# Question
Title: What is the current gold standard in double locked storage of therapeutic records?
I am asking this question in the context of a U.S. (Massachusetts) psychologist performing IPA studies. The interviews will be conducted through Zoom mostly. The recorded interviews will be stored the only way they can be, which is digitally. Has anyone found a specific resource describing how psychologists have dealt with the confidentiality concerns of digital information storage? It used to be that the gold standard for double-locked storage of therapeutic records was to put them in a locked file cabinet or locked room in a locked building. Now that we have electronic records, what are people doing about that? Is it enough to:

1. Put the electronic storage device (laptop, hard drive, flash drive, whatever) inside a locked room in a locked house?
2. Password protect the storage device, and put it in a locked building
3. Password protect the storage device, and password protect the folder/file
4. Something else?

And what about files in the cloud? Is that a no-no, or is the password protection there sufficient for one of the locks?

# Answer
> 1 votes
I cannot find a defined "Gold Standard" within the US, but there is ISO27001:2013 here in the UK and the European Union. More can be found from this IT Governance website.

There is also suggestion that you should also follow ISO27018:2014 if you are storing data in public cloud systems.

In absence of any defined "Gold Standard", you can choose to follow these standards, and if you are not following the "Gold Standard", you need to be able to justify your data protection procedures to any governing body who may be auditing you for compliance with their rules and regulations or when investigating any data breach.

Some say that just following a "Gold Standard" is not enough.

The one thing you should do is regularly review your procedures to ensure you are doing everything **reasonably practicable** to ensure personally identifiable data is kept secure from unauthorised access. Do you have a copy of **your** data protection policy and procedures which **you personally follow and regularly review** and sign off as reviewed? If not, I would put one together and sign it off regularly at review as that would demonstrate your commitment to protecting client's personal information.

One major key point you need to remember with data protection is that you must protect the data from unauthorised access **at all points of access**.

The following is in response to your individual questions.

> Is it enough to put the electronic storage device (laptop, hard drive, flash drive, whatever) inside a locked room in a locked house?

When reviewing your data protection policy and procedures, you should ask this question to yourself along with **who has access to the keys to the locked room?**

If **anyone** not authorised to access the personal data has access to the keys then the answer in my view is that it is not enough. Otherwise, how are you going to prevent unauthorised access by others who have access to the keys to the locked room?

> Is it enough to password protect the storage device, and put it in a locked building

With regard to locking the storage device in a building, that is covered in the previous question. **Password protection can add further protection, but is it enough?** This goes with your 3rd question

> Is it enough to password protect the storage device, and password protect the folder/file

This is not straight forward to answer and will depend on many different factors.

If the password is strong, the storage device remains in the one room, and is always locked away when unattended then passwords will provide extra protection but will it be enough protection from theives who might break in and steal the storage device?

Windows 10 provides device encryption, but **not Windows 10 Home** it needs to be Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise. Encryption will prevent data from being read if the harddrive was removed and transferred to another computer.

There is 3rd party software available for device encryption and each one is different to the other on strength of encryption, security and cost.

If you are talking about files such as Microsoft Word documents or Excel files, you can password protect the file from being read, and in this case, Microsoft Office encrypts the file. If stored on an encrypted device, this double encrypts the file from access.

These are things to think about.

> And what about files in the cloud?

In response I would ask *Do you **really** need to store the data in the cloud?*

If so, then I would be **very** picky as to what cloud service you choose to use.

Ask yourself:

1. **Who can access your data in the cloud?**
2. **Can the cloud service provider(s) access the data?**
I only know of one cloud service provider who has no access to your data. With them, the files are encrypted their end and if you forget your password, you have lost access to your data for good. There may be others but I don't know them if there are.
3. **If the cloud service provider can access your data, what is their policy with regard to Privacy and Data Protection? Is it in line with yours? - Keep an up-to-date copy with your policy and procedures**.
4. **Is the data encrypted in the cloud?**
5. **Is the data transfer encrypted end-to-end when transferred between the cloud server and your storage device, and if so, how strong is that encryption?**

These are just some questions you will need to find the answers to, and there may be others you feel need addressing.

Protection of digital data is not straight forward but if you think things through thoroughly and seek professional advice where needed you can devise a robust protection procedure which can be justified to any governing body.

## Links to sources provided in this answer

1. https://www.waterstons.com/articles/achieving-the-gold-standard-in-information-security
2. https://www.itgovernance.co.uk/iso27001
3. https://www.iso.org/standard/61498.html
4. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/18/protect\_your\_digital\_enterprise\_iso\_27001\_explainer
5. https://www.howtogeek.com/195430/how-to-create-a-strong-password-and-remember-it
6. https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4028713/windows-10-turn-on-device-encryption

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Tags: therapy
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# Question
Title: Any ideas about the neural mechanism underlying the ASMR sensation?
Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is described as a pleasurable, tingly sensation in the (back of the) head.
The sensation can be triggered by a vast variety of stimuli (auditory, visual, olfactory etc) but seems dependent on attention. It seems not everyone can get this sensation and among those people that do, stimuli that trigger the sensation vary considerably. See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous\_sensory\_meridian\_response

But what could be the physical origin of this sensation? And how come only a select group of people seem able to experience it? In http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/asmr/ the ASMR sensation is proposed to be caused by either \[1\] small seizures or \[2\] extra sensitivity or extra 'pleasure-shots' to stimuli that for other people are just moderately satisfying. Other sources compare ASMR to meditation.

Does anyone know more about this phenomenon, or have another theory about the mechanism behind it?

# Answer
I found one study that looked at ASMR and the Default Mode Network (DNM). The DMN consists of the medial prefrontal cortex, medial temporal gyri, bilateral inferior parietal cortices, precuneus and posterior cingulate gyrus. In the study, the DMN of 11 individuals with ASMR was compared with 11 controls.

The DMN of individuals with ASMR showed significantly less functional connectivity than that of controls. The DMN of individuals with ASMR also demonstrated increased connectivity between regions in the occipital, frontal, and temporal cortices, suggesting that ASMR was associated with a blending of multiple resting-state networks. This atypical functional connectivity likely influences the unique sensory-emotional experiences associated with ASMR.

Reference:

D. L. (2008). The brain’s default network: Anatomy, function, and relevance to disease. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124, 1–38. doi:10.1196/annals.1440.011
> 4 votes

# Answer
This study investigated brain areas associated with ASMR. ts recent as well (2018)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6209833/
> 0 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, perception, attention, sensation, meditation
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# Question
Title: What is restriction of range correction formula when you don't know standard deviation of unrestricted group?
What is the restriction of range formula if you don't know the standard deviation of the unrestricted group is?

For instance, you run a selection process, 1st stage is a cognitive ability test and as a result you would not know the standard deviation of the population.

# Answer
# My Answer

In this scenario, the unrestricted group is the population of individuals who are in the selection process. For example, Held and Foley (1994, Table 3) https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/116989/v18n4p355.pdf shows the consequences of different selection ratios on validity coefficient estimations.

To summarize, the unrestricted group is the entire pool of applicants who take your test. The restricted group is the ones who are selected based on your selection criteria.

# Alternative

Any cognitive ability test should have a manual, and that manual should contain validity information, including SD of the population. Many of them are normed in such a way as to make it simple (e.g., the SD of WAIS is 15, the SD of Stanford-Binet is 10). Obtain and use the values in the test manual.

However, I don't think this should be done in practice. The population of concern here isn't all working-age adults in the world/region, the population is all working-age adults in the world/region who have applied to work at the organization.
> 1 votes

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Tags: measurement, statistics, io-psychology
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# Question
Title: Can overload of information affect short term memory?
Can stress affect short term memory? If one is overloaded with a lot of information, can their short term memory be affected?

# Answer
> 1 votes
If you look at overloading from overuse of directed attention then I would say yes, and I would say yes it does lead to fatigue and stress, which is why you need to redress with Attention Restoration Therapy (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989, & Kaplan, 1985). If we look at an extreme example of stress, PTSD, then I would say yes it affects our cognitive abilities (Richard S, Lazarus and Judith Blackfield Cohen, 1977; Dowhrenwend, 2010).

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Tags: short-term-memory
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# Question
Title: How is intelligence in children measured?
Intelligence is dependent on mental age and education. So how can an IQ test be performed to check the mental/intellectual capabilities in children?

# Answer
There are specific intelligence tests developed for children in different age ranges, *e.g.* from 4 to 8+11 months years, and 9-16 years. The site mentions that their test

> ...is a culture fair testing method. Test takers are equally assessed regardless of cultures, languages, backgrounds or education level. Also, the test duration is 30 minutes, which is well designed to not only suit children’s attention span but also generate precise results.

Note that I am not familiair with this website and cannot verify their claim that

> Our Phd-certified test was established in 2008. Nearly ten years since, the test has received approximately 16 million sittings.
> 3 votes

# Answer
# Correction on Education

"intelligence is dependent on ... education." This is incorrect. Intelligence is a stable trait over time (Gottfredson, 1998). The correlation between education and intelligence is that on average, people who attain higher levels of education have higher levels of intelligence (Gottfredson, 1997). We wouldn't expect someone with an IQ of 80 to be able to get a graduate degree, for example.

# Age

"Intelligence is dependent on age." Correct, but needs clarification. Intelligence is measured on normed scales. So, an individual's intelligence only makes sense in the context of comparison to other individuals in the same cohort (e.g., adult, child) (Judge, et al., 1999). Because of this, difference scales are normed with different groups. Furthermore, with children, who have shorter attention spans and less world knowledge in comparison to adults, the type of items appropriate to measure intelligence may slightly differ.

# Measuring Cognitive Ability

Because of this, special tests are developed and normed on the child population. The most prominent is likely the Wecshler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). It has been well-studied (Canivez & Watkins, 1998), well-validated, and updated throughout the years (Keith, et al., 2006). There is also a Stanford-Binet for children, as well as several more. General cognitive ability is one of the more well-established constructs in the field of psychology, so there are several longstanding methods of measurement that have a ton of supporting evidence (Kuncel, et al., 2004).

## References

Canivez, G. L., & Watkins, M. W. (1998). Long-term stability of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Third Edition. *Psychological Assessment, 10*(3), 285-291. doi: 10.1037/1040-3590.10.3.285

Gottfredson, L. S. (1997). Why g matters: The complexity of everyday life. *Intelligence, 24*(1), 79-132. doi: 10.1016/S0160-2896(97)90014-3

Gottfredson, L. S. (1998). The general intelligence factor. *Scientific American Presents: Exploring Intelligence 9*(4), 24-29. Retrieved from: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a4b1/f4760274c2e5194f19bcc6573d4884aae334.pdf

Judge, T. A., Higgins, C. A., Thoresen, C. J., & Barrick, M. R. (1999). The big five personality traits, general mental ability, and career success across the life span. *Personnel psychology, 52*(3), 621-652. doi: 10.1111/j.1744-6570.1999.tb00174.x

Keith, T. Z., Fine, J. G., Taub, G. E., Reynolds, M. R., & Kranzler, J. H. (2006). Higher order, multisample, confirmatory factor analysis of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Fourth Edition: What does it measure. *School Psychology Review, 35*(1), 108-127. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jodene\_Fine/publication/232489100\_Higher\_order\_multisample\_confirmatory\_factor\_analysis\_of\_the\_Wechsler\_Intelligence\_Scale\_for\_Children--Fourth\_Edition\_What\_does\_it\_measure/links/0912f512475c7c49ec000000.pdf

Kuncel, N. R., Hezlett, S. A., & Ones, D. S. (2004). Academic Performance, Career Potential, Creativity, and Job Performance: Can One Construct Predict Them All? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(1), 148-161. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.86.1.148
> 1 votes

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Tags: measurement, intelligence, iq
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# Question
Title: How does modulation of the activity of an afferent neuron lead to increase in MEP's?
I was confused reading this:

> Another example has been described with the primary motor cortex, where the afferent axonal synaptic input (Figure 1) can be facilitated by anodal tDCS (Rahman et al., 2013), leading to the increase in motor evoked potentials

I interpreted this as saying: a neuron had a greater effect on a downstream neuron because of tDCS, which ultimately lead to more MEP's.

I was confused by the fact that the neuron is an *afferent* neuron. Since efferent neurons relay signal to muscles I figured the activity of efferent neurons would be more important in the generation of MEP's. Is this not the case?

Does greater activity in an afferent neuron lead to greater activity in an efferent neuron, which then leads to more MEP's?

# Answer
> 1 votes
The passage you reference is talking about connections within the motor cortex in the brain. Afferent/efferent can be confusing terminology in the brain.

In the periphery, the terms have clear meanings as you say: efferents go to muscles, afferents carry sensory information back to the CNS. No real controversy there. However, the meaning of "efferent" is just outwards/away from; afferent is the opposite, meaning towards. In the context of the periphery, we consistently use these terms in relation to the CNS: efferents go outwards relative to the CNS, afferents go towards. If the terms are used in the spinal cord, the convention is to relate to the brain: afferents are signals heading towards the brain, efferents are heading towards the spinal cord (and then likely to the muscles next).

Within cortex, you're already in the brain, so it makes little sense to talk about afferents or efferents relative to the brain: we are already in the brain so neither makes sense unless you are talking about cells that specifically project outside the brain. Instead, we use the terms *with respect to whatever structure we are in*. Confusingly, that means nearly every axon in the brain is simultaneously both an afferent and an efferent, it's all a matter of perspective. If you are studying thalamus, you could refer to efferents projecting to cortex; your friend studying neocortex could refer to afferents projecting from thalamus. They could be the very same axons.

In the Rahman et al 2013 paper that your link is referring to, they are talking from the perspective of *cells in motor cortex*, and when they refer to *afferents* they mean *axons projecting to a cell in motor cortex*. Really, they almost could have dropped the word "afferent" and just said "axon" throughout the whole paper; probably the only reason they used the term is because they are *not* talking about descending axons leaving motor cortex headed towards the brainstem/spinal cord, they are talking about axons terminating on cells in cortex.

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Rahman, A., Reato, D., Arlotti, M., Gasca, F., Datta, A., Parra, L. C., & Bikson, M. (2013). Cellular effects of acute direct current stimulation: somatic and synaptic terminal effects. The Journal of physiology, 591(10), 2563-2578.

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Tags: neuroscience, motor, tdcs
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# Question
Title: how to find out the references of various languages of EMI-2 (exercise motivation inventory-2)
I found a website which included the questionnaires of Exercise Motivation Inventory-2 with various languages (EMI-2; http://pages.bangor.ac.uk/~pes004/exercise\_motivation/emi/emi-2.htm) such as Arabic ( ), Brazilian (Guedes, Legnani, & Legnani, 2012), Dutch ( ), French ( ), German ( ), Italian ( ), Persian ( ), Polish ( ), Portuguese ( ), Spanish (Capdevila, 1999).

1) How can I find out all the references in blanket. 2) alternatively, how to make quotation to indicate there are various languages available in EMI-2.

Thanks a lot

# Answer
> 0 votes
## For question 1 - How can I find out all the references in blanket.

This will be very difficult if you cannot read and understand the language yourself. If you can, then Google Scholar can possibly be of help. The problem comes when you don't understand the language.

The only one you can easily reference is the Spanish one as the APA reference was provided by the bangor.ac.uk website you referred to. That is of course

> Capdevila, LL. (1999). *Actividad Física y Estilo de vida saludable*. Terrassa: Cardellach, S.A.

Searching `Agnieszka Zajac emi-2` to find the Polish version in Google Scholar as an example gives one paper by Zajac and that is in English (Zajac & Schier, 2011), yet it isn't a paper on a Polish version of EMI-2.

Searching for just the name gives lots of papers in Polish, which without being able to understand the language, you cannot ascertain which one provides a Polish version of the EMI-2.

You then have the alternative as asked in question 2

> how to make quotation to indicate there are various languages available in EMI-2.

## For question 2

This depends on the referencing style you prefer or are required to use. Using the APA referencing style preferred here on this site you could provide the following

Markland, D. (2007). *The Exercise Motivations Inventory: The EMI-2.* Retrieved from: http://pages.bangor.ac.uk/~pes004/exercise\_motivation/emi/emi-2.htm Non-English retrieved from: http://pages.bangor.ac.uk/~pes004/exercise\_motivation/emi/foreign.htm

That way, the author's disclaimer is available whereby he points out that

> I cannot guarantee the accuracy of the translations (because I don't speak the languages well enough, if at all!). Nor can I vouch for the psychometric properties of the translated versions. Authors' names are supplied and they may be able to provide information on the validity and reliability of their versions.

## References

Zajac, A. U., & Schier, K. (2011). Body image dysphoria and motivation to exercise: A study of Canadian and Polish women participating in yoga or aerobics. *Archives of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, 4*, 67-72. Free PDF: http://www.archivespp.pl/uploads/images/2011\_13\_4/Zajac67\_APP\_4\_2011.pdf

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Tags: motivation
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# Question
Title: Asking for illogical things to make extreme views normal?
A couple of months back I was reading an article about how politicians were asking to make decisions that are way beyond possible (name it unreasonable, unacceptable, illogical) just as a medium of getting extreme views to become (to be seen as) normal and/or acceptable. What is the name of this effect?

# Answer
It is a concept called "Overton Window". I finally found the article. It is not an effect though:

> There’s a concept in political theory developed by Joseph P. Overton which suggests that there’s a “window” of acceptable ideas and policy proposals in public discourse. Everything inside the window is normal and expected, while everything outside the window is radical, ridiculous, or unthinkable. And Overton argued that the easiest way to move that window was to force people to consider ideas at the extremes, as far away from the window as possible. Because forcing people to consider an unthinkable idea, even if they rejected it, would make all less extreme ideas seem acceptable by comparison -- it would move the “window” slowly in that direction.
> 1 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, decision-making, language
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# Question
Title: Amount of noise in (the recognisable definition of) an ERP
As I understand it, ERPs can be reliably identified only after the noise (inherent to EEG signals, regardless of the task used to evoke the response) has been largely removed, which is done by averaging across multiple repetitions. The ERP in that case is a recognisable-enough pattern in the EEG signal that it can be reliably pointed out in a graph of the averaged trials, for several electrodes, for instance:

Question #1: if the averaging method is trustworthy enough - assuming enough-many reptitions - to make noise components cancel each other out while leaving reliable effects still in, then why are other *non-zero* sections of (ripples in) the EEG signal also not defined as ERPs, with some attached meaning (e.g. response to some cognitive task), since they have, after all, survived the same denoising procedure? It would make sense to trust the EEG signal to really not reflect any effect when the intercept (y) is zero. However, in most EEG plots this seems to (very conveniently!) only happen at the t=0 point. The signal then becomes non-zero but only part of is acknowledged as an ERP, whereas the rest seems to be considered noise even though the plotted signal has been denoised.

**EDIT: Question #2: why do such ERP plots - obtained by averaging across repetitions and across subjects - never (in my experience) show a confidence band to show the extent of that cross-repetition/-subject variability? Would that information not be of interest?**

# Answer
> 3 votes
Averaging does not perfectly remove the noise. Assuming the signal is perfectly correlated across repetitions/sweeps/trials and the noise is independent, than doing from 1 to 2 sweeps will increase the SNR by 3 dB (i.e., decrease the noise by 1/2), Every doubling in the number of sweeps increases the SNR by 3 dB so that after 1024 sweeps the SNR has improved by at most 30 dB. This means that after averaging there is a minimum magnitude required for a peak/notch to be considered statistically reliable. Any ripples with smaller magnitudes are ignored since they are not statistically reliable.

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Tags: eeg
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title: Yes-No question in 2AFC staircase test

text:
# Question
Title: Yes-No question in 2AFC staircase test
I understand the task of a 2AFC test is to select one of the two stimuli presented (e.g. the stronger one), whereas in Yes-No test there is only one stimulus presented. But is it ok to ask a Yes-No question (e.g. was there a difference between A and B?) in a test with 2 stimuli? and can it still be called a 2AFC test? (Or is it valid to do Yes-No test with two stimuli?)

I am asking this with regard to a threshold test using a 2AFC transformed staircase (2 down 1 up procedure). It'd be a lot easier for subject to respond whether there was a perceivable difference between two stimuli rather than having to choose the stronger one. As my main interest is to see just noticeable difference, which is stronger is not of a concern. However, I guess there must be a specific reason why one stimulus has to be chosen over the other in a 2AFC test (re bias and sensitivity?). And I wonder what would be the implication of using a Yes-No question instead.

Many thanks in advance for your answers.

# Answer
Lets introduce some notation. Lets $S\_i$, with $i = 1 ,2$, represents the different stimulus classes and $R\_j$, with $j = 1, 2$, represents the different responses. In a *one-interval* task$^1$, $S\_1$ is presented half the time and $S\_2$ is presented half the time. In a typical two-interval task, stimulus $U\_1 = \<S\_1,S\_2\>$ is presented half the time and and $U\_2 = \<S\_2,S\_1\>$ is presented the other half.

The responses $R\_1$/$R\_2$ can be yes/no, a/b, up/down, or anything you want and it does not matter in either the one or two interval cases. In the two interval case, it is just as valid to ask *did the first interval contain the signal: YES -- NO?* as *which interval contained the signal: 1 -- 2?*

With a transformed staircase, you might run into problems. It is not clear exactly what you are proposing to do. If you always present $U\_1$, or present $U\_1$ half the time and $U\_2$ the other half, then the response that causes you to increase the difference between $S\_1$ and $S\_2$ would always be $R\_j$ (with whatever $j$ you arbitrarily choose based on your labeling of the responses). To get around this you could present some *catch trials* with $\<S\_1, S\_1\>$ and maybe even some $\<S\_2, S\_2\>$, but what happens if you get unlucky and get a bunch of $\<S\_1, S\_1\>$ trials in a row. You will likely keep reducing the difference between $S\_1$ and $S\_2$, but that is strange since the *signal* level is not relevant in the catch trials.

While you can probably get away with it, there are likely better procedures/methods (e.g., dual pair comparison)

$^1$ I study audition so am used to talking about temporal intervals while sometimes in vision multiple stimuli are presented across different regions of the visual field. From a signal detection vantage, it doesn't matter.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience, psychophysics
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# Question
Title: If a specific neuron is present in my brain, will it be present in another person's brain?
For example if I have a neuron cell that fires when I say the letter 'A' and is located at a specific place in my brain, will another person have that cell at the exact same place and will it fire when he/she says 'A'?

# Answer
No, unless you are a *C. elegans* (or have a similarly simple nervous system), and even then maybe not quite.

Wild-type *C. elegans* has exactly 302 neurons and they are the same neurons in different members of the species. However, even then, learning can change their nervous system so that it isn't exactly identical in two individuals.

Mammals including humans, however, have brains that are much more shaped by experience and learning. Only the general structure is the same, and even that differs somewhat. It has even been shown that different parts of the brain can be different sizes in individuals with different occupations (see Maguire et al., 2000, for example).

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Maguire, E. A., Gadian, D. G., Johnsrude, I. S., Good, C. D., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S., & Frith, C. D. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(8), 4398-4403.

White, J. G., Southgate, E., Thomson, J. N., & Brenner, S. (1986). The structure of the nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci, 314(1165), 1-340.
> 7 votes

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Tags: neuroscience
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# Question
Title: What's that vulnerability/weakness of human psychology which is consciously/subconsciously utilized by politicians or people with authority/fame?
Below is just an example:

I am from India and I remember that we were promised by our PM, Narendra Modi, that he would bring all the black money from Swiss banks and he will deposit around 15 lac INR into every Indian citizen's account.

Like this, he made a lot of promises. He said "good days will come" in 2014 and most of these promises are have not yet been fulfilled, but still most of the people are highly impressed by him.

I know that he is a good orator, but what I don't know is, what is the weakness of "Being impressed and convinced and remain the same over the time" is called? And why sometimes the realization takes time to come?

# Answer
> 1 votes
I think that one of the reason people believe in those things is that they are those who prefer to give part of their lives into other people's hands rather than take care of it by themselves. In other words, they prefer to be given a fish instead of a rod so when they hear 'I will give you money' they just vote for them blindly believing this is going to happen. Other reasons might include the rule called 'birds of a feather flock together'. Some people are attracted to people who voice cenrtain opions to which they tend to incline. I would also agree with @user3169 who said that some people simply believe in people in positions of authorities and struggle to act against them. In order to dig into more details in this topic you might want to watch Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures available on YouTube.

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Tags: social-psychology
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# Question
Title: How are the brains of mathematicians different from typical people?
As a biomedical sciences student who also minors in Mathematics, I am often amazed by some of my classmates who really appear to be born for Mathematics (with regards to both their abilities and passions). Is there any research from a psychology/neuroscience perspective that looks at how the brains of these exceptional individuals (or indeed someone who likes Mathematics) function differently to typical individuals?

If indeed there is not systemic evidence showing their brains are different, is there a systematic way we can describe how they view the world differently from people not trained in Mathematics?

# Answer
> 5 votes
### Psychology

The first major source I would go to is the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY). It is a major longitudinal study following several cohorts of mathematically talented individuals. There are many publications regarding their interests, talents, life paths, achievements, et cetera. The study is headed by Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski.

If you could only read one article describing their psychology, I would refer to Lubinski's review article of 100 years of findings.

Lubinski (2016). From Terman to Today: A Century of Findings on Intellectual Precocity

However, there are many interesting publications from the study, and if you're interested I recommend further looking at their publications.

### Neuroscience

Historically, neuroscience as a field has suffered a lot from small sample size studies (Button, Ioannidis, et al (2013)), and only in recent years do we get really large scale studies. I personally don't know of any findings that compare mathematicians with non-mathematicians that have sufficient power.

The closest thing I know of to what you're asking, is Richard Haier's book *"The Neuroscience of Intelligence"* which summarizes what we know and don't know about "intelligent" brains. He emphasizes that no single study is definitive, and that no story about the brain is simple. I recognize that just "intelligence" is not precisely what you asked, but I still think you would find it relevant to what you're curious about.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I'm not aware of any comparative study between mathematicians and normal human but there is some research on professional mathematicians:

Stanislas Dehaene has done some research on how the brain of professional mathematicians work, specifically a study suggestion that mathematical reasonings does not rely heavily on language:

https://www.pnas.org/content/113/18/4909.short

They have also compared humans and monkeys doing math:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215007290

Finally, there is a work by Semir Zeki on how the mathematician's brain find beauty in math:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00068/full

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Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, learning
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# Question
Title: How does the Forgetting curve change after repeated exposure to the same item we would like to memorise?
There has been a long debate going on on the actual form of the *Forgetting curve*, but my question will be about its change when we review a previously memorised fact - Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to find too much information (or perhaps I used wrong terms) on this topic.

Maybe the most up-to-date and least divisive research paper on the topic of the actual form of the Forgetting curve would be *Averell, L., & Heathcote, A. (2011). The form of the forgetting curve and the fate of memories. Journal of Mathematical Psychology*, which I have seen referenced here multiple times. According to it the shape of the curve is best described as $$R(t) = a + (1-a)\*b\*(1+t)^{-β}$$ which would yield $1$ at $t=0$ if the encoding happened without a problem (which we assume did). My concrete question would be that how the three parameter change after repeated exposure to the fact (where we assume that at this specific $t\_r$ the retention increases to $1$ again). I think it is fair to assume that it is going to be yet another curve describable with a Power function starting at $t\_r$ which should have a higher asymptote as the original function.

A picture (although not scientific nor correct in terms of the actual form) illustrating my question has been already posted here at How are these review-forgetting curve calculated?, although for different purposes than mine.

# Answer
Currently, I am working on various demonstration graphs of various spacing effect algorithms. From the research it seems like two of the parameters exist to constrain the outputted values...

> The parameters a and b are also assumed bounded between zero and one, and hence R(t) is similarly bounded, which must necessarily be the case as R(t) is a probability. Enforcing this bound is important as otherwise data fits can be inflated (see Navarro, Pitt, & Myung, 2004, for further discussion).

I think Ebbinghaus' original function R(t) = e ^ -(t/s) (see this thread) can more easily explain things. t is time and s is the strength of the memory. After every review, s increases. If you plot this out, you see that if you increase s, the forgetting curve function flattens out.
> 1 votes

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Tags: memory
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# Question
Title: Composer Thomas Schoenberger's Sophia Musik effect on the brain?
Thomas Schoenberger claims his 'Sophia Musik' (the Ultimate Baby CDs) hav many beneficial effects on the brain. Are you aware of this prolific composer and have any advice regarding his musical claims?

# Answer
Ok. After some additional information has come to light in the comments - initially from @StevenJeuris and through further assistance from @Eff - things look a little different.

Although there was an accepted phenomenon called the *Mozart Effect* (Rauscher, et al. 1993), the term *Schoenberger Effect* was coined by Thomas Schoenberger himself and there are no studies I can find to back his claims. The *Mozart Effect* was debunked through a 16 year meta-analysis by Pietschnig, et al. (2010) and so the chances of the *Schoenberger Effect* being valid are slim in my view.

Thomas Schoenberger's blog article titled Music for Infants states that he

> was inspired to write music for infants with the birth of his son, Wolfgang. Schoenberger’s work for infants is composed in the style of musical compositions shown to stimulate the portion of the child’s brain associated with special skills such as music, mathematics, and chess.

The CD cover image provided in the article describes the effect as the *Schoenberger Effect* and claims to be endorsed by Stevanne Auerbach, also known as Dr. Toy

Looking at the *Schoenberger Effect*, there is a Cision PRWeb article (Shaw, 2002) which links this term to the *Mozart Effect*

> Back in 1993, U.C. Irvine professor Gordan Shaw started the trend when both He and Dr. Helen Raucher coined the term "Mozart Effect" to describe the powerful effect \[certain\] classical music has in neural development of infants and babies. Since then, "Mozart Effect" products have glutted the baby market, with most of these products having no connection with the actual research done by Raucher and Shaw.

See Rauscher, et al. (1993) for details on their study.

Further into Shaw (2002), he states that the Ultimate Baby CD became an underground best seller largely through word of mouth

> which lends credibility to the "Schoenberger Effect" phenomenon. After all, if mother's swear by it's effects on their own children, there must be some type of reaction present. I listened to the Cd several times and was impressed with the "Bach meets Mozart" quality of the pieces. It's obvious that Schoenberger has tremendous talent as a melodic composer. It' also clear that something is going on with this music that separates it from the rest of the Mozart Effect products. This Cd appears to have some effect on babies. What exactly that effect is remains to be diagnosed by further scientific studies.

When you couple this with, Pietschnig, et al. (2010) who said

> \[F\]ormal tests yielded evidence for confounding publication bias, requiring downward correction of effects. The central finding of the present paper however, is certainly the noticeably higher overall effect in studies performed by Rauscher and colleagues than in studies performed by other researchers, indicating systematically moderating effects of lab affiliation. On the whole, there is little evidence left for a specific, performance-enhancing Mozart effect.

it seems that although there maybe anecdotal evidence for it's effects, the idea that music can have positive effects on infant neural development does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.

## References

Pietschnig, J., Voracek, M., & Formann, A. K. (2010). Mozart effect–Shmozart effect: A meta-analysis. *Intelligence, 38*(3), 314-323. doi: 10.1016/j.intell.2010.03.001

Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L., & Ky, C. N. (1993). Music and spatial task performance. *Nature, 365*(6447), 611. doi: 10.1038/365611a0 pmid: 8413624

Shaw, F. (2002). *The mysterious "Schoenberger effect" Fact or fiction?* Retrieved from: https://www.prweb.com/releases/2002/12/prweb52834.htm
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive
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# Question
Title: Is is possible to "delete" a memory permanently?
If cognitive memory is compared to computer memory, then is it possible to purposefully and permanently forget a specific memory, using known technologies and methodologies?

# Answer
> 2 votes
There is still much that is not completely understood about the process of memory and forgetfulness, and the following is what I have been able to find out.

It is understoood that physiologically, the establishment of long-term memory involves a process of physical changes in the structure of neurons (or nerve cells) and their synapses in the brain, through a process known as long-term potentiation (LTP). (Mastin, 2018; Science Direct, 2018a).

Short-term memory can become long-term memory through the process of consolidation, involving rehearsal and meaningful association (strengthening the physical structure of neurons and their synapses). Unlike short-term memory (which relies mostly on an acoustic, and to a lesser extent a visual, code for storing information), long-term memory encodes information for storage semantically (i.e. based on meaning and association).

The opposite to LTP is long-term depression (LTD) (Dharani, 2015), whereby the neuronal and synaptic structures are weakened, and forgetfulness develops, after a certain triggering activity. (Science Direct, 2018b).

There are several forms of LTP and LTD classified by their mechanisms and their mode of induction (Hammond, et al. 2015), and LTD can be temporary or permanent.

> LTD synergistically functions with long-term potentiation (LTP) to generate a balanced, stable memory mechanism. Although LTP plays a major role in the associative type of learning that occurs in the hippocampus and neocortex, LTD is a major player in the error-driven learning that occurs in the cerebellar cortex. Recent studies have revealed complex signal transduction processes underlying LTD. In the long run, LTD may lead to a loss of synapses, or to preservation as silent synapses that have recently been found to prevail in the cerebellar cortex (Ito, 2009).

To answer your question

> is it possible to purposefully and permanently forget a specific memory

It seems possible, and Hammond, et al. (2015) discusses induction of LTD, however induction of LTD to forget a specific memory would be impossible at this present time that I can find.

## References

Dharani, K. (2015). Chapter 3 - Memory. *The Biology of Thought: A Neuronal Mechanism in the Generation of Thought–A New Molecular Model* p.53-74. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-800900-0.00003-8

Hammond, C., Goaillard, J-M., Debanne, D. & Gaiarsa, J-L. (2015). Chapter 18 - Synaptic Plasticity. *Cellular and Molecular Neurophysiology (Fourth edition)* p361-389. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-397032-9.00018-2

Ito, M. (2009). Long-Term Depression: Cerebellum. *Encyclopedia of Neuroscience*, p533-539. doi: 10.1016/B978-008045046-9.00807-X

Mastin, L. (2018). *Long-Term Memory* \[Online\]
Retreived from: http://www.human-memory.net/types\_long.html

Science Direct (2018a). *Long Term Potentiation* \[Online\]
Retreived from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/long-term-potentiation

Science Direct (2018b). *Long Term Depression* \[Online\]
Retreived from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/long-term-depression

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Tags: neuroscience, learning, memory
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# Question
Title: How can depression and fear be effectively managed in people who know they will die soon?
Are there any efficient ways to overcome the fear and depression before death (supposing you know you are going to die soon) ?

# Answer
I'm no expert on imminent death handling but I have some concepts to share. My suggestions are general suggestions that don't only apply for this scenario but that can be applied more generally, including that scenario.

Overcoming fear of death already is not easy, having to do it in an expedited fashion is even more challenging.

Fear of death comes from resistance to it, there are a lot of books that teach how to surrender to it to drop all resistance and the fear of death with it.

I would recommend reading about "impermanence" in Buddhism, the "dying before you die" concept, "the power of now", "spiritual enlightenment".

Those family of books on "spiritual enlightenment" and "power of now" teach you how to surrender and not resist to things you can't control.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Psychedelic assisted therapy seems to shows surprising promise for this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/magazine/how-psychedelic-drugs-can-help-patients-face-death.html

https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mind-Consciousness-Transcendence/dp/1594204225/ref=sr\_1\_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1545147536&sr=8-3&keywords=how+to+change+your+mind
> 0 votes

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Tags: depression, fear
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title: System 1 thinking and ADHD

text:
# Question
Title: System 1 thinking and ADHD
I'm interested in learning if there is any connection between System 1/System 2 thinking and ADHD. The former is a theory about the process underlying decision making, and the latter is a mental disorder. Thus defined, the two do not seem related. But there appear to be similar behavioral manifestations between the two.

My question is: **Do individuals with ADHD rely more on System 1 thinking?** Relatedly, I would also like to know if tests for ADHD (in particular T.O.V.A.) are a valid means of measuring the extent to which an individual relies on System 1 thinking.

Pointers to the relevant literature would be especially appreciated.

# Answer
> 4 votes
I think there's very likely a connection between the two, but not a direct one.

The first difficulty will be visible when you dig into the literature on Dual Process Theory — that's the overarching theory that describes what is commonly referred to as System 1/System 2. The long list of descriptors in the table on that Wikipedia page will hint at the problem: variations on the theory have been used to explain so much that it has been difficult for researchers to agree on a neurological basis.

Two good academic articles:

Keith Stanovich and Richard West coined the "System 1/System 2" term in a 2000 paper: Individual difference in reasoning: implications for the rationality debate? in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, which was accompanied by a broad response of peer comments.

A dozen years later, Jonathan Evans and Stanovich wrote Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition: Advancing the Debate. There are undoubtedly important papers which are more recent, but I think what you'll discover is that the theory, while useful, is controversial.

The connection that bridges the two probably resides in *Executive Function*. Just to pull a paragraph from a paper that illustrates this:

> The dual-process theory suggests that less efficient dopamine-mediated reinforcement processes and deficient extinction of previously reinforced behavior may explain behavioral changes often described as poor executive functions or as response disinhibition.

That invocation of a dual-process theory probably won't sound familiar to anyone whose exposure to the theory was by way of Kahneman's book, but you can see that the connection is via executive functions.

If you amend your search to connections between Executive Function and ADHD, you'll hit pay dirt quite quickly. A good article to start with is Thomas Brown's ADD/ADHD and Impaired Executive Function in Clinical Practice (2008).

And it becomes fairly clear that there *probably* is a connection: ADHD probably interferes with either or both of System 1 or System 2. But which, and how?

Getting to your explicit question: *Do individuals with ADHD rely more on System 1 thinking?* Since System 1 thinking is, broadly speaking, subconscious, the answer is probably not. Maybe a little. It seems more likely (to me) that ADHD shifts the focus of thinking in ways that, perhaps, disconnects some System 1 processing from the System 2 thinking which we might expect to have followed it, but that doesn't mean that less System 2 thinking is taking place. A very different hypothesis could assert that some System 1 process is degraded, leading to a larger amount of poorly directed System 2 thinking. There doesn't seem to be much research targeting this question yet.

With respect to the Test of Variables of Attention, note this text from the "About" page:

> The duration of testing is a significant factor, since subjects who are older and more intelligent can compensate for mild or moderate attention problems for 5, 10, even 15 minutes.

That word "compensate" should give you pause. Is it plausible that some automatic System 1 response is detecting attentional drift and correcting it? Or that, with age, some subjects will have compensated by consciously directing (System 2) themselves to refocus?

The 2013 blog post you link to is interesting, but appears to be a little haphazard. The blogger seems to believe that a fast or "global thinker" could trigger a false-positive for ADHD. I'd suggest looking into the research connecting ADHD and high IQ. There's not too much of it, but it is interesting. Two articles you might start with: Executive Function Impairments in High IQ Adults With ADHD (2009) (although the focus is on adults, not children) or Co-Occurrence of ADHD and High IQ (2010).

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Tags: reference-request, decision-making, adhd
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# Question
Title: To what category of optical illusions does this image belong?
To what class of optical illusions does the below image belong? The diagonal lines are parallel, but because of the context, the longer of the two appears bent.

# Answer
> 3 votes
> To what category of optical illusions does this image belong?

This appears to be a modified Hering illusion or rather it seems to rely on the same principle:

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License: Wikipedia 2018.

> There are several possible explanations for why perceptual distortion produced by the radiating pattern. The illusion was ascribed by Hering to an overestimation of the angle made at the points of intersection. If true, then the straightness of the parallel lines yields to that of the radiating lines, implying that there is a hierarchical ordering among components of such illusion. Others have suggested that angle overestimation results from lateral inhibition in visual cortex, while others have postulated a bias inherent in extrapolating 3D angle information from 2D projections.

The modification in the case of your example with the radiant part being at the corner where the vertical rises from the tip of the left hand parallel line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hering\_illusion

That being said, see Ames room illusion for comparison of a superficially similar setup.

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Tags: optical-illusion
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# Question
Title: The relationship on deja vu, dream and retrocausality?
In quantum physics, there is a topic on something called retrocausality, which addresses whether the future can affect the present and whether the present can affect the past.

In terms of deja vu and dreams, are they the result of future information being transferred to the present/past?

Actually, I'm wondering whether psychology and quantum physic are related in any way.

# Answer
**Short answer**
Déjà vu and dreaming are closely related to memory and memory formation. However, they have nothing to do with future events. The brain cannot recall what it never has processed in the past.

**Background**
Déjà vu is thought to be related to the tip-of-the-tongue feeling, in the sense that it is a memory phenomenon. It can occur when someone encounters a scenario that’s similar to an actual memory, but they fail to recall the memory. In other words, it's not an actual memory but an erroneous retrieval of *a* memory, if you like (sources: PsychCentral & New Scientist).

Dreams are basically stories and images our mind creates while we sleep. It has been proposed that dreams reflect biological processes of long-term memory consolidation. Consolidation strengthens the neural representations of recent events (*i.e.*, their memories) and embeds these new memory fragments into older, existing memories. This also maintains the stability of existing memory representations in the face of subsequent experiences (Payne & Nadel, 2004). In sleeping rodents, for example, neurons in the hippocampus fire in patterns remarkably similar to those recorded during a previous maze-running session—almost as if the animals replay the experience in their sleep (source: Science Magazine).

In all, déjà vu and dreaming are indeed closely related to memory, and memory formation. However, they have nothing to do with future events. The brain cannot recall what never has perceived in the past. Hence, déjà vu experiences and dreams have nothing to do with what the future may bring, other than cases of pure coincidence.

<sub>**Reference**
**-** Payne & Nadel, *Learn Mem* (2004); **11**(6): 671–8</sub>
> 2 votes

# Answer
> Actually, I'm wondering whether psychology and quantum physic are related in any way.

There's no conclusive evidence insofar that quantum processes play a distinctive role in brain, although some hypothesis or another typically relating qubits (or entanglement) to consciousness seems to endure on the fringes.

Note that retrocausality is fringy even without involving the brain, as in not being strictly necessary to formulate entanglement.
> 0 votes

# Answer
**Part 1**

> I'm wondering whether psychology and quantum physic are related in any way.

One possible connection between psychology & quantum mechanics (QM; also known as quantum physics, quantum theory, the wave mechanical model, or matrix mechanics) is quantum cognition:

> Quantum cognition is an emerging field which applies the mathematical formalism of quantum theory to model cognitive phenomena such as information processing by the human brain, language, decision making, human memory, concepts and conceptual reasoning, human judgment, and perception.

From Preparing a (quantum) belief system:

> In quantum cognition, the system of interest is the decision-maker’s mental representation of the world. It is represented by a cognitive state. This representation of the world is modelled as a quantumlike system so the decision relevant uncertainty is of non-classical (quantum) nature. - pg.2

**Part 2**

> When a reporter asked Asher if quantum teleportation could teleport the soul as well as the body, Asher answered, characteristically, “No, not the body, just the soul.” -Source (pdf)

If at some point in the future we build tachyonic antitelephones (or something equivalent), it might be *hypothetically* possible to communicate backwards in time via déjà vu and dreaming since both are subjective (eg. "déjà vu is a feeling" & "dreams are the stories the brain tells during sleep" - which is to say they are not objects in the sense that chairs or cars or other *physical* things are).
> 0 votes

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Tags: dreams, brain
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# Question
Title: Can a person with delusions completely acknowledge their delusions
I wanted to ask a question for a story I'm writing;

Can a person with delusions completely acknowledge that they have delusions? For example, if someone claims that for a long time he believed certain crucial things about his life to be true (possible things, nothing bizarre; Like his parents being dead and then seeing them at home, him going to a certain school but the school doesn't exist and he actually went to an entirely different one etc.) and then was proven otherwise.

He has no fixations to his previous believes, he's completely open to the possibility of him not being able to differentiate reality (He was open the second he suspected something to be awry).

Would he still fall under the delusional category? If not would it at least be considered an *unordinary* case?

# Answer
The short answer to your question *Can a person with delusions completely acknowledge their delusions* is yes. But it depends.

There are quite a few psychological disorders that have symptoms of delusion or hallucination.

Bentall et al. (2009) took a look at the structure of paranoid delusions. They concluded that emotion related and cognitive processes are involved in paranoid delusions of participants.

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I think that a more complex answer to your question is that in the way you have described, the delusions would likely have been attempted to be shattered by loved ones and other people that are involved in the person with delusions life.

Hallucinations can be symptoms of many psychological disorders such as:

This article may be very helpful to your story, the authors discuss delusional thought among non clinical patients i.e., people with no discernible psychological disorder (Freeman, 2006).

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References:

Bentall, R. P., Rowse, G., Shryane, N., Kinderman, P., Howard, R., Blackwood, N., ... & Corcoran, R. (2009). The cognitive and affective structure of paranoid delusions: a transdiagnostic investigation of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and depression. *Archives of general psychiatry, 66*(3), 236-247. doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2009.1

Black D. W. & Nasrallah A. (1989). Hallucinations and Delusions in 1,715 Patients with Unipolar and Bipolar Affective Disorders. *Psychopathology 22*(1), 28-34. doi: 10.1159/000284576

Freeman, D. (2006). Delusions in the nonclinical population *Current Psychiatry Reports 8*(3), 191-204. doi: 10.1007/s11920-006-0023-1

Scott, J. G., Nurcombe, B., Sheridan, J. & McFarland M. (2007) Hallucinations in adolescents with post-traumatic stress disorder and psychotic disorder, *Australasian Psychiatry, 15*(1), 44-48, DOI: 10.1080/10398560601083084

Signer, S. F., Cummings, J. L., & Benson, D. F. (1989). Delusions and mood disorders in patients with chronic aphasia. *The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 1*(1), 40-45. doi: 10.1176/jnp.1.1.40
> 3 votes

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Tags: psychiatry, neurology, schizophrenia, hallucinations, psychosis
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# Question
Title: Are cognitive flexibility and interference control the same thing?
Interference control requires being able to inhibit irrelevant stimulI ie shift flexibily from something you are doing and back into it in the presence of competing stimulus. Is it the same as Cognitive Flexibility? Or are they different?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Interference control is the ability to suppress irrelevant information (Gazzaniga, Ivry & Mangun, 2014). For example, ignoring the sound of the dishwasher in the other room while you are watching a TV show. Cognitive flexibility is the ability to switch between thinking about two (or more) different concepts (Scott, 1962). Cognitive flexibility is further divided into task switching (an unconscious behaviour) and cognitive switching (a conscious behaviour). Interference control and cognitive flexibility are **different** processes that are grouped under the wide range of functions associated with cognitive control.

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References

Gazzaniga, M. S., Ivry, R. B., & Mangun, G. R. (2014). Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind (4th Ed.) New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Scott, William A. (1962). Cognitive complexity and cognitive flexibility. *Sociometry. American Sociological Association*. 25 (4): 405–414. doi:10.2307/2785779. JSTOR 2785779.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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title: Can one learn not to panic? How?

text:
# Question
Title: Can one learn not to panic? How?
It's always impressive to listen to the professionalism of a commercial pilot communicating in a crisis situation, apparently remaining calm and in control in terrifying circumstances, with terrible responsibility. I imagine this occurs because (a) the industry does not promote those who panic to this position and (b) pilots practice a great deal in simulators, learning to cope with crisis calmly.

Am I imagining correctly, here?

To what extent can practice (b) overcome a deficiency in (a) a natural tendency to calmness?

Does practice at staying cool in one field (say, making decisions during play of a fast computer game) transfer to staying cool generally (say, being accosted by an aggressive stranger on the street)?

I read What characterises people who stay calm in crisis situations? and that does relate (a) to calmness in a crisis but I don't think it says anything about (b).

# Answer
> -1 votes
I believe that there is a fundamental flaw in your scenario in that, pilots are not promoted to being a pilot from being something else. Pilots take intensive training courses that **may** include simulation training and **do** include many hours of practice in an actual aeroplane, under supervision of a trained instructor.

To more generally answer your question:

> Can one learn not to panic?

Yes, using behavioural training techniques we can train ourselves, or be trained by others, to respond to situations or stimuli in a different way than is our instinctive reaction.

With the situation you noted about pilots, a trained pilot will have all of the knowledge of how to deal with a situation that they may encounter and will have practiced this knowledge in an applied setting (an actual plane) many times, making the training become the pilots first response to a dangerous situation (Exposure Therapy, and Repetitive Learning are some ways of doing this).

A novel situation can also be trained for. In your scenario, I would suspect that their training would include an emergency checklist type of activity that would then be repeated over and over so that it is ingrained in their memory and behaviours and will also become the pilots first response to a novel dangerous situation.

How to learn not to panic is really all about training your brain to behave in a different way then its instincts tell it to, this may or may not mean that you totally remove the instinctive fear response.

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Tags: learning, decision-making
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title: EEG Equipment For High Schoolers?

text:
# Question
Title: EEG Equipment For High Schoolers?
I am doing a research project for school, and I'm trying to investigate the effectiveness of inhaling lavender oil in reducing anxiety.

I plan to measure the strength of alpha wave activities, as it seems to be commonly accepted as an index for the level of relaxation/anxiety. I may also measure the strength of gamma activity at the T3 location, for Oathes et al. have suggested that the increase in gamma power in that location is associated with worrying (https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.biopsycho.2008.04.005).

(That being said, I know very little about EEG research and will ask about the details of conducting one in another post because this post is about the equipment)

We are in a high school, though a fairly well-resourced one, so our budget isn't too big. Ideally, I would like to obtain a research-grade EEG headset plus the related equipment (e.g. A/D converter) under 1000 dollars, at most 2000 dollars.

So, what are some brands and models that might be suitable for my situation?

Thanks

**Edit:**

I think I might as well ask about the process of analyzing the raw signals here. I've done some searching online, and many people recommended using EEGLAB, a toolbox for MATLAB. So I plan to purchase a MATLAB student license and install the free toolbox. Is that a good idea? If so, do you have any recommendations for resources that I can use to learn about using this tool for data analysis?

# Answer
EEG systems are quite expensive and are far out of the budget you have outlined. There are four points to be made on this matter:

* The most basic "set" I could find produced by Biosemi costs $11,000 and this set doesn't include the caps and bands (electrodes) required for collecting data.
* It is also important that the location of this system be in a soundproof and electromagnetic safe room to ensure there is little interference in data collection.
* There is quite a lot of training required to properly conduct an EEG study and to test participants in a safe and ethical manner.
* Analyzing raw EEG data is also not a simple feat. The level of statistics understanding and software knowledge required for this type of analysis is not usually obtained until graduate-level studies.

As an aside, I am not sure that the question you have is worth the resources needed to test via EEG. For high school level research it would be best to conduct a behavioural study to measure the effects of lavender oil inhalation on anxiety symptoms. There are many available behavioural measures of anxiety that have been tried and tested in the scientific community. It is standard practice to begin with behavioural measures before moving to physiological measures.

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Please note, there is great value in replicating studies. The scientific community often feels pressured to produce novel findings, as new and exciting results may lead to fame and a bigger pay cheque. It is paramount to scientific progress to replicate previous findings as often times novel findings are never replicated and therefore never subjected to "fact checking" (and could therefore not be replicable in the first place, fluke findings do occur). Progress can only be made if we are constantly questioning what we think is right. It would be advisable for a high school level researcher to find a study related to the topic you are interested in and to replicate the methods used in that study in an attempt to find the same results as the original authors. Not only would this be more accessible to you at this level of education, but it will teach you valuable research skills and help improve your understanding of the questions you have.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Lab grade EEG are outside of your budget, however there are available alternatives like Muse, Emotiv or the OpenBCI project which are affordable. With these headset you can get either the raw data or a summary of the signal. Muse software is also quite user friendly, see http://developer.choosemuse.com/tools/

Although the quality of the signal won't be as good as lab EEG headsets, there is some papers showing that the signal is decent and not just noise -as I thought when the came out-, eg. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2017.00109/full , https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7133005

That being said, I agree with Shelby Howlett, trying to replicate a study is probably a great idea for this kind of project. It'd be very informative and a bit less of a headache to come up with the protocol and actually figuring out if you can get anxiety levels from the EEG signal.

**Update for the edit:**

I would strongly encourage you to go for an open source library instead of Matlab, it'd be better experience for learning some coding and it'll resonate more with the current Open Science spirit. There several available, the one I'm familiar with is: MNE, https://github.com/mne-tools/mne-python
> 1 votes

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Tags: eeg
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# Question
Title: Is it ethical to deliberately provide incorrect information to participants in a psychological study?
I've noticed that several psychological studies purport to measure one thing, but once participants enroll, they end up measuring something completely different.

For example, I recently came across a study where participants were told that the study was meant to help create personalized nutrition and exercise programs. The participants were then given fake DNA test results and what was actually measured was their response to the placebo effect of the test results.

What are the ethics of this? Don't such studies make it less likely that people will enroll in such studies in future and degrade the scientific endeavor in general? Is there no way for psychology to make progress without lying to unwitting study-participants.

# Answer
The whole point of these lies is to prevent participants from changing their answers because they want to please the researchers or convey their personal beliefs about a topic.

It is typical to inform participants about the true purpose at the end of the study if this is possible. Other times, studies use purposefully vague language in describing the purpose. The point is to provide enough informed consent for participants to agree to the bounds of what a study will ask of them.

All of these decisions about study design are reviewed by an Institutional Review Board that is in charge of research ethics at an institution. **Yes, these sorts of lies are ethical.**

As far as your specific example, how would you expect a study testing placebo effects to work if you started the study by telling the participants "This is a study about the placebo effect"? - knowing it is a placebo ruins the whole idea of the placebo effect.
> 5 votes

# Answer
In addition to the previous answer, there's also a document called The Belmont Report which describes the ethical principles and guidelines for conducting research involving human subjects.

Oftentimes, it is listed out in the informed consent form that deception will be used in the study, and it is also required to give out an adequate debrief session, during which any deceptions used should be cleared up and the subjects may ask any questions pertaining to the study.
> 1 votes

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Tags: reproducible-research, study-cognitive-sciences, ethics
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# Question
Title: Name this phenomenon: You're shy of doing X because nobody else around you does it
I'm looking for the name of the following phenomenon.

Image this situation:

A teenager is riding a bus. He's thirsty. He has a water bottle in his bag, but he doesn't feel comfortable bringing it out and drinking because "I'll look dumb". (Let's assume nobody else in the bus is drinking.)

(I'd also like to know: (1) Are teenagers more susceptible to this? (2) Does it have to do with self-esteem?)

# Answer
I think the term you are looking for is *social norm*, *peer norm*, or *social expectation*.

Distinguish from *peer pressure*, which is a different phenomena, yet related.

Many researchers have shown that teens are more susceptible to peer pressure (which implies the same for peer norms).

Both relate to self-esteem, and while mostly mentioned as facilitators, there is research out there to show that people with low self-esteem are more susceptible to both.

See, for example:

* Sumter, S.R., Bokhorst, C.L., Steinberg, L. and Westenberg, P.M., 2009. The developmental pattern of resistance to peer influence in adolescence: Will the teenager ever be able to resist?. Journal of adolescence, 32(4), pp.1009-1021.
* Zimmerman, M.A., Copeland, L.A., Shope, J.T. and Dielman, T.E., 1997. A longitudinal study of self-esteem: Implications for adolescent development. Journal of youth and Adolescence, 26(2), pp.117-141.
> 3 votes

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Tags: social-psychology
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# Question
Title: Is there a psychological condition which promotes literal and overly complicated thinking?
Quote from Sheldon Cooper, Big Bang Theory IMDB

> Leonard: You convinced me. Maybe tonight we should sneak in and shampoo her carpet.
> Sheldon: You don't think that crosses the line?
> Leonard: Yes... For God's sake, Sheldon, do I have to... hold up a sarcasm sign every time I open my mouth?
> Sheldon: You have a sarcasm sign?

Some people tend to think very literally and also over-complicate things.

This causes much misunderstanding when communicating with people, especially with the advent of texting, email and social networking, as the verbal and nonverbal cues are absent.

It sometimes causes difficulty when completing tasks, as those with this condition can misinterpret what is required of them. This can be an asset academically. A "misinterpretation" (or better put, a different interpretation) in one way, will, usually mean there is a gain in another aspect.

When someone truly does not understand something, others might think that person is joking. Others may not understand their humor, as he/she will make a joke about something, he/she sees as obvious and will be taken seriously by others.

Another way to describe this "condition" is to use the example of sudokus and cryptic crosswords. Someone might make mistakes in the easy ones, and find the more difficult ones easier to solve, looking for a more complicated solution than the one that was there and already apparent. To solve complex problems is, often, easier than the straightforward and simple.

1. Is this a known condition?
2. What, neurologically, may cause this in the brain?
3. Could this be some form of "retardation"?
4. Are there ways to improve this?

# Answer
> 5 votes
You seem to be describing different ways go about thinking about things in the general description of your question.

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However, I'm going to think about it (ironic, ha) and your specific questions as generally in the context of the title of the topic and as how you first tend to describe it, or I interpreted it at first glance, which is over-complicating or over-analyzing things - which can be very subjective actually. I may be way off in regards to your question though.

> **Is this a known condition?**

I've heard many times in general productivity type books the phrase "paralysis by analysis" used. No formal term I know of unless the other answers have defined/found one. I experience this when I'm not on cogsci to distract me actually, lol.

> **What, neurologically, may cause this in the brain?**

From what I've found in my experience, and to be specific without a citation (hope noone calls me out here), I would say the GABAA-ρ subclass receptors being stimulated or not to the correct intensity. I'll just leave it at that...heh.

> **Could this be some form of "retardation"?**

I'm not sure how you're defining retardation. Retardation, to me, is an extremely serious condition and is very obvious to anyone else - kind of like certain effects of down syndrome.

If you're defining it as an type of physiological state...like if someone was excessively drunk, then I suppose so. I would generally look at it as being defined by the meaning of the words its made up of in Latin:

Wikipedia:

> From Middle English, from Anglo-Norman or Latin, from Anglo-Norman retarder, from Latin retardāre (“to retard”), from re- + tardus (“slow”)

So, "slow thinking" is how I would think it - you seem to explain a phenomenon where too much fast thinking happens at once to the point of confusion or just different ways people go about thinking about things. It seems like retardation would not be a characteristic of what you explain.

> **Are there ways to improve this?**

I'm going to go with a practical answer here.

Writing everything down on paper helps a lot. There was actually a citation I found way back that showed changes in GABA receptor stimulation from this.

Meditation usually helps. Exercise too.

If one wants to be hardcore about it, they could "artificially" try to stimulate their GABAA-ρ subclass receptors.

# Answer
> 5 votes
Literal thinking can be associated with circumstantial thinking, and could be the result of thought 1 or communication disorders:

> Circumstantial thinking
> A type of thought disorder in which each of a series of thoughts seems less closely related to the original thought than the one before it at first, but the patient's thoughts eventually return to the original subject.

Circumstantial thinking can be a symptom of autism, some schizophrenia and schizotypal affects.

The assumption can be made that verbal skills are a prerequisite for effective communication. *(without discussion of the mute or deaf)*

Metaphorical intelligence is inversely linked to literal thinking.

> that the ability to process metaphors functions as a relatively stable individual differences variable, and that those who are “less able” to process metaphors can be said to have a more “literal” thinking style. ... Frozen metaphors are those that are in common use in the language and which are often thought to be treated as single linguistic units by native speakers. Novel metaphors are ones in which ideas are combined in new or unusual ways.

Logical thinking is not linked to creative thinking. Creative thinking is linked with metaphorical thinking.

> Divergent (as opposed to “convergent”) thinking is a relatively old concept, proposed by Guilford (1967). He described the convergent thinker as a person who finds it easy to deal with problems requiring one conventional correct answer, clearly obtainable from the information provided. The divergent thinker, on the other hand, is better able to solve problems requiring the generation of several equally acceptable answers where the emphasis is on the quantity, variety and originality of responses. Those who engage more readily in divergent thinking are more likely to display metaphoric intelligence. 2
>
> Creative thinking (divergent thinking) and critical thinking (convergent thinking) are two powerful aspects of effective thinking 3

A photographic or eidetic memory, is often associated with high intelligence or savant intelligence. There is evidence that suggests that the creation of photographic or eidetic memories is impaired by concurrent verbalisation. An interesting point that the mental processes involving this talent are not only independent from verbal skills, but, potentially, hindered by such. One thing it does reveal, is that verbal skills are not linked to this type of "genius".

> Research has shown that if a person verbalizes during the time he or she is scanning the original picture, this interferes with eidetic image formation.

The same features of simultaneous brilliance with impaired social skills and varying cognitive impairments, are observed with "savants". 4

I think a better question would be, what processes cause literal thinkers, who may be highly intelligent in some ways; to frequently over complicate or misinterpret, seemingly, simple concepts?

Literal and over complicated thinking can be linked with a logical thinker, who lacks creative thought skills. Some of the complications could be the result of interpreting problems literally and missing metaphorical meanings.

1. The Confusing Area of Disturbed Thinking Journal of Personality Assessment
Volume 40, Issue 5, 1976 Preview Access options DOI:10.1207/s15327752jpa4005\_5 Bert Loro
2. Dr. Jeannette Littlemore
English for International Students Unit
University of Birmingham
Birmingham
B15 2TT
U.K.
3. Critical Thinking and the Art of Learning and Living
John F. Kennedy
4. Is there such a thing as a photographic memory? And if so, can it be learned?
Alan Searleman,
Professor of psychology
St. Lawrence University

# Answer
> 3 votes
> Is there a psychological condition which promotes literal and overly complicated thinking?

Yes, I think so... Its called intelligence.

> Is this a known condition?

You want a literal answer? Then "Yes"

> What, neurologically, may cause this in the brain?

Something amiss in the corpus callosum

> Are there ways to improve this?

If you can teach an engineer to write original music, then maybe so.

**Commentary**

This question reminds me of the "Professional Test" where the first question is: How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?

The claim at the end of the test is: "according to the statistics of Andersen Consulting Worldwide, around 90% of the professionals failed the exam. (But most preschoolers got it correct which disproves the theory that most "professionals" have the brains of a four year old :)". Hence the popularity of this test.

I first saw this test over 10yrs ago and have been trying not to overcomplicate things ever since, to little avail however. About 7yrs ago I moved into an apartment and wanted to move the landline phone closer to my pc. So I'm planning how to run the wire up and down walls and across the floor when my friend said "Why don't you buy a $10 cordless phone from walmart and put it where ever you want? Sheesh!". You know I couldn't make this up! No seriously, I really couldn't make this up. I'm way too logical and literal to be that creative. So, am I stupid? Retarded? Autistic? Nah, I'm just a guy. A straight guy and I'm right-handed.

Want to guess the sex of the friend who suggested the cordless phone? Oh and she is straight too.

If you need someone to point out the obvious, find a straight gal or gay man.

Now I'm not saying that a condition can't be made of behavior more extreme than is displayed by your typical guy, and given a name like autism or something else, but it seems to me to be mainly varying degrees of communication between areas of the brain, coupled with overall intelligence, that determine how complicated or simplistic a solution will be.

We all have our areas where we excel. Some folks do well in the arts. My excellence happens to be overcomplicating things and doing extremely well with complicated, boring, mundane problems that would send any artsy person straight to the rubber room. Its ironic how I simplified this one, however. So maybe that's evidence the condition can be improved. ;) Now I'm going to go write a symphony... just as soon as I finish designing this bridge.

**Summary**

In case you missed it, larger corpus callosum is associated with left-handed people, musicians, artists, gay men, and straight women. Tendencies to miss simple solutions and to overcomplicate are associated with right-handed, logical, and engineering types (the antithesis of lefties, musicians, and most engineers are men, etc). Therefore, smaller corpus callosum is associated with overcomplication. That seems simple enough.

Note: Some have a tendency to skim over hyperlinks, I do it too, however these hyperlinks are informative and/or very funny and are essential to understanding my claim.

Another note: Some research has indicated that its not the size of the corpus callosum that matters, just how "connected" it is. For the sake of simplicity in my answer, I used the words "large" and "small".

# Answer
> 1 votes
To the best of my knowledge this is due to neuroplasticity, and the conditioning of the brain. This means that somethings might be considered by some over-complicated which are actually seen as simple by others, such as cryptic crosswords.

Something that do don't address is complicated vs complexity:

> Complex is used to refer to the level of components in a system. If a problem is complex, it means that it has many components. Complexity does not evoke difficulty.
>
> On the other hand, complicated refers to a high level of difficulty. If a problem is complicated, there might be or might not be many parts but it will certainly take a lot of hard work to solve.

Source: What is the difference between “complicated” and “complex”?

# Answer
> 0 votes
In at least one sense, your two conditions can be seen as contradictory: *literal* thinking is intrinsically empirical in nature, and is not *overly complicated*, at least from an analytic perspective.

There's a famous story that illustrates this, involving the pioneering Soviet neuropsychologist Alexander Luria:

> The uncompromising empiricism of traditional indigenous people may explain why they tend to be suspicious of abstract thinking. When the Russian psychologist Alexander Luria (1902–77) tried to test the reasoning skills of a nomadic people in central Asia, they refused to cooperate. For example, Luria gave one man the following information: ‘All bears in the North are white, and a friend who lives in the North has sent me a letter saying that he had seen a bear.’ He then asked the man what the colour of the bear was. The answer may be obvious to us, but the man replied: ‘How should I know? Ask your friend who saw the bear.’ Another man explained, ‘We always speak only of what we see; we don’t talk about what we haven't seen.’

As an aside, this development of increasing abstraction in thinking — away from the literal — as the technology and information densities of our societies have grown is one of the plausible explanations for the Flynn Effect (see this Guardian article)

¹ Not the best of sources, but it’s an old and well-known story.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, abnormal-psychology, personality, problem-solving
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# Question
Title: How long could Henry Molaison keep his memory of the present?
I'm talking about Henry Molaison (HM), the famous memory research patient. I hear that he could converse normally with a researcher until he "got distracted", at which point he no longer remembered ever meeting the researcher.

> Molaison was able to remember information over **short intervals of time.** This was tested in a working memory experiment involving the recall of previously presented numbers; in fact, his performance was no worse than that of control subjects (Smith & Kosslyn, 2007).

**If distractions were avoided, how long could HM focus and remember the present or task at hand?** How long could he talk to researcher before forgetting ever meeting him?

I hear that he was tested for hours. During those tests, did he had to be reminded at some time interval about the test procedure?

# Answer
The original paper describing Patient HM is available online, and makes for fascinating reading: **Scoville, W. B., Milner, B. 1957. Loss of recent memory after bilateral hippocampal lesions. *J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry*. 1957 Feb; 20(1): 11–21.** (Direct PDF)

From page 14:

> This patient has even eaten luncheon in front of one of us (B.M.) without being able to name, a mere half-hour later, a single item of food he had eaten; in fact, he could not remember having eaten luncheon at all. Yet to a casual observer this man seems like a relatively normal individual, since his understanding and reasoning are undiminished.

On page 15, the authors describe the group of subjects with "Severe Memory Defects", which included Patient HM:

> In this category are those patients who since operation appear to forget the incidents of their daily life as fast as they occur. It is interesting that all these patients were able to retain a three-figure number or a pair of unrelated words for several minutes, if care was taken not to distract them in the interval. However, they forgot the instant attention was diverted to a new topic.

There are plenty of other interesting aspects to this paper; I high recommend it. But I don't see any reference to the "thirty seconds" which @BenCole found in Wikipedia.

A followup paper on Patient HM — also well worth reading! — actually specifies that his memory can last indefinitely, yes, as long as he wasn't distracted. See **Squire, Larry R. "The legacy of patient HM for neuroscience." *Neuron* 61.1 (2009): 6-9.**

> \[…\] H.M. had a remarkable capacity for sustained attention, including the ability to retain information for a period of time after it was presented. Thus, he could carry on a conversation, and he exhibited an intact digit span (i.e., the ability to repeat back a string of six or seven digits). Indeed, information remained available so long as it could be actively maintained by rehearsal. For example, H.M. could retain a three-digit number for as long as 15 min by continuous rehearsal, organizing the digits according to an elaborate mnemonic scheme. Yet when his attention was diverted to a new topic, he forgot the whole event.

What I *think* we can infer is that there wasn't a theoretical limit for his attention, but the practical one was pretty severe. I don't recall specific details of how long the "period of time" was, or even how or whether it was explicitly tested, but since he undoubtedly couldn't remember that it was crucial for him to remain attentive, it would have been more of a test of the researchers' ability to keep him away from distraction, not of his own competence.

A more complete history of Patient HM is available at **Dossani, et al. "The legacy of Henry Molaison (1926–2008) and the impact of his bilateral mesial temporal lobe surgery on the study of human memory." *World Neurosurgery* 84.4 (2015): 1127-1135.**, but I'm afraid it isn't open access, so you'll need institutional access to ScienceDirect Journals. I found this detail quite impressive:

> Gabrieli et al. tested Molaison on several aspects of semantic memory, including understanding of the meaning, perception, and pronunciation of words, and showed that semantic memory acquired before the operation was normal compared with that encountered postoperatively. Molaison's inability to collect new semantic information did not affect his ability to carry normal conversations using the words he knew preoperatively. Molaison continued to have a sense of humor and understood complex sentences with ambiguous syntax. Longitudinal studies conducted over a period of 48 years showed consistency in scores obtained on four Wechsler subtests (Information, Comprehension, Similarities, and Vocabulary).

But if you don't have access to that, here are links to three other public bios, found via an image search of Patient HM found in the above article:
> 2 votes

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Tags: memory, long-term-memory, working-memory
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# Question
Title: What is the term for "What has been seen cannot be unseen" in cognitive sciences?
During a discussion with my officemate I told him that I read somewhere that the gas pillar in Carina nebula looks like a cat punching the dog; ever since then, every time my wallpaper slideshow switches to this wallpaper, "cat vs dog" is the first thing that comes to my mind. We were curious whether there is some dedicated terminology for this.

I learned via Google that this is a meme called "What has been seen cannot be unseen", I wonder what is the term for this phenomenon in cognitive science? Like a memory bias during the perception of something? Or it is that people tend to visualize some new concept/picture/term as something they are more familiar with subconsciously?

# Answer
> 12 votes
The most relevant term would be Ironic Processing.

> Ironic processing is the psychological process whereby an individual's deliberate attempts to suppress or avoid certain thoughts (thought suppression) render those thoughts more persistent.

This is a result of a failure of Thought Suppression or more generally Motivated Forgetting. It appears Thought Suppression doesn't work well and generally the attempt to not think about X results in a sudden increase of thoughts about X.

Since you have a sudden increase of thoughts about the "suppressed" thought, you're strengthening retrieval of it, and you might even be conditioning that thought with the reason you don't want to remember it.

# Answer
> 8 votes
Perhaps "visual one-shot learning" is what you're looking for.

Your question reminded me of images like this

,

which typically take first-time viewers some time to figure out, but on second viewing the subject "pops out" immediately, even if considerable time has elapsed.

Here's an even more striking example:

I believe the phenomenon was described in L. Gregory's "The Intelligent Eye" (1970). \[1\] looks like an interesting paper (it's where I got the term "one-shot-visual learning" from) - though I can't seem to figure out how to access the full text.

\[1\] Mogi, K., Sekine, T., & Tamori, Y. (2005). Slow and fast processes in visual "one-shot" learning. Perception, 34, 15-16. URL

# Answer
> -1 votes
An immediate effect comes to my mind, even though the description doesn't exactly describe the problem:

# Hindsight bias

> Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along effect or creeping determinism, is the inclination, after an event has occurred, to see the event as having been predictable, despite there having been little or no objective basis for predicting it.\[1\]\[2\] It is a multifaceted phenomenon that can affect different stages of designs, processes, contexts, and situations.\[3\] Hindsight bias may cause memory distortion, where the recollection and reconstruction of content can lead to false theoretical outcomes. It has been suggested that the effect can cause extreme methodological problems while trying to analyze, understand, and interpret results in experimental studies. A basic example of the hindsight bias is when, after viewing the outcome of a potentially unforeseeable event, a person believes he or she "knew it all along".

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Tags: memory, terminology, perception
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# Question
Title: Day and month of 1980 DSM-III publication
I cannot for the life of me find the exact date -- day, month, year -- for the original DSM-III publication. The Google Citation, Amazon info, APA page, and others only list 1980. Does anyone know? Thanks.

# Answer
At this present moment I cannot find full date information, but looking at a copy of the DSM-III I have found, on the bottom of the 3rd page of the PDF it points out:

> First Printing, February 1980
> Second Printing, May 1980
> 2 votes

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Tags: psychiatry, history-of-psychology, dsm
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# Question
Title: How do we know human brain development stops around age 25?
I've heard this stated as a fact more times than I can keep track of, but I haven't been able to find papers that actually demonstrate this. This seems to be the most cited paper on the topic, but it just claims that maturity of the brain by age 25 is widely established, and cites a CDC paper (reference 5) that does not appear relevant.

To be more specific, I want to know

1. **What exactly do we mean when we say the brain is "finished developing"?** Is that when there are no more changes in volume of gray/white matter? Is it when synaptic pruning levels off?
2. **What is the evidence for this?** What imaging modalities are used? What is the variance in the end-of-development timepoint?

I'm hoping to find a good paper that contains answers to these kinds of questions. My motivation for asking this is that I'm wondering whether this end of development is reflective of a deterministic biological process, or if it is a function of the environment (e.g. most people stop learning and meeting new people as much around 25).

# Answer
1. Based on a review by Kolb et al, 2012, it seems that "the brain is finished developing by 25" refers to the point when synaptic pruning *in the cerebral cortex* levels off, on average. However, the prefrontal cortex, the region most unique to humans and involved in executive function, develops in this way well into the third decade of life.

2. The above review cites a study by Petanjek et al., 2011 that investigates synaptic pruning in the prefrontal cortex by looking at differences in dendritic spine density in tissue samples from autopsies of human subjects ranging in age from 1 week to 91 years. As seen in the figure below, significant pruning is still occurring even by age 40.

So, a critical region of the human brain is definitely *not* finished developing by 25, or even 35.

As for whether this process is biologically "set in stone", I think it's fair to say that is still an open question. Looking at the second figure, there is quite a bit of variance and a relatively small sample size. Moreover, this was necessarily a cross-sectional study since we can only get postmortem tissue samples in human subjects. It is entirely possible that older subjects had more pruning because they lived in a less dynamic environment. Even if we could do longitudinal studies, the question of societal trends influencing learning environment would still remain.

That said, there probably is some degree of biological determinism given that we observe similar trends in other mammals. However, as humans tend to have some of the most gene-environment interactions of all animals, and the prefrontal cortex is the most recently evolved brain region, we can only get limited information from studies in other animals.

Given the importance of the human brain development timeline to policy decisions (see paper cited in the question), I think it's fair to say these questions need more attention.

<sub> Kolb, B., Mychasiuk, R., Muhammad, A., Li, Y., Frost, D. O., & Gibb, R. (2012). Experience and the developing prefrontal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201121251.
Petanjek, Z., Judaš, M., Šimić, G., Rašin, M. R., Uylings, H. B., Rakic, P., & Kostović, I. (2011). Extraordinary neoteny of synaptic spines in the human prefrontal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(32), 13281-13286. </sub>
> 11 votes

# Answer
In the book *The Naked Ape* Desmond Morris (a zoologist and perhaps evolutionary psychologist) says that human brain stops developing when the skull is fully developed, which is around age 25. The reason the skull cannot fully developed until this age (as compared to other animals) is because if it is developed in the uterus of the mother, then she cannot gives birth the child, and thus both will die. The reason for this (as compared to other animals) is because human standing up, so the human female pelvis cannot open enough room to give birth a full-developed infant skull.

Some evidences that he gives supporting this:

* Birthing in human is long and like torture, as compared to other animals. I've watched YouTube clips of giraffe's birth and chimpanzee's birth, and the babies are delivered under 5 minutes, and the mothers don't seem to have pain at all. (The giraffe continues to eat; the chimpanzee rolls around)
* There exists **no single** fossil for a full-developed infant skull, suggesting that any mutation would have definitely died

Some notes:

* My memory may be distorted
* The book is a pop science book, and written in the 60s
> 1 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, neuroimaging, brain-development
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