticaly, opening and closing based on when a particular ligand molecule binds to them.

The anatomical shapes of the brains will be mostly based on genes, so people within the same haplogroup should have brain anatomies slightly more similar than general population, but even those should have individual variations. Dendrite and receptor distribution generally depends on learning, so people with different initial conditions and environments during development will have dendrites wired differently.

I think the most fascinating aspect of these differences is that human minds are essentially slightly different neural networks that perceive the world in their own slightly different ways. The closer the genes and development environment between two people, the more similar will be their perceptions of the world.

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Tags: neuroscience, evolution, physiology, genetics
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# Question
Title: Is there a name for highly aggressive non-violent people?
I know an individual who has incredibly aggressive mannerisms including snatching things, raising voice and speaking with a very aggressive tone of voice.

However, since this person is completely non-violent - would never raise a finger against anyone, no-one ever *considers* them aggressive - and nor does this individual, as their response is always "I'd never hit anyone".

Is there a word or psychological term which describes this?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Passive-aggressive, hostile, officious?

Their response is also biased, we may say we'll never do something.. it's still possible we will though given the right circumstances.

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Tags: social-psychology, abnormal-psychology
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title: Water Jug Problem in AI

text:
# Question
Title: Water Jug Problem in AI
You are given two jugs whose capacity are 5 litre and 3 litre. No jugs have any measuring marks on it. You have one source of water. How can you measure 4 litre of water in 5 litre jug ?

# Answer
> 1 votes
1. Empty the small jug.
2. Fill the large jug.
3. Use the large jug to fill the small jug. This leaves 2L in the large jug and 3L in the small jug.
4. Empty the small jug.
5. Use the large jug to fill the small jug. This leaves 0L in the large jug and 2L in the small jug.
6. Fill the large jug.
7. Use the large jug to fill the small jug. This leaves 4L in the large jug and 3L in the small jug.

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Tags: artificial-intelligence
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# Question
Title: Is learning and memory formation mostly comprised of new synapses forming, or already-existent synapses strengthening?
I'm guessing it may be some combination of the two. If so, which is the more frequent situation?

I'm also guessing it varies depending on the type of memory being formed. Let's take for instance, my memory of opening up this tab and clicking the "Ask Question" button about 30 seconds ago. Surely this can't just be a case of strengthening former synaptic connections, right? It's a completely new and specific memory. So would it be a case of (for the most part) many new synapses being formed to somehow encode this memory? It seems hard to believe that there could be so many new synapses being created constantly in order to encode so many memories. It must happen lightning-fast, no?

# Answer
Formation of a synapse does not automatically mean learning. It is the strength of the synapse that makes it a "skill". Hebb's rule for learning states that if a Neuron A repeatedly takes part in firing Neuron B, then the synapse from A to B is strengthened. We should also consider the fact that a neuron can be either excitatory or inhibitory to another neuron. If it is excitatory, the mental habit or skill improves, and otherwise it deteriorates.

Memory formation can be modeled as recurrent neural networks, where outputs continue to occur even after input to network has ceased.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Short answer: current evidence is unclear.

**Learning** As Contrarian mentions, formation of a synapse does not always mean 'learning' as synapses are formed and eliminated all the time, however -- both -- formation and elimination have been found to be linked with learning (interestingly the same spines that are 'learnted' can be 'unlearnted'). So in this sense, the formation of a new synapse or the elimination of an existing one could be 1) 'learning' or it could be 2) a stochastic process unrelated to any learning.

Furthermore, we know that synapses have variable efficacy, which is commonly assumed to underlie learning (evidence on this is less clear). As Contrarian mentions, Hebb's postulate is a nice place to start. It is far from complete however as much evidence suggests that sometimes when 'Neuron A' takes part in the firing of 'Neuron B' a conjoining synapse may be weakened. Hebb's postulate is a very simplified view (and originally didn't even include weakening at all).

**Memory** When it comes to memory, many people assume that synapses are the substrate for memory, and this may be accurate however it is still an assumption as current evidence is not concrete (for example, here is a paper with evidence that CaMKII, a protein kinase, could be a candidate for the molecular basis of memory, or perhaps a combination of several molecules -- a nice review paper). It is usually assumed that strong synapses represent memories however this may not be the case, it could be that a weak synapse represents a memory.

An important note to this, is the time scale which you elude to. Synapse formation/elimination will take longer than the time for you to remember clicking the 'Ask Question' button. In this case it might be that a group of neurons (commonly called assemblies) are 'remembering' this with their activity, independent of any changes in synapses.

Substantial evidence has been collected to suggest that the basis of a memory is a group of neurons (often termed a cellular assembly) and their connections, simply put: see papers from the Tonegawa Lab.

(Edited to include some references.)
> 3 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, memory
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# Question
Title: Why does optogenetics not mean that perfect brain-computer interfaces are possible?
There have been multiple articles and videos circulating on the Internet claiming that optogenetics has made it possible to have perfect input/output to the brain from a computer. This is obviously false or someone would be making a lot of money selling this.

Consequently, I'm curious as to why this is false. Why does having the ability to fire and read the firing information off of individual neurons not imply that a seamless human-computer interface is possible? I'm assuming that this has something to do with the limits of the processing power of our brain and the limits of neuro-plasticity, but my experience in this domain is limited.

If this question is too broad (and I think it is), it can be reframed as a request for references. What current research is being done on this problem? What are the current approaches? Who is working on it? Are there any publications that nicely describe the progress in this (hypothetical) domain?

# Answer
> has made it possible to have perfect input/output to the brain from a computer

Perfect? Definitely not: the complexities of optogenetics of a single mm square of cortex, of a mouse lets say, are extremely complex. As Chuck mentions, many neurons/synapses may be activated by a single LASER and current technologies allow only a few different LASER frequencies to be used simultaneously. For 'perfect input/output' it is easy to imagine a system whereby one would need thousands of different LASER operating at different frequencies to individually control/read thousands of neurons. (This blog post by Mark Baxter is a nice summary of the issue of hype with optogenetics.)

Furthermore, this assumption completely ignores synapses, glial cells, dendritic branchs etc. which may be important for computation in the brain and might therefore need to be considered for any I/O system.

> Why does having the ability to fire and read the firing information off of individual neurons not imply that a seamless human-computer interface is possible?

You are assuming that everything the brain does is encoded in the firing rate of individual neurons. This is a massive assumption to which a lot of evidence is in the contrary. For example, there is evidence suggesting that the visual system does not have time to encode information in firing rates and it is postulated that the 'time to first spike' is important in this domain (first paragraph of the introduction has a nice summary of the reasoning/evidence behind this hypothesis). Furthermore, as I mentioned above, firing rates are an extremely small part of the brain, and just one of many many different ways the brain may encode/decode information (we do not know which, see sections 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7 for different methods the brain may employ).

To finish, one point which comes to mind currently limiting optogenetics is 'depth'. Light transmission falls off quickly through neural tissue: reduced by 50% after 100 $\mu$m, and by 90% after 1mm. If one wanted an input/output system connected to a computer to control/read a part of a brain 1cm below the surface one would (currently) have to chop out the neural tissue in the way -- this is a big problem!

(Edited with some references.)
> 6 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, reference-request, cognitive-neuroscience, theoretical-neuroscience
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title: Memory - Remembering a Source

text:
# Question
Title: Memory - Remembering a Source
So I study information systems technology, networking, programming, system security as my main focuses on school with a lot of reading material and a ton of independent research. My major problem is not remembering where I read something. The thing is I can remember something from it such as:

You have to remember to remember.

But without looking it up I would have no idea of the source. This leads me to want to find the source thus wasting large amount of time trying to remember where I read it. This happens with all of my areas of study. I worry I consume to much knowledge in a day and need to better document my findings and notate the sources but because I love my courses I'm always reading or researching so it's hard to constantly be writing stuff down and documenting all of it. I would end up with way to many pages reviewing them would be a task in itself.

Can someone explain why I can't remember the source of information I have learned or how to better remember the source. I always go back and re learn things that I can't remember. I suffer from major anxiety and depression so I know that can hurt my memory but it's weird because I can typically remember a lot of the content just not the source.

I know it's a weird question but this problem uses so much of my time and evergy. It also makes me ignore my lectures because it's right there I just can't remember. I find it happens because my teacher or myself brings up a topic which I have studied previously. There is a lot of repetition in my course because the underlying concepts need to be burned in.

Thank you.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Your question is around retaining information when you are immersed in four major fields of study. Yes you want a solid foundations from which to build- but perhaps you simply are taking on too much information.

There seems to be a focus in many educational systems on producing knowledge which is to be memorized in a formal, didactic, manner of "direct-instruction". However, much is to be said as well for the accrual of knowledge via conversation which seeks to solve a problem alongside another person or within a group- that which stays with you because you have an emotional connection to the process of procuring that knowledge- you feel rewarded once you've "won" the answer- and you remember these answers because you were both teaching and evaluating the answers alongside another person- developing and testing hypotheses and validities. Here you are not only processing content to reach an end result but also perhaps taking more time than you would on your own to assess content itself in relation to, say, the importance of the answer (or lack thereof). In this way the learning experience may feel more satisfying - you may feel a decrease in the drive to accrue lots of information on your own (phew- pressure, eh?) While it makes sense for one to want to document evidence of further validation of knowledge in a way that is, it could be that your process is dragging the knowledge down given the amount of purpose you find personally in documenting vs. that which is required to further good workmanship within the program.

In looking at context/environment of your learning: within academia, where is there overlap between your expectations vs. those of your program of study (i.e. do you have the capacity to develop a niche given your current psychosocial/socioemotional inputs?)

I would be curious to see a copy of a meta-mind-map if you were to draw one- you'd probably fill pages in minutes with the content of the information...and I wonder how the flow of this content would compare to the flow of a meta-mind-map of the processing of that content.

I hope that this makes sense and isn't too high on the advice-giving end especially since I'm sure that all of this writing could be so easily summed up in a visual involving just those systems which you study like a melted cpu or .... something...which of course goes against my own claim of the value of finding good mental heuristics..... .....

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Tags: memory
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# Question
Title: Are topics experienced later in the day more likely to be present in dreams?
Is there any evidence suggesting that thoughts or experiences from late in the day are more likely to be dreamed about the following night compared with similar experiences earlier in the day?

# Answer
The probability of what you'll dream is really dependent on a ton of factors. Stress can harm your ability to remember, and process, your memories during sleep. If you are highly stressed due to hunger later in the day, you brain may be more likely to process the memories of events before hunger set in. However, the opposite may be true for others. schizophrenics for example, have problems with how they process memories. Our brains can accidentally be configured to process memories in an atypical/unhealthy way. Also, extreme time-dilation can affect us. Personally, while in basic training, we got a lot less sleep than I was used too. I started noticing that the days seemed to blend together, and time moved quicker. My dreams, during that period, never seemed to follow any pattern based on time that I can remember, and it's likely true for most people in similar situations.

This article talks about sleep deprivation and how it affects the dreaming process/length: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-less-sleep-means-more-dreams/

This article details the effects of memory processing during sleep: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC534695/

This study looked into how alcohol affects memory storage: http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-2/186-196.htm

Obviously there are many things besides alcohol which can affect your ability to form and store memories, so taken together, all of these indicate that the order of the events of our day, processed in our dreams, is affected by how you formed those memories while actually experiencing them awake.
> 2 votes

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Tags: dreams
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# Question
Title: Difference between meditating and watching a movie
If I meditate, I concentrate on my breathing; if my mind wanders, I bring its attention back to my breathing.

If I watch a movie/show, I concentrate on it; if my mind wanders, I bring its attention back to the movie/show.

So what's the difference? (other than one is more entertaining than the other)

# Answer
> 1 votes
You are comparing two totaly different things.

While watching a movie/show, you let allday grind behind you and consume the input you get. This can have several effects on your consciousness, both temporal and permanent, just like meditation. But these two points are everything what meditation and watching a movie/show are having in common.

Everyone knows what watching a movie/show is due everyone has expirience in it, so I will not go further to this point. But I assume that you do not anderstand the point of meditation. It's not only about watching your breath and prevent your thoughs of wandering around. Für meditation-beginners this might be true, due they first have to lern to focus.

But meditation is a lot more. Depending on what a person wants to archive by meditation. Essentially one focus his mind on either the body, the mind itself(like in a mirror) or both at the same time.

One can write a lot of books about what you can archive due meditation, so I avoid to write a long text.

Most people do not explore their mind. They see it as a kind of invisible organ which is just there and has a function. But as many people do sport to train their body, other people meditate to train their mind. Not only to focus their thoughs on one spot, but also to conditionate their thoughts, overcome traumatic memory or just to archive highest cognitive capacity without using drugs.

Due meditation, one discovers his own mind. This will take years and the exploration will never ends, due the mind changes his state with the years. By meditation one watches the mind changing, finds his own weakpoints, learns on wich kind of input it reacts in wich way and to avoid "bad" input and search "good" input.

Typical results of years of meditations can be: \- Acceptance to things that stressed the mind in the past. \- Or exactly the opposite: rais of the courage to change something one suffered for a while. \- More happyness due the "I really controll myself" state, like a athlete.

In the end I tell you: If you want to know what meditation is about, you have to try it out. If you are willing to do, I recommend you to start the "focus on breath" technique to learn the focus, but keep in mind that this is just a small step. The aim is to focus the mind.

If you want more information, sent me a message.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Your question is unclear. To address your specific examples directly, probably not much, you are simply paying attention to something. In your first example, you are paying attention to your breathing, and if you get distracted you try to pay attention again. In the second example, the same is true, but for a movie/show.

If you are questioning why watching a movie is not like meditating then that is an unanswerable question, it is like asking 'why is driving a car not like riding a bicycle? in both cases I am sat down in/on a moving hunk of metal.'

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Tags: meditation
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# Question
Title: What is the psychology behind the need to be the centre of attention?
In conversations, there are often times when a member of the group will *consistently* divert the conversation back to their own topic (often to do with them). A 'pseudo-conversation' example:

* Persons 1-3 are talking about A - going back and forth as conversations often do.
* Person 4 starts talking about B - a topic about them
* Persons 1-4 talk about B for a bit, and that part of the conversation is largely concluded.
* Persons 1-4 talk about A again (as it had not concluded) - picking up were they left off.
* Person 4 starts talking about C - another topic about them, loosely related to topic B

(Note: for these examples, topics A, B and C are not urgent).

Many people seem to do it without realising, some habitually do it - but, it seems commonplace.

The question is, what is the psychology behind the need to be the centre of attention?

# Answer
Depends on the pattern of how this occurs -- the situation, consistency, and severity.

If across situations, across different other people, and across different settings, this would indicate a personality trait. The person might be unaware of the social cues of others and draw attention to ideas that are interesting to them. Most people are interested in talking about themselves. Combine this tendency with lack of awareness, and you might see what you're describing.

If they consistently dominate the group conversation across different people and different situations, to the point where the pattern negatively affects their life or work, they might have a narcissistic trait or even NPD. In such case, the person's concept of self-worth may be abnormally modulated by the positive attention they receive from others. They might have a need to be the focus of attention, because otherwise they may feel degrees of worthlessness. This need may have developed during childhood from one or a series of traumatic events (i.e. narcissistic parent).

If this happens consistently only with one group of people, it could be that the people in the group consistently have conversations that are uninteresting to the person.

Additionally, the group of people might be meeting in a certain place or a certain time, during which the person might be more likely to want to talk about themselves. Perhaps, the group meets after the person has finished their soccer practice, or after a weekly meeting with their boss. If so, the person might be particularly excited to talk about their game events, or how pressured they feel at work.
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, abnormal-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is the concept that schema is opposed to
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema\_(psychology)

> In psychology and cognitive science, a schema (plural schemata or schemas) describes an organized pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them.\[1\] It can also be described as a mental structure of preconceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of organizing and perceiving new information.\[2\] Schemata influence attention and the absorption of new knowledge: people are more likely to notice things that fit into their schema, while re-interpreting contradictions to the schema as exceptions or distorting them to fit. Schemata have a tendency to remain unchanged, even in the face of contradictory information. Schemata can help in understanding the world and the rapidly changing environment.\[3\] People can organize new perceptions into schemata quickly as most situations do not require complex thought when using schema, since automatic thought is all that is required. \[3\]
>
> People use schemata to organize current knowledge and provide a framework for future understanding. Examples of schemata include academic rubrics, social schemas, stereotypes, social roles, scripts, worldviews, and archetypes. In Piaget's theory of development, children adopt a series of schemata to understand the world.

I wonder what the opposite concept to schema?

Btw, I guess the schema in database theory is related to the one in psychology. How is it related, if any?

thanks.

# Answer
There are approaches in cognitive psychology that either emphasize top down or bottom up perceptual processes, or in some cases a combination of two. Psychology began using those terms after being radically influenced by the information processing framework. So I think that if a proper distinction is to be made, it would be better to put it in those terms namely, top down vs bottom up processing.

Having said that schemas are associated with top down processes as they involve the influence of knowledge on perception. So an opposite concept to schemas, if this is the right way to put it, would possibly be the concept of affordances which is associated with bottom up processes. James Gibson in his theory of affordances states that a sufficient amount of information is contained in the environment itself. Affordances in this sense, are "action possibilities" latent in the environment and are objectively measured contrary to schemas which are subjective by definition
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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title: Universal Mind? Nature or Nurture?

text:
# Question
Title: Universal Mind? Nature or Nurture?
I have been reading a book entitled "The Geography of Thought" by Richard Nisbett. He talks about how easterners and westerners think differently. I am not all the way through it, but I agree with a lot of his points, because he stresses no true biological differences between the two groups but instead suggests that the difference in cognitive processes takes place over time as a result of cultural factors or "nurture" rather than "nature." I am reading this book as a part of a class I am taking entitled "perspectives on knowledge".

To accompany this book, we are watching a video series entitled "Brain Sex" which talks about the effects of hormones on the developing brain and supports the hypotheses that Males and Females have different cognitive processes. (More specifically male and female BRAINS, as you can have a male brain in a female body or have a brain that is actually more like a hybrid between the two due to hormonal abnormalities) This would be a difference of nature that is accentuated through out life through nurture.

The problem is that this video series is a VHS and is over 20 years old.

I am wondering what science's view is on the universality of mind is today. My question can actually be summed up by a question my professor asked us to think about in class:

"Do different people think differently, or is the mind universal. If people think differently, is this difference due primarily to nature or nurture?"

**EDIT:** I have been developing my argument and I am going to defend my long term belief that people think differently, but after much thought I am torn as to where the **primary** cause for this difference could lie.

Here is the first half of my argument which sets up the first major premise, which is that people think differently:

1. The physiology of our brain can be mapped directly to our psychological “mind” regardless of the absence of a proven causal relationship.
2. Our brains undergo a large amount of physiological change throughout life due to their plastic nature
3. **People think differently as a result.**

Premise 4 is where I am torn. Both cultural factors and physical ones have a huge effect on our brains. non-physical cultural factors and physical ones, like hormones, both effect the way our brains are wired.

The **amount** of cultural priming throughout our life heavily outweighs our physical priming, but our physical priming takes place **earlier** in life, even pre-birth. presumably to me, this would make it a primary factor, because of a compound effect, making these developments more significant.

but I have no evidence to support either view point, so i'm looking for actual references that I can look at that address the significance of these factors as well as critiques of my argument in case I am operating off of some fallacy I am unaware of because of my limited perspective here.

I understand this question is subjective. I am honestly just looking for references related to my argument because it can be hard me to find good scientific references.... but the opinions of others would be awesome as well! Thank you in advance!

# UPDATE

I just stumbled across this again, and I actually wrote a paper on the matter which specifically answers the question. You can read it here.

My conclusion is that the mind is not universal and nature is the primary cause. My explanation is somewhat nuanced, but very strictly logical in nature and I trace out the premises in the first page.

# Answer
> 0 votes
I've been reading a book called The Way of The Shaman by Michael Harner. In it, I found three quotes on page 24 which describe how people perceive the world in different ways based on what could be cognitive biases. In the one quote Harner writes,

> “In engaging in shamanic practice, one moves between what I term an Ordinary State of Consciousness (OSC) and a Shamanic State of Consciousness (SSC). These states of consciousness are the keys to understanding, for example, how Carlos Castaneda can speak of an ‘ordinary reality’ and a ‘nonordinary reality.’”

In another quote he writes,

> "To understand the deep-seated, emotional hostility that greeted the works of Castaneda in some quarters, one needs to keep in mind that this kind of prejudice is often involved. It is the counterpart of ethnocentrism between cultures. But in this case it is not the narrowness of someone’s cultural experience that is the fundamental issue, but the narrowness of someone’s conscious experience. The persons most prejudiced against a concept of nonordinary reality are those who have never experienced it. This might be termed cognicentrism, the analogue in consciousness of ethnocentrism."

In the third quote Harner writes,

> "Anthropologists teach others to try to avoid the pitfalls of ethnocentrism by learning to understand a culture in terms of its own assumptions about reality. Western shamans can do a similar service with regard to cognicentrism. The anthropologists’ lesson is called cultural relativism. What Western shamans can try to create, to some degree, is cognitive relativism. Later, when an empirical knowledge of the experiences of the SSC is achieved, there may be a respect for its own assumptions. Then the time will perhaps be ripe for unprejudiced analysis of SSC experiences scientifically in OSC terms.”

I'm not sure if these quotes answer your question well enough since they attempt to explain the mind more than the brain but I thought they were somewhat related to what you've asked.

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, sexuality, plasticity
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