# Question
Title: What does the following sentence mean? I don't understand what they are referring to when they say "saturating concentrations" and "basal conditions"?
Here is the quote: "Because BH4 is not present in saturating concentrations under basal conditions, it is crucial in regulating TH activity." This is from *Fundamental Neuroscience*, page 121.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I will rewrite the sentence another way that preserves what a believe is the intended meaning:

> There is little enough BH4 under normal conditions such that levels of BH4 are important for TH activity.

BH4 is an enzyme cofactor; in this context they're talking about it used with tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) to make a precursor (L-DOPA) to dopamine.

If there was so much BH4 available at basal (normal) conditions that adding more doesn't speed up TH activity, we can say it's saturated. In that context, BH4 changes don't really regulate TH activity (unless they are huge changes that bring it well below the 'saturated' level).

The sentence you quoted is saying this isn't the case. BH4 isn't present at saturated levels, so you can influence TH activity (and therefore synthesis of L-DOPA) by influencing BH4 concentration.

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Tags: neuroscience
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title: What do you call this fear response?

text:
# Question
Title: What do you call this fear response?
In this video the baby impala does not seem to be exhibiting the classic fear responses of Fight, Flight or Freeze.

Which fear response is this?

https://youtu.be/qWXBNFLUD3A

# Answer
The linked Youtube Video is unavailable but looking at the videos linked by @Fizz it looks like it is a Fawn response. It is one kind of fear response where the stressed individual chooses to be complient with the threatening agent. It is comparable to Stockholm syndrome.

I've read many internet articles on Fawn response in human but I did not found scientific records about fawn response in other animals though.
> 1 votes

# Answer
It's probably not a fear response. Young animals (and human children) sometimes lack it in some contexts. See the controversy with the fear of snakes in children.

Looking at a two similar videos lioness vs impala calf of young lion vs oryx calf however, besides some moments of confusion of the calfs, they do one of two things: face the predator head on (which would work if they had grown horns) or try to suddenly sprint away, which is again not easy for the them to pull off being so young.

So it is a mixture of fight, flight, and probably some confusion as well. There's this notion of learned helplessness but it's a bit of stretch to apply it to any of those videos, in my opinion.
> 0 votes

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Tags: emotion
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title: Is multitasking a myth?

text:
# Question
Title: Is multitasking a myth?
Often, the term 'multitasking' is applied to very busy and 'wired' people. There is an adage that women multitask better than men.

My question is, do we actually multitask? If so, what are the cognitive processes that allow this?

Or, is it a case that we momentarily put a task on hold to do another and it has more to do with a well organised short term memory of tasks?

# Answer
Scientists studying the matter generally believe multitasking, and women's superiority at it, to be a myth. Men come out slightly better multitaskers than women but there's not really any meaningful difference. The way it's defined is critical though; it's being able to do two things that typically require focal attention at the exact same time. For example, driving and carrying on an important conversation on the phone. In general, people are quite bad at any such multi-tasking.

When you interview women they tend to believe the myth that women are better but it's based on a different definition of multitasking. They often mean that they'll start one task that can sort of self run, like putting the laundry in, and while that's happening go and work on a letter they've been writing to a client or some other task. They would tend to say they do that all of the time. There's not much research into whether men or women are better at that because that's generally not the kind of multitasking researchers have cared about. I should think an investigation into planning potentially overlapping tasks would be how you'd test this.

In addition, as one of the articles below mentions, there seems to be a general belief that while neither sex is particularly good at it, women actually do it more frequently. That too, hasn't really been studied as far as I know.

Here are some related newsy articles:

Why men (yes, men) are better multitaskers

Are Men or Women Better at Multitasking?
> 30 votes

# Answer
I like to think of multitasking as rapid task switching. See Pashler's (2000) article for the implications of "multitasking."

### References

* Pashler, H. (2000). Task switching and multitask performance. To appear in Monsell, S., and Driver, J. (editors). Attention and Performance XVIII: Control of mental processes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
> 7 votes

# Answer
Here's the link to an interview to a Stanford researcher, Clifford Nass, where he answers questions about the topic. http://www.npr.org/2013/05/10/182861382/the-myth-of-multitasking

Some links to one of his published research papers: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/37/15583.short (I recommend searching in Google Scholar for other papers by him, to the people interested in the topic.)

I quote a fragment from the interveiw which I consider very relevant to the question:

> People who multitask all the time can't filter out irrelevancy. They can't manage a working memory. They're chronically distracted.
>
> They initiate much larger parts of their brain that are irrelevant to the task at hand. And even - they're even terrible at multitasking. When we ask them to multitask, they're actually worse at it. So they're pretty much mental wrecks.
>
> (LAUGHTER)
>
> FLATOW: Wow. But they don't think they are.
>
> NASS: No. You're...
>
> FLATOW: And that's the danger, right?
>
> NASS: That's right. No, they actually think they're more productive. They actually think they tend to - and most notably, they think they can shut it off, and that's been the most striking aspect of this research.
>
> We - the people we talk with continually said, look, when I really have to concentrate, I turn off everything and I am laser-focused. And unfortunately, they've developed habits of mind that make it impossible for them to be laser-focused. They're suckers for irrelevancy. They just can't keep on task.
> 3 votes

# Answer
I think I read in some book or other, maybe called Mindfulness, by E.J.Langer (ISBN 0201523418), that William James (?) taught himself to write about one topic while discussing another topic. However, he could not remember what he wrote about afterward, and the writing was not very compelling in any case.

I think it may be possible to do more than one thing at once, but not well.
> 2 votes

# Answer
I think we all multitask to some extent which is not just task switching. Such as while watching a movie, we watch the visual scene (containing multiple objects) , listen to the soundtrack (music + voice), perceive the theatre hall's airconditioner temperature, all at a time. I don't feel it is just a very fast task switching. Its just simultaneous processing of several sensory inputs.

Talking or thinking while walking is another example of multitasking.

Breathing is another example of multitasking, we continually do it even when we do any other work. (Breathing is partly a voluntary action, we have voluntory control over it).

**However doing certain types of work together, may be difficult for some and not so difficult for someone else.**

For example I know a tutor (male) who can solve chemistry problems over a paper while receiving a phone call about another chemistry problem.

My mother can listen to my words while she teaches music via phone and can interfere the student on other end of phone making a mistake.

I know several female teachers who can write something while listening to something else.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, memory, cognitive-modeling, performance, sex-differences
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title: Is leg jiggling a focus aid?

text:
# Question
Title: Is leg jiggling a focus aid?
This is slightly left-field, but I am interested in the Cognitive Science implications of this question: Many people, myself included, are "leg jigglers", meaning we often sit jiggling or bouncing a leg - usually to the irritation of those around us.

The evidence that I have seen is that:

1. it is not related to Parkinson's
2. it is semi-involuntary - I can stop, but I do not consciously do it, and the speed of the jiggle is not something I am controlling
3. it might be correlated to performance in tests
4. and it is related to ADHD.

In my experience, it does seem to help my concentration. but I don't know if this is biological or cognitive - that is, a physical help, or an outlet of my consciousness while I am focusing on something. I would like to know if anyone has any scientifically valid evidence for relating cognitive focus to leg jiggling?

# Answer
> 44 votes
I've also observed this behaviour in friends, and was curious to see what research has been done on the topic. Here's what I found (summary at the end).

### Sechrest and Flores (1971) study of leg-jiggling

Sechrest and Flores (1971) performed an observational study of the prevalence of leg-jiggling

> leg jiggling was defined as a vertical, rhythmic movement of one or both legs while the subject was in a seated position

Their findings, albeit based on varying-quality data were that:

* leg jiggling is more common in the Philippines than in the United States
* individual differences exist in prevalence of leg jiggling
* people may jiggle their legs more when alone than in company
* leg jiggling appears to be more prevalent in males than in females
* leg jiggling is facilitated by type of sitting position. Specifically, legs uncrossed makes leg jiggling a lot easier and more likely.

They tentatively concluded that leg jiggling is a symptom of tension and classified it as a nervous mannerism. They also suggested, given cultural differences, that it may be acquired through imitation of others.

### Leg jiggling as communication

Smith and Naryan (2008), in their conference abstract, discuss features of leg jiggling and conclude that:

> while so far we can only speculate about the causal and functional properties of jiggles, they are clearly substantially rule-governed, sensitive to both formal and semantic aspects of ongoing discourse, widespread - both patterns were observed in all discourse contexts, and both languages - and deserving of further attention.

### Restless leg syndrome

There is a disorder called restless leg syndrome. From the description the leg movement is voluntary but the desire to move the leg sounds much stronger than what we are talking about with normal leg jiggling.

### Fidgeting

Mehrabian and Friedman (1986) did a general study of fidgeting where leg jiggling was classified with a wide range of other fidgeting behaviours. Fidgeting was defined as:

> engaging in manipulations of one's own body parts or other objects, such actions being peripheral or nonessential to central ongoing events or tasks

They developed a self-reported fidgeting scale and proceeded to correlate the scale with a range of other measures. Given the composite nature of the scale, it is difficult to say what correlates leg jiggling specifically has with other measures. And even if such correlations were known, it would only say something about what types of people jiggle their legs rather than the effect leg jiggling has for those that do jiggle.

### Student concentration

Appleton (1969) in a study of student concentration suggests

> Individual styles and habits reveal personal means of coping with the profound isolation of the concentrating state. Leg jiggling, for example, may be an outlet for sexual tension or a method of exercise and movement. Many students find the physical inactivity demanded by heavy work loads to be extremely difficult to bear.

### Summary of links between leg jiggling and focus

So, in relation to your specific question on leg jiggling facilitating focus, the research that I've found is fairly limited. Researchers have noticed that leg jiggling is used by students when studying in order to deal with the otherwise, long periods of no movement. This is consistent with my own thoughts that it might be related to a general desire to increase circulation. Several researchers have also posited that leg jiggling may be a way of dealing with stress, which arguably might assist with concentration. But ultimately, it looks like more research is needed on this topic, particularly experimental evidence on the effects of leg jiggling.

### References

* Appleton, W. S. (1969). The struggle to concentrate. Amer. J. Psychiat, 126, 256. FREE PDF
* Mehrabian, A. and Friedman, S. (1986). An analysis of fidgeting and associated individual differences. Journal of Personality, 54(2):406-429.
* Sechrest, L. and Flores, L. (1971). The occurrence of a nervous mannerism in two cultures. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Asian Studies, 1, 55-63. FREE PDF
* Smith, N. J. & Narayan, S. (2008). Fidgeting is Not Random: Rhythmic Leg Motion, Speech, and Gesture.9th Conference on Conceptual Structure, Discourse, & Language (CSDL9) LINK

# Answer
> 2 votes
Seems to be a form of stimming and stereotypy. Stimming helps in calming and concentrating. Everybody stims to some extent but it is more common to people having neurodevelopmental condition. As you mention it is related to ADHD, it is very much likely to be stimming behaviour.

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Tags: performance, motor, concentration
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# Question
Title: What's the psychological basis for "Look at me when I'm talking to you"?
If a person is talking to another person and the other person is looking away but still listening, many times I've seen people insist by saying:

> "Look at me when I'm talking you"

or

Gently saying

> "Look at me"

Why does someone have to say that if the other person is listening anyway? What extra advantage does looking at a persons face have?

# Answer
> 5 votes
This article may help Basically if you look anywhere but at the speaker you can seem less attentive and looking at them shows you are paying attention to what they have to say

It is also one of a few primary elements in building rapport in those who you have just met and also to maintain rapport especially when listening to a problem the speaker has in a therapeutic or even business relationship.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Communication is not only auditory but gestural and visual, and is illustrated by the McGurk Effect. The combination of auditory and visual information when someone is speaking can lead to the perception of a third sound. So, in a way, when someone says 'look at me when I'm speaking', this is a way to ensure that the listener gets all the information possible for accurate perception, as you may mishear the sound, and without the visual input, perception may become inaccurate. Here's a video on the McGurk Effect

# Answer
> 0 votes
"typically developing" people (those who are not in the autism spectrum) needs eye contact itself as a signal of communication as well as they observe gaze, facial expression, and other body language parameters to determine a lot of information.

The lack of ncessity of eye contact may hint the presence of autism spectrum disorder or at least broader autism phenotype.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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# Question
Title: Is an autistic person's brain different from a non-autistic one?
Are there any **differences** between the **autistic** person's **brain** and the **non-autistic** one?

To be more specific, are there any differences in **brain structure** or **brain activity**, that can be used to distinguish between autistic and non-autistic person by analysing their brain structure and brain activity while performing various tasks?

If so, can functional imaging itself be used for **diagnosing autism**? Is there any research with that theme?

# Answer
While quantitative changes like the ones described in the EEG in the other answer are critical in distinguishing an person with autism from a non-autistic person, they are not really diagnostic tools yet.

You had mentioned the possibility of using a CT scan for a diagnosis. As far as I can tell, there is no way of doing this as of late, but several groups are taking a look at some of the anatomical differences, which, of my own supposition, in the future could lead to definitive imaging techniques that are diagnostic. Along with the EEG studies, there are currently *functional* MRI studies that attempt to quantify the differences between persons with autism and others, but these are likely not diagnostic as well.

Oblak et al (2011) found that, despite evidence of "overgrowth" of neurons in areas such as the Prefrontal Cortex (see here for an recent study also drawing that conclusion), neurons in the posterior Cingulate Cortex were normal in number and density, but `"irregularly distributed...poorly demarcated layers IV and V, and increased presence of white matter neurons."` The diagrams below illustrate the position of the Cingulate (looking from the perspective of the inside of the hemisphere) and the normal arrangements of typical cells in cortical layers (which may have some minor variation depending on where in the cortex you are looking). To illustrate the nuances in the anatomy, it had been found in prior studies that even the anterior Cingulate, by and large, had the increases in density found elsewhere in the cortex.

What's interesting about the much lower cell density in the posterior Cingulate is that that structure is thought to be one of the most important regions of the limbic system for determining emotional salience of a situation, something that has been found to be different between persons with autism and those without autism. So now we know that this region, just like the anterior portion, has an irregular anatomy, just of a different sort.

The study also found that, by and large, the architecture of the neurons in the fusiform gyrus was undisturbed. Given the role of areas in the fusiform gyrus in facial recognition and social interaction, this was surprising, but there may be other clues in these areas as to difference in receptor density (particularly of GABA, though no difference was found in this particular study).

So, in terms of markers for future imaging studies, there are distinct differences that can be picked up in studies of brain tissue, but nothing definitive to be picked up at the scale of CT or MRI in an *in vivo* imaging study.

## Anatomy

 From Wikipedia

## Normal cortical layers

 Borrowed from here

> Oblak, A.L., Rosene, D.L, Kemper, T.L., Baumann, M.L., Blatt, G.J. (2011) Altered posterior cingulate cortical cyctoarchitecture, but normal density of neurons and interneurons in the posterior cingulate cortex and fusiform gyrus in autism. *Autism Research 4*(3): 200–211. DOI PDF
> 5 votes

# Answer
> Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital compared raw EEG data from 430 children with autism to data collected from 554 control subjects, all ages 2 to 12. They found that children with autism displayed consistent EEG patterns which indicate altered connectivity between brain regions. They found evidence of altered connectivity throughout the brains of children with autism. Most remarkably, they found a pronounced reduction in connectivity in regions of the left hemisphere controlling for language areas of the brain. Young children with autism showed increased connectivity between brain regions that were farther apart, suggesting they may have developed a compensation mechanism for other connectivity problems.

http://unpa.pro/Articles?mode=PostView&bmi=985722

### References

* Duffy, F.H. & Als, H. (2012). A stable pattern of EEG spectral coherence distinguishes children with autism from neuro-typical controls-a large case control study. BMC Medicine, 10, 64. PDF
> 9 votes

# Answer
> To be more specific, are there any differences in brain structure or brain activity, that can be used to distinguish between autistic and non-autistic person by analysing their brain structure and brain activity while performing various tasks?

Autism and autism spectrum characteristics are defined by behavioural, cognitive and emotional terms. These aspects are seemingly so complex that probably a lot of brain regions or brain features are involved in normal functioning of these aspects of human life. (so we can speculate a difference in any part of these circuitries may cause autism) There may be too many reasons such as mirror neuron dysfunction, abnormality in amygdala, hippocampi, Limbic system, parietal lobe, insular cortex, Cerebro-cerebellar circuits, almost all part of the brain have been linked with autism. Microscopic features such as brain hyperconnectivity has been linked with autism.

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a kind of MRI-based technique which may be useful for observing brain circuitries, especially hyper- or hypo- connectivities.
Fig: Sample DTI image (from Wikipedia)

Several DTI-based studies found speciality in autistic brains such as frontal lobe, Socio-emotional circuits, etc.

fMRI and PET-CT scans can be very useful tools to study brain activity pattern in autistic and typically developing people.

Differences in activation during visuomotor coordination between autistic people (yellow) and non-autistic controls (blue), Wikipedia, that has been taken from Opening a Window to the Autistic Brain.

One of the difficulty with MRI and radiologic techniques is, you can not make the subject do a lot of versatile activities.

qEEG (quantitative EEG)\- mapping has shown some success distinguishing typically developing brain and autistic brain.

Sample qEEG map from QEEG and VARETA based Neurophysiological Indices of Brain Dysfunction in Attention Deficit and Autistic Spectrum Disorder  from Connecting Electroencephalography Profiles with the Gamma-Amino-Butyric Acid (GABA) Neuropathology of Autism as a Prelude to Treatment

See also: Big brain may mark subtype of autism
> 0 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, autism
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# Question
Title: What are higher-level and lower-level brain functions?
The human brain can be described as a *"Russian nesting doll"* in the sense that the most ancient areas of the brain responsible for lower functions are located at its centre while newer sections associated with higher-level functions are located on its outskirts.

How exactly do we define *"higher level"* and *"lower-level"* functions? Moreover, is there a middle-ground where certain functions cannot be described to be higher-level or lower-level?

# Answer
> 4 votes
Tranel *et al*. (20003 gives a succinct definition of higher level brain functions in their chapter abstract:

> Higher brain functions are the operations of the brain that stand at the pinnacle of evolution and are largely unique to humans. Verbal communication, the ability to “think in the future,” and the capacity to hold multiple tracks of complex information “on-line” at the same time, are examples of higher mental functions \[...\]. The higher-order capacities of the human brain can be captured under the terms “cognition” and “behavior.” Cognition is composed of intellectual function, memory, speech and language, complex perception, orientation, attention, judgment, planning, and decision-making. Behavior is the manifestation of these cognitive functions. Behavior is guided by another facet of higher brain function—namely, personality, which describes the psychological make-up, traits, and response styles that typify a person’s behaviors across a range of situations and circumstances.

Lower level functions, on the other hand are not that well defined, and I guess it's pretty much anything else than the above :) A look at the **visual system** can help illustrate the difference (Fig. 1). The purple areas in the figure reflect areas mediating lower-level functions, namely retina (sensation of light), optic nerve (secondary visual neurons that send signal to brain), superior colliculus (low-level localization functions and saccade initiation), and V1 (processing of simple shapes). The higher-level areas, namely 'What' (dorsal stream), 'Where' (ventral stream), 'How' reflect higher level functions that reflect human consciousness, namely the interpretation of the identification of objects, and whether they are stationary, or whether they are moving. These are what Tranel calls 'complex perception'.

However, in contrast to Tranel's definition, these are not solely human capacities, because some animals are well-versed in discriminating different species (a mouse will respond differently to a fellow species and a cat :-) and where a target object is going (the same mouse will generally walk in a different direction than the cat is going). This is probably the answer to your question whether there is a gray area between high and low-level functions in the brain - yes, there is. The two terms are umbrella terms and not that well defined. In fact, I couldn't find a strict definition of 'lower-level' brain functions after a Google search.

Fig. 1. Visual system. Source: The Vision Help blog

**Reference**
**-** WebVision -- The Organization of the Retina and Visual System
**-** Ranel *et al*., Higher Brain Functions. In: Conn (ed) *Neuroscience in Medicine*. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

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Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, terminology, brain, neuroanatomy
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# Question
Title: Where can I find open data for psychology research on meditation?
I would like to know how I can get free access to data obtained from psychological experiments conducted to study the effects of meditation on the brain. Ex : FMRI data and the like

# Answer
> 1 votes
Kaggle has a dataset of an EEG conducted on a meditation group versus a control.

Other than that, if you are looking for the raw datasets of fmri meditation studies, that may be a little more difficult. If you are fine with summary statistics, and some inferential tests (data that has already been analysed), then Google Scholar has many open source papers on the topic.

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Tags: psychology, meditation
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# Question
Title: Updated list of the most used and reliable quantitative tests in Psychology
I studied Psychology some years ago and ended up as a programmer. Now, I'm working on a personal side project to build an API to serve correction for different psychology tests.

Since I moved out of the field for so many years, I'm having a hard time finding quantitative instruments to evaluate different aspects of the human psychology: personality, resilience, control locus etc...

All the tests must be reliable (they are precise and achieve to measure what they want to, backed up by studies), up-to-date and frequently used among professionals.

Thanks in advance.

# Answer
> 1 votes
The International Personality Item Pool would be a great place to start.

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Tags: measurement, test
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# Question
Title: Does the brain possess mechanisms to spot a feedback loop of self-induced negative sensation and relief?
Imagine a person has random psychosomatic itching and applies an ointment which brings relief. Could their brain wrongly assosiate the process that causes the itching as good as it brought relief?

As Berridge, 2020 recently showed, there's a difference between wanting and liking something and dopamine (which is said to work on the basis of operant conditioning) is rather assosiated with wanting. I wondered whether the brain can decypher when the operant conditioning creates a harmful feedback loop.

I would appreciate any literature recommendations which would bring me closer to the answer.

# Answer
Professor Sweeney has expressed the hypothesis that counterfactual thoughts that follow a relief are an example of a such mechanism on the Hidden Brain podcast although it's not something she discussed in the paper which finds counterfactual thoughts to be a common aftermath of a relief. The podcast discussed an experience of a guy attacked by lions in a group and how such extreme sitations tend to be followed by euphoria and laughing that later feels chilling to the people who undergo them, making the euphoria feel like not worth the experience.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience, reference-request, cognitive-modeling, conditioning
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# Question
Title: Is there evidence to support the Dunning-Kruger effect?
The well known Dunning-Kruger effect is oft cited as a general explanation for why people with limited expertise overestimate their abilities. Other than the initial research that described this cognitive bias, there seems to be little actual data to support it outside of a sit-down questionnaire or IQ test in a university setting. Driving is a well-known example (i.e. '80% of drivers consider themselves above average') although I note from a previous post, the evidence for the Dunning-Kruger effect in driving is mixed.

**Is there any data to support the Dunning-Kruger in outside of a sit-down test performed by university students?**

# Answer
> 3 votes
Yes, there are research showing a relationship between skills and not only "sit down tests". A systematic review by Madmood (2016) found "self-reported and demonstrated information literacy skills" supported the Dunning-Kruger phenomena. Demonstrated information literacy was from derived sources such as "observations, field notes, participant reflexive journals, expert grading of searching tasks, analysis of students’ theses, quizzes, and information related assignments".

**References:**

Mahmood, K. (2016). Do People Overestimate Their Information Literacy Skills? A Systematic Review of Empirical Evidence on the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Communications in Information Literacy, 10 (2), 199-213. https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2016.10.2.24

# Answer
> 3 votes
Short answer: It's currently unclear.

In the 20+ years since the original paper was published, there have been many successful replications of the effect, including domains not involving written tests, such as debating, chess, bridge, bed-side manner, facial recognition, and yes, even driving. However, as Wikipedia summarizes:

> ... their conclusions are strongly challenged when subjected to mathematical analysis and comparisons across cultures.

That is, a significant component of the reported effect may be due to statistical artifacts that result from the method used.

This is not the first time that the study method used has been questioned: Theoretical criticisms appeared shortly after the original paper's publication (eg, Krueger & Mueller, 2002; Krajc & Ortmann, 2008; more here). However, subsequent replications of the effect correcting for these artifacts largely survived the criticisms with the main revision in results being that high performers are no longer thought to underestimate their ability. Nonetheless, some studies that successfully replicated the effect did notice significant artifacts remaining in their empirical data - for example, Bell & Volckmann (2011):

> ... students with the highest exam scores are just about as variable at gauging their course knowledge as students who have the lowest exam scores.

Empirical evidence that other artifacts could be substantial was finally demonstrated with the publication of a series of studies in Nuhfer et al (2016), Nuhfer et al (2017), who state:

> Our results show that different numerical approaches employed in investigating and describing self-assessment accuracy are not equally valid.

Additional studies feature similar conclusions - for example:

Feld, Sauermann, & de Grip (2017):

> Our results show that the unskilled are more overconfident than the skilled. However, as we predict in our methodological discussion, this relationship is significantly weaker than ordinary least squares estimates suggest.

McIntosh et al (2019):

> ... the pattern can be induced (and greatly inflated) by a host of other factors and biases, some psychologically interesting, and some ‘merely’ statistical.

Gignac & Zajenkowski (2020):

> ... although the phenomenon described by the Dunning-Kruger hypothesis may be to some degree plausible for some skills, the magnitude of the effect may be much smaller than reported previously.

The artifacts significantly diminish the Dunning-Kruger effect size, possibly eliminating it in some cases.

**Additional notes:**

* The example in the question of people systematically overestimating their driving competency is *not* an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Rather, it is an example of a different bias called the above-average effect.
* There is a large amount of literature on self-assessment - where subjects are asked to assess their own competence in some domain. Across many studied domains, people tend to be somewhere around "moderately good" at self-assessing their abilities, but certainly not perfect.
* Contrary to the above-average effect, low-performers in Dunning-Kruger-type studies do *not* estimate their competence as higher than better-performing participants - rather, they rate their competence as higher than it actually is.
* In their original paper, Dunning & Kruger established a non-standard protocol for measuring the self-assessment bias, in which they divide results into sorted quartiles, and compare average absolute differences between actual and estimated test scores. It is this protocol that is implicated in the statistical artifacts afflicting the results, as using more standard methods, such as adjusted scatter-plots, correlations, and error-bars, it does not appear as if there is much difference (if any) between low and high performers' precision.
* Studies that adjust for statistical artifacts demonstrate that the non-standard protocol used by Dunning & Kruger causes data censoring (hiding the effects of noise), floor/ceiling effects (error ranges are bounded), and regression to the mean (due to comparison of 2 independent measures). Combined with some likely above-average effect, these statistical artifacts explain most (if not all) of the results. The artifacts are so significant that even random data can generate the effect!

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, methodology, experimental-psychology, bias
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title: Are we different or same?

text:
# Question
Title: Are we different or same?
I don't know if this is the right site to ask this, if not sorry for that I am new here......

I am wondering if two childs from different parents from different regions are kept in a completely empty room, do they behave same or different and for why(for the genes? and they are just children, like pure children without any experience because if it will not they must behave differently for environmental experiences, right?)? And if they behave in a same way, what if we make a huge area with every needs of living, an ideal environment to grow in the same way then everyone will learn the equal things and experiences so nothing wrong will happen.(like a utopia) And I am thinking this to do with a medium number of people. If I do this with a large number of people will anomalies happen? If they are not equal then there must be the factor genes will come to show the features but if the environment is right then will not the features work in a same manner?

If my question sounds silly, sorry......

# Answer
> 0 votes
Welcome to Psychology.SE.

When you ask

> if two childs from different parents from different regions are kept in a completely empty room, do they behave same or different

that is a question which is heavily debated in Psychology. It all boils down to the nature vs nurture or nature vs environment shaping behaviour.

Your question is definitely not silly and as it stands, the answer is very much open to opinion but you can get some information on the debate from the link provided above.

See also:

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Tags: social-psychology, psychology, genetics, behavioural-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Automatic pseudo-randomization of stimuli in R
I was wondering if it's possible to automatically pseudo-randomize stimuli in R? If so, I would be very grateful for any help.

# Answer
> 1 votes
You can use the "sample" function: https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/base/html/sample.html

Start with a list of the stimuli you want to present. For example, if you have two stimuli that should be repeated 4 times each, your list would be `c(1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2)`

If you take 8 samples from this distribution without replacement, you have a random permutation of the list. This is the default behavior if you just give the original list, like this:

```
sample(c(1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2))

```

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Tags: experiment-design, psycholinguistics
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# Question
Title: Can the human brain be simulated by a computer?
There is a Wikipedia page on brain simulation, but:

**Question**: Could there be (experimental) evidence that the (human) brain cannot be simulated by a computer?

Note that the Wikipedia page Mind uploading has a section called Practical issues, but Wikipedia says that this section needs expansion. It is followed by sections on philosophical, ethical, legal or political issues.

My purpose is not philosophical here. Roughly speaking, I just want to know whether there are research works (published in serious peer-review journals) showing that the human brain cannot be simulated by a classical computer.

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**Previous version of the post**

*Previous title*: Can the human brain be reduced to a biological AI?

The question is in the title. Let me clarify what I mean by « biological AI » : it looks like an oxymoron if you understand biological as natural and artificial as non-natural, but let understand biological as organic and AI as what it actually does (and not as what it is made of). On the other hand, I am (obviously) not asking whether the human brain was designed...
AI is here understood in its current classical sense, and not in what it could be in the future with (for example) quantum computers, so that if one can shows (for example) that the (humain) brain involves some quantum processes which cannot be simulated classically, then the answer should be no. Note that the quantum processes were just used here as an example, the question does not reduce to the existence of such processes.

# Answer
To my knowledge (I hold an advanced degree in the field), there is no widely-accepted research that documents that the brain cannot be simulated using a classical computer.

Our current understanding of the human brain is that the primary functional mechanisms consist of neurons that transmit data via chemical and electrical connections.

That said, we have no comprehensive, finite, and accurate definition of "consciousness", and therefore we cannot prove or disprove consciousness of a computer simulation. For that matter, as much as we have tried, it is questionable if we can *truly* prove or disprove consciousness in human beings, although that is the topic of much debate. It largely depends on how one defines the term *"consciousness"*.

Outside of consciousness and several other more abstract and philosophical matters (such as feelings and emotions), we know of no limits to our cognitive simulations.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, brain, neural-network, artificial-intelligence
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# Question
Title: Is a cognitive test invalid if self-administered?
Im talking about tests not designed for self-administration like the moca,wais etc. Could the scored potentially be deflated or inflated and misadministered thus making them invalid?

# Answer
> 2 votes
There are quite a few factors to consider when taking an assessment. For one, the external conditions of your environment, and your internal mindset should ideally be *standardised*.

An example of *external* standardised conditions are a consistent room temperature, a quite space to take the test, or an external examiner to check that no one cheats.
Internally, the test taker should not be hungry, and should understand the test instructions, for example.

By taking the test yourself, the conditions will likely not meet this criteria of standardisation necessary for the results to be comparable. If you want to know a bit more, there are *norm*-referenced, and *criterion*-referenced assessments. The first kind compare your scores to the scores of other test takers, like a pub quiz, for example; scores are compared, and the team with the most points wins. Here, if the conditions are not standardised, your results will not be comparable to others.
Criterion-referenced measures compare your score to a predetermined benchmark, like an exam at school; if you score above 50%, you pass. In this case, a lack of standardised conditions means you may not answer the questions as intended, and so the benchmark comparison will also lose meaning.

### Reference

C. Foxcroft & G. Roodt. (2001). *Introduction to psychological assessment in the South African context*.

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Tags: test, iq
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# Question
Title: Is the oscillatory power inversely proportional to the frequency?
I'm trying to understand neuronal synchronization/desynchronization and oscillation, as well as the psychedelic state. The following sentence confused me a bit.

> Psilocybin reduced spontaneous cortical oscillatory power from 1 to 50 Hz in posterior association cortices, and from 8 to 100 Hz in frontal association cortices.

It is taken from this article on how Broadband Cortical Desynchronization Underlies the Human Psychedelic State, featured in the *Abstract* section.

Now, as far as I've understood, the "power" of an oscillation is the square of its amplitude. In the quoted sentence, they say that the oscillatory "power" decreased with the increase of Hertz. Judging by that sentence, it would seem that an increase in the amplitude of a neuronal oscillation means a decrease in the oscillation's frequency. Is this correct, incorrect or perhaps imprecise?

# Answer
This is sort of sloppy writing about their results, and statistical significance.

In the paper, they're analyzing data in bands 1-4Hz, 4-8Hz, 8-13Hz, 13-30Hz, 30-50Hz, and 50-100Hz.

> Psilocybin reduced spontaneous cortical oscillatory power from 1 to 50 Hz in posterior association cortices

means "we saw significant reductions in all of the bands except 50-100Hz".

> and from 8 to 100 Hz in frontal association cortices

means "we saw significant reductions in all of the bands except 1-4Hz and 4-8Hz".

They're not saying anything in those sentences about the magnitude of the changes, only about the locations in space and in the frequency domain where they saw changes. And it doesn't really mean they don't see changes in the other bands, just that any changes there did not meet their criteria for significance. They're also sort of mixing a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the data. The sentence in the abstract refers to Figure 3 of the paper, where you can see that the magnitude and extent of the changes is far more frequency dependent than that short sentence conveys.
> 1 votes

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Tags: psychopharmacology, synchronization, psychedelics
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# Question
Title: What can one do to permanently increase one's baseline happiness (subjective well-being)?
According to the hedonic treadmill theory of subjective well-being each human has a hedonic set point. Positive or negative life events cause relatively short-term deviations to one's happiness before it returns to the baseline happiness level determined by the set point. The set point appears to be stable over the course of one's life. One's happiness, measured over time, looks something like this:

Question: **What, if anything, has been demonstrated by research to cause long-term, significant upward shifts of the baseline happiness? And, if so, which of those interventions are accessible to an average person (in wealthy countries)?**

# Answer
> 5 votes
Going off the findings in this paper, it seems that one's baseline level of happiness can be increased and *maintained* at a (weakly) significant level by "continual effort and engagement in some intentional process" (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2006, pg. 59), which the authors refer to as "activity-based changes". Examples given include, starting to exercise, beginning a new project, or gaining a new perspective.
This as opposed to *circumstance-based* changes which deliver only minimal, short-lived increases in happiness, such as getting a raise, or buying a new car.

I feel it is important to note that this is only one paper which uses a short time frame of only 6 months to measures changes in happiness. However, it seems then that to achieve lasting increases in our happiness set point, we are better off working on ourselves than our surroundings.

# Answer
> -3 votes
Neural networks tend to maintain limited sustained activation to preserve functional properties, i.e. they can't convey information or compute things when completely active or inactive. This only happens within a small range of parameters. Let's then pseudoscientifically pretend that this awesome paper can provide the neurological basis for the hedonic treadmill and can be self-similary extrapolated to conscious functioning: We don't function optimally if we continually over or under react to our average stimulation, and evolution wants us to function optimally.

So to keep our functions optimized we want to be able to respond to the broadest range of inputs possible, we want to be dead center on "average stimulation" so that we can still compute and respond appropriately in events of lower or higher than usual stimulation: the hedonic set point here is your relation to your average stimulation. You might be a happy peppy person slightly overreacting to average stimulation or a lethargic person, underreacting. But it doesn't really matter, it's evolution using you to test whether that happiness point might be optimal to make you behave well and reproduce.

Let's continue assuming that this set point is achieved by a regulated process in neural networks by adapting their sensitivity to their inputs over time to stay at that optimal point.

Final assumption: if we don't optimize to our average inputs and too many of our neural networks respond too little or too much to their input for too long our brain will compute for a depressive or manic lifestyle. Both perfectly valid lifestyles, but seen by the evolutionary watch dogs as 'inferior' lifestyles. And usually reported to not be all that great. But hey, life itself is usually reported not to be all that great.

This paints the picture of the hedonic treadmill: as far as subjective well being is concerned, people tend to get used to their situation and be content, unless they become depressed or manic. That's ignoring all other things that can go wrong in the brain that aren't purely 'happiness disorders'.

This was what I believe keeps us at a point where we "behave evolutionary optimal". For evolutionary purposes however it does not matter if we consciously enjoy or detest the ride we're stuck in, as long as we see it through and procreate. That gives us some artistic freedom in the conscious experiencing of our ride. We can change our outlook on things: it is perfectly possible to be completely content with being eaten by a bear in the near future, but completely impossible to have any kind of control over your behaviour while it is happening. So when receiving negative or positive inputs we lose control over our consciousness, and evolution takes the wheel, but at our hedonic set point when things that we're used to are going on we can take control over our outlook of our existence.

So while I don't think you can, or want, to be in a permanent elevated happiness state (mania is no fun) you can permanently change how you perceive being forced by evolution to be stuck at a hedonic set point.

Intuitively you might want to resist this, or find it unfair or unwanted and it is this resistance that will create suffering while you're neurologically at a state where you could be perfectly content and at ease.

Unless we develop technology capable of changing how our neural networks function, I think nihilism (as viewed by for example Albert Camus, not online edgelords) and radical acceptance (as part of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) might provide the most useful tools of permanently changing your outlook on your existential conditions.

To provide an answer to your question: I think in wealthy countries our best intervention to improve our subjective well-being is a continuous effort toward radical acceptance of our existential condition aided by philosophy, therapy and a healthy lifestyle.

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Tags: well-being, happiness
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# Question
Title: Do people have an innate preference to take matters into their own hands?
People usually want to make their own decisions. Those looking for spouses often listen to their inner romantic instincts and reject advice from more experienced people. Drivers are skeptical about self-driving cars and would feel safer driving themselves. In some cases, even when unjustified, people would rather take matters into their own hands.

A convenient explanation of this is overconfidence. People may be overly confident about their ability to choose the best decision. However, it seems that this is not everything.

Even those who know that it is better to let experts decide for them have bursts of distrust. People routinely decide not to follow doctor advice, even though they know they don't have good reasons to do so. Even those exposed to thorough research on how romantic instincts are not long-lasting follow their heart when choosing spouses.

These observations lead me to suspect that people simply have an innate preference to take matters into their own hands. Is there research that can speak to this conjecture?

# Answer
This is called the illusion of control:

> ... the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events; for example, it occurs when someone feels a sense of control over outcomes that they demonstrably do not influence.

Some examples from the same source:

> Subjects are either given tickets at random or allowed to choose their own. They can then trade their tickets for others with a higher chance of paying out. Subjects who had chosen their own ticket were more reluctant to part with it. ... Participants who chose their own numbers were less likely to trade their ticket even for one in a game with better odds.
>
> On average, drivers regard accidents as much less likely in "high-control" situations, such as when they are driving, than in "low-control" situations, such as when they are in the passenger seat. They also rate a high-control accident, such as driving into the car in front, as much less likely than a low-control accident such as being hit from behind by another driver.

The illusion of control is one of several positive illusions that people have about themselves.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, bias, decision-making, confidence
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# Question
Title: Why do we use relative signals and not absolute signals with EEG?
Most EEG machines use a system based upon differential amplifiers to enhance the signal, a basic differential amplifier has 2 inputs and one output. the device takes 2 signals and outputs the difference between them (see this video). In short, the output is the difference between 2 signals and the differential amplifier discards the rest of the signal. But I think that possibly the current way of recording EEG could be encouraging loss of data due to ONLY looking for difference within EEG signals instead of analytical evaluation of absolute signals?

Why do we use relative signals and not absolute signals with EEG? Have there been any attempts to use absolute signals?

# Answer
A voltage is by definition a potential difference between 2 electrodes.

Nonetheless, to record a signal on 1 electrode that is hardly affected by the other reference electrode a distant electrode can be used, referred to as monopolar recording. By contrast, when 2 electrodes are placed close together on the site of interest it is referred to as a bipolar recording. In EEGs, it has everything to do with *differential amplifiers* and common mode rejection, which you already hint at in the question.

Without going into the technical details of opamps, I can say that differential amplifiers, ideally, reject the common signal on the electrodes and keep the differential voltage. In effect, most of the artifacts are rejected, while the signal is maintained. Artifacts are often widespread across the scalp, such as muscular artifacts, and are shared across electrodes, while the signal of interest is mostly confined to local areas on the scalp.

In EEG monopolar recordings are typically used, basically because sufficient artifact is rejected yet the signal is least distorted. In addition, and not least important, standard EEG electrode montages allow for the arithmetic deduction of bipolar recordings from monopolar recordings, whereas the reverse is not possible (Saab, 2009).

However, many electrophysiological signals, even those closely related to EEG, are often recorded using bipolar recordings, because either the signal is too low to be recordable, or the artifact is otherwise too large (e.g., Diez *et al*, 2010; Stronks *et al*., 2009; Stronks *et al.*, 2013).

<sub>**References**
**-** Diez *et al*., *Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc* (2010): 5803-6
**-** Saab, *Biofeedback* (2009); **36**(4): 128–33
**-** Stronks *et al*.,*IOVS* (2013); **54**:3891–901
**-** Stronks *et al*., *Doc Ophthalmol* (2016); **132**:1–15</sub>
> 1 votes

# Answer
EEG measures voltage. By definition, voltage is an electric potential *difference*. There is no meaning of an "absolute" voltage, it's always a difference.

Yes, people "attempt" to measure a voltage with only one contact all the time, it happens whenever there is a broken channel or a failure of a ground wire. The result is an amplification of whatever other environmental signals can be picked up, dominated by AC current ("60/50-cycle noise"), radio waves, and other electromagnetic interference. A good ground wire is necessary to measure the small signals from the brain; something like an "Earth ground" would not be anywhere near sufficient.

You can get more local measures of voltage using electrodes in close proximity and measuring the potential between them rather than each against some other "ground". Usually these are depth electrodes in the brain.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, measurement, eeg, electrophysiology
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# Question
Title: Has there been research on the impact of gay parents on the sexual orientation of adopted children?
*Disclamer: I am not interested in personal views on whether gay parenting is a good or bad thing. I would like to understand whether there has been serious research on the upbringing consequences for such children. I am a physicist so I know nothing about psychology, but I am good with numbers and their statistical interpretation so anything substantiated is very much welcome. Thank you*

Gay parenting, whether official or not, is in place for now more than a generation and among the fierce debates about that topic (I am French), I tried to look for research that would bring some actual data on the comparative measurable effects of gay vs straight parenting (on the children). **The point I am interested in is specifically the sexual orientation of the children (now grown-ups).**

I did not find anything substantial, probably because I do not know the right literature in that field.

Is there such research?

# Answer
Farr, R. H., Forssell, S. L., & Patterson, C. J. (2010). Parenting and child development in adoptive families: Does parental sexual orientation matter?. *Applied Developmental Science, 14*(3), 164-178. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2010.500958

Free PDF from escholarship.org

> This study investigated child development and parenting in 106 families headed by 27 lesbian, 29 gay, and 50 heterosexual couples (80% White, M = 42 years) with young adopted children (41% White, M = 3 years). Parents and teachers reported that, on average, children were developing in typical ways. Measures of children's adjustment, parenting approaches, parenting stress, and couple relationship adjustment were not significantly associated with parental sexual orientation. However, several family process variables—parenting stress, parenting approaches, and couple relationship adjustment—were found to be significantly associated with children's adjustment, regardless of parental sexual orientation.

Herek, G. M. (2014). Evaluating the methodology of social science research on sexual orientation and parenting: A tale of three studies. *UCDL Rev., 48*, 583. https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/davlr48&div=18&id=&page=

Free PDF from law.ucdavis.edu

> For at least four decades, questions about the well-being of children raised by sexual minority individuals or same-sex couples have figured prominently in public debates about adoption, foster parenting, child custody and visitation, and marriage equality. Those debates have often focused on questions of law, personal values, and morality, but many have also included empirically testable assertions about the relationship (or lack thereof) between parents' sexual orientation and their children's developmental outcomes. The social science research that has empirically assessed the validity of those assertions is the focus of the present paper.

Patterson, C. J. (2017). Parents' sexual orientation and children's development. *Child Development Perspectives, 11*(1), 45-49. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12207

> What if any influence does parents' sexual orientation have on children's development? Research suggests that, contrary to concerns voiced by many observers, parents' sexual orientation has little if any direct impact on children's development. Even so, some distinctive qualities of experiences in families of lesbian and gay parents have been noted, and their implications are not fully understood. Moreover, research on individual differences among families headed by lesbian mothers and gay fathers, and their possible impact on children, is still in its early phases. In this article, I provide an overview of research in this area and offer suggestions for further studies.

Stacey, J., & Biblarz, T. J. (2001). (How) does the sexual orientation of parents matter?. *American Sociological Review*, 159-183. https://doi.org/10.2307/2657413

> Opponents of lesbian and gay parental rights claim that children with lesbigay parents are at higher risk for a variety of negative outcomes. Yet most research in psychology concludes that there are no differences in developmental outcomes between children raised by lesbigay parents and those raised by heterosexual parents. The analysis here challenges this defensive conceptual framework and analyzes how heterosexism has hampered intellectual progress in the field.
> 4 votes

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Tags: reference-request, sexuality, parenting
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# Question
Title: Neural oscillations and activity patterns
Both single neurons and groups of neurons can generate oscillatory activity spontaneously. In addition, they may show oscillatory responses to perceptual input or motor output. Even memory and thinking is associated with these neural oscillations.

My question is, are these nerve responses always oscillatory in nature? Or do we find patterns in the firing of neurons (action potentials) or in the postsynaptic potentials which are truly *chaotic* and do not fall under any *oscillatory* patterns? Or is it that because of the vast amount of inter connections between neurons as well as different sections of brain, synchronous behaviour always pops us?

# Answer
> 1 votes
**Frequency analysis**

All time-varying signals can be decomposed into the frequency domain, e.g. using the Fourier transform. This is a common technique for analyzing brain signals, e.g. from EEG.

However, doing this transform **does not mean that the underlying signals are oscillatory in nature**. Even if we talk about power in some particular frequency band, that does not mean we are talking about an oscillation at that frequency. Event-related potentials are often analyzed in the time domain, but nothing would stop you from analyzing them in the frequency domain.

**Packets vs oscillations**

When you write "memory and thinking is associated with these neural oscillations", this can be true of frequency analyses but yet not really related to oscillations. Artur Luczak and Ken Harris have argued for evidence of "packet-based" communication in neocortex (see for example their Luczak et al 2015 review). Effectively these are bursts of activity lasting on the order of 100-100s of milliseconds. They've shown that in anesthetized states these "packets" are revealed in a slow "oscillatory" power in the EEG/LFP, which makes sense: if you have a bunch of events that last 100-100s of milliseconds, you're going to find power in the low frequency bands. However, these are not oscillations. They are discrete events. In the wake state, the *same events happen*, but because there are no gaps between them, you don't see an oscillation in the EEG.

More generally, this is true of any events in frequency analysis. If you add a bunch of events lasting, say, 50 milliseconds to a white noise signal, you will see an increase in power in the vicinity of 10 Hz. They need not oscillate at all.

**Separating oscillations from 'power law' power-frequency relationships**

Some researchers have argued that we should be more aware of evidence for and against true "oscillations" when analyzing EEG. From Donoghue et al 2020:

> Following historical traditions, the vast majority of the studies examining oscillations rely on canonical frequency bands, which are approximately defined as: infraslow (\<0.1 Hz), delta (1–4 Hz), theta (4–8 Hz), alpha (8–12 Hz), beta (12–30 Hz), low gamma (30–60 Hz), high-frequency activity (60–250 Hz) and fast ripples (200–400 Hz). Although most of these bands are often described as oscillations, standard approaches fail to assess whether an oscillation—meaning rhythmic activity within a narrowband frequency range—is truly present (Fig. 1a,b).

They recommend analyzing frequency-domain signals in terms of the broadband power (dominated by the lowest frequencies), the exponent of power decay with frequency (neural signals are typically in the range of 1/f or 1/f^2, but this easily generalizes to 1/f^a), and then isolating evidence for actual oscillations that deviate from these parametric fits (linear in log-log space):

In this figure, you would only identify an oscillation in the alpha 8-12 Hz range. All of the rest of the power spectrum derives from non-oscillatory time-varying neuronal activity, which still has some detectable frequency structure.

**Power-law brain activity, criticality, and chaos**

Another area of emphasis in the analysis of brain signals is the idea of criticality, in particular work by John Beggs. Criticality is the border between chaotic and organized (oscillatory) activity. A prediction of this theory is exactly the power-law decay with frequency (1/f^a) described above. This scheme refers to "neuronal avalanches" which are events of synchronized neural activity that share some features with the "packets" of Luczak and Harris. Waking brains tend to be near this critical point, whereas during sleep there is much more oscillatory organization and the brain is further from critical. Although criticality can be described as "near chaos", I think it's important to recognize that it is **not** chaos, no matter how complicated it is. It's still quite organized, just organized in a way that optimizes information processing. Oscillations that are too organized have little capacity to transmit information (consider the information transmission limitations of radio bands that humans use for television, radio, and cell phones, for example).

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Beggs, J. M. (2008). The criticality hypothesis: how local cortical networks might optimize information processing. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 366(1864), 329-343.

Donoghue, T., Haller, M., Peterson, E. J., Varma, P., Sebastian, P., Gao, R., ... & Voytek, B. (2020). Parameterizing neural power spectra into periodic and aperiodic components. Nature neuroscience, 23(12), 1655-1665.

Luczak, A., McNaughton, B. L., & Harris, K. D. (2015). Packet-based communication in the cortex. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(12), 745-755.

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Tags: neuroscience, neurophysiology, neural-network
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# Question
Title: Why does learning new mental skills lead to headaches?
Why is deliberate practice uncomfortable? For example, during learning college math and playing the piano. Why do we get headaches after long hours of practice?

According to this question, learning is about connecting distant neural networks; in forming these synapses resources are recruited such as calcium and glucose.

Now since the brain has no pain receptors, the discomfort must be coming from the surrounding nerves in the skull and neck. Possibilities:

a) Requiring greater resources is straining our blood system and hence the pain.

b) Forming many connections continuously creates excess of neurotransmitters such as glutamine that strain and literally swell brain areas, which in turn hit against our skull nerves.

Please feel free to correct me.

This topic is closely connected with the cellular mechanism of mental fatigue.

# Answer
**Migraine** and **tension-type headaches** are an important burden in many people's daily lives. This is not my direct research topic. But as far as I have read on the subject headache has been related to **posture problems** and **vision problems**. Some studies point to an increase in headache complaints, related to increased hours of study online. But this can also be related to posture and vision (tired eyes or dry eyes). Of course, the occurrence of headaches can affect the quality of the study (and acquisition of new skills), but estimating the opposite apparently still lacks proof. I leave below some links of articles about the subject that may be of your interest:

Behavioral Treatments for Headache,

Headache vs musculoskeletal pain vs vision problems

Headach - clinical setting
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, learning, pain
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# Question
Title: How to determine nerve conduction velocity?
Can anyone suggest good sources or papers to understand about experimental setup and procedure for measuring nerve conduction velocity for various types of neurons?

I wish to learn how such experiments are done and get insight on how they were able to classify neurons based on conduction velocities as (alpha beta gamma) or I / II / III grade neurons especially for neurons that have small distances between axon and dendrites for it might be difficult to insert probes at cell body and measure signal at the synapse of that neuron to measure time elapsed in signal conduction or they measure for few neurons in chain and average out the time taken for conduction velocity.

# Answer
I think there are many ways to accomplish this in terms of technical detail, but they will all boil down to measuring the arrival of an action potential along the axon on at least two points with known distance from each other on the axon. From these two arrival times the latency can be deducted. Then, by dividing the distance between the elektrodes by the latency (i.e., the time it took the action potential from going from electrode 1 to number 2), the conduction speed can be estimated. In a paper by DeMaegd *et al*. (2017) they use extracellular electrodes and the figure in their paper is quite informative (Fig.1 ).

Fig. 1. Measuring axon conduction velocity by recording action potentials. source: DeMaegd *et al*. (2017)

**Reference**
**-** DeMaegd *et al*., *Bio Protocol* (2017); **7**(5)
> 2 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, methodology, neurophysiology, electrophysiology, experimental-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Are there "place cells" for temporal encoding?
First of all, I have to say I am not a neuroscientist but I like to learn about neuroscience. I understand there are sets of neurons called "place cells" and "grid cells" which encode spatial information in the brain.

My question is simple: Is there a structure in the brain known to encode **temporal** information analogous to place cells? Is anyone aware of some references or experiments on this subject?

# Answer
> 3 votes
It seems the topic of time perception is quite complicated. In contrast to the place and grid cells in the hippocampus (Moser *et al*., 2015), the perception of time seems to be distributed across many places in the brain. A review by Fontes *et al*., 2016) cites 158 papers written between 1980 to 2015 that describe a variety of brain structures relating to the perception of time, including areas in the **frontal cortex, parietal cortex, basal ganglia, cerebellum and hippocampus**. It indeed seems to be a highly distributed system in the brain. The proximity of time cells and place and grid cells in the hippocampus is interesting and is an active area of research.

<sub>**References**
**-** Fontes *et al*., *Neurol Int* (2016); **8**(1): 59392016
**-** Moser *et al*., Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol (2015); **7**: a021808</sub>

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Tags: neuroscience, perception, memory, time, spatial-cognition
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# Question
Title: Perceive person's importance to the education
Can we perceive, through some indications, if a person gives too much or too little importance to the education and intellectual formation?

Discussing this with some colleagues who say that no because knowledge and its importance are not reflected in behavior. Still, I'm inclined to think that based on some evidenced characteristics, we can assess the value given to knowledge.

# Answer
I think this issue touches on a number of aspects like self-worth, self-image and self-concept among others.

Undoubtedly people can place a distorted or disproportionate value on self and others based on education. It's mostly a problem of reference, how exactly do you value education and knowledge correctly?

> Can we perceive, through some indications, if a person gives too much or too little importance to the education and intellectual formation?

Certainly, if the value they place on education/formation does not correspond to real tangible values. For example the janitor who thinks himself overall more qualified than the brain surgeon. Or the brain surgeon who thinks himself necessarily superior to others in areas where he has no expertise.

> knowledge and its importance are not reflected in behavior

This is objectively wrong, for example the study of morals and ethics enables a person to positively change their behavior (as can the knowledge of healthy eating help to change dietary habits.) However, there's no necessary causal relation between knowledge and behavior.
> 2 votes

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Tags: perception, social-cognition
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# Question
Title: What is the fear of having regrets called?
What is the clinical name of fear of regrets? I'm thinking of something like arachnophobia or something ending with the prefix "-phobia"

could it be something like apóleiafovía? (the literal greek translation of fear of loss)

# Answer
> 1 votes
Although not a clinical diagnosis, in research on social media the term **"Fear of Missing Out" (FoMo)** is often used (Przybylski et al., 2013):

> Defined as a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent, FoMO is characterized by the desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing.

This sounds related, but perhaps more specific in that it focuses specifically on regret of not having experienced a rewarding experience online.

Przybylski, A. K., Murayama, K., DeHaan, C. R., & Gladwell, V. (2013). Motivational, emotional, and behavioral correlates of fear of missing out. Computers in human behavior, 29(4), 1841-1848.

# Answer
> -2 votes
Arachnophobia = fear of spiders. Neuroticism = condition to feer loss (but I won't diagnose conditions as I am not certified for this). Atychiphobia = fear of failure

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Tags: fear, phobia
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# Question
Title: What does "oddly related" mean in a mental status exam?
Mental Status Exams done by psychiatrists often include a description of the "relatedness" of a patient. Sometimes, patients are described as "oddly related." What is "relatedness" and what qualifies as "oddly related"?

A google search for "oddly related psychiatry" shows a similar question on reddit and allnurses without a proper answer unfortunately.

# Answer
Chris' answer is very thorough and describes the theory of relatedness. However, in practice when psychiatrists use the term 'related' on the behavior section of the mental status exam, they are referring to the way a patient is relating to the physician or other provider in that conversation.

In this framework, a 'normally related' person would be having a conversation the way one would expect given cultural context. An 'oddly related' person would not. The term is extremely broad however and so needs specifics for clarification. For example, a person identified as oddly-related might be alternating between being engaged and totally disengaged from a conversation without obvious pattern. However any number of other 'oddities' in their engagement with the physician could also be classified this way.

It is a relatively small component of the behavior section of mental status exam and will ideally be clarified where necessary.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Relatedness is part of **Self-determination theory**.

> Self-determination Theory (SDT) is just that — a model, a macro theory, of human motivation (Singer, 2017).

and refers to the need to feel connected to others (Wang et al. 2019). It is

> people’s need to care about and be cared about by others, to feel connected to others without concerns about ulterior motives, and to feel that they are contributing to something greater than themselves (Fowler, 2014).

In a paper by Martela & Riekki (2018), they said

> Based on research on self-determination theory, basic psychological needs, and prosocial impact, we suggest that there are four psychological satisfactions that substantially influence work meaningfulness across cultures: autonomy (sense of volition), competence (sense of efficacy), relatedness (sense of caring relationships), and beneficence (sense of making a positive contribution).

Without more information from the person who wrote this, the comment "oddly related" cannot be meaningfully interpreted.

## Further Reading

Keller, H. (2016). Psychological autonomy and hierarchical relatedness as organizers of developmental pathways. *Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371*(1686), 20150070. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0070

## References

Fowler, S. (2014). What Maslow’s Hierarchy Won’t Tell You About Motivation *Harvard Business Review* https://hbr.org/2014/11/what-maslows-hierarchy-wont-tell-you-about-motivation

Martela, F., & Riekki, T. J. (2018). Autonomy, competence, relatedness, and beneficence: A multicultural comparison of the four pathways to meaningful work. *Frontiers in psychology, 9*, 1157. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01157

Singer, L. (2017). Self-determination Theory: Understanding Human Motivation for Fun and Profit https://leif.me/2017/01/self-determination-theory-understanding-human-motivation-for-fun-and-profit/

Wang, C. J., Liu, W. C., Kee, Y. H., & Chian, L. K. (2019). Competence, autonomy, and relatedness in the classroom: understanding students’ motivational processes using the self-determination theory. *Heliyon, 5*(7), e01983. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e01983
> 1 votes

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Tags: psychiatry
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# Question
Title: Measuring postsynaptic potential vs action potential at axon hillock?
I have been reading literature regarding Neuronal potential measurement. Conventionally, researchers use electrode-based method to measure action potential. However, as it's of high invasiveness and low throughput several optical methods such as Genetically encoded voltage indicators (GEVIs) and chemical methods such as Voltage-sensitive dyes (VSDs) are emerging. One fundamental question I came across was GEVIs indeed can be targeted to the site of interest however, there only a few chemical methods targeting specific cell type have been developed. One such recent literature is this one: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.0c00861. I am wondering, are neuroscience researchers really interested in measuring neuronal potential at individual synapses (which is gradient) or only at the axon hillock (as it's the one which finally matters?). I mean does measuring gradient potential at a defined area is of any interest or is it just another piece of research making no use for neuroscience researchers? (I don't know whether it's useful to synapse plasticity research and all)

# Answer
Measuring voltage at a synapse gives you a measure of the *input* to a cell.

Measuring voltage at the axon hillock (for a typical neuron, practically the soma can substitute as well) gives you a measure of the *output* of a cell: how near it is to threshold and/or if it has reached threshold and produced a spike.

Measuring voltage at intermediate sites in the dendritic tree can be a measure of spatial integration, which can be quite complex.

All of these measuring sites can be of interest, though there is a lot of variance in how difficult each will be.
> -1 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, measurement, neurophysiology, neuroimaging
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# Question
Title: What is the term used to describe a situation where person doesn't know that he/she actually knows something?
I was watching "Molly's Game" where a conversation between Molly and her psychologist dad appears in the later life of Molly (Molly didn't have very good relationship with her dad and wanted to piss him off often when she was young).

The transcript:

> Dad: I knew that you know that I cheated with mom
>
> Molly: I didn't know that till I was 20 years old
>
> Dad: You knew it when you saw me with someone in my car, you were 5 years old, you didn't know what you saw but you have known since then

What is this psychological effect where one doesn't yet know that he/she knows something and perhaps acts out something to its effect?

# Answer
> 1 votes
I've seen that movie, it's awesome!

I'd call that "subconscious knowledge" - because you know about something and it influences your behaviour, but your brain and reasoning aren't yet developed enough to understand what you know (and to link it to the behaviour).

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Tags: social-psychology, abnormal-psychology
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# Question
Title: Pygmalion effect and negative expectations
I've been reading about the Pygmalion effect. From what extracted, it means positive expectations positively influence performance.

Now I'm curious to know this... does the Pygmalion effect also apply to negative expectations in addition to positive expectations?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Overall one can't deny the influence of expectations.

After reading more about the matter, I'd say that **Pygmalion effect** (or Rosenthal effect) only speaks of positive expectations others might have on us, so it doesn't apply to

* negative expectations.
* expectations we have for ourselves.

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For the negative expectations there's the **Golem effect** and according to Wikipedia it is

> a psychological phenomenon in which lower expectations placed upon individuals either by supervisors or the individual themselves lead to poorer performance by the individual.

In this case it's irrelevant who has the expectations (if they come from outside or from ourselves). Also, from Babad, E. Y.; Inbar, J.; Rosenthal, R. (1982), "Pygmalion, Galatea, and the Golem: Investigations of biased and unbiased teachers", the effect

> represents the concerns of social scientists and educators, which are focused on the negative effects of self-fulfilling prophecies

Notice that the German-born American psychologist Robert Rosenthal is behind both of these effects.

Then, and according to Psychologinie, there's the **Galatea effect** which is

> a phenomenon where people's own opinions about their ability and self-worth influence their performance.

The following image (also from the same website) pretty much describes the difference between Galatea and Pygmalion effects

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Tags: bias, performance, attitudes
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# Question
Title: List of psychological conditions, disorders and illnesses
I would be grateful to anyone who takes some time to answer. Is there any up-to-date list of all psychological conditions, disorders and illnesses, in the strict neuro-psychiatric scientific definition?

Would a list of such conditions, disorders and illnesses be different under the context of contemporary psychoanalysis (not of-course pure Freud based from the 1900s)? Or would they be included in the above-mentioned list? If not, is there the second list, *psychoanalytical oriented*, but still based on scientific publications?

Any form of such a list (or catalog), including *wikipedia, medpud or other major Journal publication or even a scientific book*, would work.

Thanks and please do understand the "anonymous" posting

# Answer
> 3 votes
The DSM-5 is the current version of the diagnostic manual of the APA.

It's hard to say there is any such thing as a "strict neuro-psychiatric" definition; these definitions are by their nature not strict at all, but the DSM is probably the closest thing to some level of unified understanding in the field. That doesn't mean everyone agrees with it - they certainly don't - and you can infer from changes from edition to edition that it is all far from settled.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Apart from the DSM-5, the World Health Organisation maintains the International Classification of Diseases, currently on it's 11th revision (ICD-11). It contains far more than just psychological disorders, but these are included.

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Tags: diagnosis, publication, disorder
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# Question
Title: How are neurons able to effectively communicate when there are way more dendrites than axons?
Neurons can have up to 100,000 dendrites and typically only have a single axon. This means a neuron typically has a very large number of inputs while only having a single output. Surely you can see the math doesn't add up here. There are not enough axons to connect to all of the dendrites, so where are the dendrites getting their information from?

# Answer
> 0 votes
I did a quick Google search and I found out the following:

Although the University of Queensland, Australia states that the neuron has three main parts:

> A neuron has three main parts: dendrites, an axon, and a cell body or **soma**

There is a part which is neglected to be mentioned, which answers your question, and that is the axon terminals (Biology Dictionary).

## Dendrites

These are the receiving parts of the neuron. Dendrites receive synaptic inputs from axons, with the sum total of dendritic inputs determining whether the neuron will fire an action potential — a brain signal.

## Axons

These are the long, thin structures in which action potentials are generated (the transmitting part of the neuron). After initiation, action potentials travel down axons.

## Axon Terminals

> (Also called synaptic boutons, terminal boutons, or end-feet) are distal terminations of the telodendria (branches) of an axon. An axon, also called a nerve fiber, is a long, slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, that conducts electrical impulses called action potentials away from the neuron's cell body, or soma, in order to transmit those impulses to other neurons, muscle cells or glands.
> (Wikipedia)

Image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons and licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

While there is one axon, there are many terminations from that axon. Synapses at the end of the axon terminals pass the action potential to either another neuron cell body to be passed to many more or to muscle cells or glands.

Be aware though, that:

> Neurons are not in direct contact with each other. There are extremely small spaces between each neuron known as synapses. Because there is not a direct connection, neurons must communicate with each other indirectly through the use of neurotransmitters. This communication is facilitated by the conversion of the electrical signals within the neuron to the chemical signals within the synapse.
> (Biology Dictionary)

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Tags: brain
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title: Difference in MEG and EEG readings

text:
# Question
Title: Difference in MEG and EEG readings
Reading the excellent clear answer from @RobinKramer to Are brain waves electromagnetic waves? I have become very interested in the mechanisms behind the measurement techniques using EEG and MEG.

From the answer, I understand that an EEG measures the action potentials within a neuron from one end to the other and a MEG measures the magnetic field generated by the action potentials. What I am wondering is; generally speaking, will the waveform outputs from each measuring device mirror each other in frequency and µV scales or are they different?

# Answer
It seems I misunderstood how the outputs may be viewed from an MEG.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a non-invasive test, which:

> measures the magnetic fields generated by electric currents in the brain. The magnetic field measurements are in the range of femto-tesla to pico-tesla. MEG provides a very accurate resolution of the timing of neuronal activity (Singh, 2014).

A copyrighted image of an MEG recording can be viewed in Figure 3 of Singh (2014) and looks very different to a normal EEG with a typical montage, which can be viewed in Figure 1 within Louis, et al. (2016).

## References

Louis, E. K. S., Frey, L. C., Britton, J. W., Hopp, J. L., Korb, P., Koubeissi, M. Z., ... & Pestana-Knight, E. M. (2016). The normal eeg. Electroencephalography (EEG): An Introductory Text and Atlas of Normal and Abnormal Findings in Adults, Children, and Infants \[Internet\]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK390346/

Singh S. P. (2014). Magnetoencephalography: Basic principles. *Annals of Indian Academy of Neurology, 17*(Suppl 1), S107–S112. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-2327.128676
> 0 votes

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Tags: eeg, electrophysiology, brain-waves, meg
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# Question
Title: PTSD is an internalising disorder or mixed?
I am a bit confused. In an open access article (Caspi, et al. 2020), is the following — under **Methods: Assessing Psychopathology** (emphasis mine):

> **\[...\]** externalizing disorders (ie, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, alcohol dependence, cannabis dependence, other drug dependence, and tobacco dependence), **internalizing disorders (ie**, depression, generalized anxiety disorder, fears \[including social phobia, simple phobia, agoraphobia, and panic disorder\], **posttraumatic stress disorder**, and eating disorders \[including bulimia and anorexia\]), and thought disorders (ie, obsessive-compulsive disorder, mania, and schizophrenia)

I can understand that PTSD will be caused by internalisation of the trauma experience(s), but from my experience, elements of PTSD often involve externalising (hypervigilence for example) and sometimes unhelpful thoughts/behaviours (for example, fear of all people of a certain religion, culture, background and/or gender; and to the extreme, violent tendencies towards those people to "prevent" further traumatising events).

So is PTSD just an internalising disorder, or can it be a mixture of an internalising, externalising and thought/behaviour disorder?

## References

Caspi, A., Houts, R. M., Ambler, A., Danese, A., Elliott, M. L., Hariri, A., ... & Rasmussen, L. J. H. (2020). Longitudinal Assessment of Mental Health Disorders and Comorbidities Across 4 Decades Among Participants in the Dunedin Birth Cohort Study. *JAMA Network Open, 3*(4), e203221-e203221. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.3221

# Answer
> 1 votes
My understanding is that the internalizing/externalizing dichotomy refers to the way symptoms are expressed, not the source/cause of the disorder. Internalizing disorders are those that mostly have an internal impact and tend to lead sufferers to withdraw or hide their affliction. Externalizing disorders tend to impact others more directly with outward-focused behaviors. Therefore, I don't think hypervigilance would be considered an "externalizing" feature even though it is directed at the outside world, because all that is directed outward is *attention*; the primary impact on the individual is the internal mental stress that maintaining a hypervigilant state creates. Outbursts of violence clearly would be "externalizing", however.

The DSM-5 doesn't categorize by internalizing/externalizing, and puts PTSD in the category of "Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders". The DSM-5 mentions specifically the combination of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in these disorders:

> In some cases, symptoms can be well understood within an anxiety- or fear-based context. It is clear, however, that many individuals who have been exposed to a traumatic or stressful event exhibit a phenotype in which, rather than anxiety- or fear-based symptoms, the most prominent clinical characteristics are anhedonic and dysphoric symptoms, externalizing angry and aggressive symptoms, or dissociative symptoms.

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In the paper you refer to, the authors did group PTSD with the internalizing disorders. They've done this in reference to a previous paper which identified three factors, labeled Internalizing, Externalizing, and Thought Disorder, that together explained well the spectrum of conditions. However, PTSD is not really involved in this paper.

It's unclear why they chose to include it as "internalizing" in the Caspi 2020 paper, except that their approach meant that if they included it at all it had to be placed in one of those three categories. Given the other items on the list, I think it's quite reasonable to group PTSD along with anxiety, phobias, and depression, rather than among substance dependence or schizophrenia, but I don't think this should be taken as anything but a choice of designation within the scope of this particular paper.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, clinical-psychology, ptsd, categorisation
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# Question
Title: Is there any evidence that language is the limit of the world?
Philosopher Wittgenstein says that "the limit of my language means the limit of my world". One theory that supports this statement is that people couldn't see the blue colour until they have the word *blue*. However, it has been proven to be false in Skeptics: Could people perceive the color blue in ancient times?

So, is there any scientific evidence that prove (or at least agree with) this statement?

# Answer
There is this quote from a cognitive linguistics book.

* Evans & Green (2006) *Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction*. p. 102

> we introduced the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the idea that language might play some role in determining non-linguistic thought, and that speakers of different languages might therefore have different conceptual systems. We concluded that, while the strong version of this hypothesis is rejected by most linguists, there is some evidence in favour of the weak version of the hypothesis. Although cognitive linguistics makes the case for a common conceptualising capacity, accounting for general cross-linguistic patterns, such a position is nevertheless consistent with and even predicts substantial cross-linguistic variation. Given that the linguistic system both reflects the conceptualising capacity, and in turn influences the nature of knowledge by virtue of the language-specific categories it derives, cognitive linguistics is consistent with a weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
> 2 votes

# Answer
This is not quite your question, but it's the closest thing I know of. There's a significant amount of work suggesting that **purely morphological attributes can shape conceptualization**: looking at the impact of grammatical gender on the attributes assigned to the nouns that have a specific grammatical gender--that is, grammatically male nouns are rated higher on stereotypically masculine attributes and lower on stereotypically feminine attributes. You could argue that morphological sway on the semantic content of the noun is a "limit", I suppose.

Some studies have done nice pairing of languages to demonstrate reverse effects on the same nouns according to different grammatical gender. If you're interested in reading the studies, Konishi 1993 is a good place to start.
> 4 votes

# Answer
First some linguistic theory background.

Noam Chomsky has hypothesized that language developed internally to facilitate certain aspects of human cognition. According to Chomsky's hypothesis, human ability to articulate language audibly for communication appeared much later. Chomsky claims that the rather sudden emergence of language as communication points to the longer evolution of this internal language as an underpinning of human cognition.

Further, Chomsky holds that this evolution of language results from an "organ" in the human mind, which evolved to provide the facility of language. That is why a child of 18 months can begin to speak, despite rather sparse informational language context.

This all suggests that human cognition is tied intimately to language, and that human language is a narrower facility than might otherwise be thought.

Therefore, the limits of human language, generally, almost certainly limits your cognition, perception of the world, and capacity to cognitively model reality.

There are, however, other cognitive systems than language. The system that allows temporal spatial imaging, for example. Another example is the visual system that perceives color, which is almost certainly much older than the human cognitive system, evolutionarily speaking. Therefore, even prior to having the capacity of speech, our evolutionary ancestors could perceive blue, even without a word for it. However, they lacked the capacity to imbue the perception with meaning beyond the drives that color perceptions trigger, such as eating ripe fruit.

Does this mean that they really did not see what we call "blue"? That is an interesting point for further discussion.
> 4 votes

# Answer
"Blue" exists in a *context* of blue. If the mind presented itself with the linguistic expression (word) "blue" at every perception of the colour blue, then the world is limited to the expression. The context of blue-ness (the experience at 10 fathoms below the surface of the sea), and the complexity of expressions incorporating blue-ness is Wittgenstein's point. The richness of blue-ness and language comes from the unlimited ways to which it (a concept/perception) may be referred or expressed.

Language development in children as an indicator of social advantages would support this view of the merits of richness for setting limits to a world... Language and Social Disadvantage: Theory into Practice, or The Contribution of Early Communication Quality to Low-Income Children’s Language Success

In terms of the origin of the colour.. Why would the word "blue" be necessary if the colour was imperceptible? Perhaps this is an ease-of-use linguistic negation. For example: blue replaced the "not red", "not crimson" naming scheme - a world limited by nouns.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Very interesting question! Patrick Winston - profesor at MIT said: "If you can name something, you get power over it!" Prove by contradiction: Suppose someone cannot explorer new things. Then give 3 cards (pink, blue, green) to that person who does not know blue as a color. The person will recognize "blue" as a color. If you don't tell the name "blue" it will be some other words, for sure, but we have the ability for generalization which leads to no limits of our world.
> 0 votes

# Answer
There is actually whole field dedicates for this: Cognitive linguisitics

> Cognitive linguistics (CL) an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics, combining knowledge and research from both psychology and linguistics. It describes how language interacts with cognition, **how language forms our thoughts**, and the evolution of language parallel with the change in the common mindset across time.
> 0 votes

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Tags: perception, reference-request, language, philosophy-of-mind, language-processing
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