# Question
Title: What exactly happens to brain during anesthesia
While anesthesia is given to a patient what changes in the chemistry of brain happens. Which part of the brain is affected by the medicine which causes anesthetic effects. Can anesthesia be considered as sleep+painless state of body? Or is it more than that.

# Answer
> 7 votes
General anesthesia is a reversible drug-induced neurophysiological state comprised of unconsciousness, amnesia, analgesia, and immobility with maintenance of physiological stability. How anesthetic drugs create the state of general anesthesia is still not completely understood, but general anesthesia is essential for the safe and humane conduct of surgical and invasive diagnostic procedures.\[1\]

The goals of general anesthesia include amnesia, analgesia, unconsciousness, and immobilization. The ability of general anesthetics to produce these distinct therapeutic endpoints is not equal. For example, explicit memory is the most sensitive target of inhaled general anesthetics; consciousness (assessed by appropriate response to spoken commands) is preserved in the absence of memory during exposure to low doses; and unconsciousness is produced by lower concentrations of most general anesthetics than those that ablate movement in response to noxious stimuli. \[2\]

General anesthetics consist of many different drugs. \[2,3\] These different drugs display distinct relative potencies in their ability to produce different components of general anesthesia. For example, the ratio of the drug concentration producing immobility during incision to that producing unconsciousness is 1.5 for nitrous oxide, about 3 for most of the inhaled halogenated ether, and over 4 for the intravenous anesthetic propofol. They also have different effects on EEG during anesthesia. Thus, clinically, general anesthetics can be classified into 3 groups based on their relative potencies for different clinical endpoints and their impact on EEG:

**Group 1** consists of etomidate, propofol, methoxital, and barbiturates. These are intravenous drugs that are much more potent at producing unconsciousness than immobilization and shift cortical EEG toward lower frequencies. Their effects are mediated mainly by a subset of γ-aminobutyric acid type A (GABA-A) receptors, which, when activated, reduce neuronal excitation.

**Group 2** includes the gaseous anesthetics nitrous oxide (N2O), xenon (Xe) and cyclopropane, along with an intravenous agent, ketamine. Clinically, these drugs produce significant analgesia, while their potency as hypnotics and immobilizers are relatively weak, and they may increase cortical EEG frequencies. Anesthetic agents in this group have little or no effect on GABA-A receptors, but they instead potently inhibit N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors, which are excitatory cation channels activated by the amino acid glutamate. In addition, agents in this group also inhibit α4β2 neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, which modulate synaptic release of neurotransmitters.

**Group 3** consists of the volatile halogenated anesthetics: halothane, enflurane, isoflurane, sevoflurane, and desflurane. These drugs induce amnesia, hypnosis, and immobility in a predictable manner and reduce the spectral edge frequency of cortical EEG. General anesthetics in this group lack significant selectivity for general anesthetic target molecules. They enhance the function of inhibitory GABA-A and glycine receptors while also activating 2P potassium channels and inhibiting excitatory glutamate receptors and a variety of excitatory cation channels.

Group 1 and Group 3 drugs that act by enhancing GABA-A receptor activity in various neural circuits appear to impair both unconscious and conscious processing, including associative cortex and synchronous integration among multiple cortical areas. Cortical EEG activity shifts toward lower frequencies in the presence of these drugs, and large doses can lead to the total loss of coordinated neural activity (iso-electric EEG). On the other hand, Group 2 drugs such as ketamine and nitrous oxide appear to act by impairing signal filtration to the consciousness, perhaps altering the amounts or intensities of sensory inputs, or by allowing leakage of unconscious signals into conscious processing. This lack of filtering “jams” or overwhelms the consciousness with signals, leading to a “dissociative” state, frequently associated with reports of vivid dreamlike experiences.

Therefore, while being under general anesthesia, the brain is still functioning, but it is functioning differently from when it is awake or sleeping. \[4\] Neural circuits that are responsible for consciousness, sensation perception, memory, and motor are not functioning as they do when being awake or sleeping. For different general anesthetics, different effects on neruotransmitter receptors and neural circuits are different; thus, various neural circuits in the different areas of the brain are affected differently, and the whole brain will function in different unconscious states even though, outwardly, the anesthetic patients appear to be in similar unconscious states. Also, for different dosages of the same anesthetics, overall neural circuits are affected differently, and the brain in different anesthetic stages will function differently too.

N.B. The above is a simplified answer about the complex actions of general anesthetics. More details can be found in the following references.

**References:**

1. Akeju O, Brown EN. Neural oscillations demonstrate that general anesthesia and sedative states are neurophysiologically distinct from sleep. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2017 Jun; 44: 178–185.
2. Forman SA, Chin VA. General Anesthetics and Molecular Mechanisms of Unconsciousness. Int Anesthesiol Clin. 2008 Summer; 46(3): 43–53.doi: 10.1097/AIA.0b013e3181755da5
3. Brown EN, Purdon PL, Van Dort CJ. General Anesthesia and Altered States of Arousal: A Systems Neuroscience Analysis. Annu Rev Neurosci. 2011; 34: 601–628.doi: 10.1146/annurev-neuro-060909-153200
4. Müller CP, Pum ME, Amato D, Schüttler J, Huston JP, Silva MA.The in vivo neurochemistry of the brain during general anesthesia. J. Neurochem. (2011) 119, 419–446. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-4159.2011.07445.x

# Answer
> 1 votes
General anesthesia is a drug-induced reversible state defined by five end points: **Unconsciousness**, lack of awareness of sensory input **Analgesia**, lack of pain **Akinesia**, lack of movement **Amnesia**, lack of recall **Physiological stability**, the preservation of normal levels of all vital physiological functions, such as respiration, heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature E.N. Brown et al., “General anesthesia, sleep and coma,” New Engl J Med, 363:2638–50, 2010.

Some anesthetics, such as ketamine, which was synthesized in 1962, and nitrous oxide block the channel of the N-methyl D-aspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptor. Normally activated by the neurotransmitter glutamate released from excitatory neurons, the NMDA receptor allows the flow of potassium ions out of the cell and allows calcium and sodium ions in, increasing the relative voltage of the neuron’s interior and thereby increasing the probability of firing an action potential. Anesthetic drugs that target this receptor act as antagonists to block these ions fluxes, decreasing the ability of the cell to fire. This then produces an anesthetic-induced oscillation, which alters when neurons can spike, and impede communication between brain regions that play a role in consciousness. Research (done with an fMRI) suggests that all the regions of the brain relevant to the maintenance of anesthesia are already affected at 0.5–0.7 MAC. This would therefore mean that anesthesia, while it does "put you to sleep," your body is more in an in-between stage, where you are alive, but in a comatose state. During sleep, a body still moves, and can still remember things, such as dreams. However, whilst under the anesthesia, neither of these actions occur. Hope this helps!

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Tags: neuroscience
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title: Is depression part of who a person is?

text:
# Question
Title: Is depression part of who a person is?
I have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, commonly known as depression.

Some days ago I had a discussion with my therapist about whether or not depression is part of the person I am. She says that indeed it is and that I should accept it as a part of my being. I should not fight it, but rather accept it. I should not see it as a "demon" trying to mess with my life, but rather as a part of me asking for attention, rising from the dark depths of my mind where I try to bury it. It is a helpess child, my own inner child, crying and asking for help for only apparently no reason, and I should not "beat it up" and yell at it to "go back into its room", but rather ask what's wrong and cuddle it.

I disagree, as I think that I *have* depression, but I *am not* my depression. I'm *suffering from* a depressive episode, but I *am not* a depressed person, as I am a completely different human being when I'm not going through an episode. I *have* an illness, I *am not* my illness. I might come to terms with the fact that I indeed have depression and that I have to deal with it, but this doesn't mean accepting it as a part of me. I fight it as I fight a flu or a cold. I accept the fact that I have come into contact with the virus, I can't be mad for that, I can't just willingly remove it from my body simply because I don't want it, but that illness is not a *part* of me, though it affects my everyday life and forces me to feel and act in ways I'd rather not.

You might ask to clarify what I mean with "part of who a person is", so let me try to explain further: is depression part of someone's personality, consciousness, temper, character? Or is it, as a disease, a negative and abnormal *influence* on someone's regular and healthy behavior? Am I someone who tends to be negative, irritable, hopeless, unexplainably sad and tired, self-loathing, apathetic, suicidal, because that's who I **am**, or do I **suffer from** such symptoms of my illness?

# Answer
Depression can be defined as "a state of feeling sad" (Merriam-Webster), which is an **emotion** or a **feeling in the heart.**

Depression can develop as a **reaction** to a thought, demand, event or word someone said to you.

You may have a certain "character" or "temper" that makes you vulnerable for things that hurt you and make you sad. So, it is correct to say that you are not depressed as a person but you may be prone to become depressed when something hits you.

Depression is a feeling and not a disease and it usually does not come from an underlying disease, but from the conflicts in your thoughts, attitudes, believes and relationships - which you can accept or change, as appropriate. Depression can make you stop functioning, which you can call a disease, but depression on its own is not already a disease.
> -1 votes

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Tags: depression
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# Question
Title: Is it better to say "Don't forget" or "Remember" in written encouragement?
This is more of a subtlety and goes beyond general English Language & Usage and is more about the cognitive process surrounding the use of language.

It seems like I heard once that, while it is common to say, using a phrase like "Don't forget" or "don't miss" is essentially a cognitive double negative. Consciously we understand that "Don't forget" means to "remember" but unconsciously our minds drop the "don't" and file it as "forget," thus conveying the opposite message.

The argument goes that if I tell you "don't think of a pink elephant" then you need to first think of the pink elephant before you can cognitively not think of it. Later if you recall back to the conversation you would remember it was about pink elephants and not thinking of them.

# Answer
> 4 votes
I'd argue that Churchill's "**Never**, never, NEVER give up" didn't reputedly have this effect.

With 'Don't forget' the 'don't' may well outweigh the infinitive verb in its cognitive effect, especially if stressed. The language here is of stimulation, incentivising, or command, and I'd say the more likely undesired reaction is the dislike of the perceived patronising (or, certainly, the imperious) approach.

With 'Don't think of a pink elephant' there is little likelihood that one feels patronised or browbeaten.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I think "remember" might be a better choice than "don't forget" because the former would be taken more as a suggestion while the latter sounds limiting (as if it were a prohibition of sorts). Humans probably in average respond better to positively formed suggestions.

# Answer
> 0 votes
This really depends on the circumstances.

"Remember(!)" may sound like a command and a lot of people, especially adults, may feel being patronized by it. It can work well when teachers or parents talk to children, for example.

"Don't forget" may also sound quite patronizing, but in a conversation with a person you have a friendly relationship, it can sound like a recommendation. You could also say "Let me remind you..."

# Answer
> -1 votes
It is better to say remember. It is actually impossible to comply with "don't forget" because in the time between the request and the eventual time you do the thing you were not supposed to forget, you will have forgotten about it many times. You cannot retain that one item in the conscious part of your brain for all that time. As soon as you forget the first time, you will already have failed the task of *not forgetting*. What matters is that you eventually remember. It doesn't matter if you forget and remember fifty times, you still complied with the request to remember. But you have failed to comply with the do-not-forget request (about fifty times).

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Tags: language
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# Question
Title: Multistable perception with three possibilities
I know that **multistable perception** refers to the phenomenon that occurs when we look at an ambiguous image like a Necker Cube or some sort of positive/negative space art, and we can’t perceive both possibilities at once, but rather waver between them repeatedly. However, all of the visual examples I’ve seen of this phenomenon only have two possible interpretations (of course, putting two Necker Cubes next to each other leads to $4$ possible interpretations, and three Necker Cubes gives $8$ interpretations, etc).

However, does anyone know of a well-known ambiguous image or piece of art with exactly *three* different interpretations between which the viewer switches back and forth? If not, can anyone construct such an image?

Thanks!

# Answer
Here’s an image I found that triggers **tristable perception** (as opposed to just bistable perception):

The three possible interpretations are

* A big cube with a smaller cube in front of it
* A big cube with a small cubical chunk missing
* A room with a small cube sitting in the corner

Apparently there is a fourth possible interpretation, but it is so “unlikely” that we can’t visualize it very readily.

This comes from a paper called The dynamics of perceptual rivalry in bistable and tristable perception.” Can anyone find any more examples?
> 2 votes

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Tags: perception, vision, sensory-perception, optical-illusion
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# Question
Title: Does this rdists package provide actual (predicted) response time for each observation?
With the help of other packages, I've estimated Drift Diffusion model parameters of my data. Now, I want to estimate the predicted (or actual) response times for each observation with the help of estimated parameters. By going through the manual I got a sense that `ddiffusion` function estimates (predicts) the actual response times, basically I used this code for my own purposes:

```
dd1<-ddiffusion(data$rt , data$resp,a=2.16,v=1.12,t0=0.36,z=0.51).

```

Does this function gives me actual (predicted) response time for each observation?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Not very familiar with this package, but per manual (bold and italics added):

> *ddiffusion* gives the density, *pdiffusion* gives the distribution function, ***qdiffusion* gives the quantile function (i.e., predicted RTs)**, and *rdiffusion* generates random response times and decisions (returning a data.frame with columns rt (numeric) and response (factor)).

So, it looks like if you want predicted reaction times, you should use the qdiffusion function (but note that it is a quantile function).

# Answer
> 0 votes
The functions estimate the parameters of the distribution. If I understand you correctly, you want to make individual predictions - these require a predictor variable in the sense of a regression model. (sorry for the late response, I just stumbled across the question)

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Tags: cognitive-modeling, software, reaction-time
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# Question
Title: Is there a name for arguing with other people in one's mind?
Is there a name for the phenomenon of arguing with other people in one's mind? I don't mean simply replaying memories of arguments (or modifications thereof), although that may fall under this too but also predicting arguments and debating people preemptively in one's imagination.

# Answer
I'm not aware of a term specifically for this phenomenon.

Having a conversation in one's head has been termed dialogic inner speech by several researchers. You didn't mention if the people you are arguing with reply back - if they don't, then it's just regular (monologic) inner speech.

One common function of inner speech is sometimes referred to as speech rehearsal - ie, where one might practice a monologue or dialogue (eg, debate) in their mind ahead of time.

In a more pathological context, repeatedly looping through a conversation in one's head can be a form of rumination, and simulating a future argument could be considered action rumination if it is a reaction to a recently failed argument.
> 5 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, consciousness
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# Question
Title: Is there any evidence in neuroscience that suggests visual thoughts (possibly others) or some aspects of the mind occupy higher dimensions?
We think anything as real if we can perceive it through our senses. But I think generally speaking, anything **is** real if it occupies space (ie familiar 3D world/space)& have a 2 way to & fro interaction between it & us. So the latter definition excludes things in the past & future that **were** or **will be** real. So what about our thoughts or the mind? Mind is the arena where we have thoughts. The thoughts we have in our mind can be visual/tactile/auditory /olfactory/gustatory, etc. For instance, we can reproduce an image of a real world object in our mind. We know that the imagery is in our mind & not in the real world, though there is an exact replica in the real world. These imageries can be static or dynamic according to we wish. I mean we can even run a movie in our mind in such a way that's virtually indistinguishable from reality. Just think about dreams. Sometimes after waking up, we think the events that occurred in our dreams really did occur. The complicated biological processes happening in our brain cells create what you call as thought. These biological processes can be thought of as an information or information changes. This information hence definitely occupy space. They occupy space in our brain cells. But where does the imagery or the virtual 3-D hologram itself that this information produces exist? For sure this imagery doesn't exist in our familiar 3 dimensions.If it did,it would be real as any other real object. But we know our mental imageries are 3-D.So why I believe these visual thoughts has to occupy some dimension or space? Because we experience it.Experience is mediated through interaction by some signal.Signal can travel through some medium only. By medium I mean space or higher dimensions; not a physical matter substance. So I think even though on how to produce an imagery in the mind is encoded as information in our brain cells, the information about the imagery itself has to geometrically occupy space & time. That space maybe the higher dimensions. Thats why even though we don't feel these visual thoughts to be real, it appears as if they are real.In short I think they aren't real because of my definition I believe of whats real (anything real should occupy our familiar 3D space & have 2 way to & fro interaction). So in short this is what I want to know- is there any evidence in neuroscience that suggests visual thoughts (possibly auditory,tactile,etc) or some aspects of the mind occupy higher dimensions? (Maybe something anomalous that suggests leakage of energy or info)

# Answer
As pointed out in the comments, there are many different questions in your post, and it lacks a clear focus and structure, plus you introduce many assumptions that I think are incorrect (e.g., the definition of *real* is **not** "what we can perceive through our senses").

Having said that, and to cut to the chase, the answer is: yes, our thoughts are real. You seem to accept that thoughts are a sort of information, so **thoughts are real to the extend that information is real**.

According to Steven Pinker in *How The Mind Works* (I think it's an excellent book to read for the kind of questions you have), the *mind* is what the brain does, which includes our thoughts, and it is, essentially, information/logic/processes that arise from the physical structure and physical properties of the brain.

In that sense, you can draw an analogy to a silicon-based computer and the software that's on it (which is physically rooted in the arrangement of electrons in the computer's hardware). Just like a silicon computer, our mind uses symbols to represent the physical world, and these symbolic processes (which are not yet well understood) can also allow the representation of things that don't exist in the physical world.

To use an example from the silicon-computer analogy, think of a video game like *World of Warcraft* or *The Legend of Zelda*: the whole game is fully rooted in the physical world (the structure of the hardware, the arrangement of electrons on the circuits, indentations on an optical disk etc.), but the game itself (the software) is the information that is encoded in the physical systems. Furthermore, the game can represent a completely unrealistic world (one could say "imaginary", but that word is closely related to what we're trying to understand, so it's best to leave it out of the explanation). But you could never claim that the software, the game itself, is not real.

In that sense, I would say that thoughts are real, even though they may represent things that are not.
> 1 votes

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Tags: dreams, thought
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# Question
Title: Are our human brains programmed as materialistic as one can be?
First of all, not all human beings are materialistic. I strongly believe that.

We tend to not be happy with what we have but what we want. We desire for more.

There is a saying that says that the other side of the lawn is greener.

We are inclined to compare ourselves with other human beings. Sometimes I have seen humans become so envious and jealous that they become their only barrier.

Why do we behave like so? We know that we can never be like them. Still, we want to have that kind of car, that kind of house and the list goes on.

Not only that. I have detected a feeling among humans titled **A feeling of deprivation and replenishment**.

Today we have an $80 Nokia Lumia 630 cellphone. Tomorrow we will see a commercial on an android phone. Little more expensive. Still, we want that. Then the market introduces the next-gen iPhone. We want that too. Then an iPad. Then iMac. Then iDesktop. Then dual-processor Xeon 21 cores the best desktop. Still, something will be missing tomorrow as soon we see the commercial of the next-generation TV with THX certified 8.5 channel Dolby Digital surround sound speakers and subwoofers.

Why does the human brain act this way? Is it right or appropriate to act this way? Is our human brain programmed for materialism and as soon as it perceives that object with its five senses and even though we don't need it we want it anyway? Why doesn't our sixth sense kick in and say hey enough already?

I have also seen in certain conditions and circumstances the sixth sense of homo sapiens automatically kicks in psychologically and it happens to support the lost or damaged senses. For example, when a visually impaired person is walking on the streets, right at that moment they can feel their sixth sense.

So the question are we materialistic by nature and why doesn't our brain have some sort of protection mechanism to protect us from that instinct?

# Answer
> 1 votes
I don't know of research that discusses this, as it seems to be more of a philosophical question rather than a scientific one. A quick search in Google Scholar did not yield a lot scientific articles, and rather, showed that this topic may be more theoretical.

Still, I'd suggest a few readings such as Rousseau's *Discourse on the Arts and Sciences*, or this article I found while doing some quick research : Materialism pathways: The processes that create and perpetuate materialism.

Otherwise, I found this website and a podcast that discuss the topic.

Enjoy reading/listening to these! Hope it helps.

Best,

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Tags: brain, philosophy-of-mind
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# Question
Title: Ways to treat disorganized thinking, other than pharmacotherapy
Disorganized thinking is a cognitive deficit symptomatic of thought disorders such as schizophrenia. This affects your ability to process and connect thoughts and ideas, rendering them disorganized, and fragmented. In extreme cases, disorganized speech results.

Are there any activities that have a therapeutic effect and remedy this somewhat? For example, puzzles, computer programming, writing a novel etc. Or employing certain new habits. For example, composing mind maps, writing lists of tasks on your arm etc. Finally, there's cognitive remedial therapy (CRT), and other forms etc.

# Answer
> 4 votes
**Metacognitive therapy** has been proposed to improve disorganized thinking. Metacognition can be thought of as our ability to "think about thinking." Essentially, it's a person's ability to organize their thoughts into a coherent narrative, reflect on their thoughts and experiences, take the perspective of others, and make sense of the world. Individuals with schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis may experience disorganized thoughts, which can hamper their metacognitive ability. They may even have difficulty recognizing that other people would have thoughts or emotions about other peoples' lives or behavior.

Metacognitive therapy can take different forms, but in many cases it involves helping people organize their thoughts by eliciting narratives about their lives. For example, a therapist may ask a client to tell them about a recent trip to the store, or an event that was meaningful to them. If the client responds in a disorganized manner, the therapist can drill down to details, focusing on helping the client organize the story.

For example, imagine a client is telling a story about attending a basketball game, but has left large chunks of the story out, or has skipped around chronologically. This type of exchange might occur:

Therapist: "It sounds like you had fun, but I'm confused. When did you arrive at the game?"

Client: "Oh, about 7."

Therapist: "And did you go to the game with your friends, or meet them there?"

Client: "Sam and I met Bob there."

Therapist: "Oh, so you and Sam drove over to the game at 7pm, and met Bob."

Client: "No, Sam and I came separately, but we met up first at the game. Then later we saw Bob."

In this exchange the therapist keeps pulling for additional details, helping the client recall and organize the experience by re-telling it. The therapist also "inserts her mind" into the discussion by admitting "I'm confused." This tells the client that a) their story was not clear and b) the therapist is having thoughts and reactions to hearing the story. Over many sessions, metacognitive therapy may help clients organize their thoughts, and become more aware of other people's internal experiences.

This was a very brief explanation, and I've listed a series of papers and books about this type of intervention that can provide additional information. There may be other therapies that address disorganized thinking, but this is one I am most familiar with. I will expand this answer in the future, if time permits.

**References**

* Brune, M., Dimaggio, G., & H Lysaker, P. (2011). Metacognition and social functioning in schizophrenia: evidence, mechanisms of influence and treatment implications. Current Psychiatry Reviews, 7(3), 239-247.
* Dimaggio, G., & Lysaker, P. H. (Eds.). (2010). Metacognition and severe adult mental disorders: From research to treatment. Routledge.
* Hasson-Ohayon, I., Kravetz, S., Levy, I., & Roe, D. (2008). Metacognitive and interpersonal interventions for persons with severe mental illness: theory and practice. The Israel journal of psychiatry and related sciences, 46(2), 141-148.
* Lysaker, P. H., Gumley, A., & Dimaggio, G. (2011). Metacognitive disturbances in persons with severe mental illness: Theory, correlates with psychopathology and models of psychotherapy. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 84(1), 1-8.
* Salvatore, G., Conti, L., Fiore, D., Carcione, A., Dimaggio, G., & Semerari, A. (2006). Disorganized narratives: Problems in treatment and therapist intervention hierarchy. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 19(2), 191-207.
* Salvatore, G., Lysaker, P. H., Gumley, A., Popolo, R., Mari, J., & Dimaggio, G. (2012). Out of illness experience: metacognition-oriented therapy for promoting self-awareness in individuals with psychosis. American journal of psychotherapy, 66(1), 85-106.

# Answer
> 1 votes
**Meditation** has been proposed as being useful but there are warnings against it as well.

**Example**

Search for "meditation and schizophrenia" and you will find scholarly (and not so scholarly) articles on the subject.

Here are two that turned up - I make no comments on their validity.

1. *Precipitation of acute psychotic episodes by intensive meditation in individuals with a history of schizophrenia. R Walsh, L Roche - The American journal of psychiatry, 1979 - psycnet.apa.org*
2. *Loving-kindness meditation to enhance recovery from negative symptoms of schizophrenia. DP Johnson, DL Penn, BL Fredrickson*

As you can see, on the face of it they seem to make conflicting claims.

**Disclaimer**

I am not an expert and I don't know what works or what might be harmful.

# Answer
> -1 votes
Yes, loving-kindness meditation. Love is the cure for all mental illnesses. I was suffering from schizophrenia until I tried Metta. By sending good wishes of happiness to my family members, my symptoms of schizophrenia were gradually diminishing.

Schizophrenia is closely related to sinning or selfish actions sense gratification. My overindulgence in sense gratifications was the cause of schizophrenia. As soon as I turned to love the things got better.

Sorry for not providing any references from other sources but this is my direct experience of Metta.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, abnormal-psychology, clinical-psychology
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title: Early STEM Education Impact

text:
# Question
Title: Early STEM Education Impact
I'm looking to find studies that examine when STEM education is most critical (e.g. what years of early STEM education have a significant impact on college/uni-level students, as measured by their IQs/GPAs/SATs or any combination thereof), and what demographics (age and/or sex) of students become disengaged from STEM education.

Results of STEM education at the pre-K and kindergarten level are of acute interest. Preferably the latest peer-reviewed studies, from North American universities of good repute.

A jumping-off point perhaps: STEM Starts Early: Grounding Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education in Early Childhood, and More Than a Foundation: Young Children Are Capable STEM Learners

# Answer
Unfortunately, answers to these questions are not yet available. As Morgan et al (2016) put it:

> ... whether and to what extent science achievement gaps display stable, cumulative, or compensatory growth trajectories are unknown. This has been due to the lack of large-scale, multivariate, and longitudinal studies, particularly those following diverse samples across the elementary and middle school grades.

Available data (eg. the ECLS) typically follows children only as far as middle school, so effects on post-secondary level students are hard to come by.

That said, as the Elisabeth McClure reports listed in the question assert, the available data suggests that early STEM education has significant impact on academic achievement and cognitive skills later in life. The earlier the intervention, the greater the impact down the road, particularly for pre-kindergarten (eg, Duncan et al, 2007; Sackes et al, 2010; Tippett & Milford, 2017), and early kindergarten (eg, Sarama et al, 2012) exposure. That is, even where achievement gaps may be compensated for with later remedial programs, the sooner children are exposed to STEM education, the more favourable the future effects.

Correspondingly, interest in STEM education and careers is already set well before high school - from Sadler et al (2012):

> The key factor predicting STEM career interest at the end of high school was interest at the start of high school. ... During the high school years, the percentage of males interested in a STEM career remained stable (from 39.5 to 39.7), whereas for females it declined from 15.7 to 12.7.
> 2 votes

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Tags: learning, intelligence, educational-psychology, cognitive-development
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# Question
Title: Is there a scientific definition of "fairness"?
The concept of fairness, in my opinion, is somehow defined by the concept of **empathy** through some searches by *Daniel Goleman* in his book *Social Intelligence*.

The book deals with ***scientific measurement through MRI***.

**Ethic** and **Moral** are also trying to define what is fair.

Can you give me some hint achieving a definition of what is fair?

i.e. why killing people, slavery, exploiting are not fair stuff?

# Answer
I'd say that 'fairness' would be best treated as a narrow concept not encompassing the whole of empathy/ethics/morals, otherwise the term ceases to be specific and useful. I.e., something could be perceived as both cruel/evil but still fair/just; and harsh 'eye for eye' style punishments are perceived as fair in some cultures but still require some disconnect of empathy.

I believe that experiments of Kahneman and others such as the Dictator game are a good place to start - as this way can measure \[an aspect of\] fairness in a somewhat objective way and observe how the concept of fairness is different for different cultures.
> 2 votes

# Answer
I would also urge you to think about equality vs. equity as two important facets to understanding fairness, especially in the context of heterogeneous societies.

Simply put, Equality is the idea that all individuals are exactly equal. If X people work on a project, all of them would get remunerated exactly the same amount.

On the other hand, Equity is the idea that there exists a quid pro quo i.e. if X people work on a project individuals would get paid proportional to the amount of work they put in.

Both could be considered "fair" depending on your perspective. In fact, it has been shown that individuals tend to switch between equity and equality when self-presentational concerns are made salient. (Ref: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022103176900792)

Needless to say, this "fairness" debate guides discussion on Affirmative Action in the West and social reservation policies in countries like India. I like the following piece which sums up this discussion nicely:

http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/iftoolkits/toolkitrelatedlinks/equalityequity
> 3 votes

# Answer
There are a variety of decidedly simple concepts that become infinitely complex when placed under the microscope of scientific scrutiny. I believe you have hit one of them right on the head.

Let's consider a parallel example: pornography. At first glance, what constitutes pornography is decidedly simple and obvious; yet, when the Supreme Court of the United States was asked to formally define pornography, the best that Justice Potter Stewart could come up with was "I know it when I see it."

Clearly, one person does not always see what another does. The same can be said of many such concepts, including fairness and justice. If we truly had a scientific definition of these things, society would be free of nearly every problem we currently face. But, we don't, and we won't.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Personally informed answer and I don't need to reference (which I will explain):

* *Metaphysical background*: It's impossible to claim value without being *part-subjective*. Reason: such claim must **come from a subject** and since **a moral idea is not a physical phenomenon** (it may be brain physics, but unless one can explain it, then one cannot say it's physical), then it cannot be "natural-science like".
* "Base case": Since it's part-subjective, then it means that it's *open to subjective interpretation*.
* "Inductive hypothesis": Since it's open to subjective interpretation, then claim that "anyone can make any sort of moral claim". I.e. "I think slavery is morally correct" and "I think slavery is not morally correct" are *about as valid*.
* "Inductive step": Given any moral statement, it's not possible to decide non-subjectively whether it's right or wrong. This is because of "inductive hypothesis".

Implies:

"fair" is part-subjective.

"good" is part-subjective.

"equality" does not consistently exist, since it's possible to deviate by "applying part-subjectivity".

\[any moral statement\] is part-subjective.

---

Semantics of *part-subjective*:

* It's subjective and it can be intersubjective. It's not objective, since subjective and objective fundamentally contradict (solipsism).

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I don't need reference, because by moral being part-subjective I can choose to or attempt to deviate from any reference.
> 1 votes

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Tags: social-psychology
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title: Thinking about What Others Think of You

text:
# Question
Title: Thinking about What Others Think of You
When a mind develops, it goes through numerous stages of awareness, such as (not necessarily in order)

* Awareness of others
* Awareness of self
* Awareness of other's thoughts (this may not be a discrete stage)

What do you call the awareness of other's awareness of you (and the logical deduction of what they believe you're thinking)?

I believe this should be the stage before meta-gaming is possible.

# Answer
This sort of thinking is called theory of mind (not to be confused with theories of how the mind works).

It's not entirely clear whether theory of mind is a discrete ability or a spectrum, but tasks requiring higher-order theorizing tend to be more difficult and are more likely to be lost to dysfunction:

> Cognitive theory of mind is further separated into first order (e.g., I think she thinks that…) and second order (e.g., he thinks that she thinks that…)

I'm not aware of a specific term that distinguishes second-order theory of mind when the second-order person is in fact the first-person rather than a third-person (e.g., "she thinks that I think that...").
> 4 votes

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Tags: metacognition, awareness
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# Question
Title: Can thought processes be sensed to happen exactly in the head?
It's common knowledge that humans think with their brains. So it's common to associate hard thinking with head and to seemingly "feel" that it's the head which is loaded when one's thinking.

But does this association have any grounds in actual sensing? Can one sense where the thought processes are happening if not taught about this? If we taught some child that he thinks with e.g. stomach (and no one hints him otherwise), would he associate thinking with that location? Or would he somehow suspect that actually it's the head which is thinking, and what he is taught is wrong?

# Answer
> 3 votes
In the 4th century BC, Aristotle wrote that the source of intelligence was the heart (source). Other greeks like Alcmaeon of Croton thought it might be the brain. I think the fact that they were having this discussion means that it's not obvious from our sensations alone that the thoughts are happening in the head.

# Answer
> 1 votes
**Q: But does this association (that the head is the place where thought processes happen) have any grounds in actual sensing?**

**A:** Yes, the association (that the head is the place where thought processes happen) has the ground in evolutionary neurophysiology.

Thinking, analyzing, deciding, and other cognitive functions are the most important functions for a human or any other animal to survive in the environment that poses endless varieties of challenges. Thus, it is very crucial for a human/animal to be able to locate where these functions are in its body so that it can give the best protection at the correct place. For this, the organ where these cognitive functions occur – the brain – has evolved complex functional areas (mostly in the temporo-parietal junction and the fronto-parietal cortex) that can create the correct 3-D mental image of its body and environment with the correct relation to the brain itself, that is, with the brain correctly felt to be in the head, not in the hand, the leg, the abdomen, or anywhere else, including outside the body.

You don’t need anybody to tell you that the thoughts occur in your head. Just close your eyes and feel where your thought is. You’ll feel that you’re thinking in your head, again not in the hand, the heart, the body, or anywhere else, including outside your body. That’s the result of the functions of your brain areas that create the 3-D of your body image and your surroundings with the correct relation to the brain.

This is also true in animals. If animals do not evolve to the ability to know that it is in their heads that their thinking occurs, they will not give their heads the first and foremost priority in protection and caring. Their heads (which is the place where they think) will become susceptible to danger, and their species will become extinct from this, leaving only those animals that evolve this crucial ability to persist. Evidently, animals that persist nowadays always try to protect/care their heads above all other body parts. For example, in danger, if they decide to flee, they will turn with their heads furthest away from the danger and they will escape into the protection (cave, tunnel, shield, etc.) with their heads in first. When they hide from the sun or the rain to seek comfort, they always give the priority to their heads to be under the shelter even if other body parts have to stick out in the sun or the rain. So, what that is thinking in the animals knows where it is (i.e., knows that it is in the head) because it protects and takes care of itself correctly.

Moreover, humans and animals must have observed that when their heads are hit hard enough, they cannot think normally or even cannot think at all (i.e., lose consciousness, if the hit is severe). This doesn’t happen if the hand, the chest, the abdomen, or other part else is hit but the head is spared. They must also have witnessed these in other animals. So, in addition to the innate ability to know that the thinking is in their heads, they can learn from these experiences that it is definitely the head that the thinking occurs.

In conclusion, no human or animal needs to be taught that the head is the place where it thinks.

I think the above discussion answers the other questions already too.

**References.**

1. Blanke O, Slater M, Serino A. Behavioral, Neural, and Computational Principles of Bodily Self-Consciousness. Neuron. 2015 Oct 7;88(1):145-66. The pdf file can be downloaded from here
2. Lenggenhager B, Smith ST, Blanke O. Functional and neural mechanisms of embodiment: importance of the vestibular system and the temporal parietal junction. Rev Neurosci. 2006;17(6):643-57. The pdf file can be downloaded from here or here.
3. Wikipedia. Body Schema

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Tags: brain, sensation
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# Question
Title: On a variation of Trolley's problem. How to explain the survey's results?
It is not long since a friend of mine reported about an experiment they would do in their philosophy class, or rather, in their philosophy classes. At that time, his and the parallel class were dealing with the problems in regards to Utilitarianism.

The teacher then proposed in class A the following problem (*see* Trolley Problem)

> You see a runaway trolley moving toward four tied-up people lying on the main track. You are standing next to a lever that controls a switch. If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track, and the four people on the main track will be saved. However, there is a single person lying on the sidetrack. You have two options:
>
> > 1. Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the four people on the main track.
> > 2. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?

*Sidenote:* The only thing you know about these people is that they're all more or less the same age. Nothing else (so there are no criminals, murders or saints to be taken into consideration).

The teacher then asked the pupils what they would do. The results were

* 29 would pull the lever. They argued that, on equal terms, letting one person die is worth if you can save four lives (4\>1).
* 1 claimed, he wouldn't do anything, because he believed in destiny.

Now the teacher proposed another problem in the parallel class B, which goes as follows

> One man enters a hospital - let's call him John - because he has injured his arm. Nothing dangerous, but it requires disinfection. Coincidentally, in the same hospital, four patients are about to die. They need (urgently) respectively these organs: a heart, a liver, two kidneys, and lungs.
>
> After some tests, it turns out, that John's organs aren't only in perfect conditions for a transplant but are also compatible with the four patients mentioned previously.
>
> Assume now that the hypothetical transplants would all succeed and that John is the only possibility for those four patients to survive. You have two options:
>
> > 1. Let John go home after disinfection and allow the four patients to die.
> > 2. Arrest John and take his organs in order to save the four patients' lives. John dies.

*Sidenote:* Again, the only thing you know about these people is that they're all more or less the same age. Nothing else (so there are no criminals, murders or saints to be taken into consideration).

Surprisingly, a survey revealed the following results

* 23 would let John go home, even if the four patients die. They argued that John should decide whether to sacrifice for the benefit of the other patients.
* 7 would remove John's organs - and therefore kill him - in order to save the other patients' lives. They believed that four lives are, on equal terms, more value than one.

The teacher then brought both classes together and let them compare their viewpoints regarding the respective situations. Most of them agreed with the decisions, their colleagues from the parallel class had taken until one student noticed

> "We are actually dealing with the same situation. It does not matter wheter railway tracks or a hospital: this is just the context and it should not influence the final decision. The problem reduces to deciding wheter for people should live or only one, but not both of them."

Last, but not least, my question: **How can you explain psychologically that, even though the students had to address the same question, the answers were dramatically different?**

# Answer
The two problems might seem to be equivalent but they aren't - in the "John" scenario those advocating not to arrest John and harvest his delicious organs are pointing out that:

> that John should decide whether to sacrifice for the benefit of the other patients.

This is showing that the problems aren't equivalent because John has a choice to sacrifice himself - he *could* turn to the docs and say - "Right! Knock me out and cut me up!"

In the trolley problem however the one *doesn't* have the choice to sacrifice themselves for the many, when deciding between forcing John to be an organ donor and letting the others die the ethical dilemma is about removing John's agency. To make the problems equivalent you would have to modify the trolley problem such that the "one" person also had access to a lever to divert the trolley such that it would kill them (and the knowledge of what pulling that lever would do).

Essentially the "John" scenario could be considered similar to the "stranger on a footbridge" variant of the Trolley Problem:

> In another version of the problem, the trolley, as before, is about to kill five people. This time, however, you are not standing near the track, but on a footbridge above the track. You cannot divert the trolley. You consider jumping off the bridge, in front of the trolley, thus sacrificing yourself to save the imperiled people, but you realize that you are far too light to stop the trolley. Standing next to you, however, is a very large stranger. The only way you can stop the trolley killing five people is by pushing this large stranger off the footbridge, in front of the trolley. If you push the stranger off, he will be killed, but you will save the other five.

-Ethics and Intuitions, Peter Singer 2005

As with the "John" case the majority vote *not* to kill the poor fat stranger and instead allow the hapless majority to die.

As to *why* the two different problems provoke such different responses, Dr Joshua Greene examined this in his doctoral thesis *The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth about Morality and What to Do About it* and proposed that the difference was driven by a difference in emotional response.

As he put it:

> Because people have a robust, negative emotional response to the personal violation proposed in the footbridge case they immediately say that it’s wrong... At the same time, people fail to have a strong negative emotional response to the relatively impersonal violation proposed in the original trolley case, and therefore revert to the most obvious moral principle, ‘‘minimize harm,’’ which in turn leads them to say that the action in the original case is permissible

Greene tested this theory using an fMRI in *An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment* and the results seem to suggest that the initial response to the stranger-on-a-footbridge variant is indeed an *emotional* one (based on activity seen on the fMRI in different areas of the brain) and it is this that leads to the difference in responses:

> The trolley and footbridge dilemmas emerged as pieces of a puzzle for moral philosophers: Why is it acceptable to sacrifice one person to save five others in the trolley dilemma but not in the footbridge dilemma? Here we consider these dilemmas as pieces of a psychological puzzle: How do people manage to conclude that it is acceptable to sacrifice one for the sake of five in one case but not in the other? We maintain that emotional response is likely to be the crucial difference between these two cases. But this is an answer to the psychological puzzle, not the philosophical one.
> 3 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, decision-making, survey, moral-psychology
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# Question
Title: does the fact that Psychology Today take neurolinguistic programming seriously delegitimize the magazine?
According to Wikipedia, Neurolinguistic Programming is a pseudoscience and dismissed by most experts. However, Psychology Today, a popular magazine, appears to not thoroughly reject it. Does this fact invalidate the legitimacy of Psychology Today?

# Answer
A similar question has been discussed on the Meta site associated with this Stack.

In summary: Psychology Today doesn't really have any legitimacy to invalidate in the first place. It's just a collection of blogs without any peer review process.

Psychology Today is a popular science magazine, not a peer-reviewed publication. There are some good articles on the site; there are also many bad ones. Some articles cite peer-reviewed literature: if you find a peer-reviewed source on Psychology Today, feel free to read it for yourself!

The editors may keep certain content off the site, but they are not adhering to any standards of evidence or standards of clinical care. It's fine to cite for a source of popular claims, but doesn't have any scientific weight.

The main purpose of the Psychology Today website seems to be as a paid directory for psychology professionals \- basically, people sign up, post their pictures and biography and a phone number to try to collect clients.

Some of the editors have brief biographies posted - it seems clear that the editorial staff have their expertise in publishing/journalism, like you would expect for a popular magazine. They do not have the sort of editorial staff that a reputable journal has, which would include university research scientists at the top of their research field.

In their media guide for educational advertisers the site compares itself (favorably, from the viewpoint of an advertiser) in terms of # of viewers to sites like The Atlantic, Oprah, Time, The New Yorker, Fortune, Popular Mechanics, and National Geographic. Many of those sites also have some good content, but may be more readily recognizable as popular magazines. If they were a site for reputable science content you could expect that they would instead compare themselves with other peer-reviewed content.

Many of the pages have language along the lines of "Verified by Psychology Today" but in every case I see this it seems to refer to their *directory of psychology professionals* rather than any of the blog content. I don't know what the verification process entails.
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Is it okay to measure only a subset of the Big Five such as neuroticism and extraversion in research?
I recently received this question via email and thought it might be of broader relevance:

> I am writing as I am interested in using measures of personality in some clinical psychology research. I am specifically interested in measuring neuroticism, and perhaps also extraversion, given previous work in my area speaks to the importance of these dimensions in terms of health outcomes in my area. I was wondering whether you would have any advice on available instruments for measuring just these dimensions (rather than measuring, say, a full five factor model).
>
> For instance, would it be considered psychometrically ‘kosher’ to just pull out the neuroticism and/or extraversion scales from the BFAS or the 5 NEO Domains from the IPIP website and administer the scales in isolation?

# Answer
It's very common in research to only measure a subset of the Big Five. When I recently reviewed the literature on the Big Five and well-being, there were a huge number of papers that only used a subset of the Big Five. And I'd say that the most common variables to be measured in isolation were neuroticism followed by extraversion. More generally, if I were to add one more to the mix in health related research, I'd say that conscientiousness deserves greater attention. It's particularly relevant to health-related outcomes and captures quite a different mechanisms (e.g., compliance with treatment, healthy lifestyle, lower levels of compulsive behaviours, etc.).

And when you look at this research, they generally take scales from standard length measures of the Big Five (e.g., NEO FFI, IPIP NEO 50, BFI or BFI 2, etc.). You also have Eysenck's measures which are still popular and provide neuroticism and extraversion measures.

That said, I'm not really a fan of this piece-meal approach to personality measurement. It's not that hard to include a complete measure of the Big Five, and then you get a more comprehensive view of how personality maps onto the constructs of interest, rather than assuming a priori that the domains you're looking at are all that there is. If the number of items is a big issue, the BFI 44 is not that long or if you get desperate there's something like the Mini IPIP 20 (although alphas are a bit lower). We discuss these recommendations and trade-offs quite a bit in Anglim & O'Connor (2019).

Anglim, J., & O’Connor, P. (2019). Measurement and research using the Big Five, HEXACO, and narrow traits: A primer for researchers and practitioners. Australian Journal of Psychology, 71(1), 16-25. https://psyarxiv.com/a78g2/download?format=pdf
> 2 votes

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Tags: personality, clinical-psychology, big-five
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# Question
Title: How can I find literature about the connection between proprioception and thinking?
This is a seek for hints or references. Feel free to delete the question if it is not suitable to the rules in here.

I have heard people saying that our inner spacial perception is an important foundation for our ability to think. So if we are standing upright, the mere awareness that our hands "are below our head" and "our feet are below our hands", all orientation like this is more important for our thinking than it would seem first.

Further I have heard that there exists some sort of illness or disability, where the proprioception is somehow distorted or blocked, and this allegedly is affecting the thinking power. People who could think, calculate, conclude etc in a normal way, cannot do so any longer because their spacial perception/proprioception is somehow reduced.

A prominent person who is a counter example for this connection between proprioception and thinking could be Stephen Hawking. A prominent pro argument for the connection could be the process of training pilots in a centrifuge, thinking while suffering a lot of G.

My question is:

> Can somebody tell me the right terms or keywords so that I can find literature about the mentioned connection? My search shows very wide results between mathematical concepts, mental mapping, spacial orientation and more, but I am looking for the basic relation between muscles, nerves, proprioception and clear conceptional thinking. Or does somebody even now a paper which examines this connection?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Two major terms:

**"Spatial Representation":**

of pitch height (lower/higher):

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027705000260

emotions (down/up):

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02699930500347794

**"Spatial Analogy":** https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5256459/

Some papers argue that even time has strong spatial representation in it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001002770700087X

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, reproducible-research, body-language
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# Question
Title: Meaning of "projection" and "to project" in neuroscience
What is the exact meaning of the term *projection* and the verb *to project* in neuroscience?

I haven't found any neuroscience reference book or dictionary that gives a definition, although those terms are often used in the definitions themselves. For example, the Glossary of *Neuroscience* (2nd ed.), available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10981/ gives this definition:

> **upper motor neuron**: A neuron that gives rise to a descending projection that controls the activity of lower motor neurons in the brainstem and spinal cord.

and several others, but "projection" itself is not an entry in the Glossary.

The *Oxford English Dictionary* gives this definition (#11):

> *Physiol.* The spatial distribution, in the brain, or other parts of the central nervous system, of the points to which nerves or nerve impulses go from any given area or organ; const. *on*, *upon*, *to* the receiving part; also *concr.*, a tract of projection fibres.

but it's still a little vague.

I'd be happy if someone could give me a precise definition (and some references to corroborate it). In particular: can I say that a neuron *projects* to another neuron, to mean that the axon of the first connects to some dendrite of the second?

Cheers!

# Answer
I think the definition you found from OED is fine. Dictionary definitions are often not really ideal for terms used in biology, you learn more from examples and usage, for example the quote you gave about upper motor neurons.

> can I say that a neuron projects to another neuron, to mean that the axon of the first connects to some dendrite of the second?

Typically *yes*, though as the OED definition implies, "from any given"/"to the receiving part", *projection* is typically used for longer-range connections, where the sending and receiving cells are in different nuclei or layers. You would be less likely to describe cells that synapse on each other within one nucleus as *projecting*, though I also wouldn't say that description is entirely wrong either, and the distance required to be "long-range" can sometimes be short.

You'll note if you go through the Purves' glossary that you linked, all the uses of "projection" refer to long-range connections.
> 0 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, neuroanatomy, projection
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# Question
Title: What's the human behaviour called that often makes us warp realities to appease another?
Whenever people experience specific medical symptoms, they might research it online and find out that there is a possibility of a certain cancer being the culprit, they then might see that the chances of getting that cancer is 1 in a million. So they would often shrug it off as "Well that will never happen to me!", whereas that same person might go to the local store to purchase a lottery ticket that has a chance of winning set at 1 in 30 million and they then feel like the chance is high enough to win.

I am looking to find out if there is a particular name for this type of behaviour / thought process. I'm interested in research papers regarding these behaviours.

# Answer
This is called optimism bias:

> ... a tendency for people to overestimate their likelihood of experiencing a wide variety of pleasant events, such as enjoying their first job or having a gifted child, and somewhat underestimate their risk of succumbing to negative events, such as getting divorced or falling victim to a chronic disease.

Optimism bias is a type of self-enhancement:

> ... a preference for positive over negative self-views.

and positive illusions:

> ... unrealistically favorable attitudes that people have towards themselves or to people that are close to them.
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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title: How to learn how humans behave?

text:
# Question
Title: How to learn how humans behave?
I have decided to study psychology as a hobby. I want it to understand better people that I am interacting with. Specifically, I want to know:

* Why humans talk / behave in certain ways?
* How they think and why they think in those ways?
* How do people make decisions?
* How to study personality as a whole?

What areas of psychology should I study? I have heard that an OCEAN model can help me with that. Will it?

Thanks in advance!

# Answer
> 1 votes
Those research questions are broad and therefore don't point specifically to sub-areas in psychology. For example, you could examine behavior in multiple species (flies, rats, humans), multiple contexts (social media, laboratory, financial markets), and diverse methods (neuroscience, surveys, computational modeling). However, your mention of personality suggests that one area to look closely at would be Social and Personality Psychology, which are two domains often combined: http://spsp.org/about/what-socialpersonality-psychology.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, learning
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title: What motivates someone to key a Tesla

text:
# Question
Title: What motivates someone to key a Tesla
**Background** Over the last few months there have been multiple reports of random strangers keying Teslas.

I am interested in understanding the mental state of of the person carry out the act? I have already read the following article https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/05/what-motivates-someone-to-key-a-tesla/ which is quite insightful . But I am looking for a generic predisposition that plagues these peoples mind - Are there any day to day examples of the same ? Do we all have these predisposition though of varying degrees (examples) ?

How can one change their mentality to not fall prey to performing these actions?

# Answer
> 0 votes
I recommend looking at the literature on aggressive behavior, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggression. There are many potential causes for such an act. In terms of generic predispositions, consider personality types (e.g., low Agreeableness), but don't overlook the importance of context and culture (e.g., high wealth inequality).

As to the final question, self-help questions are out of scope for this forum.

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Tags: motivation
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title: Aren't MBTI and Big 5 connected?

text:
# Question
Title: Aren't MBTI and Big 5 connected?
I have seen repeated suggestions that the Big 5 model is the preferred model of personality in psychology, and Myers-Briggs is used in pop psychology and industry and not presently taken that seriously by proper psychologists.

It seems to me that there is a connection between the two. Extraversion is one axis with the same name and similar or unchanged content. Openness on at least one test sounds like a rough gauge of old-fashioned IQ, and as such is a candidate for correlation with the Sensate-Intuitive axis. In the popular *Please Understand Me!*, the SP-SJ distinction sounds a lot like Conscientiousness. These suggestions could be challenged, but it seems grounds to suggest that three of the four Jungian preferences survive largely intact in Big 5.

Am I overestimating the continuity between the two models? If I am not, why does Big 5 have scientific validity where the MBTI is a bit of fluffy pop psychology?

**--UPDATE--**

I have un-accepted the answer as I find it bare assertion plus a statement of author's credentials, and I really want a more thorough response.

To flesh out what I meant by the question, I'm going to go with Jungian preferences as simplified in *Please Understand Me!*, said to be one more assertion of temperament theory as *Kevin Trudeau's Mega Memory* can be said to be one more assertion of (neo?)-classical standard memory techniques, which may be seen as a move from fluff to fluffier. I acknowledge this as a liability, and I further acknowledge that I do not engage whether the NT-NF polarity is relevant to people deemed Sensate, nor whether the SJ-SP polarity is relevant to people deemed Intuitive.

One can be deemed Intuitive without being good at, relying, or identifying with intuition as the term is usually used. The Sensate-Intuitive axis is one I would on consideration suggest might be better named **Concrete-Abstract:** where *Abstract* is paired with *Feeling*, it matches more closely with what one might pick a one-word label of "intuitive" for (other candidates might be "influencer, "spiritual" or "self-actualizing"). Combine *Abstract* with *Thinking* and you get STEM practitioners, analytic philosophers, and so on, and possibly liable not to hold common intuition in very high regard.

I don't think I have anything quite as striking to offer for the SP-SJ axis, but I think that people evaluated by Myers-Briggs as SJ with at least a square J, you'll get people who are diligent, believe in order, and so on, high performers on high Conscientiousness. I'm a little less sure with SP, but I would think squarely SP people would commonly register as highly primative, and I would expect solid SP's to score low on questions about "I diligently keep my home, my room, my cubicle, and my desk meticulously clean" used to assess degree of Conscientiousness on Big 5 scoring.

I assume that Extraversion will be accepted as an obvious point of contact, and people may argue traits versus preferences (*Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking* asserts that one can be deeply introverted and learn to function as a consummate extravert if one deeply desires it), but it still looks to me like, if I may count better, all three other Jungian preferences appear to reincarnate in Big 5 in slightly different form.

If industry's popular MBTI is largely reincarnate in proper psychology's Big 5, it might explain why industry is reaping apparent benefits from the deprecated tool.

If Openness, which is said to be a crystallization of what is otherwise represented in IQ, is largely similar to "Sensate-Intuitive" (or "Abstract-Concrete"), and so on, and a personality psychologist does not see a need to give much more than bare assertion in a response, could this be a little more worth digging into...

# Answer
> 3 votes
All personality models are related in that they are carving up the same variance into different factors, and some of the factors will overlap. Extraversion is probably the most similar trait between the two models, but it's still quite different.

As a personality psychologist, I would say yes, this is potentially an overestimation of their convergence. A brief description of why the Big Five is preferred over MBTI is that the measures of the former are dimensional rather than categorical, have more test re-test stability, and have more stable relationships with other levels of analysis (e.g., genes predicting traits; traits predicting behaviors). Reliability and validity are the cornerstones of quality measurement.

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Tags: jung, big-five, mbti
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# Question
Title: What does it mean by "the resulting behavior doesn't produce the consequence"?
A lecture slide says:

> classical conditioning causes a stimulus to signal a positive or negative consequence; **the resulting behavior doesn't produce the consequence**.

What does it mean by the bolded sentence?

# Answer
> 1 votes
The slide is contrasting classical conditioning with operant conditioning.

In operant conditioning, you train that a *behavior* is paired with a reward or punishment. For example, a lever press dispensing a food pellet.

In classical conditioning, there is no relevant behavior. Some stimulus (rather than behavior) is paired with an outcome. For example, if there is a tone played before a shock, the tone will cause rodents to freeze in anticipation of the shock, but nothing about their freezing behavior is causing the shock.

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Tags: conditioning
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# Question
Title: How can a narcissist be given negative feedback without triggering aggressive behavior?
I've interacted with several individuals over the years that had narcissistic personality disorder. In particular, I find I have difficulty navigating their nebulous relationship with truth and find myself talking in circles when trying to provide them with information they view as negative feedback. After meeting someone that told me about their own experiences with their narcissist ex-husband I decided I should learn specialized behavior modification techniques that would be useful in home and business, should I notice someone exhibiting these behaviors.

What are methods that can be used to provide someone with narcissistic personality disorder with accurate factual feedback without risking triggering either outright deceit or a verbally aggressive reaction?

# Answer
> 2 votes
To want to have a normal relationship with another person is commendable. Unfortunately, they can't. **Their inability to receive feedback is a part of their diagnosis.** Attempts to do so will also cause them to escalate, as they are responding to the denial of their perception of reality, not the actual facts. **How you communicate the facts won't matter to them, as the facts are disproving their view of reality.** Merely having the facts presented to them is enough to trigger their escalation.

Most neurotypical persons have been conditioned by society to ask themselves if they may be in the wrong when someone responds in the ways someone with a narcissism diagnosis usually responds. Unfortunately, when interacting with a narcissist that isn't the case. Narcissists often blame others as a part of the narcissist's own maladjusted behavior, not because the other person is actually at fault. This reaction is actually a part of the diagnostic criteria used to diagnose the condition. To get around that quality would go a long way in helping clinicians treat the condition.

It is worth noting that narcissism, as a clinical condition, is so severe as to qualify as a personality disorder. The person's behavior will not be consistent with either your expectations or reality, but since narcissists go to elaborate lengths to conceal their own misconduct there is often no way to expect that at first. Since they stress their need to conform and to project success they often appear to be very well-adjusted. Many narcissists use their skills at deceit to advance professionally, and often become problematic for a formal environment to deal with. If you're encountering a narcissist in a professional environment be cautioned that they're going to be highly toxic to your career, as they will be willing to pursue you in a very vindictive fashion.

Unfortunately their inability to receive feedback is similar to the way a schizophrenic reacts when you deny their delusions. The narcissist's mind perceives themselves in an unrealistic fashion and is willing to tamper with records and evidence in an attempt to deny reality. If you contradict their perceptions of themselves and the context surrounding themselves the narcissist will escalate, as you are now evidence that their perceptions are wrong. They are responding to the denial of their perception of reality, not the actual facts. No statement that includes them in any way is going to be tolerated.

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Tags: clinical-psychology, personality-disorder, social-cognition
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title: Brain capillary density

text:
# Question
Title: Brain capillary density
Is there any data available on the density of capillaries in the brain?

Also, I have seen images like this (from Chapter 2 of *The Cerebral Circulation*, by Cipolla MJ.):

This illustrates to some extent (some?) of the arteries in the brain. But is there an image available which illustrates how the capillaries are distributed in the brain?

Also, I recently had a discussion in which I was told that *blood does not enter the brain due to the blood brain barrier*. Is such a statement accurate? The previous question is relevant here since if the brain is dense with capillaries then it would sound strange (to a layman like me) that blood does not enter the brain.

Thank you.

PS: Please not that I have no background in neuroscience and the last biology lecture I had was in high school.

# Answer
Indeed, the brain is absolutely full of vasculature; I thought this image was a nice example...

*(figure from Adams et al 2015)*

(a) and (d) are sections through cortex, parallel to the surface. All the black/colored dots are indicating vessels (arterioles and venules) that are diving down into the brain. (b) shows the vasculature of the pial surface, where arteries and veins can be distinguished (color coded in c); this is how they get the color coding in (d), by comparing the overlay position. You can see all the veins, in blue, are larger and surrounded by the arteries, in red.

Note the millimeter scale. The authors report 27.4 vessels per square millimeter.

When describing the *blood brain barrier* people are not referring to an absence of blood vessels in the brain; rather, the blood brain barrier is between the *walls lining all of those vessels* and the *neurons themselves*. Therefore, the actual surface area of this blood brain barrier is absolutely massive. Wong et al estimates 15-25 square meters of surface area over 600 kilometers of blood vessels in the brain, whereas the skin is only about 2 square meters.

*(figure from Wong et al 2013)*

Elsewhere in the body, nutrients just leak out of capillaries by diffusion. The endothelium in the brain (BMEC in the figure above) strictly controls the transport of most substances from the vascular space to the brain space, and the space between the endothelial cells is tightly closed.

Furthermore, the endothelial cells themselves are covered by the processes of glial (non-neuronal) cells called astrocytes, serving as a second layer of regulation.

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Adams, D. L., Piserchia, V., Economides, J. R., & Horton, J. C. (2015). Vascular Supply of the Cerebral Cortex is Specialized for Cell Layers but Not Columns. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 25(10), 3673–3681. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhu221

Wong, A. D., Ye, M., Levy, A. F., Rothstein, J. D., Bergles, D. E., & Searson, P. C. (2013). The blood-brain barrier: an engineering perspective. Frontiers in neuroengineering, 6, 7. doi:10.3389/fneng.2013.00007
> 2 votes

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Tags: brain
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# Question
Title: Clues for genetic basis in Autism Spectrum Disorders
In Principles of Neural Science 5th edition, Chapter 3, It Is said that Autism Is a genetic disorder but which genes are involved Is not clear, how do we know there Is a genetic basis and Is not a response to environmental factors (or a combination)?

# Answer
> 1 votes
There is a clear heritable component that seems to be "highly genetically heterogeneous and may be caused by both inheritable and de novo gene variations" (Rylaarsdam, Gomboa, 2019). There has been hundreds of genes implicated in autism and a complex interaction of non-heritable gene variations as well, "genetic modifiers such as copy number variation, single nucleotide polymorphisms, and epigenetic alterations likely play a key role" (Rylaarsdam, Gomboa, 2019).

The Rylaarsdam review article summarises the current state of play in terms of the genetic and non-heritable gene factors as well.

**Reference:**

Rylaarsdam, L., & Guemez Gamboa, A. D. (2019). Genetic Causes and Modifiers of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, 13, \[385\]. https://doi.org/10.3389/fncel.2019.00385

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Tags: autism, genetics
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# Question
Title: How do you call the cognitive bias of not seeing self as the common denominator?
Imagine an Italian person is living in London. A poll on the street asks them to estimate the total number of Italians in London. This person then gives a highly incorrect, overblown guess. It's simply common for people of a single nationality to notice each other in the crowd or go to the same places, so it's somewhat likely that one would have an inflated estimate in their heads.

Another example would be a "reverse physical attractiveness stereotype": a person holding the belief that "all people are friendly". However in reality this could be explained by the fact that the person holding the belief is highly attractive.

How do you call this bias? Selection bias seems close, but is there something more specific?

# Answer
> 2 votes
I think you're at least in part talking about the false consensus effect/bias

> the false-consensus effect or false-consensus bias is an attributional type of cognitive bias whereby people tend to overestimate the extent to which their opinions, beliefs, preferences, values, and habits are normal and typical of those of others (i.e., that others also think the same way that they do). \[...\]
>
> The false-consensus effect is not restricted to cases where people believe that their values are shared by the majority, but it still manifests as an overestimate of the extent of their belief. \[...\]
>
> There is no single cause for this cognitive bias; the availability heuristic, self-serving bias, and naïve realism have been suggested as at least partial underlying factors.

At least your second example: "most people are X" being thought by someone who is X clearly belongs to this false-consensus-bias category.

I'm not sure your first example is quite like that though... being Italian is not something that can be reasonably assumed to be universal... but Wikipedia also mentions (2nd para quoted) that some seem apply the "false consensus bias" to describe even cases where the subjects just overestimates the extent of their belief.

The false consensus effect is thought to have some \[cor\]relation with the availability heuristic, or even be a causal effect of the latter... that seems to have been the ultimate conclusion of Larry's answer.

There's at least one paper starting with

> Selective exposure to a biased sample of others is supposed to play an important role in explaining the false consensus effect (FCE).

And it also measured the level of correlation

> Three predictions were tested. First, subjects were expected to refer to similar others more often than to dissimilar others. Second, referring to similar others was expected to lead to larger FCEs. Third, referring to dissimilar others was expected to lead to smaller FCEs. Results provided direct evidence of selective exposure, but this was **most pronounced for issues for which opinions were relatively heterogeneous, i.e. for which there was no clear majority or minority opinion. The availability of similar others was further shown to be associated with larger FCEs,** whereas the availability of dissimilar others was associated with smaller FCEs.

Other research suggest that there more moderators for the FCE:

> Prior research has shown that individuals are often susceptible to a false consensus effect, whereby they overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions. In three studies, we show that the strength of the false consensus effect is moderated by the valence of one's own opinion, such that overestimation of population consensus is greater when an individual likes an alternative as compared to when she or he dislikes it. Further, we show that this moderation of false consensus is driven by the availability of countervalence attributes, that is, disliked attributes in liked alternatives and liked attributes in disliked alternatives.

So FCE seems more complex than being driven by mere availability, i.e. the level of like/dislike for the main characteristic as well as its associated/secondary characteristics seem to moderate FCE.

To speculate how this might influence your Italian example, subjects with a strong \[and positive\] ethnocentric perspective will probably exhibit more overestimation (of their percentage in the population). I don't know if anyone has tested this hypothesis though.

N.B. one study found that FCE persisted even after subjects were shown objective statistics. But the persistence of FCE is (thankfully and obviously) moderated by encountering disagreement.

Finally, one of those papers mentioned some synonyms for FCE that have been used in the literature: "assumed similarity" and "social projection".

# Answer
> 3 votes
While I am not sure if people actually do overestimate the incidence of a minority group (or maybe they do, I would want to see the data), we can treat this as a philosophical question about what we would call that phenomenon were it to exist.

The notion of bias in psychology is less precisely defined than a similar notion of bias that lives within the fields of computer science, machine learning, and computational cognitive science. This notion of bias is simply the property of an learning algorithm or a cognitive model or a person that cause it to favor some hypotheses or explanations over others in the absence of specific data. For example, if I come across an unknown large animal with big teeth, I may have a bias that causes me to expect it to attack, even though I do not have any direct experience as to whether or not it is friendly. If you think about it, any prediction we make requires such a bias, because we never have data about what has not yet happened. If you are interested in learning more about this, I suggest reading Hume, Tversky and Kahneman, and Mitchell as a start.

I agree that what you are talking about is a bias in this sense, but I do not know whether there is an established term for the specific type of bias. In general, while it is useful for exams and for reference, I recommend avoiding leaning too hard on the idea that all phenomena fit neatly into well-defined and labeled concepts such as "selection bias" or "reverse physical attractiveness stereotype." While some people might have a term for the phenomenon you have mentioned, it is more useful to articulate and understand it in terms of what it is: a cognitive tendency to overestimate subpopulations in large cities in the absence of relevant data.

Whether this is a general phenomenon about human estimation or it is limited to cases of subpopulation estimates in large cities is an empirical question. If you want to know more, you'll have to run some experiments!

Edit: Now that I think about it, this sounds like like the availability heuristic discovered by Tversky and Kahneman. Basically, the availability heuristic (or bias) is the conflation of the biased sample that you have easy access to with the full population. In the case of your example, an Italian person living in an Italian community would likely run into a lot of Italians day-to-day and therefore might come to believe that Italians are prevalent in the total population, even though this incidence of seeing Italians is solely due to his membership in this particular community.

# Answer
> 1 votes
The Italian in London that overestimates the number of Italians in London could have **confirmation bias,** which is "the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that affirms one's prior beliefs or hypotheses" (Wikipedia referring to The Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making, p. 233).

The attractive woman thinking that all people are friendly because they are friendly to her could also have confirmation bias or **observational selection bias**, which is "introduced by the selection of individuals, groups or data for analysis in such a way that proper randomization is not achieved." Or she could use **subjective validation** by which she perceives two unrelated events (i.e., a coincidence) to be related because their personal belief demands that they be related. Or she could be just **naive.**

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Tags: social-psychology, bias
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# Question
Title: Seeking a standard term for the "Where's Waldo?" effect
Here is a commonly observed effect: Some things are very hard to find because they're embedded in surroundings where they don't stand out, but after you've found one, it's easy to find it again—and it's hard to perceive the original difficulty of finding it.

For example, finding Waldo on a page of a *Where's Waldo?* book is usually very difficult. You have to search through many "decoy" images on the same page. But once you've found Waldo on that page, finding him again is much easier. You can omit nearly the whole page from your search, and Waldo visually "pops out" more easily. Sometimes you can't *not* see Waldo.

Other examples:

* Solving a puzzle or brainteaser question is usually difficult, but once you know the solution, solving it again is easy.
* Learning mathematics is usually difficult, but often after you've learned a piece of it, e.g. the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, it seems almost trivially obvious.
* Learning to perceive spoken words in a foreign language is usually difficult at first, but once you've got it, it's effortless; you can't even *not* perceive them.

Usually after learning one of these things, one tends to underestimate its difficulty for someone who hasn't solved it. For example, after finding an outdoor sign for a business on a crowded street, people will sometimes point and say, "It's right there—the yellow sign! Can't you see?," forgetting how hard it is for someone who hasn't seen the sign yet to see it.

You might reasonably say that the above examples illustrate several distinct effects, not just one effect. That's OK. If there are multiple terms or multiple forms of "Where's Waldo?" effect distinguished in the literature, I'd love to see an answer with more than one. I'm mainly asking in order to get terms to search the literature on Google Scholar. I'm as interested in the base effect as in the difficulty empathizing with people who haven't yet "found Waldo".

# Answer
> 3 votes
**Learned recognition**

The evolution of signal form: effects of learned versus inherited recognition (The Royal Society Publishing)

> Organisms can learn by individual experience to recognize relevant stimuli in the environment or they can genetically inherit this ability from their parents...We analyse the joint effects of receiver biases, signal cost and mode of acquisition, investigating the circumstances under which **learned recognition** gives rise to more exaggerated signals than inherited recognition.

**Curse of knowledge**

Your quote:

> Usually after learning one of these things, one tends to underestimate its difficulty for someone who hasn't solved it.

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Tags: terminology
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# Question
Title: Is the length and intensity of feelings and emotions limited?
So, I know hormones in the brain being released are more or less responsible for the emotions we feel. From a physical point of view, the amount of hormones available and the production rate of the hormones is limited. So, if the amount of hormones being released exceeds the production rate, from a purely physical point of view, at some point it will be depleted. I personally experience this in the form that after euphoria I feel more down than usual (at least I believe that this is an example).

(Also, there is physical pain. I have no idea if that can be limited in any way depending (or not) on time of duration and intensity.)

So, I can grasp the concept from a logical point of view. On the other hand, I have a strong sense that there are certain actions in the world that have no upper limit of inflicting physical and psychological pain.

**Question:** Is the length and intensity of feelings and emotions limited, especially these of physical and psychological pain?

# Answer
> 2 votes
The key terms to help understand the answers about the duration and intensity of experiences over time would likely include *habituation*, *emotion*, and *pain*. You might be surprised by how scientists use these terms differently than most people. Consider an intro psych textbook or wikipedia.

For example, emotions are generally defined as being brief, transitory affective states. If someone has a negative feeling that lasts for hours, psychologists might call that a *mood*. If a person has a negative feeling that lasts for years, psychologists generally use other labels such as *personality*. The experience in a moment might be the same between these cases.

There are some assumptions in your question that are not shared by most research or clinical psychologists or neuroscientists. For example, emotions aren't deterministically caused by hormones.

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Tags: emotion, pain
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# Question
Title: What can reduce the cognitive abilities in a common workplace?
There are many types of work that mainly create benefit by thinking, often called desk jobs.

The output is based on the cognitive abilities of the person.
It typically happens in an environment we call office.

A working person has some amount of cognitive abilities. They are certainly multidimensional, but that has no relevance here.

There are things that can reduce these abilities. Some of them are obvious, but it would be interesting to know all that are important for a common desk job. I assume there are not so many of them that this becomes a list question. Many of them are obvious, but I assume there are others.

Obvious are for example:

* Tiredness
* External distraction by unrelated activities of others

Some points or classes where it is not obvious are:

* Maybe some types of mental illness? Major depression seems likely?
* Possibly external physical influences like freezing?

There are certainly unusual points applying only to few people, for example a person extremely distracted by harsh light. These are interesting, of course, but I mainly think of common things.

# Answer
Your question can only be answered if asked to the fields of human knowledge that deal with humans and their activities: ergonomics, psychology, social sciences, human-computer interaction, etc... There is no one field that may give you a complete list, in my opinion.

So let's think about it together and start with the intrinsic domains that could affect human cognition in the context of the workplace.

1. Human physical aspects

* As you mentioned, tiredness
    * Disabilities (e.g. visual impairment)
    * Physical incompatibility (e.g.: person provided with tools and accessories that don't fit their height or size)
    * Debilitating illnesses (e.g.: headaches, colds, etc...)
2. Human psychological aspects

* Bias and faulty heuristics
    * Mental illnesses (affecting either mood, thought process or both)
    * Motivational and attitudinal issues (e.g.: the person just hates their job or their job is run by a dictatorial boss)
    * Attentional issues (e.g.: the person is spread too thin or dividing their attention between personal and professional tasks)
    * Lack of knowledge or experience (e.g.: the person doesn't have much to refer back to when they need to process new information. This can lead to bias.)

Now in the frontier between intrinsic and extrinsic aspects:

3. Human social aspects

* Once again, bias and faulty heuristics shared by people in the workplace
    * Beliefs and values (this is actually covered by biases)
    * Authorisation issues (e.g.: the person might know how to do something but doesn't have the privileges or authorisation to do a task)
    * Dependency issues (e.g.: a process might need other people or external requirements to be completed: a worker in an assembly line might not be able to do their part until another worker on a previous line finishes their job)
    * Mis-allocation (e.g.: someone is asked to do a job they are not prepared, trained or don't have the experience to do)
    * Faulty or lack of processes (e.g.: people are asked to do stuff without a certain underlying process or order, or their process lacks the necessary steps or contingency for cognitive processes to occur: a programmer is given a two-line brief to start the creation of a software without time to plan or understand the requirements of such)
    * Negative psychological environment (e.g.: an environment that fosters gossip, blaming, bullying and peer-pressure)
    * Office culture (another one covered by biases but it can also be the resulting environment, both psychological and physical, that contributes to and is made of all the aspects we are discussing in this thread)

And the more extrinsic reasons:

4. Environmental aspects

* Climate (e.g.: an office that is too hot or too cold)
    * Workplace layout (e.g.: one needs to walk a lot between buildings to consult with colleagues, colleagues are in another country, the office is not open plan, your desk is too small, etc...)
    * Workplace design (e.g.: the room is painted in bright distracting colours or shabbily painted, signage that is not positioned in a visible location, etc...)
    * Noise and pollution (e.g.: certain activities require masks and ear-guards, sometimes offices are so close to the traffic there is a constant hum, air-conditioning noise, etc...)
    * Wrong tools, equipment, and accessories (e.g.: equipment that hasn't been adapted for disabilities or physical characteristics of worker, etc...)
    * Outdated tools, equipment, and accessories (e.g.: a bit like wrong tools but more like that slow computer you have to wait 5 minutes for every operation to go through)
    * Badly designed interfaces and instructions (e.g.: the software or machines required to get the job done have usability and affordance issues, a coffee machine/photocopier that just a few know how to operate, etc...)
    * Local culture (e.g.: foreign language, local customs and behaviours, etc...)

Feel free to edit and add more to the list.
> 4 votes

# Answer
One of the most significant factors impairing cognitive abilities in a typical office environment is the noise. It is well-known that quiet environment is essential for good concentration. For instance, WHO recommends school classrooms should have noise level as low as 35 dB during classes. Yet a typical office environment can be as loud as 70 dB, which is about 30-50 times louder.

There are loads of articles describing the effects of different levels of noise on various cognitive abilities, which inevitably show that noise above 60-65 dB has a significant impact on mental activity, and noise above 75 dB has a lasting effect which can be measured 4 hours after the exposure. For reference, most public transport is louder than that, and a subway can be as loud as 95 dB.

It is well known that private offices (which reduce the noise quite a bit) can boost productivity significantly. Unfortunately, they are too pricey, or at least are seen as such, to become widespread.
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, intelligence, motivation, self-discipline
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