# Question
Title: Research groups in Computer Science which study Computational Neuroscience
I am currently applying to graduate programs in Computer Science in the United States for admission next fall. I am particularly interested in the convergence of Computer Science and Computational Neuroscience, particularly in biologically-realistic neural computation and the analysis of human brain circuits and algorithms.

The faculty of most Computer Science departments I'm looking at, however, do not seem to be directly involved with Computational Neuroscience, and Neuroscience as a whole is dealt with as a separate department with faculty mostly from biology and psychology.

I would like to know whether there exist particular universities with Computer Science departments where there is an active research group working on Neuroscience and brain circuitry. Also, if I were to apply to universities where the Computer Science and Neuroscience departments are completely disparate, how could I possibly go about convincing the admissions department about the interdisciplinary research that I'd like to undertake, without undermining my entire application?

I apologize if this isn't the right place to post this question. I considered posting it on academia, but it seemed a bit too specific a subject for it to belong there.

# Answer
My general advice would be to start by tracking down the faculty that are doing the kind of research you want to do. A good way to do this is to identify journal articles that appeal to you, and then figure out what lab they originated from. The labs might be in a computer science department, a neuroscience department, or even a computational neuroscience department. If the lab seems interesting, then evaluate the program to see if it seems like a good fit. For most graduate programs, individual faculty members have a lot of input into admissions. If there is someone who does the kind of work you want to do, then they are more likely to support your application.

This article has some really helpful advice about how to pursue computational neuroscience in programs that are not specifically 'computational neuroscience' programs.

Of course, there are some computational neuroscience programs, where interdisciplinary research will be the norm. A small sample of the ones that I am aware of:
> 4 votes

# Answer
From what you describe, computational neuroscience programs should fit your interests as they are highly multidisciplinary. Josh gave a great answer, so I only wanted to add the following.

* This website contains links to various programs and labs that match your interests. Some are European but you can ignore them.
* I don't remember if it is mentioned in the above website but Caltech has a program that you might know and it's called Neural Systems and computation
* The Computer Science department of Carnegie Mellon has faculty doing research in computational neuroscience
> 2 votes

# Answer
I would also recommend to subscribe to the connectionist mailing list here and the comp-neuro mailing list here where you can find frequent announcements of (new) PhD and master programs in computational neuroscience, besides conferences, workshops all over the world and other interesting things.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: theoretical-neuroscience
---


# Question
Title: Relationship between oculometry/pupillometry and disorders of consciousness
I recently got to wondering whether certain eye movements or pupillary responses were correlated with disorders of consciousness (coma, VS, MCS, or even locked-in syndrome). I know that the pupillary response to a direct light-source is part of the usual coma evaluation scale, but my question deals more with resting-state oculomotor activity or stimulus-evoked responses.

An example of such research might be (for example) a paper in which changes in pupil response co-varies with conscious-state changes in an MCS patient.

Does anybody know of any such research?

# Answer
I have listed several articles below for your reference:

(Search terms: "**oculometry pupillometry disorders of consciousness**" in Google Scholar, nothing special):

Grandchamp et al, 2014, DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00031 \- A primary research article related to consciousness (mind wandering) where the authors investigated various pupillometric responses, among other measures. Good journal.

(Search terms: "**pupillometry consciousness**" in Google scholar):

Laeng et al., 2012, DOI 10.1177/1745691611427305 \- Nice looking review on pupillometry and consciousness that should be a good source of additional references;

Smallwood et al., 2011, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018298 \- A primary research article on attention and perception in Plos One. It is open source, but not my favorite journal
> 4 votes

---
Tags: vision, consciousness, eye-movement, unconscious
---


# Question
Title: Which personality traits cause "non-cruelty"?
Human behavior towards other living beings can be classified into three categories:

1. *altruistic:* actively caring for the well-being of others
2. *cruel:* deliberately inflicting pain and suffering
3. *neutral:* not affecting the life and well-being of others

You cannot always care for the well-being of everyone around you. Therefore active altruism cannot be a general guiding principle of behavior. But you can always chose not to be actively cruel. Lacking a better name, I will call this type of behavior, which includes both altruistic and neutral behavor, *"non-cruel"*, as suggested by Nick Stauner.

What I would like to know is if there are predictors that differentiate between habitually cruel persons and those that are usually either actively altruistic or at least show a passive lack of deliberate cruelty and knowing acquiescence of suffering?

**Which personality traits are responsible for habitually non-cruel behavior?**

---

Notes:

I am interested in traits in the traditional sense (patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion) as well as neural correlates of non-cruelty.

# Answer
I've been commenting a lot and not answering for quite some time now! My hesitation was largely due to the terms "unfailingly", the mixture of "altruism" and "non-cruelty", and having forgotten my intention to answer. My answer certainly won't be foolproof (haven't yet heard of a trait model that is), and I may not cover both altruism and non-cruelty, but here are some pointers anyway...

To start this answer off "Big", I'll begin with *agreeableness* (and its Wikipedia page, which has a lot to offer on the topic), one of the Big Five personality traits \[emphasis added throughout\]:

> Agreeableness is a personality trait manifesting itself in **individual behavioral characteristics** that are perceived as **kind, sympathetic, cooperative, warm and considerate** \[(Thompson, 2008)\].

All of these aspects (traits unto themselves, really) will relate somewhat to non-cruelty or altruism; even cooperation entails not harming one's teammates and sometimes putting them first.

> People scoring **low on agreeableness** are generally **less concerned with others' well-being and report having less empathy**. Therefore, these individuals are **less likely to go out of their way to help others**. Low agreeableness is often characterized by skepticism about other people's motives, resulting in suspicion and unfriendliness. People very low on agreeableness have a tendency to be **manipulative** in their social relationships. They are also more likely to **compete** than to cooperate.

Less concern for others' well-being and emotions in general means greater freedom to disregard or willfully harm them, as are often useful to do for personal gain via manipulation or competition. Here we also have a direct connection to altruism, and a few indirect connections, including disinterest and mistrust of others' concerns. Yet the most direct connection to altruism appears in the *facets* of agreeableness (lower-order factors in a second-order model of agreeableness as a multidimensional construct; see Figure 1 for a similar model):

> Agreeableness is considered to be a superordinate trait, meaning that it is a grouping of personality sub-traits that cluster together statistically. The lower-level traits, or **facets, grouped under agreeableness** are: **trust, straightforwardness, altruism**, compliance, modesty, and **tender-mindedness** \[(Matsumoto & Juang, 2012)\].

I've emphasized trust and straightforwardness above because the Big Five model of personality isn't the only one that relates trust to altruism—see also:

**Figure 1. Second-order model of trust linking altruism to honesty** (Perepelkin & Di Zhang, 2011).

Again, logically, a lack of trust would likely reduce motivation to help others altruistically. As for straightforwardness, Wikipedia notes, "Low scorers...are generally deceitful or manipulative." Again, these behaviors are likely to relate to some form of cruelty more often than not (i.e., "white lies" are the exception, I assume).

Also, from the same section, "Straightforwardness is similar to the honesty aspect of honesty-humility in the HEXACO model" (Ashton & Lee, 2005). So, speaking of HEXACO...

> The factors of Agreeableness, Honesty-Humility and Emotionality are distinctly different from their counterparts on the Five Factor Model (FFM). Honesty-Humility, Emotionality and Agreeableness are proposed to be measures of Altruistic versus Antagonistic behaviour. Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness both measure two different aspects of Reciprocal altruism, high levels of which indicate a propensity for helping behaviour and cooperation as opposed to the exploitation of others. The Honesty-Humility factor represents a person's tendency for pro-social altruistic behaviours \[(Thalmayer, Saucier, & Eigenhuis, 2011)\], while Agreeableness indicates an individual's tendency to forgive and to show tolerance. Emotionality is a measure of kin altruism, that is, the tendency to show empathy and attachment to one’s kin.

This implies a little complexity in altruism itself, but brings agreeableness, honesty-humility, and emotionality directly into the equation within the HEXACO model. It may also claim that emotionality is "distinctly different" from neuroticism, but I'm not sure I'd go so far. Consider that neuroticism relates negatively to happiness in the context of the Wikipedia page on altruism itself:

> While research supports the idea that altruistic acts bring about happiness, it has also been found to work in the opposite direction—that happier people are also kinder. The relationship between altruistic behavior and happiness is bidirectional. Studies have found that generosity increases linearly from sad to happy affective states \[(Underwood, Froming, & Moore, 1977)\]...While generous acts make people feel good about themselves, it is also important for people to appreciate the kindness they receive from others. Studies suggest that gratitude goes hand-in-hand with kindness and is also very important for our well-being. A study on the relationship happiness to various character strengths showed that "a conscious focus on gratitude led to reductions in negative affect and increases in optimistic appraisals, positive affect, offering emotional support, sleep quality, and well-being" \[(Shimai, Otake, Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2006).\]

This adds happiness and gratitude to the equation as well, which can be measured at the trait level.

BTW, since empathy has come up a fair amount, you may be interested in the "empathy-altruism hypothesis". This also implicates empathy as a trait of sorts that relates to altruism, but I'm not sure this adds anything to what I've said above. Also, while I'm disclaiming, I may not have addressed cruelty sufficiently yet, much less neural correlates. Both are likely to make the necessary answer much bigger, so I'm at least going to take a break on this one for now. I'd encourage someone else to step up and cover those bases in the meantime.

**References**

\- Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2005). Honesty-Humility, the Big Five, and the Five-Factor Model. *Journal of Personality, 73*(5), 1321–1354.
\- Matsumoto, D., & Juang, L. (2012). *Culture and psychology* (5th ed.), pp. 271. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth-Cengage Learning.
\- Perepelkin, J., & Di Zhang, D. (2011). Brand personality and customer trust in community pharmacies. *International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, 5*(3), 175–193.
-Post, S. G. (2005). Altruism, happiness, and health: It's good to be good. *International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 12*(2), 66–77.
-Schwartz, C., Meisenhelder, J., Ma, Y., & Reed, G. (2003). Altruistic social interest behaviors are associated with better mental health. *Psychosomatic Medicine, 65*(5), 778–785.
-Shimai, S., Otake, K., Park, N., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. P. (2006). Convergence of character strengths in American and Japanese young adults. *Journal of Happiness Studies, 7*(3), 311–322.
-Thalmayer, A. G., Saucier, G., & Eigenhuis, A. (2011). Comparative validity of brief to medium-length Big Five and Big Six Personality Questionnaires. *Psychological Assessment, 23*(4), 995–1009. Retrieved from http://pages.uoregon.edu/gsaucier/comp\_val.pdf.
-Thompson, E. R. (2008). Development and validation of an international English big-five mini-markers. *Personality and Individual Differences, 45*(6), 542–548.
-Underwood, B., Froming, W. J., & Moore, B. S. (1977). Mood, attention, and altruism: A search for mediating variables. *Developmental Psychology, 13*(5), 541–542.
> 9 votes

# Answer
I interpret your question as a search for all kinds of characteristics for habitually non-aggressive people. Logically you could also put your question this way: What is characteristic only for people who are generally aggressive? How do you tell the difference between someone generally aggressive and someone not?

Here are some things that recognize above average habitual aggression:

* **Biochemicals**
* + Zinc deficiency can lead to symptoms that include aggression and violence.
* + Low serotonin leads to increased aggression.
* + High testosterone (males are more prone!)
* + Abnormal glucose metabolism
* **Brain functions**
*
*
* **Emotions**
* + Anger, frustration, jealousy and fear can all lead to aggression. We all know that many criminals have had bad childhoods, were bullyed at school, grew up without their parents or other sad things.

> Investigators from the Université de Montréal in Canada found that negative behavior at age 6, such as fighting, disobedience, and a lack of empathy, predicted criminal convictions by age 24. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/781279

> The study concluded: "BP, particularly during acute episodes, is associated with increased self-reported verbal and physical aggression, anger, and hostility. - See more at: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/bipolar-disorder/risk-aggressive-behavior-bipolar-disorder#sthash.N8E37ibO.dpuf http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/bipolar-disorder/risk-aggressive-behavior-bipolar-disorder

* + Kids who constantly expect rejection are more aggressive and get into trouble more with teachers than do their classmates.
*
* **Genes**: Some say that 50% of aggressivenes is caused by genes.
* + Low Agreeableness: As mentioned in the post by Nick Stauner
* + High Neuroticism: Facet N2, Angry Hostility makes a person annoyed, angry, frustrated, bitter, intolerant, and have a bad temper, short fuse.
* **Learned aggression**
* + Studies have shown that children imitate the behavior of grownups and cartoons (see Bobo doll experiment). They imitate both physical behavior and aggressive attitudes. This is especially the case when they observe someone behave aggression without being punished for it.
* + The bobo doll experiment indicates that children with aggressive parents are likely to imitate their parents' behavior - which is also supported by studies:

> Dick's research found that three factors can predict violence in men with 88 percent accuracy: Men who have witnessed their fathers abuse their mothers, men who are victims of a father's abuse themselves and men who have low self-esteem are the most likely to be violent themselves. http://www.uc.edu/info-services/batter.htm

All the mentioned causes are long-lasting or even permanent. So there isn't any short or easy answer as to what makes a person aggressive. All I can say is that people who are habitually aggressive have some kind of...issue... and they can't really help it, because most of these causes have no simple treatment.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Empathy is a concept of Psychology. Human individuals can attempt to understand the emotional state of another being and act in a way which that being would like to be treated. Altruism is a different concept. Where individuals are compelled to act in a way which they view is the best for the welfare of the individual. Someone with extreme empathy might assist someone in committing suicide because they are able to feel the emotional or physical pain of the person contemplating death. Likewise a person with extreme altruism would go to great links to continue the life of someone on the brink of death. Like carrying a mother out of burning building as she screams and resists because she wants to search for her child.

It is the contention of some psychologist that empathy can be taught especially to children and prisoners. Likewise also some research has been done into teaching altruism.

Lessening egocentric behavior seems to be the theme of both programs to teach empathy and altruism.

In non-scientific theological circles repeated exposure to principles of compassion (by lessening self-centeredness) have been known to induce altruism in certain individuals. Yet this same teaching of compassion has also been shown to induce sociopathic behaviour as well. Having the opposite effect of that which was intended.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: personality, altruism, aggression
---


# Question
Title: Research on avoiding thinking about things that trigger depression or anxiety
Has there been study done in regards to the phenomenon of avoiding thinking about things that would emotionally trigger depression or anxiety?

What I mean is, a person will think about something randomly, and if they don't push the thoughts away immediately, they will start to obsess over those thoughts and become depressed. Is this a known phenomenon?

# Answer
In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, one way to break this *cycle* is to examine the intensity of the anxiety, or the propensity to think anxiety-inducing thoughts, in different locations, home, shopping, gym, library, movie. Breaking the *cycle* by limiting time spent in the anxiety-inducing location is beneficial because triggering depression might trigger more anxiety-inducing thoughts, which will add to the depression...etc.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: depression, anxiety
---


title: Are there any rules about masking?

text:
# Question
Title: Are there any rules about masking?
I am currently programming an experiment where participants have to do a divided visual field task. In a paper about the correct methodology about these tasks, it is said that you should use a backward mask (a mask after the target) in order to avoid after-images.

I have no objection of inserting backward masks in my experiment, but I just can't find any rules about how to implement these correctly.

Does it matter if I use a random black/white pixel rectangle where the target was or some symbols (e.g., ### is often used in psycholinguistic experiments) on that location? Or should I put random black/white pixels over the whole screen?

(Location of the target/mask is not important for the participants, so a target-located or a full-screen mask does not change to the goal of my research.)

# Answer
> 5 votes
Your question was a loooooong time ago, but I just ran across a couple of good references explaining what backward masking does and how to choose one. This(1) is a great paper examining the neural mechanisms and timing of visual backward masking; according to this (2) 2000 review of masking theory, there are four subtypes of backward masking.

Backward masking can be achieved by

* **light**, when the target is masked by a larger and spatially overlapping uniform flash of light.
* **metacontrast**, when the mask does not overlap the mask spatially.
* **structure**, when the mask overlaps the target as well as shares many structural features of the target.
* **noise**, when the mask consists of random-dot noise over the target.

(There are some papers from the 1960s & 1970s talking about the transient vs sustained activation theory of backward masking function, but they are hard to find online because of their age so I have not included them.)

It's probably a good idea to go and read the 2000 review paper--the full paper is publicly available at that URL--because what kind of backward mask you choose depends on the hypothesis of the experiment.

References
(1) Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, May 1999, Vol. 11, No. 3, Pages 300-311. doi: 10.1162/089892999563409
(2) Perception & Psychophysics, December 2000, Volume 62, Issue 8, pp 1572-1595.

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, methodology, experimental-psychology, vision
---


# Question
Title: What is the neurobiological basis of the "inner voice" used for thought or reading?
I've recently experienced a number of hypnogogic near sleep states characterized by change in thinking (stage 1-2 sleep). I noticed that if I let go and get absorbed in the state, I can follow it.

I can describe the hypnogogic sensation as a feeling of empty space without a definite boundary. Typically the state arises at 17-23 minutes after bedtime (I'm using a timer to check). However, as soon as I activate "inner voice" or think a thought spoken in that voice, those other near sleep states get completely suppressed. Literally, a single word disrupts these states.

This makes me interested **what happens in the brain when a person thinks using a single threaded, spoken train of thought?** ("I'm typing a question on cogsci right now" or "I'm reading a question right now") Is there some part of the brain that gets activated while others get suppressed? In particular I'm interested **why spoken thought suppresses other non-verbal states** that a brain can consciously experience?

> Internal monologue, also known as inner voice, internal speech, or verbal stream of consciousness is thinking in words. It also refers to the semi-constant internal monologue one has with oneself at a conscious or semi-conscious level.

It would be interesting to know if there's some difference that fMRI can show between a brain that's reading using voice and brain that's reading non-verbally.

I recall reading about similar phenomenon in the eastern spiritual traditions, like Taoism or Buddhism, where the states of mind they are trying to achieve are also incompatible with inner voice.

# Answer
> 4 votes
Preliminary answer I intend to improve later. Stumbled upon this in the context of description of how people read:

According to this paper on readin (Sousa, 2005), novice readers internally verbalize written words of English and German using **"an area of the brain just above and behind Wernicke's area"**. This area then communicates with the Broca's area and the frontal lobe.

Found this additional article which mentions that people use the same area of the brain when reading silently as when listening actively.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Verbalizing out loud is a technique that is actually very useful. Once this begins (out loud, I'm not sure about in your head) the amygdala gets slower and the prefrontal cortex lights up.

---
Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, language
---


# Question
Title: Neurotransmitter control via biofeedback?
According to this thread, certain regions of the brain, and even some distributed activation patterns can be up/down regulated via bio-feedback.

Is it possible in theory and is there any research where subjects were taught to consciously control neurotransmitter (e.g. serotonin, dopamine, etc...) levels?

It seems that doing so would present with alternatives to pharmacological methods of altering neurotransmitter levels in treatment of various mood and cognitive disorders.

# Answer
Firstly, you wouldn't be directly controlling neurotransmitter. From the human perspective, you'd be controlling higher-level events (and they aren't necessarily describable on more than a phenomenological level). Of course, this would also lead to some changes in neurotransmitter release, but in a complex way: that's all handled at a lower level by the cells.

That being said, neurofeedback is a (the?) clinical practice that most closely matches your question. If you look at the references in the wiki page I linked, you will see lots of papers reporting on the findings and techniques. I do not know the current state of the research.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Turns out this is possible with microdialysis. Microdialysis uses small probes that can continuously sample the concentrations of target compounds (i.e. neurotransmitters when embedded in a brain).

In theory, though somewhat invasively, one could insert a few of these probes in a person's brain, display the neurotransmitter concentrations on a computer screen, and train the subject to change the neurotransmitter concentrations through his/her thoughts as they would in a bio-feedback setup.

If the concentrations are associated with some neurological disease (i.e. depression, anxiety, schizophrenia), the subject could learn to alter their neurotransmitter levels, and possibly reduce their symptoms, without the use of pharmacological interventions and their associated side-effects.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: neuroscience, neuroimaging, health-psychology
---


# Question
Title: Folding (wrinkles) in cortex: Why is surface area more important than volume?
When we look at the cortex of the brain, it has a folded structure. It is said that this is because this enables a greater number of neurons to exist, which is obviously advantageous.

However, we could pack in the same amount of 'volume' into a smaller space without any folding, sacrificing that surface area it results in. Why does this lead to fewer neurons? Can neurons only exist near surfaces?

# Answer
The key point is that the brain is not a uniform structure. The outer layer, known as grey matter, is a relatively uniform and flat structure. Underneath the grey matter is white matter. An overly-simple characterization of these two areas is that grey matter performs computations, and white matter lets different areas of grey matter talk to each other. Here's an image of a dissected brain from wikipedia where you can clearly see the ring of grey matter.

One reason for the folds might be that if you want to fit a flat structure (like grey matter) into a tight space, folding it is one way to fit more of it. Another aspect of this is that the folds bring different areas of grey matter closer together, which means less white matter is needed to connect the areas together.
> 16 votes

# Answer
First of all, the human brain is distinctively larger than that of any other primate, mainly due to the great expansion of the cerebral cortex. The underlying structures have remained relatively stable (Toro et al., 2008). As the cortex overlies the rest of the brain, a solution had to be found, because the whole brain did not have to inflate to increase intelligence in men, just the cortex. The answer by @Josh touches on the solution, as folding the cortex increases the surface-to-volume ratio such that an expanding cortical surface fits onto a relatively stable base.

However, the question basically, and very rightfully states: "**why not increase volume in order to fit those extra neurons in**?". Since the volume of a ball increases by a third power with radius, why on earth would nature keep holding onto increasing the surface area, and not simply inflate the cortex by enhancing its thickness?

This has to do with the fact that the *vertical architecture* of the cortex has remained remarkably stable during evolution. In other words, evolution of a bigger cortical area to enhance higher cognitive processes has occurred in the most parsimonious way so typical for evolution: take an existing structure and enlarge it when there is need for more.

The cortex typically consists of a thin sheet covering the brain, and is not more than 3 mm thick. The neocortex represents the great majority of the cerebral cortex. It has six layers and contains between 10 and 14 billion neurons. The six layers of this part of the cortex are numbered with Roman numerals from superficial to deep. Layer I is the molecular layer, which contains very few neurons; layer II the external granular layer; layer III the external pyramidal layer; layer IV the internal granular layer; layer V the internal pyramidal layer; and layer VI the multiform, or fusiform layer (Review of Clinical and Functional neuroscience, chapter 11).

Basically, layer IV receives most input from the periphery via the thalamus (visual, auditory, tactile inputs etc.), layer II/III take care of horizontal projections for further processing, while layer V takes care of the output (motor output etc.). This basic architecture cannot be changed easily without changing the entire core workings of the cortex. As an analogy - to speed up computers in a parsimonious way, one can expand the number of processors quite easily. Coming up with a speedier processor is difficult these days, as evolution of single processor capabilities is pretty much at a dead end.

Hence, to increase the number of cortical neurons, the cortical surface must be enlarged. As the basis (subcortical structures) remain pretty much the same, creating folds (gyri and sulci) is the best way, and perhaps the only way to increase cortical surface area.

And to answer the last subquestion - **no, neurons do not only exist near surfaces**, it is the fact that the cortex is the outer shell of the brain and to expand it, this surface had to increase in size.

<sub>**Reference**
**-** Toro *et al*., Cerebral Cortex (2008); **18**(10): 2352–7</sub>
> 13 votes

---
Tags: neuroscience, neuroanatomy, brain-development
---


# Question
Title: Is there any evolutionary theory for self-destructive behavior?
Self-destructive behavior is usually related to the stress response.

Given that the world is a big source of stress and stress usually is also a source of evolution (since we must adapt to survive), is there any evolutionary theory that explains (or try to explain) the self destructive behavior under stress?

I mean, if the idea is to survive, wouldn't make more sense if, under stress, we could just try harder instead of giving up?

# Answer
> 6 votes
There are many different uses for the word "stress" that should not be confused with one another. For example, Self-destructive behaviour may be used to cope with psychological stress. Other examples are stress response, and biological stress, both of which have very different meanings. An important driving force of natural selection - a key process in evolution - is called selection pressure, which is yet another entirely different kind of stress.

Evolution certainly has great explanatory power, but it doesn't explain all behaviour - especially not the kind that is learned rather than inherited.

I am not aware of any evidence that self-destructive behaviour is inherited, but there is some evidence that it may be learned. As such, there is no impetus to explain this behaviour in an evolutionary context. Having said that, self-harm is found in animals besides humans, suggesting that perhaps something may be inherited (eg, the basic "learning mechanism" in humans has many similarities to other animals) that has this side-effect.

A lot of human behaviour does not "make sense" in the immediate context. Much human behaviour relies on heuristic rules that work most of the time, but fail some of the time. So for example, if self-harm results from learning, then well, most of the time our built-in learning mechanism serves us well, but sometimes it fails us.

# Answer
> 1 votes
The only evolutionary backed self destructive behavior I can think of is that which in certain situations the act of sacrificing one's self will aid the passing of one's genes through the next of kin. MAYBE one can come up with a scenario where say, two siblings encounter a lion, one then acts as a sacrifice so that the other can survive. That's a long shot though, and isn't all that relevant to your question.

As previously pointed out, stress and psychological stress aren't necessarily the same thing. A stress response in the body can be induced, independent of psychological factors. If the stress you speak of results in suicide ( and if this is in fact what you mean) the only explanation which would be congruent with biology & evolution is some how, in some way, the act of suicide by the stressed individual will increase the chances for this individual's sister or brother to reproduce.

# Answer
> 0 votes
There actually is. Self-sacrifice may not be common in the animal kingdom but it does occur. Ant's will intentionally fight to the death, even when retreat is possible, to defend their colony. Such behavior ensures the overall survival of their hive/nest. This means their genes stick around, and spread the "self-sacrifice" gene. This is, in a way, a positive form of self-destruction, with the goal of ensuring the survival of others. However, there is also evolutionary basis for negative self-destruction. This is particularly noticeable in humans. Humans do not usually have the same environmental pressures (at least to the same degree) acting on us, that animals do. This means that folks with weaker hearts don't get eaten by the lion, and so they pass on the genetic predisposition to heart disease. Combine this with human social psychology, and you have a situation where not only do they not get eaten, but they are shunned by healthier folks, and are more likely to mate with someone around the same overall genetic fitness, which leads to their offspring being around their same general level of genetic fitness. Combine this with the fact that folks are more likely to be poor when they have rolled poor genes, and poor folks are more likely to have more children, and you end up with a higher number of folks who's brains are extremely impulsive, obsessive (in the wrong ways), or erratic, and higher rates of cancer among other things. This isn't a hard and fast rule, with genetically based mental illnesses for example, being exhibited in someone extremely successful and rich, leading them to suicide. People like Robin Williams have brains that, due to weird quirks of genetics, managed to override some pretty serious issues that they are suffering, leading them to be more successful and pass on the genetic trait that may lead to them to self-destruction eventually. This kind of weird situation where harmful genetic traits slip by nature are also noticeable in creatures which over-specialize in surviving particular environments. For instance, plague-level viruses are actually TOO GOOD at what they do. If they are too specialized, they may wipe out the entire species of host that they have come to rely on, and be unable to adapt quickly enough to infect new host species, leading to their own extinction as well. At the time, it seemed like a good idea...

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2461362?uid=3739256&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21104792679333

Our early ancestors are said to have suddenly reached a point in brain development that they quickly developed the tools necessary to kill massive herds of animals. They sometimes killed most, if not all in the herd, and drove the herds into the ground through at least lack of genetic diversity. This behavior resulted from our ancestors brains developing such that they had the means, but not the understanding. So there is more than one way for self-destructive behavior to come about genetically.

Another resource which is more specifically targeting this exact topic: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Evolution-3839/2009/5/Evolution-Genetics-bad-traits.htm

For further research, look into studies concerning increasing rates of cancer, for which there are a million studies. One such example:

http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/understand\_bc/statistics

> About 5-10% of breast cancers can be linked to gene mutations (abnormal changes) inherited from one’s mother or father. Mutations of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are the most common. Women with a BRCA1 mutation have a 55-65% risk of developing breast cancer before age 70, and often at a younger age that it typically develops. For women with a BRCA2 mutation, this risk is 45%. An increased ovarian cancer risk is also associated with these genetic mutations. In men, BRCA2 mutations are associated with a lifetime breast cancer risk of about 6%; BRCA1 mutations are a less frequent cause of breast cancer in men.

For folks with a genetic predisposition to develop breast cancer, their increased survival rate means an increase of the gene in the population over time.

---
Tags: stress, self-discipline
---


# Question
Title: Is there a condition where a person doesn't feel emotional or non-physical pain?
Congenital insensitivity to pain is a rare condition where a person cannot feel pain (physical). Is there any condition relates to emotional pain or any pain not related to physical that a person cannot feel?

# Answer
> 8 votes
Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP) is a condition in which a person *cannot* feel physical pain. There is no known analogue encompassing all emotional (psychological) pain.

There are certain conditions in which a person may not be able to feel certain types of emotions, such as in psychopathy and related anti-social personality disorder. This may be related to abnormalities in the limbic system \- an area of the brain associated with processing emotion.

However, it is not always clear whether or not individuals who appear to lack the ability to feel certain types of psychological pain (eg, PTSD) in fact *cannot* feel it, or they can feel it but are indifferent to it, as in emotional numbness or apathy.

Additionally, modern theories of emotion suggest that emotion is "subjective" (context-dependent) - that is, physiological aspects of emotion (such as pain) are only part of the picture, and many other cognitive factors come into play. So for example, in the case of a broken heart, as with psychological pain in general, it appears to share some mechanisms with physical pain - ie, this type of pain is effectively the same as physical pain. Nonetheless, CIP patients appear to be able to feel emotions such as heartache normally, suggesting that the mechanism is much more complex, and physical pain is neither necessary nor sufficient for feeling psychological pain. The added complexity may be the reason why an emotional analogue to CIP is not known - the number of systems that would need to malfunction simultaneously is too unlikely. It is also probable that given the importance of emotion to normal functioning, that a condition of not feeling it would be equivalent to death.

PS: Sorry that I don't have any book recommendations for you, but Wikipedia articles I linked to contain many references to literature you can check out.

---
Tags: pain
---


# Question
Title: Is there a good entry-level tutorial for SPM?
The title pretty much says it all. I need to do some fMRI data analysis and I can't find any entry-level tutorials for Statistical Parameter Mapping (SPM). I've looked at some of the videos on the official SPM website, but I find that videos are not the most effective way of learning a new computerized tool -- I'm in the market for reading.

Does anybody have a go-to reference that's a bit less verbose and a bit more crash-course-y than the official manual?

# Answer
> 4 votes
The best way to learn is probably not by reading, but by doing. The SPM website contains a number of useful datasets with tutorials for various tasks.

I also find PowerPoint slides from lectures and talks useful. There are a bunch of slides on the SPM website, but you can also find more on Google by limiting your results to `type:pptx`.

---
Tags: fmri, spm
---


# Question
Title: How to collaborate with a university on a consumer psychology study?
Is there a way to propose a consumer-psychology study (as a business) and work with the university for the benefit of all people. Or do they only do studies around current subjects or select them internally?

# Answer
There are two factors at work in what is being researched: interest and money.

Researchers research what they find interesting. So if you can interest someone in your idea, then chances are that they will want to research it. But wether they will actually do that research will depend on wether it seems more interesting to them than what they are currently doing, have been investing a lot of time and effort into, and have already employed a team to research. So, your topic has to be really, really interesting to an advanced researcher to pick it up, which is unlikely. If it were so interesting to them, they would have thought of it themselves.

Researchers usually depend on third party funds. Those third parties only finance what they find relevant. There is research on how topics that are currently considered important by the media and populace are more researched. A good example is research on video game violence which was intensely researched after the Columbine shooting. Much relevant research is not done, because it is not currently politically opportune. Many researchers report how they were unable to continue research, because there was no funding. So if your topic is of current popular interest, and politicians can get voted if they care for it, chances are someone is going to research it. If not, not.

If, on the other hand, you *pay* for the labs and the people, you will have no problem finding researchers, and you can approach any expert in the relevant field. With money being notoriously scarce at many universities, and many young researchers working in underpaid, short-term positions, it is highly likely that *someone* will be happy to hear from you and make your research happen.

---

Practical real world example:

A company produces a biofeedback device for a certain condition. To better sell their product, they want scientific research proving its therapeutic effectiveness. They approached my professor (who is a clinical psychologist, but does not do research in that field). Another psychologist, who had earned his doctorate with my professor and is now working in a relevant clinic, was found and conducted a study, the pracical side carried out by student interns. My professor appointed me, one of his student assistants, to do the statistical analysis of the data. The resulting article, which was written by the aforementioned psychologist, his students, and myself (I wrote the results section), has been peer reviewed for publication and the feedback is currently being worked into the paper. If all goes well (which I expect), a year from now the company will quote this paper on their website to emphasize the effectiveness of their device. All my professor did is write some emails and find some people, and now he has another publication under his belt. No money was involved.
> 4 votes

---
Tags: social-psychology, consumer-psychology
---


# Question
Title: Can hallucinogens treat depressive states?
Given the serotonin hypothesis of depression, increasing synaptic serotonin level may cause anti-depressive effects.

Hallucinogens seems to have such advantages:

1. They improve mood at once, but not after a while as SSRI. So hallucinogens may actually act faster.
2. There are more types of hallucinogens, then there are SSRIs. They have a wider pharmacological effect on serotonin receptors than antidepressants do.

So the questions are:

* Are hallucinogens anti-depressive agents?
* Which are their advantages and problems in comparison with modern antidepressants?

# Answer
Most of the 'true' hallucinogens are classified as 5HT2A agonists. 5HT2A is a postsynaptic serotonin receptor. Serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on the other hand act by increasing serotonin (5HT) levels in the brain, which in turn activates presynaptic 5HT1A receptors. Due to a continuous stimulation of these 5HT1A receptors they become downregulated (Hjorth et al., 2000).

5HT1A receptors are crucial for the negative feedback loop that controls 5HT release from the raphe nucleus neurons. When they release 5HT, they will postsynaptically activate a myriad of targets, but also presynaptically activate 5HT1A receptors, which inhibit 5HT release. Continuous 5HT1A receptor stimulation through SSRIs downregulates the 5HT1A receptors, thereby disrupting the negative feedback and resulting in a continuous, disinhibited flutter of 5HT release, in turn leading to overall elevated 5HT in the brain and suppression of depressive symptoms (Hjorth et al., 2000).

Among the most well-known 'true' hallucinogens we have LSD, mescaline, psylocibin and dimethyltryptamine (DMT). All of these are thought to act as 5HT2A antagonists (Nichols & Sanders-Bush, 2001) and do not elevate mood. Although they may induce euphoria, they may well induce a state of terror as well, dependent on the nature of the 'trip', which heavily depends on the acute mental state of the person ingesting the drug.

The one class of hallucinogenic drugs that may act as an antidepressant from a neuropharmacologic point of view is MDMA (ecstacy) and related compounds (MDA, MDEA etc). These drugs can, arguably, be classified as a hallucinogenic, although their hallucinogenic properties are far less pronounced as compared to mescalin and LSD. MDMA and related compounds evoke massive 5HT release, among other effects and induce acute euphoria, and virtually never dysphoria seen with the 'true' hallucinogens. However, after the effects wear off, a backlash typical for these drugs may be experienced, reminiscent of a dysphoric state associated with a burning out of the 5HT in the brain. Therefore, its effects are too transient to be classified as antidepressant. Long-term MDMA use is associated with brain damage (Fisher et al., 1995). Short-term euphoria is also seen with dopamine-agonists like amphetamine, meth and cocaine, drugs associated with even more severe comedown ('crash') after the effects wear off.

To wrap up, and answer your questions:

1) *Are hallucinogens anti-depressive agents?* \- No.

2) *Which are their advantages and problems in comparison with modern antidepressants?* \- They act too shortly by inducing a few hours of euphoria, after which a period of dysphoria follows. Long-term use of MDMA and related compounds will lead to insomnia, addiction, and brain damage which are unwanted side-effects. Hence, these illicit compounds are not suitable for replacement of regular antidepressants.
> 8 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, depression, psychopharmacology
---


# Question
Title: How is intelligence correlated to beauty?
Recently, I read several interesting questions on the web about the relationship between IQ and general intelligence and physiological symmetry. But more importantly, what explains the correlation? Or is it even true? Because many of the world's foremost thinkers, such as Plato, and Sartre, were ugly.

* **Is there really a relationship between beauty (physiological symmetry) and intelligence?**
* **And if so, does physiological symmetry cause high intelligence?**

# Answer
> 24 votes
In the general population there does seem to be a positive correlation between psychometrically measured intelligence and observer rated attractiveness (Kanazawa, 2011). The power of the relationship seems to be medium to low.

Two possible explanations for this relationship are:

1. Intelligence and physical attractiveness both depend on physical health; meaning that people who grow up unhealthily tend to be less attractive and less intelligent.
2. The genes for intelligence and physical attractiveness became collocated over time as more attractive people tend to mate with more intelligent people.

**References**

Kanazawa, Satoshi. Intelligence and physical attractiveness. Intelligence 39.1 (2011): 7-14. (free pdf here)

# Answer
> 7 votes
The correlation between physical attractiveness and IQ is somewhere between insignificant and mildly positive, with a slightly higher correlation for men. The correlation between physical attractiveness and *perceived* intelligence is more significant.

There are typically two approaches to explain the (albeit mild) correlation:

Nature: From an evolutionary psychology perspective, one theory is that intelligent men are (on average) somewhat more successful, mate with more physically attractive women, resulting in offspring that are both more intelligent and more attractive than average. Evidence does support these assertions.

Nurture: However, there is an alternative explanation that accounts for these findings as an environmental (rather than hereditary) effect due to a self-fulfilling prophecy. According to this hypothesis, attractive children are perceived as more intelligent, resulting in more and better opportunities for them, that lead to better education, living standards, and ultimately higher intelligence.

The heritability of IQ, based on twin studies for example, is under some dispute, but suggests that both nature and nurture are significant factors, making both approaches equally valid. The debate may be resolved by examining cultures that don't associate physical attractiveness with intelligence (Eastern), but unfortunately, most of the research has focused on cultures that do (Western).

---
Tags: intelligence, evolution, physical-attraction
---


title: Why dreams can be surprising?

text:
# Question
Title: Why dreams can be surprising?
If we all agree that dreams are created by our own minds, then how could some dreams surprise us, since, after all, all the things that could happen in a dream are made up by us, and should be utterly predictable and be of no surprise at all? For example, if you are awake and doing some day dreaming, you would never be surprised by what you are imagining, right?

Then why some dreams are surprising, and kind of unpredictable?

# Answer
> 8 votes
Let's first dispel this myth: "all the things that could happen in a dream are made up by us, and should be utterly predictable". This is a common fallacy known as the introspection illusion:

> The introspection illusion is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states. ... In certain situations, this illusion leads people to make confident but false explanations of their own behavior (called "causal theories") or inaccurate predictions of their future mental states.

This is a common notion in psychology research. So the more interesting question is not why are we surprised by our dreams, so much as why are we not surprised by our non-dreams. But I digress.

Dream imagery is often generated partly from long-term memory rather than external stimuli. Unlike normal perception, which is continuous and generally sensical, dream imagery is disjointed and not sensical. Interestingly however, subjects of dream research report only realizing the bizarre nature of their dreams after they wake \- they are not "surprised" by the imagery during the dream:

> During most dreams, the person dreaming is not aware that they are dreaming, no matter how absurd or eccentric the dream is. The reason for this may be that the prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain responsible for logic and planning, exhibits decreased activity during dreams.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Although both daydreaming and dreaming are created by our own mind, they happen in different mental states. Daydreaming happens in wakefulness, there is still some awareness involved, it's one actively imagine things; while dreaming occurs in sleep usually we are not aware of that we are dreaming unless in lucid dream (LaBerge, 1980). Hope this answers your question why daydream doesn't surprise us but dream does.

LaBerge, S. P. (1980). Lucid dreaming as a learnable skill: A case study. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 51(3f), 1039-1042.

---
Tags: dreams
---


# Question
Title: Do the colour blind have a distinct visual cortex structure?
Studying the structure of the visual cortex, it seems there are many neural structures specifically dedicated to detecting and interpreting colour. For example, parvocellular cells are particularly sensitive to colour. Consequently, in a colour blind person, are parvocellular cells or other neural structures less prominent? What are the differences in brain structure between a colour blind person and a normal seeing person?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Interesting question! I performed a fairly extensive search in Google Scholar and Scopus using various keyword searches, including, but not limited to "*color blindness and plasticity*", "*color blind and brain*", "*dichromates brain*", and "*monochromates brain*". Strikingly, I found nothing. The reason is aptly explained by Solomon & Rosa, 2014 and I quote from their interesting review:

> As yet **no anatomical correlates of color blindness** have been found in the **retina** (Chan and Grünert,1998; Chan et al.,2001; Jusuf et al.,2006a,b), **thalamus**, or **primary visual cortex** (Goodchild and Martin,1998; Solomon, 2002).

If desirable, you should be able to re-trace the relevant citations from the cited review, as it is open source.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I can't speak to color blindness, but a little about the neural correlates of color processing in general. There has been some thought that macaque V4 (non-primary or extrastriate visual cortex) and the **human V4 topologue may be responsible for color processing**--some studies have found wavelength-specific cells in V4, but other studies have found no greater concentration of these in V4 than in V1. There has been significant disagreement about this depending on methodology and task details; it seems that overall, **imaging studies tend to find selective activity for color in V4 but lesion studies with damage to V4 often do not find damaged color discrimination**. It also seems that the macaque V4 has both a dorsal and a ventral component, where the human dorsal component does not seem to respond to color, complicating the topologue comparison.

Imaging studies
Brouwer and Heeger (2013). Clustering of the Neural Representation of Color. J. Neurosci., 33(39):15454 –15465. DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2472-13.2013
Brouwer and Heeger (2009). Decoding and Reconstructing Color. J. Neurosci., 29(44):13992–14003. DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3577-09.2009
Goddard et al. (2011). Color responsiveness argues against a dorsal component of human V4. Journal of Vision, 11(4):3, 1–21. doi: 10.1167/11.4.3

Lesion studies
Schiller PH (1993) The effects of V4 and middle temporal (MT) area lesions on visual performance in the rhesus monkey. Vis Neurosci 10:717–746.
Walsh V, Carden D, Butler SR, Kulikowski JJ (1993) The effects of V4 lesions on the visual abilities of macaques: hue discrimination and colour constancy. Behav Brain Res 53:51–62.
Heywood CA, Gadotti A, Cowey A (1992) Cortical area V4 and its role in the perception of color. J Neurosci 12:4056–4065.
Heywood CA, Gaffan D, Cowey A (1995) Cerebral achromatopsia in monkeys. Eur J Neurosci 7:1064–1073.

---
Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, vision, plasticity
---


# Question
Title: What is the difference between pre-synaptic versus post-synaptic?
As a non-specialist, I am unclear as to the exact meaning of the terms **pre-synaptic** and **post-synaptic**.

Specifically, do they refer to

1. *the same* neuron, either transmitting or receiving, before and after the chemical synapse has occurred, OR
2. *two different* neurons, i.e. "pre-synaptic" = the transmitting neuron, and "post-synaptic" = the receiving neuron?

I ask this because the terms are often used in ways that do not make it clear which meaning is the one intended.

# Answer
Typically 'presynaptic' and 'postsynaptic' are used to indicate two neurons that are connected, as you indicate correctly in your second example. Information flow in the nervous system basically goes one way. If one neuron fires (presynaptic cell) it can chemically activate another cell on which it synapses (the postsynaptic cell), as shown in the following figure 1.

As an illustrative example consider the auditory system (figure 2).

The cells that send their axons from the inner ear to the cochlear nucleus (the first central auditory structure in the auditory pathway) are called spiral ganglion cells. The axons from the **auditory nerve cells** form the auditory nerve. The auditory nerve cells release glutamate from their axon terminal into the synapse, that in turn activates the cochlear nucleus cells. In this scheme, the auditory nerve cells are **presynaptic**, and the cochlear nucleus cells are **postsynaptic**.

Translating this example into Figure 1, the axon on top would be the auditory nerve cell and the postsynaptic neuron the cochlear nucleus that receives input from the auditory nerve.

However, to continue with the peripheral auditory system as example, the auditory nerve cells receive their input peripherally from hair cells in the inner ear, while the cochlear nucleus cells send their output centrally to the olivary complex. Hence, auditory nerve cells can also be classified as postsynaptic, while cochlear nucleus cells are also presynaptic. Again, as illustrated by this auditory-system-based example, it all depends on the **context** and the specific system under investigation.

The terminology can, however, point to a single cell as well. In the hypothetical scenario a neuron would send a collateral axon to its own cell body, it would be the presynaptical as well as postsynaptical cell. In the figure, the axon on top of the image (still correctly labeled as presynaptic) would then come from the neuron shown on the bottom of the image (still labelled correctly as being postsynaptic).
> 14 votes

# Answer
From my undergraduate biology degree, I am only familiar with the **second** use of the terms which you describe.

That is, **the terms pre-synaptic and post-synaptic describe a spatial relationship** to the synapse, which has directionality, as you know. If the terms are used to describe whole cells, as AliceD covers, and as people often do when describing a neural pathway; then for clarity the relevant synapse should be named. This is because many neurons both receive input and give output at different synapses.

The first use that you suggest is unfamiliar to me, I have not heard this usage. This meaning could perhaps be better understood from the terms "pre- or post-transmission" or "pre- or post-synaptic event", but I am not sure how useful these terms are (I will explain why:)

There are some structures of the synapse for which it might be useful to think about states before and after a single synaptic event: the ion channels and population of neurotransmitter vesicles of the axon terminus, and the ion channels of the post-synaptic bulb.

The whole system present at the synapse is dynamic, however, and I believe new action potentials can arrive at the synapse more frequently than the time it takes for the synapse to recover - hence there is really a heterogeneous population of states with time rather than two clear ones. A single isolated transmission event can be used as a thought-experiment for understanding the molecular biology, which is why textbooks teach the series of events of synaptic transmission.

I could argue that synaptic transmission refers to the entire event including recovery - and so there is no meaningful difference between synapses before and after transmission. Exceptions to this might be Long-Term Potentiation/Depression, but they are conditional on more activity than just a single action potential.

As far as I know, "pre-/post-synaptic" **are not used to refer to states of the synapse**, in time. My view is that there is no such useful distinction between a pre- and post-event synapse.

The synapse in neurobiology is a structure, with direction - hence pre- and post- have spatial meaning. The event of transmission ought not to be called "synapse", I feel this brings confusion.
> 6 votes

---
Tags: neuroscience, neurophysiology
---


# Question
Title: Can one alter their auditory perception?
I'm coming from the idea that the way we perceive sound is a reaction to a certain signal, sent to our brain by ears. Of course this feeling intensifies as volume of the sound increases and our ears send us a stronger signal.

Now here I am wondering if we can augment that signal in our brain, so when the volume stays the same - we will be able to perceive it louder. Can that be done without any kind of chemical or surgical intrusion, just by sheer force of will? Do such perception "controllers" even exist and we just haven't learned to control them? This question is about auditory system, but since it touches the brain signal interpretation you could explain this from a different perspective (visual or even tactile).

This isn't part of the question, but I also wonder, if previous is possible, than can the same be done to mentally create sounds in your head and hear them as if they were real..?

# Answer
Imagine a music recording studio, with a band playing in the soundproof room. Now imagine 2 mic-\>speaker connections: A mic inside the room records the music, and plays it on a speaker outside, and then another mic records the sound coming out of that speaker, and delivers it to the recording equipment. You can imagine the loss of quality involved in that set up I'm sure, but bear with me. Both mic-\>speaker connections are set to 50% volume. Say we want to increase the volume: We can increase the volume on either connection (or both). If we increase the volume to 100% on only one of the 2 connections, then the volume of the recorded sound will increase by approximately the same amount whichever one we choose. However, increasing the volume of the first connection is better - it results in a better quality recording. This is because each connection can only lose quality, not add it.

Now, supposing that the first mic-\>speaker connection represents the auditory nerve (ear -\> primary auditory cortex), and the second connection represents "perception" (auditory cortex -\> rest of brain), then we can discuss increasing the "volume" at either "connection" via conscious control (I'm assuming that this is what you mean by "force of will").

The auditory nerve passes through the central auditory system, an area of the brain considered unconscious:

> Damage to the Primary Auditory Cortex in humans leads to a loss of any awareness of sound, but an ability to react reflexively to sounds remains as there is a great deal of subcortical processing in the auditory brainstem and midbrain.

In other words, so far as we know, there is no conscious control over this "connection".

Neuroplasticity of "perception" is much greater. A variety of studies have shown certain improved hearing capabilities in blind people, correlating with how early hearing loss occurs (the earlier the better), and the involvement of neuroplasticity as the visual cortex can be usurped for auditory processing. Whether or not this corresponds to a change in "volume" is unclear, and this effect does not appear to be "consciously" controlled.

However, more recent research has demonstrated how similar effects can be induced in non-blind adults: Through temporary blindness (as little as 90 minutes with a blindfold). Corresponding research on mice has shown that this may be the result of increased "volume" in perception:

> The cells fired faster and more powerfully in response to sounds and were more sensitive to quiet sounds.

So not exactly "sheer will", but temporary blindness, that you can easily induce on yourself consciously, may improve certain aspects of hearing, possibly including "volume".

Hope this helps.
> 3 votes

# Answer
We can easily alter the signal that arrives at the eardrum by changing our position/orientation relative to the sound source (and any reflections and any noise sources). If we limit ourselves to cases where the sound pressure at the ear drum is identical, there are still things that can be done. For example, it might be possible to voluntarily control the middle ear reflex which changes the transfer function characteristics of the middle ear and can change the sound level by approximately 20 dB. If we further limit ourselves to cases where the pressure at the stapes is identical, there are things that affect the transmission properties of the ear. The olivocochlear system is thought to control the gain properties of the cochlear amplifier. While I am not aware of any studies that have demonstrated conscious control of the oliviocochlear system, it is definitely possible through surgery and likely drugs. Our auditory perception is also driven by the chemical composition of the fluid in the cochlea and neurotransmitter reserves in the auditory nerve. It seems less likely that we could consciously control these chemical states, but surgery and drugs definitely can alter them.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: perception, hearing
---


# Question
Title: What is the mechanism behind unihemispheric sleep in animals?
It is known that dolphins have the ability to sleep with only one half of their brain at a time.

According to this popular science source:

> Dolphins sleep by resting one half of their brain at a time. This is called unihemispheric sleep. The brain waves of captive dolphins that are sleeping show that one side of the dolphin's brain "awake" while the other in a deep sleep ("slow-wave sleep"). Also, during this time, one eye is open (the eye opposite the sleeping half of the brain) while the other is closed.

Given that the dolphin probably depends on bilateral brainstem mechanisms for respiration, my assumption is that this "shutting down" mainly involves the cortex.

* Is this true, or are areas like the thalamus also suppressed unilaterally?
* How is this "switching" (from hemisphere to hemisphere) managed? Is it accomplished at the level of the thalamus, or within the brainstem?
* Were a dolphin to be dominant in one hemisphere (surely Flipper was "right-finned"?), how is the representation of the dominant side of the body managed when the opposite cortex is suppressed?

# Answer
**In general, I don't think the answers to these questions are known.** This paper is a good review of unihemispheric slow-wave sleep (USWS); **the section on neurophysiological mechanisms is largely speculation** based on how slow-wave sleep is generally thought to function--despite its lack of answers, that section is good reading anyhow, since it covers current evidence (in 2000, anyway!) and lines of inquiry. I dug through its citing articles as well, hoping for a more informative update; the best I found was this paper, which shows **small differences (which may or may not be statistically significant) between the openness of the ipsi & contralateral eyes to the sleeping hemisphere based on right/left**--which does suggest at least some hemispheric dominance at play. Eared seals also sleep on their side during USWS, and leave the sleeping side of the body out of the water, while the awake side of the body paddles to keep their nostrils from submerging; I found nothing suggesting hemispheric dominance issues there, though.

As far as hemisphere-switching mechanisms go, that first paper mentions work finding that unihemispheric slow-wave sleep develops only following sagittal transsection of the lower brainstem in cats--even when the interhemispheric commissures were not involved; that implies some kind of uncoupling of lower brainstem sleep regions, but that's about as far as anybody's got (or as far as I could find!).

An interesting question! If you find more work, come back and tell me about it.

References
1 Rattenborg, Amlaner, & Lima (2000). Behavioral, neurophysiological and evolutionary perspectives on unihemispheric sleep. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews Volume 24, Issue 8, December 2000, Pages 817–842.
2 Lyamin, O., & al. (2002). Unihemispheric slow wave sleep and the state of the eyes in a white whale. Behavioural Brain Research Volume 129, Issue 1-2, 1 February 2002, Pages 125-129.
> 4 votes

---
Tags: neuroscience, sleep, physiology
---


# Question
Title: Does your voice pitch affect your perceived authority?
I heard a claim that people with lower voice pitch are perceived as more credible than people with higher pitch.

Is there any research on this?

# Answer
> 8 votes
There's quite a bit of research related to this topic:

* Male CEOs with deeper voices make more money and manage larger companies (Mayew et al., 2013).
* People are more likely to say they would vote for a political candidate with a deeper voice (Klofstad et al., 2012; Tigue et al., 2011).
* People rate lower-pitched voices as more persuasive than higher-pitched voices (Apple et al., 1979).
* Somewhat contrary to the above findings, people tend to raise the pitch of their voice when they are in a position of authority (Ko et al., 2014).

---
Tags: social-psychology, perception, hearing, trust
---


# Question
Title: Does Stroop test performance correlate with any personal characteristics or abilities?
Have there been any studies that found that an extremely high (or low) Stroop test score correlates with certain personal characteristics, abilities or aptitudes, or would all such conclusions be outside the test's scope?

# Answer
> 2 votes
N.B.: There are many varieties of "Stroop-like" tasks, which as a class are often called implicit association tests or IATs. Since those are likely to test attributes related to their specific construction, I have excluded them from this answer.

There have been a variety of papers studying correlations of Stroop performance with other characteristics.

Ward et al. (2001) examined the correlation between Stroop effects and executive control, finding that **Stroop costs and other measures of executive control were not well correlated**.

Brewer et al. (2008) found **sizable correlations between neural activation in Stroop testing and treatment outcomes among cocaine-dependent patients**; they interpret this to suggest executive control differences are determinative in treatment outcome, but this interpretation is contradicted by Ward et al. above.

Less recently, Golden (1975) found the **Stroop test to correlate with measures of creativity**; I have found no more recent discussion of this so cannot speak to its currency.

References
Ward, G., Roberts, M., & Phillips, L. (2001). Task-switching costs, Stroop-costs, and executive control: A correlational study. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology Volume 54, Issue 2, pages 491-511. DOI:10.1080/713755967

Brewer, J., et al. (2008). Pretreatment Brain Activation During Stroop Task Is Associated with Outcomes in Cocaine-Dependent Patients. Biological Psychiatry Volume 64, Issue 11, 1 December 2008, Pages 998–1004. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.05.024

Golden, C. (1975). The Measurement of Creativity by the Stroop Color and Word Test. Journal of Personality Assessment. Journal of Personality Assessment Volume 39, Issue 5, 1975 pages 502-506. DOI: 10.1207/s15327752jpa3905\_9

# Answer
> 1 votes
The Stroop test also correlates with age and education level (Van der Elst et al. 2006).

When emotionally charged words are presented (Emo-Stroop), the Stroop task was found to correalte with high state anxiety.(Dresler et al 2009)

You can find a review in "Secondary Influences on Neuropsychological Test Performance", edited by Peter Arnett. (Its on google books)

references:
Wim Van der Elst, Martin P. J. Van Boxtel, Gerard J. P. Van Breukelen, Jelle Jolles (2006) The Stroop color-word test: influence of age, sex, and education; and normative data for a large sample across the adult age range. Assessment. Vol 13, Issue 1, Mar 2006, Pages 62-79.

Thomas Dresler, Katja Mériau, Hauke R. Heekeren, Elke van der Meer (2009) Emotional Stroop task: effect of word arousal and subject anxiety on emotional interference Psychological Research Vol 73, Pages 364–371

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, experimental-psychology, test, attention, correlation
---


# Question
Title: What happens in the brain when conscious awareness is changed during dreaming onset?
I've long been interested in dreaming and there's a peculiar phenomenon of the very start of the dreaming process. Different people experience it differently, but even for the same person there's anecdotal evidence of different experiences during dreaming onset.

One of the most dramatic examples is the "wake induced lucid dreaming" transition, where the subject experiences intense hallucinations. These could be sight, sound, feeling of presence, falling, buzzing, etc. As these hallucinations subside, they are replaced by dream imagery.

There are other kinds of transitions as well.

What interests me is if these phenomena have been studied using modern neuroimaging techniques. **Does science know what happens in the brain when the persons perception shifts from the real world to dreaming mentations?**

# Answer
Here is the first study with fMRI, EEG and eye-video simultaneously recorded while subjects were performing a task (Poudel et al., 2014).

"fMRI analysis revealed a transient decrease in thalamic, posterior cingulate, and occipital cortex activity and an increase in frontal, posterior parietal, and parahippocampal activity during microsleeps. The transient activity was modulated by the duration of the microsleep. In subjects with frequent microsleeps, power in the post-central EEG theta was positively correlated with the BOLD signal in the thalamus, basal forebrain, and visual, posterior parietal, and prefrontal cortices. These results provide evidence for distinct neural changes associated with microsleeps and with EEG theta activity during drowsiness in a continuous task."

Poudel, G. R., Innes, C. R., Bones, P. J., Watts, R., & Jones, R. D. (2014). Losing the struggle to stay awake: divergent thalamic and cortical activity during microsleeps. Human brain mapping, 35(1), 257-269. doi: 10.1002/hbm.22178.
> 5 votes

# Answer
You're describing Hypnagogia. There has been some research on the EEG states during hypnagogia:

> To identify more precisely the nature of the EEG state which accompanies imagery in the transition from wakefulness to sleep, Hori et al. proposed a scheme of 9 EEG stages defined by varying proportions of alpha (stages 1–3), suppressed waves of less than 20μV (stage 4), theta ripples (stage 5), proportions of sawtooth waves (stages 6–7), and presence of spindles (stages 8–9). Germaine and Nielsen found spontaneous hypnagogic imagery to occur mainly during Hori sleep onset stages 4 (EEG flattening) and 5 (theta ripples).
> 4 votes

---
Tags: sleep, neuroimaging, dreams
---


# Question
Title: Difference between parallel processing done by human brain and by computers
I am asking a question regarding parallel processing as done by billions of Neurons inside our brain and parallel processing done by our computers in a cluster for example or even on a Graphics processor having 500 processing cores.

Recently we have seen great success in applying computers to solve complex problems applying parallel processing, such as in the field of scientific simulations, modeling, video/image processing etc. Also due to limitations on semiconductor devices, chip makers are now forced to develop multi-core CPUs. This encourages and motivates software developers to apply parallel programming to gain the required performance, exploiting all the processing cores inside the CPU.

While people are encouraging to solve problems using parallel programming on the computers, at the same time generally discouraging to do parallel processing inside the brain. Expert say that we must concentrate in one dimension to get best results. Why can't human brains be used to do massive parallel processing in the same way computers are doing today? The brain is having billions of computational units called Neurons, and thus it provides an opportunity to do processing at both coarser level and at finer level. Why can't we use our brain to do certain jobs in parallel in the same way as computers, for example, while I am writing this question using my right hand, why cant I solve a problem in geometry at the same time, using my left hand? Using much less powerful computers having just two processing cores (vs billions in brain) I can do these two jobs of writing and solving geometry problem, in parallel by launching two separate threads. Why it is so?

# Answer
> 11 votes
There is a passage in On intelligence about the differences between parallel processing in human versus computers :

> From the dawn of the industrial revolution, people have viewed the brain as some sort of machine. They knew there weren't gears and cogs in the head, but it was the best metaphor they had. Somehow information entered the brain and the brain-machine determined how the body should react. During the computer age, the brain has been viewed as a particular type of machine, the programmable computer. And as we saw in chapter 1, AI researchers have stuck with this view, arguing that their lack of progress is only due to how small and slow computers remain compared to the human brain. Today's computers may be equivalent only to a cockroach brain, they say, but when we make bigger and faster computers they will be as intelligent as humans.
>
> There is a largely ignored problem with this brain-as-computer analogy. Neurons are quite slow compared to the transistors in a computer. A neuron collects inputs from its synapses, and combines these inputs together to decide when to output a spike to other neurons. A typical neuron can do this and reset itself in about five milliseconds (5 ms), or around two hundred times per second. This may seem fast, but a modern silicon-based computer can do one billion operations in a second. This means a basic computer operation is five million times faster than the basic operation in your brain! That is a very, very big difference. So how is it possible that a brain could be faster and more powerful than our fastest digital computers? "No problem," say the brain-as-computer people. "The brain is a parallel computer. It has billions of cells all computing at the same time. This parallelism vastly multiplies the processing power of the biological brain."
>
> I always felt this argument was a fallacy, and a simple thought experiment shows why. It is called the "one hundred–step rule." A human can perform significant tasks in much less time than a second. For example, I could show you a photograph and ask you to determine if there is cat in the image. Your job would be to push a button if there is a cat, but not if you see a bear or a warthog or a turnip. This task is difficult or impossible for a computer to perform today, yet a human can do it reliably in half a second or less. But neurons are slow, so in that half a second, the information entering your brain can only traverse a chain one hundred neurons long. That is, the brain "computes" solutions to problems like this in one hundred steps or fewer, regardless of how many total neurons might be involved. From the time light enters your eye to the time you press the button, a chain no longer than one hundred neurons could be involved. A digital computer attempting to solve the same problem would take billions of steps. One hundred computer instructions are barely enough to move a single character on the computer's display, let alone do something interesting.
>
> But if I have many millions of neurons working together, isn't that like a parallel computer? Not really. Brains operate in parallel and parallel computers operate in parallel, but that's the only thing they have in common. Parallel computers combine many fast computers to work on large problems such as computing tomorrow's weather. To predict the weather you have to compute the physical conditions at many points on the planet. Each computer can work on a different location at the same time. But even though there may be hundreds or even thousands of computers working in parallel, the individual computers still need to perform billions or trillions of steps to accomplish their task. The largest conceivable parallel computer can't do anything useful in one hundred steps, no matter how large or how fast.
>
> Here is an analogy. Suppose I ask you to carry one hundred stone blocks across a desert. You can carry one stone at a time and it takes a million steps to cross the desert. You figure this will take a long time to complete by yourself, so you recruit a hundred workers to do it in parallel. The task now goes a hundred times faster, but it still requires a minimum of a million steps to cross the desert. Hiring more workers— even a thousand workers— wouldn't provide any additional gain. No matter how many workers you hire, the problem cannot be solved in less time than it takes to walk a million steps. The same is true for parallel computers. After a point, adding more processors doesn't make a difference. A computer, no matter how many processors it might have and no matter how fast it runs, cannot "compute" the answer to difficult problems in one hundred steps.
>
> So how can a brain perform difficult tasks in one hundred steps that the largest parallel computer imaginable can't solve in a million or a billion steps? The answer is the brain doesn't "compute" the answers to problems; it retrieves the answers from memory. In essence, the answers were stored in memory a long time ago. It only takes a few steps to retrieve something from memory. Slow neurons are not only fast enough to do this, but they constitute the memory themselves. The entire cortex is a memory system. It isn't a computer at all.

The point made here is that the computing paradigm (that is, the way the whole thing works) of the brain and the computer are completely different. The computer is a Turing machine, and the brain is something else, possibly a memory system if you think that Jeff Hawking is right. Whatever it is, the brain is not a Turing machine.

To go back to your question:

> Why can't human brains be used to do massive parallel processing in the same way computers are doing today?

It has to do with the way the human brain works. If you assume that the brain will do any task in a parallel fashion, and the more neurons involved, the better the performance; then in order to maximize your performance you should use your whole brain. 1 task: 100% performance, 2 tasks: 50% performance, 3 tasks: 33% performance, and so on.

But if you add an "attention switching cost" to go from one task to another, then you are better off just focusing on one task where the switching cost is zero.

So you *can* multitask, but it won't be efficient.

# Answer
> 5 votes
Maybe I just don't get it, but I see your question as confusing because:

1/ Your brain is capable of running multiple parallel processes. Actualy each one of tasks you've mentioned consists of number of processes that are done at the same time. Lots of your neurons and neuronal networks are being used at the very same moment.

2/ If you can do something automatically, without thinking about it, but not without using our brain to guide the action (there are very few things you can do without actually using your brain and its neurons), you will find that you actually are able to do even more complex tasks in parallel. Even the two you've mentioned.

3/ So the problem of you not being able to do some tasks together is a problem of you not being able to concentrate at both of them as good, as you do with one task. Your question asks for the difference using a metaphor and comparison of the 'hardware' of your brain, but the problem you are asking about goes on higher cognition. You not being able to effectively 'double' your attention, you having limited working memory capacity.

# Answer
> 4 votes
I think you are beginning to push at the limits of human brain versus computer metaphor.(mildly related link here) I'll list the objections as:

1. While neurons firing can be translated/compared to 0 or 1 states, am not convinced it is a valid equivalence. (i.e: simulating 100 billion neurons on a computer would still not be able to match a human brain). My suspicions are while we have gone through a very accelerated evolution in building and controlling the performance of transistors, evolution hasn't progressed to that stage in terms of brain development.
2. Our neuronal cells do exhibit variations(range of electrical activity, not just spikes and flats) and in some sense you can call procedural learnt tasks to be parallel processing. i.e: you can speak and drive to some extent etc..Not to mention the Autonomic nervous system and it's functionalities like breathing, heart beat etc..Here's the paper i was referring to. My point being this can be considered as parallel processing.
3. Another ignored factor is the resolution at which we can control/program processors to compute and co-ordinate with each other on a single problem. Parallel processing is hardly a solved problem in the programming world.
4. Yet another factor that is ignored is that if you do zoom down on the computers to the level of capacitors, they are not all binary and have some analog activities too.This article mentions it, though it goes on to make a different point.
5. Another relevant point is that there are algorithms that cannot be sped up by using parallel computing. For ex: iterative algorithms like Newton's method, in these cases the next computation depends on the immediately preceding computation and so has to wait till the previous computation is done.

So to summarize, our brains do some forms of parallel processing already.It may just be that the jobs of writing and solving geometry problem have a set of processes too much in common that they cannot be done parallel.

# Answer
> 1 votes
This probably won't be a very good answer, but I studied this a bit in a Human Factors class I took this semester. The metaphor that the professor used is a bucket of mental resources. We have several buckets for certain things. When we are using resources from the bucket the bucket has less resources for other things.

We can walk and talk at the same time because they are using different buckets( motor-physical and language processing ). However we are very bad at reading and talking to someone at the same time because both task are taking up mental resources from the same bucket( language processing ).

So, yes we are able to do various things well that aren't requiring resources from the same bucket, but these buckets are only so deep.

Maybe that makes since. Oh yeah there's a more technical term, maybe Multi-Channel Human Information Processing. I know if you researched Human Information Processing( HIP ) you would stumble upon what you may be looking for.

# Answer
> 0 votes
First of all I should say that I'm not a neuroscientist so take my answer with a grain of salt. Your first question was "Why can't human brains be used to do massive parallel processing in the same way computers are doing today?"

I think the answer to this question has to do with the difference between the multi-core processors computers have and the nuro networks that exist in the human brain. Most processors on a regular computer, with the exception of the GPU, are general purpose processors so that any program or algorithm can be run on any core of the computer.

The human brain on the other hand has specific areas of the brain specializing in processing different kinds of input.

In the human brain the part of the human brain which controls higher cognitive function is called the prefrontal cortex and one of the jobs of the prefrontal cortex is to determine what from other parts of the brain to listen to and what parts of the brain should be ignored.

Also I question your assertion that the human brain does not in fact already engage in parallel processing. Anybody able to hold a conversation while walking or driving is engaging in parallel processing. This is possible because the areas of the brain engaged in language processing are different than the areas associated with image processing and movement.

# Answer
> 0 votes
As computers have a different architecture, you are all just comparing an Apple with a Pie, or a Melon with a Pineapple. How can such a comparison ever be correct? I have never seen any fruit tasting the same, and you all think the human brain(whereof we believe is conscious) is comparable with a computer whereof we don't even know if it is conscious after all. I am not a computer, so how will I ever know for sure a computer is conscious. How do I even know the people around me are conscious? I try to say, that you cannot only rely on a observation that's just a assumption of reality! That's why the holy bible said: Don't judge! And just to clarify, I do not deny any religion, neither do I try to prove it's legitimacy. Grow up please, and leave unanswerable questions out of the question. The get back to what we do know.

Humans can give input to a computer as we assume. Computers can't give input to humans, as far as we assume. Humans can decide as far as we assume, computers can't as far as we assume.

What's the specific problem in this case?

If I do just walk through a "Don't walk sign", I might get troubles! If a computer walks through a "Don't walk sign", it asks us what to do. Which decision is faster?

When calculating what to do next, a "Don't walk sign" involves abstract thinking, which is almost impossible to computers. Computers can do commands very easily, humans simply can't follow up commands easily. What do you think that happens if humans have a faster brain, but simply review their decision many times before making a decision, talking about emotions and fears and other stuff. We have to keep track of much more parameters, of which computers cannot even be aware of. Have you ever seen a small kid of about five years old, keeping track of all the parameters adults have to be aware of? Guess why adults learn slowly! Our brain isn't just placing ones and zeros on a harddrive! We are a living organism, and we cannot just place information somewhere. Our brain is continuously fragmenting, just like computers, but humans are defragmenting all of the time, where computers start do have the ability to perform such a task simultaneously to it's calculations. But humans are basically performing a few hundreds, maybe even a few thousands of brain tasks before we even do something. Have you ever seen computers keeping track of these parameters? Till then, it's just comparing a cockroach to a human. Does a cockroach know?

# Answer
> 0 votes
Others have answered to explain that the brain can indeed do parallel processing, or how the structure of the brain and a computer differ. I'm gonna answer your "Why?":

### Because your brain was "built" to do specific tasks, and not others.

Your question is like asking why a car cannot fly, if planes can fly. The answer is simple: Because cars were optimized to drive on a road.

Your brain evolved to be perfect at helping you hunt antelopes, interact with other humans in a complex society, and survive virus infections.

---

*That was the answer to the "Why?" of your question. What follows here are some thoughts on the extent and the form of the differences between a computer and the brain.*

Your brain – which, as others have pointed out, actually *does* massive parallel processing – did not evolve to do "scientific simulations, modeling, video/image processing etc.".

Oh, wait, doesn't the brain process images? Sure, it processes the input from the eyes, and the constant, video-like flow of visual information your eyes send to the brain is certainly larger than any digital image or video file (which, by the way, a computer may be able to perform interesting looking video effects on, but quite simply cannot even begin to understand). Oh, and doesn't the brain also do scientific simulations and modeling? Sure, or how do you think we have an idea of the world and solve problems? When I sit down and wonder "what if", that isn't any different from a "scientific simulation".

So, it seems to me that the brain does everything that you say it doesn't. It even scans a huge database (i.e. your whole memory) in milliseconds.

But let's get back to the part where I said that the brain even fights a viral infection of the body. This seems exceptionally important to me:

**The brain is connected and regulates the whole of the body that it resides in.**

A computer processor does not even note if a key on the keyboard no longer works, much less repair itself. In a computer, the processor is separate and barely connected to most of the other parts that make up the whole of the computer. Your brain is not a distinct part of your body. It is so intimately interwoven with it that it is difficult to tell where it begins and ends. From everywhere in your body nerve fibres lead to your brain, and your brain is in fact the collection of the endpoints of these nerve fibres. You may have heard of the second nerve center, the so-called "second brain" in your guts. You have more neurons in your intestines than in your spinal cord. In a computer, there are no other parts where there are processors or their axons, and the connections of the processor to the interfaces, the memory and a handful of other parts, are few.

And then neurons and their electricity are only one channel of information flow in the brain/body-whole. Information in the human body is stored and processed in the form of chemicals also. And in the form of growth and decay of cells. The form and shape of your body is in fact also memory, and this information is available to your brain.

In short, the brain and the body are an inseparable unit. As research into emotion shows,

## "processing" of information does not take place only in the brain, but in the whole of the body,

all the time, and the amount of information that the sum of these – parallel! – processes make up is as yet unfathomed.

A computer is a badly designed box in which a processor is screwed that does mathematical calculations. A human being is an organism that survives and procreates. How anyone could think of comparing the two is a mystery to me.

Yes, the human brain cannot count from 1 to one billion as quickly as a computer can, but that seems like an irrelevant exercise to me anyway. If you think of other complex calculations like the weather, a human who is given the current weather data can predict the weather almost as accurately as any computer can. What does that tell us about the impressive calculation power of computers?

What? Google's computers can scan billions of web pages and create translations that are almost correct? Interesting. I can come up with translations that *are* correct. Well, sure, someday Google may have perfected that algorithm to no longer make mistakes, but that's a lot of effort, people, time, and money, put into doing something that half of humanity can already do, and the other half could learn if they could go to school.

What? Computer software can render a photorealistic landscape? Looks good. With all the time the modelling, texturing and light set up took, a good human painter can do the same in acrylic or oils. And the painting even looks less sterile and more alive :-)

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


title: Approaches to life coaching

text:
# Question
Title: Approaches to life coaching
I work on a theological reflection of coaching. I would like to list some basic directions/approaches/ways/schools that differ each other.

My attempt:

1. Neuroscience based coaching
2. Systemic coaching
3. NLP coaching
4. Narrative coaching.

# Answer
Coaching is not as well researched and not as well conceptualized as for example psychotherapy. There are no clear and distinct schools and approaches, especially since many certifying institutes require by contract that the coaches they train must not disclose the copyrighted methods to third parties.

Generally, literature on coaching and the reports of coaches show that coaching uses a "toolbox" of methods taken from any and all schools of psychotherapy (from behavioral therapy to humanistic therapy to Gestalt therapy to psychoanalysis to systemic therapy and so on) and sociology as well as other, even New Age methods (see for example Rupert, 1992) of personality development, most prominently NLP. Usually the tools are used in an eclectic, "experimental" (try-what-works) manner. Rarely is there a theoretic "framing" of methodology (one example is Schmidt-Lellek & Schreyögg, 2008, who use a phenomenological frame).

Sources:

* (I'm currently enrolled in a psychological seminar on methods in and evaluation of coaching)
* Rupert, G. (1992). Employing the New Age: training seminars. In J. R. Lewis & J. G. Melton (Eds.), *Perspectives on the New Age.* Albany, NY: SUNY Press., 127-35.
* Schmidt-Lellek, C. J., & Schreyögg, A. (Eds.) (2008). *Praxeologie des Coaching.* Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften
> 4 votes

---
Tags: learning, leadership
---