# Question
Title: Is it possible to run Psychtoolbox or PsychoPy on Raspberry Pi 2 for simple perceptual experiments?
We are considering setting up a few testing computers using Raspberry Pi 2. There was an interest in this a few years ago, but due to limitations of OpenGL in Raspberry Pi it did not go far. I was wondering if anybody made progress with possibility of running PTB, or PsychoPy, or other experimental software.

Old reference links: Is the Raspberry Pi capable of operating as a stimulus presentation system for experiments?

http://akiraoconnor.org/2013/02/01/using-the-raspberry-pi-to-run-cognitive-psychology-experiments/

# Answer
Speaking for the PsychoPy team, I would expect it to be possible but performance won't be great.

Both PsychoPy and OpenSesame use Python under the hood and this is an interpreted language. That means it isn't super-fast to execute code but we can get away with that by having fast computers (and hardware-accelerated graphics makes a huge difference).

Another option to consider might be a barebones PC like the Intel NUC computers. You can get one of those for £100 (but you have to add memory and hard disk so maybe £180 all in?). It still won't be as fast as a high-spec computer but should outperform a Raspberry Pi

Jon (for full disclosure, I'm the creator of PsychoPy)
> 4 votes

# Answer
Psychtoolbox-3 maintainer here.

I will probably buy one for some christmas entertainment and see how it does wrt. Psychtoolbox. In the past, with Broadcoms proprietary drivers, i wouldn't have trusted it for a second to provide trustworthy visual timing etc. Also their proprietary drivers only support OpneGL-ES afaik, and that is quite limiting.

However, Eric Anholt, a top open-source graphics driver developer, was hired by Broadcom a year ago to develop a fully open-source graphics stack for RPi / the VideoCore-4 QPI graphics processor, and that stuff is shaping up nicely lately. I was a bit involved in bringup of XOrg support for the xf86-video-modesetting driver of the just recently released XServer 1.18. As Rpi's open source graphics stack uses that driver, i think the user-space support for RPi looks quite decent now. I also did a quick code review of the improvements to the RPi kms display driver in the Linux kernel, and they look as if they might work well enough for somewhat trustworthy display timing. Those stuff is scheduled for Linux 4.5, and maybe would get backported by the RPi foundation to their distribution kernel.

The nice thing about the FOSS driver would be not only increased trustworthyness, but also regular desktop OpenGL support, which would make things easier for PTB and probably also PsychoPy etc.

Of course you won't get the graphics performance or possibly stimulus precision out of a RPi that you'd get from a standard Intel graphics chip, like in a NUC.

So basically i'm cautiously optimistic that the RPi might become at least somewhat useable for at least some not too demanding use cases within the next couple of months or maybe sometimes 2016. But i haven't tried one yet and things always tend to take much longer than one expects and the devil is always in the details, so consider this just a slightly informed opinion, based on some initial code review and skimming of available information.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience, experimental-psychology
---


# Question
Title: Islam and participation in acts of political violence
This is currently a hot political topic, but what does the science say?

I was thinking that a good experiment would take groups of people, and match them for alternate explanations: Age, gender, socio-economic status, level of education, nationality, occupation, cultural factors, political affiliation, immigration status, etc. (These are factors that many experiments control for when dividing subjects into groups, so is not unusual to do.) Then look for correlations, and see if particular religious affiliations (or non-believers), are more strongly correlated with participation in acts of political violence than are other factors.

I have not found such a study yet. There is a fair amount of research regarding attitudes towards violence, with mixed results (example, example, example, example), but these are generally not controlled for very many factors, and do not address any actual violence rates. There is also some research on actual violence rates (example, example), but again, few variables are controlled for, and the focus is on countries rather than people.

Is religious affiliation really a predisposing factor for people to actually commit acts of terrorism and politically-motivated violence?

# Answer
A good, and very pertinent question. This speculative and blunt answer is based on the literature that I have studied as part of understanding behavior change. It is a simplification of the literature, but it should set a foundation that you could build on if you wanted to investigate further and develop a more nuanced view.

> Is religious affiliation really a predisposing factor for people to actually commit acts of terrorism and politically-motivated violence?

I start with a basic assumption: As terrorists are people we can assume that they are motivated by the same things as people in general.

Based on this assumption it seems more than reasonable to expect that religious affiliation would influence behavior, and in some cases influence likelihood of violence and terrorism. In all that follows you can assume that I am contrasting one 'more benign' form of religious affiliation, such as atheism, with another form which is more easily used to justify violence, such as Christianity or Islam. The following are some reasons why having one type of affiliation rather than the other might affect behavior:

1. Mental characteristics, such as values, attitudes, and beliefs, have a strong influence on behavior \[e.g. 1\]. Additionally, these mental attributes are influenced by information \[e.g., 2\], such as what might have been encountered in religious literature. Given this argument, it seems reasonable to assume that the religious literature that terrorists have read could have influenced their mental attributes, and in turn predisposed them, even if just to a small extent, to engage in terrorist behavior.
2. Expected value has a strong influence on behavior \[3\]. Essentially, people are more likely to engage in behaviours that they believe will create value for them. For most of us, suicide is a pretty low value outcome but for certain religions, suicide to kill others is going to be rewarded by eternal life, along with a number of devoted companions. Likewise a war can be holy for some religious affiliations but not others. In light of this example, it seems reasonable to assume that religious beliefs that make a terrorist behaviour appear like it will be more rewarding, will in turn influence people with those beliefs,than those without, to be more likely to engage in that behaviour.
3. Research suggests that most people generally require justifications for their actions to avoid congnitive dissonance \[e.g., 4\]. Those who have been raised by learning a religious scripture which presents many justifications for violence, would in turn have easy mental access to these justifications when thinking about how to act. Indeed, they might have access to the justification that a supreme, unquestionable, omnipent, ominpotent individual wants them to act in a violent way. Accordingly, it is reasonable to assume that individuals with these sets of justifications could use them to justify violence, while those not in possession of such justifications would not be able to.

I am happy to clarify, or add to this as you wish. I am sure I have oversimplified things in a few cases.

References:

\[1\]Ajzen, I. and M. Fishbein (2000). "Attitudes and the attitude-behavior relation: Reasoned and automatic processes." European Review of Social Psychology 11(1): 1-33.

\[2\] Chaiken, S. (1980). "Heuristic versus systematic information processing and the use of source versus message cues in persuasion." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39(5): 752-766.

\[3\] Wigfield, A. and J. S. Eccles (2000). "Expectancy-Value Theory of Achievement Motivation." Contemporary Educational Psychology 25(1): 68-81.

\[4\] Festinger, L. (1962). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press.
> 4 votes

---
Tags: religion, correlation, political-psychology
---


# Question
Title: Why doesn't the brain get into infinite loops when being queried?
In computer programming, when algorithms are using loops/recursion without an exit condition, the algorithm will never end or get out of resources.

How does the brain work around getting into endless loops/recursions due to interconnected nets, i.e. when there are circularities in the nets? For example, neuron A activates neuron B which activates C which activates A, and so on. Or are there no circularities in the brain structure?

# Answer
> 5 votes
The brain often does create looping conditions. When these loops involve a large number of neurons, we call it a seizure. An analogy in electrical engineering would be a feedback loop -- such as literal feedback between a microphone and speakers. In the brain, fortunately, these loops are usually self-dissolving since the neurons involved will often run out of neurotransmitter or energy, or inhibitory neurons will get involved (like referees breaking up a fight). Many of the neurotransmitters and hormones in the body act as regulators of ongoing processes. There are almost always negative feedback mechanisms whose purpose is to prevent overload on various systems. The equivalent in programming would be using a counter variable in a while loop to break if it loops too many times.

This all, of course, was with respect to short pathways (small number of links). Larger, more complex pathways such as thoughts and goals are probably handled in part by different mechanisms, such as the instinct of not wanting to waste too much time getting nowhere. At the same time, getting frustrated and rage quitting is a perfect example of hormones and neurotransmitters rising to the point of stopping the loop of trying to do something that is not working as desired.

# Answer
> 0 votes
The brain is full of neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters are connected to more neurotransmitters, etc. And they're not just one-way. One thought leads to another which could lead back to the initial thought. And when you learn, you create new neural pathways which helps.

---
Tags: brain-development
---


# Question
Title: Is it possible to be completely impartial when considering yourself?
Consider the following quotation by Poulain de la Barre:

> Everything that has been written by men about women should be viewed with suspicion, because they are both judge and party.

Is it possible to be completely impartial when considering yourself, or matters in which you have a significant vested interest, or will one always be biased?

# Answer
> 1 votes
For most people, I would say no, they lack the self-awareness and self-control to be able to make such a judgement. Those who have practiced a good amount of meditation would, on average, be better candidates. Moreover, nearly anyone experiencing strong emotions would have extra trouble thinking objectively and detached from personal interest. Those who can turn their emotions off would be better candidates.

Another method to consider is creating an objective measuring system that does not rely on subjective information. Technology or strict definitions may be needed for the method to be reliably applicable. If the person making the measurement system created it with the intent to use on others, it could be good to use back on the creator. Some simple examples here are those measurement systems intended to assess physical abilities and strength. Granted one had reasonable self-control and integrity, it would be pretty easy to accurately measure one's own physical strength using a weight set, for example. A fair person could also measure his or her own maximum running speed with pretty good accuracy.

As for matters of "significant vested interest", I would need some specific examples to really be able to say whether it would be reasonable to expect a person to be able to self-assess. The only example that comes to mind right now is that of whether the world would be a better place without oneself. That would be difficult for many people to answer accurately since, at least it seems to me, many people do not consider their own value to society when considering their career or other choices that affect others. Some people have a net positive effect on society while others have a net negative.

---
Tags: bias
---


# Question
Title: Trying to understand equations in Karl Friston article
I am trying to understand a neuroscience article by Karl Friston. In it he gives three equations that are, as I understand him, equivalent or inter-convertible and refer to both physical and Shannon entropy. They appear as equation (5) in this article (PDF; DOI 10.1007/s00422-010-0364-z). Here they are:

* Energy minus entropy: $F = −{\ln p(\tilde s,Ψ|m)}q + {\ln q(Ψ|μ)}q$
* Divergence plus surprise: = $D(q(Ψ|μ)||p(Ψ|\tilde s,m)) − \ln p (\tilde s|m)$
* Complexity minus accuracy: = $D(q(Ψ|μ)||p(Ψ|m)) − {\ln p(\tilde s|Ψ,m)}q$

The things I am struggling with at this point are:

1. the meaning of the || in the 2nd and 3rd versions of the equations
2. the negative logs

Any help in understanding how these equations are actually what Fristen claims them to be would be greatly appreciated. For example, in the 1st equation, in what sense is the first term energy, etc.?

# Answer
> 2 votes
As mentioned in the definitions section on page 2 of the paper, $D(q||p) = \<ln(q/p)\>\_q$ is the Kullback-Leibler divergence or cross-entropy between two densities.

The reason for the negative logs is that is the convention when discussing entropy in the context of information theory. This allows information to be combined additively. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy\_(information\_theory)#Rationale)

# Answer
> 1 votes
1. In physics, exponential of negative energy is often probability (e.g. in maximum entropy models).
2. || is a notation used in divergences (or info theory) where the order matters. That is $D(A||B) \neq D(B||A)$ as in KL divergence

---
Tags: neuroscience, perception, motor, perceptual-learning
---


# Question
Title: Batch converting .img files to .mgz in FreeSurfer
I have a series of .img files from a previous analysis in SPM that Freesurfer (FS) cannot directly handle.

FS comes with a conversion tool, the mri\_convert command, but I am not able to make it run iteratively over all the files in the same directory. I found a mention about the --sdcmlist argument online, however I am not figuring out the proper syntax for it.

When I run:

```
mri_convert --sdcmlist 000123_1_4.img 000123_1_4.mgz

```

I get:

```
mri_convert: missing output volume name

```

Would anyone suggest a way of going about these conversions?

# Answer
I couldn't find a way of doing that using the arguments in the mri\_convert, so I decided to do it programatically in bash. This answer will only work in Linux (or in any bash). It's an one-line command to iterativelly run the convertion on all files in the same directory.

```
for f in *.img; do mri_convert $f $f.mgz; done

```

There is one aspect that I did not get right, that is FS actually handles img files, however these files do not have directionality information, thus using them is not recommended.

One can simply feed the recon-all command with the img file and the command will take care of the conversion.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: neuroimaging
---


# Question
Title: Is emotional processing lateralised in the brain?
It was easy for me to find that language processing is lateralised and that creativity/logic processing possibly not (against pop-psychology claims). But which is the current view hold by experts on emotion about the lateralisation of emotion?

Although there is a wikipedia entry suggesting that emotional processing is lateralised in the brain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional\_lateralization

I found that recognised neuroscience books like this:

Gazzaniga, M. S. The cognitive neurosciences. MIT press.

does not seem to talk about emotional lateralisation.

Furthermore, I found that the bulk of references about emotional lateralisation are quite old and a meta-analysis of fmri/pet does not show much emotional lateralisation:

Wager, T. D., Phan, K. L., Liberzon, I., & Taylor, S. F. (2003). Valence, gender, and lateralization of functional brain anatomy in emotion: a meta-analysis of findings from neuroimaging. Neuroimage, 19(3), 513-531.

# Answer
Alright, so I'll give this question a go... Admittedly, I'm not really familiar with theories of emotion lateralization, but let's look at some meta-analyses for insight!!!

*As a quick theoretical note, a single study cannot confirm emotion-related lateralization. The representation of emotions or affect in the brain can change from context to context, person to person, and over time.* **This is why we need to rely on meta-analysis** (in my opinion)**!**

## Lindquist et al. (2015)

*This is a meta-analysis of positive and negative affect in the brain.* Overall, the meta-analysis shows large correspondence between the brain regions that are involved in positive vs. negative affect (in favor of a valence-general "workspace"). Moreover, affect seems to be represented **bilaterally** in most regions as well as **right temporal/occipital cortex** (see image below).

These areas represent the "salience network," which is involved in self-relevant attention (e.g., to internal bodily sensations and "feelings").

However, the above image shows that the **left amygdala** and the **left insula** are more often involved in negative affect than positive affect. No regions seem to show preference for positive affect over negative affect.

## Wager et al. (2015)

*This is a meta-analysis using very, very fancy statistical techniques to differentiate among discrete emotion categories (e.g., fear, disgust, anger, etc.).*

The above image (B) shows activation intensity in cortex, amygdala, basal ganglia, and thalamus for each emotion. You can see that some regions are more strongly active for certain emotions in a lateralized manner (R and L mean Right and Left Hemisphere).

The most significant lateralization was for happiness, which showed "**left-hemisphere dominance in the hippocampus**" (p. 16).

## Conclusion

While these meta-analyses provide interesting clues about emotion lateralization, I'm going to go ahead and say that we don't really know whether emotion is lateralized. Moreover, the idea of "emotional processing" is incredibly vague and is likely constituted by more basic psychological processes (e.g., interoception and exteroception).

The theory about sympathetic/parasympathetic afferent streams to the right vs. left insula seems plausible (outlined in Wikipedia; Craig), especially given the importance of interoception to affect and emotions (Barrett & Simmons, 2015).

However, overall, it's just not clear.
> 4 votes

# Answer
From my knowledge emotion lateralisation is still a theory.

But there are studies that apply this theory for their works: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262288467\_Detecting\_emotion\_from\_EEG\_signals\_using\_the\_emotive\_epoc\_device

And there are also studies that indicate that affective (emotion) processing is different for left-handers: EEG correlates of handedness

In my own opininon I would say that emotion lateralisation is present, but not generic. But i am not an expert yet, just a both handed individual that has studied the effects of dominant hand change and how this affects human emotion.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: emotion, lateralization
---


# Question
Title: Paradoxical senses of scale: Are they common or is it just me?
It doesn't happen anymore, but when I was younger I would often get strange sensations regarding scale that I never heard anyone else report.

There were two different flavors. One felt like the room and everything in it were both small and large at the same time. If I were to ask myself, "Do I feel like I'm small in a small room, or huge in a huge room?" I would say, "both, at the same time".

The other happened only in my mind. Roughly speaking, it was a kind of tactile sensation. It felt like I was sort of... "handling" an object, perhaps pencil-shaped, that was skinny and fat at the same time.

It happened most often when I was about to fall asleep, but it sometimes occurred in the middle of the day.

Is this sort of thing known and documented? Is there any sense to be made of it? I tried to search online but had no luck. What would I even search for?

# Answer
The symptoms belong to the **Alice-in-Wonderland Syndrome**, which is supposed to be very common in childhood. An interesting article appeared in the New York Times.
> 3 votes

# Answer
I too have experienced this sensation. I used to experience it quite often when I was younger, but I still experience it once in a blue moon. I have a friend who also sometimes experiences it. For me, it was not really the environment but rather that I felt I would become larger and smaller over several seconds, as if there were some sort of constriction followed by expansion going on (of far greater amplitude than breathing, for example). For years I had no hypothesis on the cause, but then I took a class on biopsychology, wherein I thoroughly studied the materials, including additional material. I now have a hypothesis on a possible cause: narcolepsy.

Since I was a child, I have experienced episodes of conscious sleep paralysis (during sleeping hours, not during the day), which I learned in biopsychology to be related to narcolepsy. My hypothesis is that these sensations of growing and shrinking are related to a very light case of narcolepsy or cataplexy. I had a friend once tell me of experiencing these sensations, whereafter I expressed that I too felt similar sensations at times. It so happens that this friend had a mother with official narcolepsy, which further supports this hypothesis.

I too would be interested to learn whether this sensation is related to cataplexy or narcolepsy.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: perception
---


title: Re-arrangement of brain's functions

text:
# Question
Title: Re-arrangement of brain's functions
In a neuroscience class, I was told that if some part of the brain gets damaged somehow and it's early enough, the functionalities of that part of the brain are rearranged to another part of the brain. This was used to prove that all parts of the brain utilize the same general mechanism.

Now my questions are:
1. How does the brain get assigned these locations initially? Is it genetics?
2. If the functionality is reassigned, won't it affect the place where it is now put?
3. How does the brain decide where to put it? Is the brain self aware?

# Answer
> 2 votes
> This was used to prove that **all parts of brain utilize same general mechanism.**

This is not quite true. While a good deal of reorganization can happen post-damage, brain function will not be re-localized to *anywhere*. Instead, what often happens is that, if a location on one hemisphere is damaged, the function is taken over by the corresponding location on the other hemisphere. In the extreme, some children have an entire hemisphere removed (to treat seizure disorders), and the remaining hemisphere takes over nearly all the function of the removed hemisphere. Hopefully this partially answers your second question.

To answer your first question, both genetics and environmental input shape how functions get localized in brain tissue. We know environmental input is important because people that are deprived of some kind of input (e.g., vision or sound) will re-assign the brain tissue to processing input that *is* received (so for a Deaf person, auditory regions in temporal lobe may be repurposed for processing visual input). I can't, off the top of my head, think of concrete cases to illustrate how genes influence function localization, but hopefully it's obvious enough that this is the case / how this might work.

Re: your last question about the brain being self-aware...well, in one sense the brain is self-aware since *you* are self-aware and *you* are your brain. But we must be careful about what exactly we mean by "self-aware". It can be easy to fallaciously invoke the homunculus.

---
Tags: memory, brain-development, brain-injury
---


title: How do I choose what I think?

text:
# Question
Title: How do I choose what I think?
Where do my thoughts come from? What allows me to choose them at all? Regardless of whether free will is an illusion or not, what makes a thought happen? (This is a mix of a philosophical question and a biological one)

# Answer
> 3 votes
First, I think you'll find that most cognitive scientists do not believe in free will. It definitely is relevant to your question, because if you believe in free will, then you basically don't believe that our thoughts have causes.

Second, you'll be interested, I think, in the idea of spreading activation. Models based on spreading activation capture the intuition that our train of thought has an associative character (I think of castles, which remind me of kings, which remind me of giant drumsticks, which remind me of chickens, etc etc.). But don't get too hung up on this model -- associationism like this can only be part of the story (often our train of thought has a much more hierarchical structure).

# Answer
> 2 votes
Thomas Metzinger wrote a few interesting articles about this, he calls it Mental autonomy. (here's an open access article) The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy. Front Psychol. 2013; 4: 931.

# Answer
> 0 votes
This same query occurred to me about a year or so ago. And then I had some reason. Thoughts occurring at random is mostly dependent on our past experiences and environmental stimulus/stimuli, I believe. Regarding allowing/blocking one's thoughts, I guess it's partly conscious and mostly involuntary. But practice does somewhat improve the process. That's what I've come up to till now.

---
Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, thought
---


# Question
Title: What is a good beginner's book to read to get a greater understanding of neuroscience?
Having read "the mind that changes itself," i've become interested in neuroscience. However reading discussions about this book online there does appear to be controversy about the book and the author doesn't appear to be an actual neuroscientist as well as many scathing reviews online. It still was a good read and factual (i think?). However the actual subject i find very interesting. I was wondering if anyone could suggest a more respected book to give a good introduction, or any good resources to learn from.

# Answer
You could try this one: 30-Second Brain: The 50 Most Mind-blowing Ideas in Neuroscience, Each Explained in Half a Minute. ISBN-10: 184831647X. I haven't read it myself but it covers a really wide spectrum: single neurons, neural networks, brain architecture, awareness, perception, disease, ageing, etc. Importantly it's written by really good scientists in who are all currently doing really interesting things.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: study-cognitive-sciences
---


# Question
Title: Does Wim Hof really consciously control his autonomic nervous system?
While there is no question about the validity of Wim Hof's abilities, I question some of the claims made about his ability.

He is claimed to be able to consciously control certain aspects of his autonomic nervous system with his mind.

But while his feats are undoubtedly impressive, and his training program was proven effective, I find it hard to believe he's reached a point where all he needs is his mind.

As much as I'd like to believe one can do the things he did without the special breathing techniques he uses.

Is there any reason to believe there is something to it beyond conditioning the body and breathing in a specific manner (which, from what I understand, causes the body to react in a certain way leading to the desired effects)?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Disclaimer: just an opinion of someone on the web, it's not health advice. And I might be wrong.

With that said...

In my opinion it's wrong. He can't control his ANS *just* by using his mind. He uses: breathing techniques, exposure to cold and having the right mindset in order to withstand the cold. There's also a Dutch article on the site that says this. The way he handles the cold is also the same way he handles his ANS in general.

I think the wikipedia page is wrong about it. Also, the researchers that did studies on him at the Radboud University of Nijmegen are not specialized in understanding meditation. In most cases I'd disagree that what Wim does is meditation at all. While I respect the knowledge of the researchers, I think they were dead wrong in understanding what meditation is back then. It's really more of a behavioural thing with your breath. The meditation I know is more about mentally focusing on your breath or body, not physically altering it. Their expertise is in all sorts of: viruses, bacteria and the human body in general -- including combining the 3 for experiments.

Here is a better source about the science of Wim Hof: http://www.icemanwimhof.com/science

In my opinion that source is a lot better. Then again, it is a very wise to be sceptic (hint: also with my post). I think a lot of people made wrong claims about his method. I think almost everyone involved made at least a wrong claim about something of it. People are enthusiastic and lack expertise in some area and that's when claims might be overstated or misinterpreted by the one reading about them.

You don't have to be too sceptic though, it definitely works and improved my life. I love all weather now with regards to temperature. I sometimes use his method as a natural painkiller as it releases adrenaline, though I'm still on the experimental side with that.

The reason I believe to know all this is because:

1. I participated in one of the experiment and trained for 4 days with Wim and other participants
2. I asked a ton of questions to the researchers who were there from the Radboud University.
3. I have 400 hours of meditation experience and read about 100 articles on them from Science Daily, and about 30 real papers and 1 book about meditation that uses science as its way of justification (Search Inside Yourself by Chade Meng-Tan).

---
Tags: meditation
---


# Question
Title: Why do we wake up when we die in our dreams?
A lot of people had some experience with dying in their dreams. They all confirm they remember the whole story until the precise moment of death and it is the death itself what woke them up - not being nervous, scared or shocked (I remember myself dying peacefully in bed in one of my dreams, no fighting or falling involved).

I have never met anyone who continued dreaming after dying - although some religious people should be deeply convinced that the death is not the end of their story. It also quite a common plot of novels or movies: the main character dies and appears in some kind of "afterworld" - I have never met anyone with this experience, though.

Is it caused by the fact that our brain just does not know what happens next when it is all over?

Or is the moment of death such a "low-level" shock for our minds, that it just "reboots"?

# Answer
> 13 votes
When you dream you're in REM sleep (rapid eye movement). REM sleep is only slightly more "deep" than stage 1 of non-REM which means it's not that hard to wake you up in the first place.

Dying in a dream is a stressful event, which causes your brain to release adrenaline. You can't sleep and have an adrenaline rush at the same time so you wake up.

These dreams where you die and wake up are usually more memorable due to the fact that you wake up whereas most people don't remember 95% of their dreams.

**Sources:**

*Adrenalin:*

"Being particularly scary or threatening, nightmares can provoke ‘fight and flight’ responses, and the release of adrenalin whilst we are still asleep. Once you awaken from a nightmare it may then take a little time to come down from this elevated state, preventing you from being able to get back to sleep as easily or quickly."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TZOiC23CpI&feature=youtu.be

Profeso Colin Espie, Director of the Sleep Centre at the University of Glasgow and co-founder of Sleepio

*Forgetting Dreams:*

"We forget almost all dreams soon after waking up. Our forgetfulness is generally attributed to neurochemical conditions in the brain that occur during REM sleep, a phase of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements and dreaming. But that may not be the whole story. Perhaps the most compelling explanation is the absence of the hormone norepinephrine in the cerebral cortex, a brain region that plays a key role in memory, thought, language and consciousness. A study published in 2002 in the American Journal of Psychiatry supports the theory that the presence of norepinephrine enhances memory in humans, although its role in learning and recall remains controversial."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-memories-of-vivid-dreams/

"At least 95% of all dreams are not remembered. Certain brain chemicals necessary for converting short-term memories into long-term ones are suppressed during REM sleep. Unless a dream is particularly vivid and if one wakes during or immediately after it, the content of the dream is not remembered"

Hobson, J.A.; McCarly, R.W. (1977). "The brain as a dream-state generator: An activation-synthesis hypothesis of the dream process". American Journal of Psychiatry 134 (12): 1335–1348.

---
Tags: consciousness, sleep, dreams
---


# Question
Title: How to import images used to analysis in SPM to FreeSurfer
FreeSurfer uses the recon-all command to semi-automatically generate its statistics. This tool implies a certain directory structure in which the files with the images for the samples should be organized into. In FreeSurfer tutorial they call this specific directory structure the FSFAST structure.

I need to analyse images that were previously worked on in SPM, and it has the following directory structure for the patients:

```
/experiment/patients/A.o/

```

and for controls:

```
/experiment/controls/A.o/

```

Within each directory there are .hdr, .img, .mat and .mask files for each observation, which was obtained in two different times. So the naming of the files have the following order:

```
experiment_subjectnumber_time1.img

```

and for the second acquisition reads:

```
experiment_subjectnumber_time2.img

```

The same with all the before mentioned extensions (hdr, mat, mask).

It seems that in the FreeSurfer workflow the command unpacksdcmdir is used to extract data from the nii and dicon types and organize them in the FSFAST structure. Can it be used on directory structures like the one I have?

# Answer
> 0 votes
I found help at the FreeSurfer mailing list regarding this question. The answer is that for the structural analysis, there is no need to run the recon-all command in a specific directory structure.

It is just a matter of running

```
recon-all -s SUBJECTNAME -all -i IMAGE.IMG

```

Note that I am feeding an img file, which is what I am using now, however the creators of the software suggest the use of the DICON filetype.

---
Tags: neuroimaging, spm
---


# Question
Title: Why do we say, "Oh!" when we are surprised?
I have noticed that I and many of my peers tend to say "Oh!" whenever we are surprised or think of an answer to a question. This "Oh!" is not only prevalent in English, but also in Korean and German.

Edit: Sorry for not clarifying. I was wondering why we say, "Oh!" instead of perhaps, "Pft!" or "Tsch!" or any other type of sound.

# Answer
This is a hard question because there are probably many different (but not equally valid) answers.

From my perspective (Barrett & Russell, 2015), there are a couple of things to think about.

* **How often do you actually say "Oh!" when you are surprised?** Your memory of these instances is likely unreliable, as you're depending on semantic memory about cultural beliefs, and not on episodic memory of your actual behavior (Robinson & Clore, 2002). Indeed, we might expect a lot of variability across different contexts (see next bulletpoint).
* **How much variability is there within/between individuals and cultures?** If we've learned anything from relating emotions to variables like physiology, behavior, and facial expressions, we know that there is no one-to-one correspondence (e.g., fear and running away, anger and increased heart rate, etc.). Instead the relations between discrete emotions and these response systems change across individuals, contexts, and cultures.
* **Does surprise produce an "Oh!" or does an "Oh!" indicate surprise?** On the one hand, you can think of an emotion as a reaction to some stimulus, producing loosely coordinated responses (e.g., "Oh!"). On the other hand, you can think of emotions as *interpretations* or *categorizations* of what's going internally and externally. In this sense, you infer from your "Oh!" that you are surprised. This means that "surprise" is a category that you deploy for all the instances in which you say "Oh!" This is sort of like how "bird" is a category for all instances in which the object being described is animate and has wings.

**So in a tautological way, you say "Oh!" when you are surprised because you categorize all instances of "Oh!" as surprise.** Either way, your question has not been studied empirically (to my knowledge), so it's hard to give an answer based on actual data, and different theories will make different hypotheses.
> 3 votes

# Answer
I think this is likely an expression of shock. Think to the days when there was significant danger in the world. Saying *"Oh!"*, *"Ah!"*, or other exclamatory phrases lets others know that there is something significant going on. Whether spotting a predator in the bushes, or learning some interesting news, this excalamation warns others.

As for thinking of the answer to a question, think of your thought process. You're thinking, thinking, thinking... suddenly, you think of an answer. In this case, the "Oh!" serves to let others know that you have thought of something. It's prevalent in many languages simply because this is a pretty universal thing.
> 0 votes

# Answer
the behaviour you draw attention to is widespread and seems to be based on a response which is to some extent *involuntary*. so it is not unreasonable to wonder if there is some genetically mediated neural substrate. obvious questions arise re the developmental aspect, particularly in the early years, and re the presence or absence of this response in other mammalian, particularly primate, species. (it might also be worth looking at how this response is incorporated into signing languages.)

the articulation of an "Oh!" is a rapid exhalation of breath with no consonant which suggests classification with other paralinguistic vocalizations. the expression "Wow!" is similar, but the muscular accommodation required to pronounce the initial "W" suggests an element of cognitive mediation has modified the more instinctive "Oh" to add a semantic component. thus we observe that "Wow!" can be modified in quite flexible ways, by varying stress and duration.

it may help to relate "Oh!" to certain other behaviours. for example the "Oof!" of pain ("with "Ouch!" as a more formalized modification analogous to the shift from "Oh!" to "Wow!")

there is also a related form of expression eliciting a rapid *intake* of the breath, perhaps through slightly clenched jaw and pursed lips, which is evoked by certain over-intense stimuli - e.g. a drink which is too hot.

as a coffee-addict i have confirmed with others similarly afflicted, that the first caffeine hit of the day can invoke an in voluntary, deeply-satisfied "Ah!". this response (although it can be exaggerated for dramatic or comic effect) feels to me to be instinct-based. it does not seem to be initiated by any imperative to communicaticate. indeed the presence of another person might cause an attempt to stifle or minimize the "Ah!" (politesse)

finally one should mention in this context the now-widespread meme of the "Aha!" experience, though noting that for at least one great creative scientist, the Muse of history has recorded his "Aha!" response as the phonetically complex and semantically-loaded "Efrika!" - accompanied by an activation of the non-verbal jumping-out-of-a-bath alarm reflex.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, language, psychology, speech
---


title: Interpretation of facts in dream

text:
# Question
Title: Interpretation of facts in dream
We learn facts in life from books or from experience, and we remember them. If later we ascertain a new fact about the same subject or phenomenon that contradicts the first impression, we can't erase that first fact, but we keep both facts with the ability to distinguish between them clearly, in consciousness.

For example Pluto used to be the 9th planet however is no longer. But if in a dream one tells someone tha Pluto is in fact the 9th planet, does this mean that there is inconsistency between the id, ego and superego?

Can we link this to slips of the tongue/mind or silly mistakes to which we later feel "oh I still knew it, I did that mistake"

# Answer
> 1 votes
Freud's psychic apparatus is pure theoretical psychology, which isn't cognition's best friend.

It's really hard to think how one could map the 3 construct to cognition (perhaps id is the easiest - primal brain, instinct). But even if you could, suggesting an inconsistency between 3 brain mega-systems to explain dreams is a bit of a stretch (albeit not completely unfounded - consider phantom limbs).

So as far as cognition goes, dreams have a few key characteristics:

* **Recency** \- they involve things that you have experienced since you've last slept.
* **Saliency** \- they involve things that are of subjective importance.
* **Randomness** \- random combinations and often incoherent flow.

If you try to infer anything from dreams, your best shot is that whatever you dreamt of was either recent, salient or random.

I know it may not be exciting like Freud's theories, but it is by far more founded on empirical evidence.

# Answer
> 0 votes
For the first question, I think the answer is no.

There's an inconsistency between this statement in the dream and the dreamer's current beliefs, but how can you show that it's a difference between Freudian entities?

Which one would be the superego, the ID, or the ego? How would you know? I think the phenomenon doesn't provide enough information to draw that conclusion.

An example of this is: say that the ego believes the old belief, and the superego is automatically correcting to the new belief. Then what if the person learns a third overriding belief? Presumably, either of the old beliefs can be called up in a dream. But then do the beliefs shuffle down to the id, ego and superego, or is the superego carrying two beliefs, or what?

Why would the id care about which version is true?

An example of a belief that is overridden many times is what year it is.

If someone dreamt of someone saying that it's currently what's actually a previous year, how would you assign that to the Freudian entities?

edit: By the way, I'm not a psychologist.

---
Tags: dreams, long-term-memory, psychoanalysis, episodic-memory
---


# Question
Title: Do psychiatrists have educational requirements other than an MD?
Most pre-medical students take psychology, biology, chemistry or something science-related, in addition to the classes needed as prerequisites for medical school, for their undergraduate degree or even for a master's, but is there any particular degree besides an MD that someone who wants to be a psychiatrist needs to take?

For example, is a business, philosophy, english or political science major who has taken the required classes of medical school who later finishes medical school eligible to train to become a psychiatrist? I'm curious as to how such a person would get the psychology-related training and knowledge. Is it in the training after medical school? Is it related to medical school electives?

# Answer
> 2 votes
The only required degree to become a psychiatrist is a doctoral degree (M.D.). Using your example, yes those people could train to become psychiatrists.

After passing the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and going through med school, most students undergo a psychiatric residency (aka. clerkship) where they are trained in different medical centers (hospitals, health clinics, psychiatric wards, etc.). This allows the prospective psychiatrist to gain "real world" experience. After a psychiatric residency, psychiatrists must then take an exam issued by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. If they pass this exam they are certified and can then legally practice as a psychiatrist.

**Source:** http://study.com/articles/Psychiatrist\_Educational\_Requirements\_for\_Psychiatrists.html

Edit: Med school teaches you theoretical psychiatric knowledge whereas the clerkship will teach you how to apply it. The clerkship could also train you in specialty fields.

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, psychiatry, medication
---


# Question
Title: Are people with high willpower more likely to succeed at keeping a diet then people with lower willpower?
I remember reading that the amount of measured willpower is uncorrelated with dieting success. On the other hand there are various popular article that suggest that there a link.

What does the science on the subject say?

# Answer
There was a study that was published in 2009, which focused on food and self-control. This study, revealed that self-control didn’t have much of an effect one way or another on whether or not the volunteers were able to constrain themselves from eating the presented food (in this case, chips)

In addition, professor and health psychologist Traci L Mann Ph.D. concluded ,through her studies, that willpower is a myth when it comes to dieting. You can view the multiple papers she has written here or purchase her book on this topic on amazon.
> 2 votes

---
Tags: motivation, willpower
---


title: What is the name of the phobia of dams?

text:
# Question
Title: What is the name of the phobia of dams?
I have a friend who has a terrible fear of dams, water reservoirs, jetties or bridges with big blocks on water; in general, a fear of large buildings on water.

He often tells me that he imagines a dam near the gates and has *"anxiety attacks"* and becomes very afraid. However, he is not afraid of swimming, or common places with water, like the ocean, pools and so on. On the contrary, he loves to swim.

While he is not afraid of pools, he is very afraid of the wells of the pools where the water enters or where is filtered.

His psychologist doesn't know the name of such a phobia and, after a while, his diagnosis was *hydrophobia*. The problem is that he is not afraid of water, only these large structures over the water, whose purpose is to control water flow.

How can I get information about this phobia; is there a specific name?
And how can be treated?

# Answer
As far as I know, there is no specific definition for this phobia. No search reveals anything similar. It is important to recognise that simply defining phobias is not medically useful and does not provide further insight into human cognition. It would not be efficient to provide a label for all the phobias which exist. Generally labels are created when the population of people with the disorder reaches some threshold that specific treatments are developed. Your friend simply has a "specific phobia" of the situational type (also see Wikipedia entry).

I imagine treatment would be the same as for most specific phobias. Generally this involves a form of CBT known as exposure therapy or graded exposure.

If you desperately require a definition, I like hydrostructuraphobia - taken from latin word for structure.
> 6 votes

---
Tags: phobia
---


title: What if he hates me for telling?

text:
# Question
Title: What if he hates me for telling?
Why do people sometimes not understand that there are other ways of dealing with depression? I have done everything I know that I can do for this person. I've helped a few of my friends stop their cutting and stuff and I love listening and helping them and helping them figure out other soulutions for dealing with their emotions but I'm having trouble with this one

Do you think I should tell my friend's parents now?

# Answer
> 0 votes
Each person deals with and reacts to psychological issues, including depression, differently. It's not your fault that the other person isn't finding your approach helpful. Also remember that symptoms of depression include negative thinking and trouble focusing, so don't blame yourself.

Secondly, sometimes you have to tell another person what is going on when you are seriously concerned about another person's well-being. Tell someone you trust. This person should be able to listen and make good choices about what to do with the information you tell them. They should be able to understand that you want to respect this person's feelings and privacy and concerns about expressing these to anyone. However the person you tell should know whether or not it is a wise decision to intervene, and how.
Perhaps they could give you advice on how to better understand and help your depressed friend in a way you hadn't thought of before, provided the situation is not too serious.

**If your friend is in danger, you need to tell someone.**

# Answer
> 0 votes
Do these friends that you are helping have any other friends in whom they have confided? If there are other people who *already* know, and who are your age and potentially going through similar things, it can help to talk to them. This also has the benefit of not telling anyone your friend might not want you to.
One possibility would be to contact a counselor/therapist - if you are at school they will likely have one available to whom you can go in full confidentiality, and who will be trained and experienced to help.

**If you believe that your friend may be in danger, for example suicide,** or that things are getting out of control, they need help, and it is reasonable to break a promise of confidentiality if it could save their life. If you are in the UK, you can call the samaritans on 116 123

Also, please look after yourself, even if you don't have depression or any of the feelings that you are helping your friends with, it can be hard. Any feelings of blame towards yourself, guilt, uselessness are understandale but they do not apply. you are doing amazingly for helping these people, and in some cases even stopping self harm. The samaritans number isn't just for people thinking of suicide, it's for people in need of help, and this is very understandable with so much going on, and helping so many people. And, thank you. Even if you're not experiencing appreciation from your friends just yet, you have done an incredible thing for them; making their lives better, and stopping them hurting themselves. Please don't hesitate to reach out for help, for any of you.

---
Tags: social-psychology, depression
---


# Question
Title: Can I use Mechanical Turk for a longitudinal study?
My thesis looks at depression and social support. My design involves participants answering taking a survey every other day for a total of 10 times. Is is the same set of questions that they will answer each time, but I need to see how the responses change over time.

1) Is it possible to set up such a 10 part study on Mechanical Turk, where they will have to return every other day to take the next part?

2) If yes, will have to pay them as they finish each part, or can I pay them when they finish the whole study? I was also wondering if it might be possible to pay a bonus amount to those who finish the whole study - as an incentive to keep coming back each day.

2a) How much should I pay them each time? The survey consists of 23 rating questions on a 5 point Likert scale. I tried it and it took me a little less than 4 minutes.

3) Also, is it possible to accept their answers but only pay the ones who finish the whole study? Because I will be discarding the participants with missing data from my study anyway.

4) The survey results will be anonymous but it is a diary study of sorts. So, I need to be able to connect participants' responses from one day to the next. Will Mechanical Turk allow me to generate a specific code for each participant? Or does each worker already have a code?

5) What survey platform do you suggest I use for setting up my study? Will google docs work?

6) I read somewhere that Mturk workers don't like giving out their emails. But I need to be able to send them emails everytime the responses are due. Will Mechanical Turk allow for this?

# Answer
The best way to set up a Mechanical Turk longitudinal study is with TurkPrime.com. You can follow-up with users and invite them to take a new survey. As long as they are properly incentivized they will come.

I recommend that you inform them at the start that you are running a 10 part study and that those who perform well on each of the 4 minute studies will also receive a significant bonus, say $5-$10.

See here for some more instructions on setting this up.
> 1 votes

# Answer
**Prolific Academic**

Alternatively, you could use Prolific Academic. It is similar to Mechanical Turk in that it provides a system for recruiting paid online participants. However, it is more specifically designed for running academic research. And it has specific provision for running longitudinal studies. I've used it for cross-sectional research, and had a fairly good experience.

Here is a post about running longitudinal studies on Prolific.

**Payment:** Payment on Prolific is based on the proposed time it takes to complete the study and a minimum effective hourly rate. In general, I found that most participants are quite quick at completing survey items. If a participant takes a little longer, they still get the proposed rate. So at present, you might pay say 5/ 60 minutes * 5 pounds = .41 pounds per participant (i.e., about 60 US cents per wave per participant). But this is just a rough guide.

**Identification across waves:** Prolific assigns each participant a unique ID that would be common across logins. You'd generally just have a question that asks participants to enter their prolific ID at the start of each wave.

**Not paying for incomplete data**: I'm not sure what is considered reasonable here. I think each wave of data collection would be seen as a separate study, and you would generally be expected to pay if the participant completes the wave. One option would be to increase the payment for subsequent waves or offer bonus payment to incentivise completion.

**Survey Platform**: Our school has a licence to Qualtrics. I've found this to be very good for surveys and it integrates well with Prolific (i.e., \[redirecting participants back to Prolific\](https://prolificac.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202985142-How-do-I-add-a-completion-URL-at-the-end-of-my-study-, copying surveys to create subsequent waves), working many devices, etc.). That said, your study is pretty simple in terms of data collection, so you could probably use just about any survey platform.

**Sending emails**: You're not allowed to collect identifying information such as emails. I imagine you would need to setup a subsequent study within Prolific for subsequent waves of data collection. Participants are generally notified of the study by email, but you'd need to check how reliable this is.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: depression, software, survey, mechanical-turk
---


title: Bootstrapping in Psychology

text:
# Question
Title: Bootstrapping in Psychology
I am interested in bootstrap, especially how it's entering the psychologist's world.

Boostrapping is used to 'omit' classical assumptions to get statistics. Bootstrapping starts with creating new samples from an original sample (that is considered as a population). Those new samples are generated via resampling with replacement (so that in a new sample observations can be repeated). Doing this (for example) 1000 times, you can get 1000 new samples and then calculate statistics of interest on each of a new sample. Thus you get 1000 of means (as an example). In the end you can calculate (bootstrapped) confidence interval.

I am looking for papers on bootstrap in social sciences (like this one Wright, D.B, London, K., Field, A.P. (2011) Using Bootstrap Estimation and the Plug-in Principle for Clinical Psychology Data, *Journal of Experimental Psychology*, DOI: 10.5127/jep.013611), where the authors explain bootstrap technique to psychologists in their subfield or those papers (in social science) where bootstrap is used extensively.

Has anyone has seen, read or known such papers?

# Answer
> 2 votes
When I embarked on using bootstrapping in my research I found this chapter/lecture notes by Cosma Shalizi very useful:

I see now that he has also written a short introduction for American Scientist

We published this paper, which uses bootstrapping in the third analysis (and so may directly answer your question).

Aside from mere egotism on my part, the analysis code for the paper is available, so you can see mechanically how I did it for my analysis (in Python)

---
Tags: reference-request, experimental-psychology, statistics
---


title: Is the average IQ still 100?

text:
# Question
Title: Is the average IQ still 100?
IQ tests have been around since Binet invented them in the early 20th century roughly 100 years ago. The point of the test was to measure your mental against your chronological age (hence the quotient) and then multiplied by 100, so that the average person's IQ was supposedly 100.

I have seen several claims (including this one) that IQs have risen steadily at about 3 points per decade since the early 1900s. So roughly 10 decades at 3 points each makes for what today ought to be a 130 point IQ.

Most tests today though, still score you on percentiles based on an average score of 100 points. How can these facts be consistent?

# Answer
Intelligence Quotient is a relative score, comparing you to the current average. It is not a fixed, raw intelligence score.

> When current IQ tests are developed, the median raw score of the norming sample is defined as IQ 100 and scores each standard deviation (SD) up or down are defined as 15 IQ points greater or less,\[2\] although this was not always so historically. By this definition, approximately two-thirds of the population scores between IQ 85 and IQ 115, and about 5 percent of the population scores above 125.\[3\]\[4\]

....

> Raw scores on IQ tests for many populations have been rising at an average rate that scales to three IQ points per decade since the early 20th century, a phenomenon called the Flynn effect.

...

> Since the early 20th century, raw scores on IQ tests have increased in most parts of the world.\[45\]\[46\]\[47\] When a new version of an IQ test is normed, the standard scoring is set so performance at the population median results in a score of IQ 100. The phenomenon of rising raw score performance means if test-takers are scored by a constant standard scoring rule, IQ test scores have been rising at an average rate of around three IQ points per decade. This phenomenon was named the Flynn effect in the book The Bell Curve after James R. Flynn, the author who did the most to bring this phenomenon to the attention of psychologists.\[48\]\[49\]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence\_quotient

In addition to various IQ tests giving varying scores, each of them is also standardized to the current average intelligence score. So every test can give you a different score. Put in other words: An old IQ-test will compare you to what was average IQ at the time the test was standardized - which may be lower than todays average.
> 19 votes

# Answer
In the US or the UK, the tests are regularly re-normed to keep the average score 100. But if you use the UK/US average as a baseline to look at IQ scores around the world, then the "average IQ" globally is closer to 88, and dropping, despite the Flynn effect (whose effect has already maxed out in many developed countries, where IQ levels are sometimes now in decline). Generally, people in lower IQ countries tend to have more children, who then grow up to be low-IQ adults (again, generally speaking, and obviously not in every case), which leads to a global decrease in the average IQ. This chart/animation shows what the estimated average is in 2015, what it was in 1950, and estimates what the global average will be in 2050 (the animation takes a few seconds to load).

This 2014 article in the Daily Mail offers a good summary of the research being done into the global drop in IQ scores. Yes, I know, it's the Daily Mail (actually Mail Online), but it does provide concise and easily Google-able references to the main researchers in this field, for example Jan te Nijenhuis, Michael Woodley, and most (in)famously Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen, who pretty much pioneered the idea of how nation-level IQs have major effects on a nation's outcomes (which research has made the duo pretty unpopular, as the implications of their work aren't pretty).
> 8 votes

---
Tags: iq
---


# Question
Title: psychologically , which color for which lesson?
Imagine I have an educational website which hosts high school students and presents lessons like chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc. Now I want to give each one of my lessons a unique color. I thought maybe there is a psychological thing about this. Is there? If so, could any one give such resource that tells me what color is suitable for chemistry and so on.

# Answer
> 2 votes
I haven't ever seen material which describes links between colors and some knowledge fields. To my mind, it depends on your *own experience*. But there are a lot of material about common feelings of different colors, that could be helpful for design, for organization of any kind of information. Look here and here.

---
Tags: psychology, color
---


# Question
Title: How to build a high sensitivity EEG headset for continual monitoring?
After having a conversation with a couple of the more popular "consumer" level EEG makers such as `Versus`, I have found that their monitoring abilities are either limited or altogether absent. The devices utility, while cool from a 3rd party controlled training standpoint, is neutered when it comes to just getting raw data and plotting it out in a manner that allows one to make their own interpretations and calls.

I would like to build my own device that can monitor from the very low \< 0.5 hz all the way up to at least 200 hz. My goal is to feed that into my own software in order to keep a running graph for analysis, etc.

How would one go about building an EEG that has this level of sensitivity?

# Answer
> 3 votes
There are a few commercial EEG makers that do allow monitoring of raw EEG data. For instance, I know the Muse headband and OpenBCI allow you to do this with little trouble. These both support sampling rates up to 250 Hz. (The OpenBCI in principle could have a higher sampling rate, but i don't know anyone who has done this.)

The Emotiv EPOC also has an option to get raw EEG data. You have to pay more for the research version of the SDK to get the data officially. However, someone has reverse engineered their protocol, so you can access the raw data that way. This has a sampling rate of up to 128 Hz.

That said, if you still want to build your own EEG, OpenBCI has documented all of their plans, so a good start would be to replicate their product.

There is also the older, but still useful, OpenEEG project, which also has open plans for an EEG device.

---
Tags: neuroscience, measurement, eeg
---


# Question
Title: Is there terminology for perceptual illusions at the moment that figure-ground reversal occurs?
I'm looking for a term in the perception / cognition area of research.

I recently saw this visual illusion that 'flips' what is *negative-space* and what is *positive-space*. This is known in the arts as "figure-ground reversal"

I am looking for a word / term that addresses when the thing we are observing changes, such that the parts that signify the 'figure' and 'ground' are themselves switched. Is there a word for this? Does Ecological Psychology have a way that it organizes such stimuli?

I would think there may be a term that address when our perception 'flips' the perception of a static image, and afterward we are biased to perceive the 'ground' differently. This happens when we see a *vase* instead of *faces*.

But I don't know *that word*, nor do I know if it applies to the occurrence of when a thing/image/perceptual-field changes, in order to *action* the figure-ground reversal.

# Answer
> 2 votes
There are many such illusions. It mostly belongs to pattern-recognition and gestalt psychology. From German it means *"shape", "form", "essence"*. To answer your question, I think, here there are *illusory contours* (when you watch and understand an illusion) and *lateral inhibition* (when you have got new understanding of the picture and compare it with previous form).

Enjoy more pictures ;)

---
Tags: perception, vision, visualization
---


# Question
Title: Dynamical systems theory as a metaphor in psychology: is it useful or not?
Dynamical systems theory as it is used in the context of developmental psychology, and by some psychoanalysts as in this article or in this video by the first speaker can be described as an attempt to introduce mathematical concepts in the study of psychological phenomena. Unlike other applications of dynamical systems theory, the above seem to use terms like "attractor" in an abstract or metaphorical sense, that is, outside of a formal mathematical context.

* Is this kind of application useful or just a bunch of preety words, stripped of their real meaning ?
* Do we have a better understanding of psychological phenomena through such a framework?

# Answer
Like all models and modeling frameworks, the utility of the approach is often tied to how much it increases our understanding of the phenomena of interest. As summarized nicely by Smith & Thelen (2003), there are developmental questions that are better conceptualized through the framework of DST than through alternative modeling frameworks due to the richly interactive and multi-causal structure of the phenomena.

You'll also find that applications of DST in Developmental Psychology are not just appealing to the metaphorical use of DST. There are rigorous mathematical uses of the tools of DST to explain developmental phenomena. One of the most cited examples is Thelen et al. (2001), who modeled the A-not-B error. There is a lot of similarly inspired modeling work being done throughout the field.
> 7 votes

# Answer
Dynamical systems models is commonly used in the domain of perception and action. See Warren, 2006 for a comprehensive review. This work uses the mathematical formalism of dynamics and not just the metaphorical concepts. An exploration of the references of Warren's paper, as well as of papers that have cited it, will find many examples of dynamical models of perception and action.

For another example of dynamical modeling in perception-action research (with moves toward more "cognitive" models as well), I recommend Scott Kelos' Book *Dynamic Patterns*. This is an accessible overview (10 years before Warren's paper) that makes very explicit the connection between the metaphors and actual models.

I will also add that there are close theoretical and methodological links between Warren, Thelen/Smith, and Kelso that go beyond merely the use of dynamical systems models. For example, they all draw links between dynamical systems methods and the possibility of a non-representational ontology of mind.

All that said, even within perception-action, there are many researchers who use the metaphorical concepts of dynamical systems theory inexactly. A chapter of my Ph.D. thesis will be on incorrect use of the terms "attractor" and "bifurcation", etc., in the literature. (playing fast and loose with fixed points vs. nullclines, state variables vs. parameters, etc.)
> 4 votes

# Answer
The premise of this answer is that if math can be applied to accurately used for psychic phenomena than meta use of math can be applied accurately as well.

Psychoanalysis is a tricky subject. Unlike cognitive behavioural psychotherapy its goal isn't expressly to teach a new behavior but to find a *source* of a stimulus. If strands of thought based on rational movement and happenings were a line then the human condition certainly would be nonlinear because so much of what we do is a reflection of our training and associations from the past both conscious and subconscious. Though we know not the exact equation of consciousness we can accurately theorize that human intelligence is reflected in the artificial intelligences we have created. For instance some decisions can be mapped out as a proposition logical equation simular to a decision tree. Other decisions are based purely on instinct like neural networks and some come from recognizing and finding things that please and displease us like SVMs. Some of those equations would have random variables of course but much of what we do has been predetermined.

Something like this decision tree probabilities and truth values of situations contribute to the end result:

or this:

Other decisions can only be explained in terms of an equation of neurons firing and pleasure or goodness derived from each neuron like an SVM or Neural Net.

SVMs create linear and nonlinear discriminants which is a line that tells groups apart based on features. They can be quite complex in their ability to discriminate between pleasure and pain or classify an object.

Neural networks work based on several input senses which are weighted then ran through a function to determine if a pathway is activated.

The equation for sexual position of greatest preference might include things from past experiences, prejudices and preferences for pornography actors who were in that position, feelings associated with bending and flexing that way. Then as Freud acuaratly pointed out seeming random things from childhood that logically should be completely separate from sexuality but because we are connected individuals built systematically.

So yes using math especially those related to artificial intelligence, time series and propositional logic are useful methods in describing psychic phenomena. Simplifications of the aforementioned sometimes contributes to misunderstanding of how humans think but can be implemented in ways that facilitate understanding for those of less experience or education.
> 1 votes

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Tags: reference-request, developmental-psychology, psychology
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# Question
Title: Is it possible to increase the capacity of human brain like “Lucy”?
I saw the film *"Lucy"* in 2015. The film says that humans can use 100% percent of the capacity of their brains.

According to my personal ideas, the capacity of the brain will changed based on the basic knowledge of a person. We all know Albert Einstein was a great knowledgeable human in the world. This level of knowledge can change by the time, for example he was arguably the best scientist or philosopher of his time; he used his brain as much as possible for innovation.

At the present, there are many more scientists in the world, but the world is filled with knowledge, new technology etc. Man's basic knowledge could be higher than a scientist in the past, because this knowledge is openly available everywhere. But the problem is that they don't use their brain to the same level as Einstein or any other scientist that has lived in the past. That means that they don't use the highest capacity of the brain.

So according to my idea, the capacity of the brain will vary depending on external environmental factors.

According to comments and suggestions in this article I read, I was unable to identify the truth: whether people can enhance their brain capacity like "Lucy". And I need to know whether humans have a fixed brain capacity or not.

Most religions say that their saints had used 100% of their brain capacity. So what about other humans?

# Answer
> 1 votes
This may provide you with extra supplementary information regarding the notorious "10 Percent Myth". To respond to your statement regarding increasing brain capacity through am increase in knowledge:

> Synaptic Consolidation is the process by which items are transferred from short-term to long-term memory. Within the first minutes or hours after acquisition, the engram (memory trace) is encoded within synapses, becoming resistant (though not immune) to interference from outside sources.

Knowledge has to do with "saving" the original memory traces followed when first learning the information. It does not necessarily have to do with active brain capacity. Thus, an increase in knowledge will not necessarily cause an increase in used brain capacity.

You see, the primary issue here is energy cost. Although the brain typically only constitutes 2 percent of the body's weight, it utilizes around 20 percent of the body's energy intake. As a species, we have been "designed" through the filtering of many "versions" our species to be most efficient. As we have not found a particular need to utilize such a large percentage of our brain *at a time* throughout the millennia, our brains have been simplified into a somewhat energy-efficient structure, utilizing a portion of the total capacity at a time. However, if Man had originally needed to use more of the brain capacity for a majority of his or her daily activities, it would be safe to expect that we would use a larger portion of our brains at any given instance. Assuming you are still in a state of heightened neuroplasticity, it is potentially possible to "increase the amount of brain capacity used at a time" by participating in activities requiring multiple parts of your brain.

But how many different activities can you think of that would require reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, emotions, problem solving, movement, orientation, recognition, perception of stimuli, visual processing, perception, recognition of auditory stimuli, memory, and speech?

# Answer
> 0 votes
Usage of brain capacity? That's an ridiculous expression. I see, you have already read about "ten percent of the brain" myth. As Krotanix wrote above, a brain uses all its functions in different time, coz you can't and shouldn't remember, feel everything in one moment. Vice versa, we can think about every detail independently, step by step, for understanding of full picture.

There were many experiments to explain difference between brain work of beginners and masters is some fields (some researches are described in the book of Robert Solso). It was found that they had almost the same brain activity. So, difference is in knowledge and experience, not in brain capacity or activity.

# Answer
> 0 votes
"Lucy" was an interesting movie but is not based on how the brain functions.

Consider that an epileptic seizure is what greatly increased activity of the brain looks like. Or consider that tDCS (magnetically causing all neurons in an area of the brain to fire simultaneously) is used to render an area of brain inactive as the neurons recover after firing.

When you start talking about intelligence you are discussing the mind rather than the architecture of the brain. A good way to distinguish the two is to think about if you can point to it. Frontal lobe - yes! Joy, no.

The mechanics of the brain can be observed but how higher functions relate to this mechanics is not all that well known.

Summing up. "Lucy" was a fun movie but read evidence based research if you want to understand brains. "Neurons firing" is not the same as "thinking". Brain activity is not the same as wisdom or insight. The dualist and reductionist versions of how we exist really needs to be discussed more. The mind was dismissed by the behaviouralists without any evidence to support the dismissal.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, theoretical-neuroscience, developmental-psychology
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title: Imagination limits

text:
# Question
Title: Imagination limits
I would like to know how true is the following sentence:

> One can only imagine combinations of things he has experienced through his senses.

It is important to state that this sentence is about imagination, not about thinking boundaries.

As examples:

1. You can think about a universe with 4 dimensions, but you can't imagine it.
2. You can think about infra-red radiation, but you can only imagine it as a combination of known colors.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Many people who have tried psychedelics would probably disagree with that statement based on their experiences alone. There are various such accounts available if you search, such as on Erowid. On the other hand, perhaps the statement holds for average persons in "normal" states of mind. From an evolutionary perspective, there would be very little use in imagining things fundamentally different from normal life (or normal reality), so you would expect such experiences to be limited to abnormal states of mind.

To think about this question more philosophically, there are *endless* possible illogical (or unobserved) "realities" to be envisioned while there are perhaps only a finite number of true realities. This concept is related to the idea that you cannot prove a negative such as "There is no hidden pink unicorn ghost floating above you right now". Because the unobservable possibilities are endless while the observable ones are much more finite, the mind would be at a total waste to spend time processing the unobservable possibilities. This is not to say the mind is incapable of it, but rather that there is strong selective pressure to prevent such processing under normal conditions.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Is this a sentence in Sophie's World? It is more of an empirical thought. The weird thing about it is it cannot be "empirically" proved, since it's not something material, or can be made materialistic. All that can be done is to discuss about it. I, myself, have thought about it quite a lot, and haven't reached an answer. I cannot disagree nor agree. Imagine an artist, of fantasy things. They, let's assume, paint a unique kind of a monster or something, though it's not something they've seen before, i.e. experienced, it is something combined of what they've seen before somehow, somewhere. Yet, that same artist may come up with something never ever existed, nor they've experienced it in any way before, but did imagine it and made a paint from it. I haven't been able to go further :D I hope it's helpful.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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# Question
Title: Why is the order of white/grey matter different in the brain and spinal cord?
In the brain proper, grey matter forms the outer layer of the brain, and white matter forms the inner layer. In the spine, this is reversed: white matter forms the outer layer of the spine, and grey matter the inner layer. Is there a developmental or functional reason for this?

# Answer
I'll tackle this question from a **functional** point of view.

Gray matter are cell bodies, white matter are myelinated fiber tracts.

In the brain, the gray matter is basically the cortex, the white matter lies mainly underneath it. The Cortex is the place where all the higher mental **processing** takes place (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Cortical functions. Source: Penn Medicine

The white matter in the brain connects the various parts of the cortex so that information can be transported for further processing and integrated.

Fig. 2. Central white matter. Source: NIH Medline

Since the cortex is the 'processor', it makes sense to connect the parts subcortically (more efficient as it leads to shorter connections). However, the cortex has been expanding very late in evolution, so this 'endpoint reasoning' can be contested, because from an evolutionary perspective, more cortex was needed and hence it was expanded right where it happened to be, namely in the outer part of the brain.

In the spinal chord things are pretty much reversed; grey matter within, white matter around it (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Section through spinal chord with central grey matter and surrounding white matter. Source: University of Michigan

The white matter, again, is formed by various tracts (Fig. 4) and the grey matter with parts that are processing information (fig. 5).

Fig. 4. Section through spinal chord showing the spinal tracts forming the white matter. Source: Biology.SE

Fig. 5. Section through spinal chord showing the spinal reflex arches forming the gray matter. Source: APSU Biology

The white matter in the spinal chord constitutes the various sensory and motor pathways to and from the brain, respectively. The gray matter constitutes basic processing nuclei that form the reflex arches in the spinal chord. These reflex arches process incoming sensory information (e.g. pain) and govern motor output (e.g., pulling the hand away from the fire).

Again, the structure makes sense in terms of efficiency, as the reflex arches combine the sensory and motor tracts to govern reflexes, and therefore processing them from within saves space.
> 9 votes

# Answer
This is a simple logic to understand. In the brain the grey matter is on the cotex.Grey matter is a tissue made of the cytons due to which the cotex is pinkish Grey in colour. The White matter,the tissue made of axons is inside to the brain. Cortex is the processing centre which has cytons. In the spine the processing is to be done internally. So the cytons concentrate inside the spine which we call the Grey matter.Similarly the axons are to be around the Grey matter to transfer messages from and to other organs.They form the White matter outside the spine.
> 0 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, neuroanatomy
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# Question
Title: What are the estimates in total neurons and average connections per neuron for each of the processing areas of the visual cortex?
I am trying to find ballpark estimates for the number of neurons in each functional area of the visual cortex (V1, V2, V3, etc). While nice if known, the numbers themselves are not as important to me as the relative size differences of the areas, so this information would be just as welcomed.

Also, if known, are the total synapse averages fairly consistent between areas, or do they change dramatically?

I have found rough estimates for V1 here: http://www.vision.caltech.edu/~harel/fun/v1.html but am having trouble finding this sort of information out for subsequent areas.

# Answer
I found a table listing the relative volumes of 39 different BAs in the supplementary material of: Hazlett, Erin A. et al. "Cortical Gray and White Matter Volume in Unmedicated Schizotypal and Schizophrenia Patients", which seems to be open-access.

This data is from MRI scans of 148 healthy controls. The mean total brain volume was 1216cm.

Not sure how the density of neurons differs across areas.

Here is a link to the supplementary pdf
> 2 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, vision
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# Question
Title: Why are autistic people more likely to be savants than nonautistic people?
I read that 10% of autistic people and 1% of nonautistic people are savants. It seems like lacking an ability is what defines somebody to be autistic.

# Answer
Disclaimer, this is less of an answer and more of a critique of the demographics behind Savant Syndrome.

Currently there are very few issues with finding a decent answer to this question: This 10% of autistics being savants seems tenuous, there is no clear cut unambiguous research from current and respected journals analysing the prevalence of savant syndrome. The last paper to back these claims was in 1988, and that is the only one reporting these numbers. This 1988 paper seems to be to source of the statistics reported in the question and on websites such as the autism institute. However there have been no repetitions of this reported prevalence. Savant syndrome is a popular idea that people with learning disability can be brilliant too, and they can, there are real cases of Savant Syndrome. A few journal articles describe the workings of Savant Syndrome, such as the brain function and abilities. However these are not common, much like Savant Syndrome, if Savant Syndrome was as common as reported by the 1988 paper we would see savants amongst autistics as we do left handers across Europeans. From personal experience I would say we do not, I spent many years working with people who have ASD, I meet any savants, even though I would have liked too. Of course it is entirely possible that I could I just happened to be statistically unlucky. The lack of further prevalence data is suggests that these results haven't been replicated, and may therefore be misleading.

So whats causing this statistic? In my opinion its likely to be two factors. First the over diagnosis of autism, many children are diagnosed with Asperger’s who are not later in life. Secondly intelligent children are often diagnosed as autistic or with mood disorders, intelligent people may think differently to the general population and some of their tendencies may seem 'autistic', like there fascination with particular subjects/objects, such behaviours might contribute to a ASD diagnosis in children.

There is no prevalence data for savants in 'normal' populations, but you could say anyone who is talented and passionate about a particular skill or subject is a savant, from footballers to scientists, many 'normal' people are exceptional. Personally, I work in an academic departments, and I meet people that would fit the definition for the abilities of a savant on a daily basis, but they don't have a disorder. You probably do as well, yet because they don't have a disability you wouldn't use the same term savant, and technically you shouldn't.

Conclusion: More data needed! Their clearly isn't enough support to make the claim that 10% of autistics are savants, and additionally there seems to be no real comparison with 'normal' functioning individuals. And the definition of savant is also dubious, can normal people be savants?
> 2 votes

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Tags: savant-syndrome
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# Question
Title: Recent psychophysical studies using the "Method of Adjustment"?
The **Method of Adjustment**, devised by G.T. Fechner, is one of the three classical psychophysical procedures used to examine perceptual performance.

It came to fame through early studies of visual illusions. But, unfortunately, it is rather difficult to find *recent* publications in which it was used. Other methods, such as forced-choice procedures, are much more popular nowadays.

### Questions

> 1. Is there a research field in which the Method of Adjustment is still frequently used, or is even the prevalent psychophysical procedure?
> 2. Where can I find recent publications about this method?

I know that "recent" is imprecise, but I would say that fifty-year old publications do not count as recent, anymore.

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### Update (Description of the Method of Adjustment)

The Method of Adjustment, also called Method of Average Error (Guilford, 1954), is used to psychophysically measure a subject's *accuracy* and *precision* in matching (subjectively equalizing) stimulus magnitudes.

Typically, subjects are asked to adjust the magnitude of a variable *comparison stimulus* (Co) until it subjectively equals the magnitude of a fixed *standard stimulus* (St). This is repeated several times$-$per St as well as for different St's. As a result, one obtains for each St a distribution of Co's. Descriptive statistics of these distributions, such as the mean and the standard deviation, are used to compute the *point of subjective equality* (PSE) and the *difference limen* (DL).

A measure of accuracy is the *constant error* (CE), i.e. the difference between the PSE and the St. A meaure of (relative) precision is the *Weber fraction* (W), i.e. the ratio of the DL and the St.

# Answer
The recent visual working memory literature has predominately used the method of adjustment. In particular, there is a lot of work using continuous color adjustment tasks:

Wilken P., Ma W. (2004). A detection theory account of change detection. Journal of Vision, 4 (12): 11, 1120–1135.

Zhang, W., & Luck, S. J. (2008). Discrete fixed-resolution representations in visual working memory. Nature, 453(7192), 233-235.

Here's a recent open access paper using the method of adjustment:

Brady, T. F. and Alvarez, G.A. (2015). Contextual effects in visual working memory reveal hierarchically structured memory representations. Journal of Vision. http://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2471226
> 3 votes

# Answer
when I was planning a pilot study in which we planned to use cross-modality matching I came across some studies.

1. Human Factors and Ergonomics researchers seem to still use the Method of Adjustment. At least, I found a couple of conference papers in which they examined warning signals for cars. Unfortunately, I don't remember the titles but I think one of the authors was named Baldwin.
2. Try to use Google Scholar or target specific Human Factors and Ergonomic journals (e.g., Human Factor and Ergonomics). You could also have a look at this chapter to follow the references; http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-15841-4\_1. They used cross-modality matching and the method of adjustment.

I hope that gives you a little hint on where and how to find out more about your questions.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Method of adjustment is still in use in vision science, especially when dealing with illusions. Its major advantage over, for example, 2AFC tasks is the speed of estimation -- you need way less trials to measure the effect, which could be useful in clinical settings \[1\]. You could also try to search for "nulling" instead of "adjustment" -- nulling is the most powerful variation of the adjustment method, when the subject has control over some aspect of the stimulus and asked to adjust it so as to "null out" the illusion .

It is easy to find such studies with a targeted Google Scholar search, here are some examples:

Maus, G. W., Ward, J., Nijhawan, R., & Whitney, D. (2012). The perceived position of moving objects: transcranial magnetic stimulation of area MT+ reduces the flash-lag effect. Cerebral Cortex, bhs021.

Liberman, A., Fischer, J., & Whitney, D. (2014). Serial dependence in the perception of faces. Current Biology, 24(21), 2569-2574.

Cavanagh, P., & Anstis, S. (2013). The flash grab effect. Vision research, 91, 8-20.

Schloss, K. B., Fortenbaugh, F. C., & Palmer, S. E. (2014). The configural shape illusion. Journal of vision, 14(8), 23.

1. Pelli. D. G., & Farell, B. Psychophysical methods
> 2 votes

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Tags: measurement, methodology, experimental-psychology, psychophysics
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# Question
Title: What is the best way to turn EEG scans in to 3D images?
I'm looking for the best way to turn standard EEG scans into 3D images of activity in the brain over the time of scanning, for example like the Glass Brain images or even connectome-style images.

I have experience of collecting EEG data and basic experience of EEG analysis using the SPM package for MATLAB, but this didn't include creating a 3D image.

Is there capability to create this using SPM or perhaps another add on or even other software entirely that I can access? Alternatively, does anyone know of any service which would do this for me? I work for for a technology company, not as part of a testing lab or affiliated to a university, so don't have access to these sorts of labs and expertise.

# Answer
> 3 votes
By 3D image, I assume that you want a projection of the topographic map onto a 3D model of the head. For an accurate resolution, you would need to have acquired the position of the EEG channels on the head as well as the shape of the participant's head. However, this kind of data is not often acquired.

The next best solution is to use an existing model of the channel position for your EEG system on a template head. The head plot function in EEGLAB can do that: http://sccn.ucsd.edu/eeglab/allfunctions/headplot.html

Transferring your files from SPM format to EEGLAB format should be quite straightforward. You can find solutions to this problem on both the EEGLAB and SPM mailing lists.

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Tags: eeg, neuroimaging
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title: Discovery of “Functions of Brain”

text:
# Question
Title: Discovery of “Functions of Brain”
As far as I know, Physical Experimentation of Human Brain is not possible. So how does people come up with the idea that different parts of brain is associated with different specific functions? and Who found it?

Example:

* Cerebrum for memory, speech etc..
* Cerebellum for motor, sensory etc..

# Answer
Often, we learn about brain functions when parts of the brain become damaged. One famous example is that of Phineas Gage. He survived severe brain damage, and his character and abilities were noticeably different. From the article:-

*Some months after the accident, probably in about the middle of 1849, Phineas felt strong enough to resume work. But because his personality had changed so much, the contractors who had employed him would not give him his place again. Before the accident he had been their most capable and efficient foreman, one with a well-balanced mind, and who was looked on as a shrewd smart business man. He was now, Harlow said, fitful, irreverent, and grossly profane, showing little deference for his fellows. He was also impatient and obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, unable to settle on any of the plans he devised for future action. His friends said he was "No longer Gage."*
> 2 votes

# Answer
In addition to studies of patient with particular focal lesions, brain function in particular areas can also be studies in other ways. For one, functions are often conserved between species so that studying animals can give some indication of the role of a brain region in humans. This may be done by applying lesions or through treatment with genetic or pharmacological agents.

Brain function can also be studied in healthy humans through invasive or non-invasive methods. Sometimes electrodes are implanted in preparation for neurosurgery and these recordings can be used to learn something about brain activity associated with different tasks that the patient is asked to perform.

Non-invasive methods allow for the imaging or manipulation of brain function. Methods like functional magnetic resonance imaging or magneto-encephalography make it possible to record aspects of brain activity. In the analysis, statistical procedures are applied that identify the areas that are most closely associated with a particular tasks, which leads to the association of brain area and function.

In contrast, trans-cranial magnetic stimulation can be used to manipulate brain function for a short time. When this disruption leads to an impairment on s particular task, the brain area that was targeted is thought to be involved in that task.

However, the current view is moving away from describing simple association between an area and a behavioural or cognitive function. The old approach has sometimes dismissively been termed "modern phrenology". In more recent years, the focus has shifted towards describing the role of a brain structure within a wider network.

You will find many more details about this in any introductory cognitive neuroscience textbook, if you are interested.
> 2 votes

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Tags: methodology
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# Question
Title: Self-study guide for translating a psychological scale
I am conducting research on Arab homosexual men. I want to translate to Arabic and validate psychological scales like scales for gender dysphoria, internalized homophobia scales ..etc first, How to know if the scale is copyrighted or not?(e.g. are scales in the DSM copyrighted ?) second, is their any plan or self-study book to help me do this?

# Answer
> 1 votes
The article by Gudmundsson (2009) looks very useful. It describes an eight step process for translating and adaptive psychological instruments. The article is written clearly with concrete suggestions and references to the broader literature.

> 1. selecting an instrument for translation
> 2. selecting qualified translators
> 3. selecting qualified experts
> 4. Method of translation (e.g., back translation, two independent translations)
> 5. Method of adaptation
> 6. Investigating bias
> 7. pilot studies
> 8. validity studies

In general, psychological scales are copyrighted. That said, many academics would be excited at the prospect of having their scale being translated into another language. Thus, in general, a good approach is to contact the author of the scale to get their consent to you performing the translation.

### References

Gudmundsson, E. (2009). Guidelines for translating and adapting psychological instruments. Nordic Psychology, 61(2), 29.

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Tags: methodology, cross-cultural-psychology
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