title: Euphoria from oxygen deprivation

text:
# Question
Title: Euphoria from oxygen deprivation
Plane & Pilot have an article saying:

> Altitude-chamber tests have shown that as oxygen deprivation increases, some victims experience a sense of increasing well-being, even euphoria, while they’re losing the ability to function in a thoughtful, coordinated manner.

But it's not too clear from that article how many people experience euphoria from oxygen deprivation. I'm pretty sure the loss of cognitive function is 100%, eventually, even though the dose/concentration might vary with the subject. But does everyone experience euphoria before that happens or does it happen just to some individuals with a certain vulnerability? This video suggests not everyone experiences euphoria, and if that's so what's the prevalence?

Optionally (i.e. if it's easy to answer based on the same source(s) for my main question), are there any proposed/studied pathways by which this euphoric consequence of oxygen deprivation might come about? And is it relevant to anything else, say to the "choking game" that some children (unfortunately) practice, or to asphyxiophilia/hypoxyphilia?

# Answer
> 3 votes
**Short answer**
Given the fact that literature on hypoxia consistently report euphoria as a symptom, my conclusion is that the two are correlated strongly and is not confined to a small subset of susceptible people.

**Background**
Personally I know only of the effects of oxygen on the central nervous system under conditions of increased oxygen pressure, as for example encountered by scuba divers at depths greater than standard recreational diving. In that case it is called **oxygen intoxication** or oxygen toxicity (*e.g.*, Chawla & Lavania, 2001), characterized by *e.g.*:

* visual changes
* tinnitus
* irritability, anxiety, confusion
* vertigo.

Hypoxia (Asmaro, Mayall & Ferguson, 2013) can indeed lead to

* Euphoria and feelings of well-being
* Acute anxiety, irritability & confusion
* confusion, loss of consciousness.

The authors however only qualitatively analyzed their group of test subjects on these subjective mind states and describe quantitative statistics only on psychophysical tests. The latter were indeed significant, showing that hypoxia leads to changes in performance on a variety of tasks in most, and probably all subjects.

To proceed to your question - hard numbers on the prevalence of feelings of euphoria are difficult to find, yet credible reports that mention it as a symptom are abundant. For example, the self-asphyxial risk-taking behavior (SARTB) you mention is known to lead to euphoria and is thought to be one of the motivations behind the 'game' (Griffiths, 2015; Busse *et al.*, 2015).

The fact that hypoxia is a general term for a range of blood oxygenation levels, and the complexity of the cerebral cortex, variability in susceptibility is to be expected. For example, hyperoxic effects depend strongly on the altitude (*i.e.*, partial oxygen pressure) Chawla & Lavania, 2001).

<sub>**References**
**-** Asmaro, Mayall & Ferguson, 2013
**-** Busse *et al*., *Arch Dis Child* (2015); **100**(12): 1106–14
**-** Chawla & Lavania, *Med J Armed Forces India* (2001); **57**(2): 131–3
**-** Griffiths, *Education and Health* (2015); **33**(3): 54-6</sub>

---
Tags: neuroscience, mood
---


# Question
Title: Why do many people play Candy Crush without ever buying anything while some spend all their money on it?
I'm trying to understand how free-to-play games like Candy Crush Saga use existing knowledge of the human brain to keep people engaged and how they convince players to pay money for in-game goods. Some of their game mechanics remind me of the Skinner box. Interestingly, some sources claim that a very small percentage of players contribute 50% of their revenue. I'm assuming this is because not everyone is as susceptible to their monetization tricks. Some addicted players dump all their money into the game, which puts pressure on game developers to protect vulnerable customers from themselves.

Research on big spenders in free-to-play games seems to be scarce, but are there any parallels with existing research (e.g. on gambling) that explain why many people will never spend a dime on these games while others are struggling not to spend their life savings on it? For example, is there a significant difference in how individuals respond to conditioning?

# Answer
Summary: From the few papers I've looked at, microtransaction-based games tend to work as suspected/designed. That is, games which rely on frustration to get the player to spend money (like Candy Crush) tend to obtain money from players with low tolerance for frustration; games which are more related to gambling (like "social casino" games) tend to get money from players who score high on gambling-problem scales and so forth. There are probably not enough high spenders in such games to reflect their behavior in the (unweighted) average player. There's one cluster-analysis paper suggesting that the motivations of the high-spenders (and thus possibly other parts of their psychological profile) are different than those of the average spender. But I think the research on that is too limited to draw firm conclusions on this aspect.

---

I found one paper specifically about Candy Crush, "Self-Control in Casual Games: The relationship between Candy Crush Saga™ players’ in-app purchases and self-control":

> Our study reveals that the amount players spend on in-app purchases is correlated with lower levels of self-control. On the other hand, purchases and self-control levels were not significantly correlated with the amount of time people play, game addiction, or problem video game playing.

So in a game where the microtransaction are mainly a way to speed-up the game (a fairly typical freemium design), the people that pay are those with poor self-control who get crushed by the game's non-paying pace and repetitiveness. Self-control was measured in this paper in a uniform manner using the (highly cited/used) Self-Control Scale (SCS) from Tangney et al. The authors also quote a couple of free-form responses for additional insight/confirmation:

> I'm trying really hard not to spend money on games. I did it a few times after being stuck for weeks because I was frustrated but I'm trying not to do it again.

and

> I am feeling really frustrated because I am having trouble getting past this level. I know that if I buy the fish boosters, then I would have an easier time of getting past this level. I am seriously contemplating hitting the buy now option on my ipad to purchase the boosters. I get frustrated with myself and disgusted at the game turn it off, and then go to play farm hero saga instead, which is similar to candy crush but it is a lot less difficult to spend money on it because it is easier to play.

---

There's a more recent (2016) paper "Who Spends Money to Play for Free? Identifying Who Makes Micro-transactions on Social Casino Games (and Why)." limtited alas to "social casino" games like Slotomania.

> Results showed that social casino gamers who engaged in micro-transactions reported significantly higher levels of impulsivity, reward sensitivity and problem gambling severity, but not competitiveness. In terms of motivation to make micro-transactions, desire to extend play was endorsed most frequently, followed by a desire to access additional features, chasing lost credits, and to speed up play. Lastly, among participants who made micro-transactions, reward sensitivity predicted making micro-transactions to chase lost credits. These results suggest the personality make-up of social casino gamers is important to understand who is likely to make micro-transactions as well as their motivation to do so-information that could prove useful for regulation of the industry.

And in numerical detail, the difference between spenders and non-spenders:

The results in this study confirm gambling-like addiction behavior as predictor for spending. The results may not fully generalized to other types of microtransaction games (e.g. where players more obviously compete with each other), but some seem consistent with the designer's intention in this particular game. I had never heard of "buying back your virtual credits" before, but apparently people spend money on that too. Perhaps a clever (or--depending on your point of view--unscrupulous) way to tap into loss aversion. Or maybe just a way of extending play in this type of game.

The authors were quite reserved in their abstract; the breakdown of motives for various microtransaction incentives was close to statistical significance in quite a few other cases, e.g. impulsivity predicting the need to speed up the game had p=0.07; perhaps a better powered study would find some of these significant as well.

Some reference links for the measures used: PSGI, BIS-Brief for impulsivity, Smither and Houston's Competitiveness Index, whereas

> Reward sensitivity was measured using two face valid items anchored at 1 (strongly disagree) and 7 (strongly agree), ‘‘I play social casino games in order to win large sums of virtual credits’’ and ‘‘I don’t find social casino games to be rewarding \[reverse coded\].’’ Higher scores indicated greater sensitivity to rewards.

---

And there's yet another 2016 also on "social casino" games (with a similar title too!): "Who Pays to Play Freemium Games? The Profiles and Motivations of Players Who Make Purchases Within Social Casino Games", which did a cluster analysis to find that:

> A cluster analysis revealed distinct subgroups of paying players; these included more frequent moderate spenders who made purchases to avoid waiting for credits and to give gifts to friends as well as less frequent high spenders who made purchases to increase the entertainment value of the game.

Of note is that there was no statistical difference in income or education between these groups. But these groups were still a substantial proportion of the sample; total sample was 521; of these 261 had ever made a purchase and the two aforementioned clusters had 67 (moderate but frequent) and 52 (high but infrequent) spenders. I think neither of these clusters captured the actual "whales" who are probably an even smaller group.

---

There are more concrete numbers from the industry itself, but these are not in peer-reviewed publications. According to a Tapjoy report discussed in Adweek:

* Whales, defined as the top 10% of an app's spenders, account for 70% of the app's revenue from in-app purchases and for 59% of its total revenue (which additionally includes advertising). Whales "make approximately 7.4 in-app purchases per month, for a median average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) of $335."
* The rest of paying players make 1.75 in-app purchases per month, and have a median ARPPU of $17.94. But in contrast to this substantial monetary difference, the time spent in game is not that different: a median of 33 days compared to 40 days for whales.
* Ad-tapping customers had an ARPPU of only $3.38.
* 91% of users were non-spending.

It's also interesting that spenders aren't that impulsive with their first purchase; the (average or median?) "time for spenders to make their first in-app payment is 16.3 days". This was based on Tapjoy’s "Personalized Monetization Platform", so it's presumably aggregate across multiple types of games.

The reason why I detailed these is that the clusters from the previously mentioned academic study don't quite mesh with this industry-reported data. So I suspect there may be substantial variability depending on the game, how you cluster the data etc.
> 2 votes

# Answer
The economic concept of marginalism comes to mind. Actors will spend money to buy virtual goods if the marginal cost (price) is lower than the marginal (subjective) utility of the virtual good. If you have lots of money it's easier to spend $10 on extra lives. This explains some of it.

Most of the purchases are small, so the individual cost/utility analysis is biased, it's "just" $10. Over time it might become a problem.

It's a lot like any other kind of addiction, and I think (baseless speculation) that the "big whales" are more likely to be predisposed for addictions than the general population. The utility, positive affect generated by a feeling of progress and accomplishment, becomes harder to maintain and creates a "need" to keep playing. And when the individual transaction costs are so low it's that much harder to resist.

Edit: I've found some sources that might answer your question better.

This paper discusses how game designers might think about it. Not peer-reviewed.

From a different behavioural economics perspective.

Some other papers on the topic.

Note: Most of these discuss microtransactions and virtual goods. Candy crush is mostly lives, leading to different motivations than games like Team Fortress 2 with cosmetics like hats and skins (and keys).
> 3 votes

# Answer
At least in part, the games include elements that make **children more susceptible to buying in-app-purchases**. Though this tactic may have been somewhat attenuated.

In some other cases, I found the following conclusion from this review paper:

> Purchase behavior is explained primarily with purchase intention but also with habits. Purchase intention in turn is most strongly driven by how satisfied people are with the use of
> virtual goods and whether they have a positive attitude towards using real money in virtual environments.
>
> Moreover, people seem to purchase virtual goods in order to give a favorable image of themselves. Furthermore, interestingly the enjoyment of using the core service where the virtual goods are sold in does not predict virtual good purchases while it is thought as one of the main reasons for using the service.
>
> These results could be in line with past literature that suggests that game operators attempt to increase demand for virtual goods by intentionally inconveniencing players by limiting some aspects of the game or making the game more burdensome to play. Therefore, enjoyment may have a double role in explaining purchases; enjoyment of the game is needed for retaining players and thus increasing the likelihood of purchases but on the other hand, negative enjoyment is needed for the player to feel the need to purchase more.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: motivation, conditioning, hci, economics
---


# Question
Title: Does white noise impair studying, reading, recall/memory or learning?
I recently have been trying to look into whether or not white noise works as a means to block out external sounds so I can concentrate. However, I want to know whether it actually impairs studying and reading. I do not care if it has no benefit, as long as it has no negative effects.

I am trying to block out the sounds of my brother through the walls when he is playing his xbox. As I am hyper-sensitive to noise and any abrupt noises what so ever throw me out of my concentration.

# Answer
There are recent studies that suggest that unstructured background noise, including white noise, may actually improve studying and recall. The benefits are unclear and likely person-dependent, but there is at least no obvious bad effect.

Bottom line: sounds like a safe strategy for you to try.
> 2 votes

---
Tags: learning, reading
---


# Question
Title: Does the brain's architecture change while growing up?
If we are somehow able to record and store all the neural connection in the brain of a child and also the brain of the same individual when he is old will there be difference between the two ?

Is the brain capable to destroy and create neural networks (neurons) on its own, namely to store, process and retrieve memories? Or does it uses a fixed network instead, *i.e.,* the network which each individual is born with )?

If the brain does create new networks, can you please provide a link to the resource where I can read this from ?

# Answer
**Short answer**
The brain is a highly dynamic organ that changes constantly through life. During adulthood, there is a general decline in the number of cells. Memory formation is generally thought to be regulated through synaptic connections rather than at the whole-neuron level.

**Background**
First of all, aging results in a steady decline of the number of nerve cells, so the 'architecture' of the brain changes dramatically regardless its function.

Secondly, memories and other dynamic processes in the brain are typically controlled by altering **synaptic connectivity** and not so much at the level of the whole-neuron.

Thirdly, neuronal regeneration is confined to but a few areas in the brain, for example the hippocampus where it may, or may not be directly involved in memory formation.

But yes, the brain does dynamically control the synaptic connectivity and notably the synaptic strength of synapses. As Fizz here correctly states, that is called neuroplasticity. Intensive use of certain synaptic connections may result in synaptic strengthening,for example by **long-term potentiation** (Lynch, 2004). Reversely, abandoned connections may be downregulated through **long-term depression**.

A general reference work best suited for your basic question would really be a general Neuroscience text book, such as the following online work:

**-** Purves *et al*. (eds). *Neuroscience*. 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates; 2001.

Or for something more up-to-date, yet not online, the bible of Neuroscience:

**-** Kandel *et al*. (eds.). *Principles of Neural Science*

**Reference**
**-** Lynch, *Physiol Rev* (2004); **84**(1): 87-136
> 4 votes

# Answer
The brain continues to reorganize throughout life. The process is called neuroplasticity. Among other things (and as proof) it is what allows people to recover from stroke (or traumatic brain injury). Neuroplasticity does slow down in the really old age, which also makes recovery from stroke more difficult for the elderly.

For even more details (than the prvious link) see "Old Dogs Learning New Tricks: Neuroplasticity Beyond the Juvenile Period"
> 2 votes

---
Tags: neuroscience, neural-network, neurophysiology, brain
---


# Question
Title: Which possible methods can be used to determine if a certain part of the brain is active?
The question goes back to this tweet:

> Julia @JuliaHass
>
> I just learned that elephants think humans are cute the way humans think puppies are cute (the same part of the brain lights up when they see us) so pack it in, nothing else this pure and good is happening today.

The skeptics stack exchange post about the tweet refers to elephants, but I'm interested in a general answer.

# Answer
Note that I'm being a bit simplistic here, as with PET you can measure a lot of different things (like activation of circuits depending on specific neurotransmitters) depending on the tracer used. Here's a table from the book *PET and SPECT in Neurology*:

The downside is that PET has lower spatial resolution than fMRI and substantially lower temporal resolution, meaning chnages over time are hard to pick up with PET. If you care about quick changes, then MEG or EEG are the fastest, but you have solve a difficult inverse problem to figure out where the changes came from, which requires making quite a few assumptions to get a (unique) solution.

And let me add (for infotainment purposes) "\[f\]MRI Killed The Radiotracer".
> 1 votes

---
Tags: neuroscience, neurophysiology, neurology, brain, experimental-neuroscience
---


# Question
Title: What is the psychology behind the mass crying of the crowds at superstar music concerts?
Watch the youtube below. Look at the superhuman powers of Michael Jackson to make his audience cry. These audience are strangers to Michael Jackson. There is no close relationship between them other than they paid for his ticket.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeWVoRUJhdY

I have watched Michael Jackson several times on Youtube and I have never shed a tear.

What is the psychology behind the powers of superstars like Michael Jackson and Beatles to induce crowd crying? There is no sob stories being told.

# Answer
> 3 votes
From a study conducted by Salimpoor, Benovoy, et al.:

> Music, an abstract stimulus, can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving, similar to tangible rewards that involve the striatal dopaminergic system.
>
> (...)
>
> These results indicate that intense pleasure in response to music can lead to dopamine release in the striatal system. Notably, the anticipation of an abstract reward can result in dopamine release in an anatomical pathway distinct from that associated with the peak pleasure itself.

This helps explain the basis for people crying when they're listening to music. As for why this tends to occur in a concert environment - this could be partly related to Salimpoor et al.'s suggestion that

> composers and performers ... manipulate emotional arousal by violating expectations in certain ways or by delaying the predicted outcome (for example, by inserting unexpected notes or slowing tempo) before the resolution to heighten the motivation for completion.

One could argue that live performances tend to have more unexpected sequences like these (if you've been to a concert or listened to a live track, you notice that the live show might have a different, unexpected musical arrangement).

Additionally, a plausible explanation would be that when you have many people packed into the same space experiencing the music (as opposed to listening to it alone or in a small group), the emotional reactions discussed above could be amplified. There doesn't appear to be much research backing this up specifically, however.

Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. J. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience, 14(2), 257-262. doi:10.1038/nn.2726

---
Tags: social-psychology, abnormal-psychology
---


# Question
Title: Can speech dysarthria occur in schizophrenia without other neurological or medication-induced disruptions?
As I understand it, acquired dysarthria of speech is caused due to problems with motor neurons or other neurological, cerebral and peripheral, conditions in the CNS affecting those. And schizophrenia is primarily a problem in mesolimbic and mesocortical dopaminergic pathways, amongst possibly other problems. Can a purely schizophrenic or psychiatric condition without neurological diagnoses cause dysarthria as a symptom by itself? Or is acquired dysarthria always a sign of a comorbid neurological diagnosis?

# Answer
> 1 votes
There's one somewhat obscure paper by Varambally et al. (2012) that (apparently) says that dysarthria can be a part of the "Neurological Soft Signs" (NSS) of schizophrenia itself. They examined "32 never-treated patients with schizophrenia" vs healthy controls and found that

> A stepwise multiple discriminant analysis identified two ICARS sub-scores to be significant (Kinetic sub-score and Dysarthria sub-score), which accounted for 78% classification.

The broader topic of NSS in schizophrenia (either in patients or even in their relatives) has received a fair bit of attention, but the above is the only paper that mentioned dysarthria in this context. One potential problem that I see is that there isn't a commonly agreed way to measure NSS. One meta-analysis found that three studies used NES, two used SNE, and two the Rossi scale. I looked at these scales briefly and they don't seem to address dysarthria; it's possible that I've missed something and they call it something else...

---

The question is a bit vague (and given its age and one-time involvement of the asker it seems unlikely it will see clarification). The title seem to ask if medication can also cause dysarthria. Apparently, yes, there is one study by Caroff et al. (2011) which does mention it as an extreme form of (antipshyctohic) drug-induced dystonia:

> Dystonia is an acute, alarming involuntary movement disorder that can be painful and distressing, and erodes patient trust and compliance. It is characterized by briefly sustained or intermittent spasms or contractions of antagonistic muscle groups resulting in twisting and repetitive movements or postures. Drug-induced dystonia can affect any muscle group, but most commonly involves the head, neck, jaw, eyes and mouth resulting in spasmodic torticollis, retro- or anterocollis, trismus and dental trauma, forced jaw-opening or dislocation, grimacing, blepharospasm, tongue biting, protrusion or twisting, and distortion of the lips. It is not action or sensory stimulus dependent. More subtle signs, including muscle cramps or tightness of the jaw and tongue with difficulty speaking or chewing, may precede dystonia or occur alone. At the other extreme, dystonia may present as an oculogyric crisis or with other forced eye movements, or with **dysarthria**, dysphagia and potentially lethal respiratory stridor if pharyngeal or laryngeal musculature is affected. Less frequently observed, dystonia may affect axial, truncal or limb movements occasionally leading to camptocormia, pleurothotonus (Pisa syndrome) or opisthotonus.

The same paper mentions that dysarthria may also occur in the more dangerous neuroleptic malignant syndrome, in which the more classic symptoms of hyperthermia and generalized rigidity also occur (and can be used for differential diagnosis.)

There's one other paper by Mathews et al. (2005) about antipsychotic-induced movement disorders that I've looked at, but it doesn't mention dysarthria. From this I guess that it's a rather rare occurrence as a side-effect of antipsychotic medication. I didn't find anything more detailed about prevalence etc.

---

---
Tags: schizophrenia, speech
---


# Question
Title: Can intense multitasking improve fluid intelligence/working memory?
The Dual N-Back task is the only task I'm aware of that has empirical support showing that it improves working memory. It appears to improve working memory through multitasking, although this multitasking must fit certain criteria, namely that you can't learn the task so well that you can eventually "automate" it without going into working memory.

Thus, I'm wondering whether other forms of multi-tasking such as playing Starcraft II (see my earlier thoughts) and driving with a cellphone can also improve working memory?

A possible follow-up question: if not, what differentiates the type of multitasking found in the Dual N-Back task from other types of multi-tasking?

# Answer
> 9 votes
In general, I'd hypothesise that "memory-training" programs will not lead to domain-general increases in fluid intelligence nor working memory.

As general background, you might want to check out the literature on expert memory.

* Practice is very effective at improving performance on the practised task. Transfer is real and does exist, but it is often small in effect.
    + Let's take the study by Ericsson, Chase, and Faloon (1980). After 230 hours of practice a participant, SF, was trained to increase their digit span (i.e., the sequence of random numbers they could recall) from 7 to 79 numbers. One might think that SF had increased his working memory. However, talk aloud protocols suggest that SF was using sophisticated domain specific mnemonic strategies (e.g., linking running times to random numbers). The skill did not generalise to other memory stimuli.
    + The expertise literature is filled with examples of experts seemingly defying the limits of human ability. Yet, such achievements tend to be domain specific and achieved through substantial practice. For an excellent review of the expertise literature, see Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer (1993).
* It is very difficult to modify very large domain general abilities.

Thus, my general advice is for people wanting to improve their working memory or fluid intelligence is to instead focus on what domain specific ability they want to improve and focus on practicing that.

### References

* Ericsson, K. A., Chase, W. G., and Faloon, S. (1980). Acquisition of a memory skill. Science, 208(4448):1181-1182. FREE PDF
* Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, T., and Tesch-Romer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100:363-406.

# Answer
> 2 votes
In my mind the dual-n-back (aka Jaeggi training) is still controversial. A meta-analysis by Jaeggi and co-authors (2015) found in favor of their original paper, but others have gone on record to disagree with their conclusions, Melby-Lervåg & Hulme (2016) in particular who had conducted a meta-analysis concluding the opposite in 2013; Jaeggi and co-authors disagree with that criticism, of course. Dougherty et al. (2016) were also unconvinced of the meta-analysis of the Jaeggi group.

There's a 2016 editorial in *Nature* on the state of affairs on this line of research, with the subheading:

> Conflicting results are expected in a young field, but what do you do when even the meta-analyses do not agree?

An empirical study by Lawlor-Savage and Goghari (2016) published after those meta-analyses and which (according to its introduction) took methodological concerns outlined in the meta-analysis into consideration for its own experimental design, also failed to find improvements from dual-n-back. I'm not saying this is the last word on the issue, just that replication has proven difficult.

So I think it's somewhat premature to ask what else works like this, when we're not sure this works.

# Answer
> 0 votes
I think the "automate" problem is caused by several reasons in my experience.

1: brainworkshop's design on fixed time intervals between trials is bad. Some of the time, we increase our n-back level without some seconds more to recall the letter or position, which ruins the rest of the trials. And so, we chose to remember letters and positions and finally "automate" this bad practice.

2: It is bad to have too many letters in brainworkshop. If you can, imagine how we tried to remember a long word while we were still children. So we suck the long chain of letters into our minds instead of recalling what we saw.

3: Positions are not the best way to practice n-back, just like in the last reason. The human brain can easily recognize this kind of 3x3 spatial pattern. While we are training, we can't avoid learning the 3x3 patterns eventually. How hard to stick a 3 position set and a 3 letter set in mind, right? But while we are sticking those, we have less parts of our minds available to recall memories.

---
Tags: memory, intelligence, performance, brain-training
---


# Question
Title: Calculating brain-part volume percentage?
How is the approximate volume occupied by a brain component calculated?

For example, how would you know the approximate brain volume percentage of both *hippocampi* or both parts of the striatum, or the cortices of the brain?

Is there an application that I, as a non-neuroscientist could use to get such an estimation for a given part in the human brain?

# Answer
> 1 votes
**Short answer**
Magnetic resonance imaging can be used to calculate volumes of brain areas.

**Background**
A state-of-the-art method to determine volumes in brain tissue is by making use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI segments the brain into 3D pixels, called **voxels**. Voxel is derived semantically from the fusion of pixel and volume. Hence, each voxel has a certain volume and thus the number of voxels inside a certain brain area (*e.g.* the hippocampus) can be calculated yielding your desired volume measures (Fig. 1).

Of course you cannot do MRI in your attic, but you can search the internet for the right articles. Two leads are cited below.

Fig. 1. Brain divided into voxels by MRI. source: Everything Zoomer

**References**
**-** Andica *et al*., *J Neuroradiol* (in press)
**-** Aquartz *et al*., *Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci* (2001);**251**(6): 255-61

---
Tags: neuroscience, measurement, neuroanatomy
---


# Question
Title: is it possible to think without language?
I'm trying to fathom what it might be like for a person with aphasia and for one with agnosia. For a person with a visual agnosia I wonder this: if two unrecognizable objects are shown to them, and one is entirely within the background of the other, (say a fork on a cutting board) do these two objects mold into a single unrecognizable object or do they remain distinct unrecognizable objects? Or have I got it all wrong and they don't even "see" any object to speak of (regardless of how many or how they are positioned)?

# Answer
> 0 votes
It all depends on how you define "language" and "thought". The way I define them (very broadly, really universally), neither can exist without the other.

Language is a component of thought, while thought produces language. Language and thought are so inter-dependent as to be virtually the same thing.

And at the social level, thought and language are commutative, so that at times one's language may serve to provoke others to think, while at other times one's thoughts may motivate one to express them in language, for purposes of communicating or sharing with others. And vice-versa.

Language and thought are also commutative on the personal, individual level, in that they help bridge the barriers between internal and external realities.

Perceptions on the other hand, are the mechanisms through which we gain the awareness we need to form thoughts and language. Neither thoughts nor language are possible without the ability to perceive on some level.

So in the order of primacy:

1. Perception or sense
2. Awareness (consciousness)
3. Generic Ideas and language, often equally irrational
4. Reasoned logic and logical language (with increasing complexity)
5. Sound judgment or wisdom, and the ability to use language for good purposes (most complex)

I say "primacy" for this list, because *perception* (or sense) is the foundation for all thought and language, at any level. People can and often do compensate for losses of perceptual ability.

Update (I've been asked to provide references for the bases of my opinions). The following is from Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Information:

> *The Language of Thought Hypothesis*
>
> 1. What is the Language of Thought Hypothesis?
>
> LOTH is an empirical thesis about the nature of thought and thinking. According to LOTH, **thought and thinking are done in a mental language**, i.e., in a symbolic system physically realized in the brain of the relevant organisms. In formulating LOTH, philosophers have in mind primarily the variety of thoughts known as ‘propositional attitudes’.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

> *The Epistemology of Visual Thinking in Mathematics*
>
> 5.2 An evidential use of visual experience in proving
>
> Visual perception is used to tell in particular cases whether the rule thus expressed is correctly implemented...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

> We may distinguish two operations with respect to a given linguistic operation, in particular, a (declarative) sentence and its parts. The first operation is the analysis of the expression with the aim of understanding it, of grasping its meaning. *The second operation consists in investigations concerning the* ***factual*** *situation referred to by the given expression*. **Its aim is the establishment of factual truth**. *This operation is not of a purely logical, but of an* ***empirical***, *nature*...Thus, for every expression that we can understand, there is the question of meaning and the question of actual application; therefore the expression has primarily an intension and secondarily an extension.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

> We shall define the term 'analytic' in such a way that it is applicable to all those sentences, and only those sentences, of Language II that are valid (true, correct) on the basis of logic and classical mathematics...The synthetic sentences are the (true or false) sentences about facts. An important point is that Language II includes descriptive symbols and hence also synthetic sentences.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

> ...language evolved in two stages, and its main purpose was not communication—to show that the ability to think mathematically arose out of the same symbol-manipulating ability that was so crucial to the emergence of true language.

In conclusion, I have tried to show that thinking is enhanced by language. Even further, that conscious thought and logical mental processes are themselves a unique kind of language. Perception is the tool by which we prove ideas, whether true or false. Perception is also the tool by which we gain external information which is used in deduction.

# Answer
> 15 votes
I think the answer is a qualified yes, humans can think without language. Ultimately though it depends on what you mean by "think."

There is a remarkably large number of deaf people who are not exposed either to a signed or spoken language even in developed countries. These people often invent their own gesture systems, referred to as home sign systems. These people In these cases, the deaf children's systems are more complex than the gestures their parents use (Carrigan & Coppola, 2012). My dad was a home signer until after high school, and he learned how to work on his car, drove a motorcycle, and figured out how the furnace worked. Based on these examples, it is clearly possible to engage in fairly complex reasoning without language. In the article cited below, Spaepen et al. (2011) describe how home signers have some concept of number, albeit imprecise.

This is all to say that thinking is possible without language. Home signers are not catatonic, and can actually engage in complex reasoning. One the other hand, language is a huge cognitive advantage, and in this respect it certainly has an impact on thinking. Language facilitates transmission of information (learning), and it provides a way of organizing thought.

Carrigan, E. M., & Coppola, M. (2012). Mothers Do Not Drive Structure in Adult Homesign Systems: Evidence from Comprehension. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & RP Cooper,(Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1398-1403).

Spaepen, E., Coppola, M., Spelke, E. S., Carey, S. E., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2011). Number without a language model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(8), 3163-3168.

# Answer
> 7 votes
Certainly.

It depends on the type of learning process of a person. One can be better at remembering images, so he might access the images first when trying to define an object/event/etc. This can be thought of as having a photographic memory.

The main reason why most people think with words is because it is a much more sophisticated and structured learning process, and is taught young. Missing the opportunity to learn a language when youre young would most likely cause them to develop a different way of processing information.

Same way goes for someone with visual agnosia. He might develop another way of recognizing objects. For example to use other senses (much like the blind uses his hands to "see"). So one with agnosia would have to use another approach to understand that the fork and the cutting board are two different objects.

Developing (with time or by injury) agnosia or aphasia at some point in your life would certainly mess your usual way of processing information; and it would be very hard to rebuild a new recognition system as old habits are hard to break.

On another note, some friend of mine claims that he consciously thinks with noises when playing and writing music.

# Answer
> 5 votes
It is hard to imagine what evidence might be found of thoughts existing without language. Even feral children encounter language (either verbal or nonverbal) through limited contact with people or animals, and lab animals communicate nonverbally with researchers, even if only through their environments (the researcher observes the animal's behavior, and the animal observes how the researcher changes its environment, e.g., its food, waste, and cage furnishings). For reasons such as these, the prospect of thought without language may be somewhat untestable. Producing a sentient being that is never allowed the opportunity to communicate with others would also be unethical by most means I can imagine.

As for your (largely unrelated) question about object discrimination in the absence of recognition, I can't offer any insight in the context of visual agnosia per se, other than to point out that (according to Wikipedia), "Visual agnosia...is not due to a deficit in...language." However, outside that context, I would recommend watching an episode of Scientific American Frontiers, "The Man with Two Brains" that I mentioned in another answer of mine just yesterday! The effects of lacking communication between one's cerebral hemispheres are different from visual agnosia, but give some insight into how unknown objects (e.g., crude drawings) may be identified and differentiated in the absence of linguistic function, which is generally left-hemisphere-dominant. In this episode, Mike Gazzaniga also demonstrates how his split-brain case study subject attends differently to the components that comprise larger objects vs. the overall unity of those objects as one *meta-object* (coined here for lack of a better term), depending on which hemisphere's visual field processes such an object comprised of smaller objects. The left hemisphere, in which linguistic functions primarily operate, tends to break down these meta-objects and perceive them separately, whereas the right hemisphere tends to notice mostly the overall silhouette of the meta-object. Thus when a still-life painting of a pile of objects that together resemble a face is presented to the right (relatively non-linguistic) hemisphere, a face is perceived, not a bunch of objects (that happen to be organized in a face-resembling pattern).

This sort of evidence might offer the next-best thing to what you'd hope to find through study of visual agnosia. From Gazzaniga's demonstrations with his split-brain case study subject, it seems likely that, without involving the left hemisphere (and thus largely avoiding the involvement of major linguistic processes), the right hemisphere operating alone would perceive a fork on a cutting board as one object in the shape of a cutting board, or would at least require stronger visual contrasts between the two (e.g., color, shadow, texture) to achieve a just-noticeable difference between the two, relative to the left hemisphere operating without the right. Whether that actually has anything to do with language though, or whether it's a separate qualitative difference in the functions of each hemisphere's visual processes, is another question on which I can hardly even begin to speculate.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Yes, Thinking without language is possible. Suppose a well-known boy "Mogli" who was left alone in jungle before he could learn language from his parents. But still he could manage to live many years in jungle till he met other humans. Mogli may be a fictional character but story is based on real incidence and much this kind of cases has been recorded.

My point is, in absence of language the jungle boy was able to learn things, think which is good and bad. Make strategies and learned how to use objects. His learning was beyond natural instincts. Without thought or cognitive processes it would not be possible to live throughout these many years. When these kinds of kids are adopted again by humans they learned how to use their vocal cords, modulate voices, and understand gestures. During this learning they think and finally they learn to use language to express their thoughts.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Yes, I do think thinking without language is possible. A pretty simple example is the word 'perceive'. A person may perceive a lot many phenomena even if s/he doesn't know how to put it in words.

To me Leonardo Da Vinci seems to be a great thinker who used to think without language, evident by his ability to develop a fly-able sketch without accompanying language of aviation. This is to be understood in the context that every field of specialty has its own language and even then time and again there are prodigies who deny this language and add value to the specialty. If logic and proof is the language of Mathematics then Srinivas Ramanujan thought without that language thereby finding it difficult to provide proofs to his formulas and theorems.

Language is basically a digitised construct of an analogous world. If one were to think based only on words , s/he might never be able to perceive the reality of the world. This is evident in Einstein's statement, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Here, Einstein might be seen referring to knowledge as known by language and words and imagination as an ability to think beyond these words. Einstein's inability or blessing to have not been able to speak till age of seven ( Edit: http://www.albert-einstein.org/article\_handicap.html ) might be reason behind his 'superpower' to look beyond words.

To cite a more orientalist example, Indian meditative sages are supposed to have pretty sharp contemplative skills using mediation. (Edit : http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/evidence-builds-that-meditation-230237 ) As a personal experience, which most Indians can relate to, meditating on a situation is much more helpful than trying to fit it into the maze of language. ( Edit : can't cite a study to showcase experiences of people around me, but to me more precise I have had many teachers who would tell us to just meditate over a new concept if the words are enough, and it has helped many students including me)

---
Tags: perception, language
---


# Question
Title: Psychological explanation for the success of "class systems" in video games
Over the last decade, Role Playing Games and Mobile Online Battle Arenas have been a dominating force in the video gaming industry, millions of people playing sometimes every day and often being quite passionate about their favorite game.

The thing that strikes me when looking at the most successful of those games (not sure I'm allowed to say any names) is the recurring presence of "class systems", ways to label characters and players with a specific set of abilities and roles.

Examples of this are the classic "warrior, mage, hunter, assassin..." classes attributed to RPG characters or the the "tank, support, damage dealer..." roles that players in MOBAS take on in a team.

What I find interesting is that players seem to like having a more or less defined role, class or play style in these systems. One such example of this phenomena is the use of the pronoun "a" to refer to someone or oneself:

```
      "I am a mage player"
      "He is a [insert MOBA character name] main" (main here means most played character)
      "Where the heck is our support?" (referring to the player playing in the support role)
      "She is the best [insert MOBA character name] on the     EU server"

```

## Is there a psychological explanation to why people seem particularly attracted to these systems that "label them" in a way?

My hypotheses:

```
  - The discomfort of not fully knowing one's personnality and capabilities drive people to "symplify their personnalities" by endorsing specific roles in these games.

  -  Players "specialize " themselves as a way to get singled out and feel special.

```

Please tell me if there is something I can do to make the question better, this is my first time asking on this site.

# Answer
> -1 votes
There are many explanations and counter examples for this phenomenon. Perhaps I can provide my two cents.

According to Kendrick et al pyramid, an updated pyramid of need, Status/Esteem seems to be reasonably applied to the class systems. Such systems allow the players to practice mastery, in other words, the need to feel competence. This is similar to your understanding of "specialize themselves to feel special".

> For example, two players of healer/damage class may compare HPS/DPS (Healing per second / Damage per second ) to see who is more competent. Tanks see who understand the mechanics of the fight more thoroughly. At this point, the goal shifts from defeating the boss to climbing the highest in the HPS/DPS meter. (this is similar to many sports, where players play for the stats). This example applies to "World of Warcraft", one of the earliest MMORPG that introduces the triangle system (tank, healer, damage). The class system provides a measure within the group.
>
> Another example would be "Guild Wars 2", a game that has no class system. Players heal, attack, and tank on their own even in a group setting. The game is a relatively much relaxing game in comparison with World of Warcraft, which has many hard core gamers.

There are way many other possible explanations on this aspect, but it might be hard to examine specific reasons because there is too much variation in the individuals.

---
Tags: psychology, video-games
---


# Question
Title: Accuracy of psychopy keystroke duration measurement
I am using Psychopy and this code for measuring keystroke duration as suggested in this answer for my previous question:

```
from psychopy.iohub import launchHubServer
io = launchHubServer()
keyboard = io.devices.keyboard
count = 0
keyinfo = ""
duration = 0
key = ""

io.clearEvents('all')

print 'begin'

while key not in ['escape', 'esc']:
    key_info = keyboard.waitForReleases()[0]
    count += 1
    key = key_info.key
    keyinfo = key_info
    duration = key_info.duration
    key = key_info.key
    print 'round number:' , count
    print key_info
    print 'Press time was', key_info.duration
    print 'key', key_info.key

```

The first tests look promising, but I was wondering if there is a difference in accuracy between `iohub` or `pyglet` function in Psychopy? Or if there would even be a more accurate solution than using one of theses two? And how is the measurement of the keystroke duration. I've been searching for it but haven't found any data for windows. The only thing I found are these tests Has someone stumbled across a publication regarding the accuracy?

Moreover I don’t know how good RAM and CPU would need to be, right know I am using an ASUS notebook with Intel Core i7 2.6 GHz and 16GB RAM, (Bluetooth, Ethernet. Wi-Fi, Mobile and other kind of connections disabled; desktop visual effects disabled; antivirus, software updates, background programs, and other kind of asynchronous events sources disabled) and the last version of PsychoPy2.

I tried to do preliminary tests to measure the accuracy of my test and to measure the keystroke duration with Psychopy and my keyboard simulating device. Before renting more expensive equipment, I've tried to pretest the accuracy with a 60 fps camera recording the moment of touch and without touch to the device and measuring with Psychopy at the same, to be able to compare these to values to have the accuracy. The 60 fps means, that in between frames there are 16.67 ms. My cheap camera pretest showed, that most of the processing time would be a maximum of approximately 8ms, so that I think I will achieve even lower values with better recording equipment with a higher framerate. But approximately every tenth measurement I have 24-36 ms signal processing.

My questions summarized:

1. Does anyone know, what the reason might be that approximately every tenth measurement has higher signal processing times?
2. How could I make the measurement of the keystroke duration more accurate?
3. Has anyone measured the keystroke duration accuracy of psychopys2 different functions (e.g `iohub` and `pyglet`) in windows himself or stumbled upon literature about this?

# Answer
> 2 votes
In the Psychopy forum I have received some advice:

* One would be to change the code: take out the print command, no redefining of variables
* USB, USB device, the python and system libraries should be the newest and fastest, if possible, because these could have an influence on the accuracy.
* And that Psychtoolbox forum could have the solution, but so far I haven't found it.

# Answer
> 1 votes
This frankly should have been asked on SO as it's 99% a programming question. There are a lot of things that can contribute to the "spiky" accuracy you've seen:

* language/runtime: Python is hardly a good idea for anything requiring real-time accuracy. It's an interpreted language with garbage collection. The \[re\]assignments in your loop will (eventually) trigger that. I've written once a Python GTK interface for a real-time device, but the code controlling the device was entirely in C, and nothing time-critical was done on Python side.
* Ultimately, the C runtime dynamic memory allocations (which Python eventually relies on) are also not predictable in terms of timing, although this is probably not what you're seeing. For real-time software dynamic allocation is generally avoided.
* operating system: not running at high enough process/thread priority so you get occasionally preempted by other processes/threads.
* hardware/driver: USB sends packetized data at limited poll rate; 8ms (125 Hz) being the default for most input devices. Unless you can change the default, a PS/2 keyboard is typically faster; see table 2 in Shimizu 2002; the worse standard deviation (SD) for response time seen there for a USB keyboard was around 10ms, which seems less than what you saw, so you're probably having additional issues. Only one PS/2 keyboard exceed 3ms SD (by a little).
* the microcontroller (or possibly additional chips, e.g.) in your keyboard implement something called debouncing, which smoothes out the presses and releases to compensate for the mechanical characteristics of the keyboard's switches. Without this, you'll garbage presses as in the case of some Dell laptops some years ago. Debounce applies both to key presses and releases. For most keyboards debounce will not be configurable or very easy to find out what the settings are.

From an engineering perspective, the first thing to ask how good of an accuracy do you actually need. And for a science perspective, what do you need this measurement for? Your question smacks of a big xy problem.

---
Tags: measurement, methodology, psychophysics
---


# Question
Title: Why do people like to listen to sad songs?
Why do people like to listen to sad songs?

Sadness is not a positive feeling, so people should avoid it, right? Listening to sad songs is like inflicting some pain to yourself just for pleasure.

Did someone studied this? Why do people like sad songs? Is it similar mechanism to masochism? What is evolutionary role of feeling sad on purpose? What is neurological background of this phenomenon?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Maya Tamir's work probably sheds the most light here. Her work suggests that we're not merely trying to avoid bad feelings and promote good ones. Instead, we want to feel what's most ***useful*** to us. We want to feel emotions that help us realize our goals (Tamir, 2009). If we think sadness has some positive behavioral value, then we'll try to upregulate it.

Rumination is an extreme example of this kind of focus on negative feelings, where chronic ruminators share metacognitive beliefs about the positive value of focusing on negative feelings and thoughts (e.g., Papageorgiou & Wells, 2001). They think that rumination helps them to understand their feelings and prevent future mistakes, even though it's ultimately maladaptive.

# Answer
> 0 votes
I'm not sure of the research on this one, but there are probably many reasons why. For one, it is like role-playing or perspective taking. One is not actually sadened but takes on the role of it. It can be an enjoyable, unique experience.

---
Tags: neuroscience, emotion, psychology, music, brain
---


# Question
Title: Freeware for measuring keystroke duration
I am searching for freeware to measure the duration of a keystroke or mouse-click, both would work. Does anyone have an idea?

Matlab toolboxes are, unfortunately, of no use to me.

# Answer
> 6 votes
Psychopy (http://psychopy.org) can do this. It can do it in two ways.

1. Using iohub. Iohub is a crazy powerful way to get any information about any kind of input to your system, from keyboard, mouse, eye-trackers, etc. You can see the documentation for keyboard here.

```
from psychopy.iohub import launchHubServer
io = launchHubServer()
keyboard = io.devices.keyboard  # handy name

print 'start pressing a key now'
key_info = keyboard.waitForReleases()[0]  # Just grab first release, even if there are multiple
print 'Press time was', key_info.duration
print '... and BTW, all key event info was', key_info

```
2. Using pyglet:

```
from psychopy import visual, event, core
win = visual.Window()  # Disadvantage: you need to have a window open to record it.
clock = core.Clock()

# Start listening
print 'start pressing a key now'
key, time = event.waitKeys(timeStamped=True)[0]
clock.reset()  # Key down time
while event.getKeys():
    pass
print 'key lasted', clock.getTime(), 'seconds'

```

If measuring key strokes is the only thing you need, psychopy may be a bit heavy since it is meant for running full experiments, but it will do the job!

# Answer
> 2 votes
Thanks to Jonas Londelov, I've been able to rewrite the script for measuring multiple keys until esc is pressed and writing the key duration, the key and the info into an excel sheet. It might not be very good written I a python beginner, but it is useful. Perhaps someone else will need it.

```
from __future__ import division
from psychopy import visual, event, core, data, iohub
from psychopy.iohub import launchHubServer
io = iohub.launchHubServer
import csv
io = launchHubServer()
keyboard = io.devices.keyboard  # handy name
count = 0
keyinfo = ""
duration = 0
key = ""
time = core.getTime()
date = data.getDateStr(format='%Y_%b_%d_%H%M')#(format="%Y_%m_%d %H:%M (Year_Month_Day Hour:Min)")

io.clearEvents('all')
win = visual.Window([400, 400])
msg = visual.TextStim(win, text='press a key\n < esc > to quit')
msg.draw()
win.flip()

datafile = open("touch duration.csv", "wb") #$not overwriting but longer
writer = csv.writer(datafile, delimiter=";")
# create output file header
writer.writerow([
    date,
    "round",
    "keyinfo",
    "duration",
    "key",
    ])

while key not in ['escape', 'esc']:
    key_info = keyboard.waitForReleases()[0]  # Just grab first release, even if there are multiple
    count += 1
    key = key_info.key
    keyinfo = key_info
    duration = key_info.duration
    key = key_info.key
    print 'round number:' , count
    print key_info
    print 'Press time was', key_info.duration
    print 'key', key_info.key
    writer.writerow([
    "",
    count,
    keyinfo,
    duration,
    key,
    ])

```

# Answer
> 1 votes
If accuracy is important, perhaps try the GPL'd TScope, which is a C library; there's a paper about it (alas for old version) with a moderate number of citations. It's also maintained (current version is 5) and they have an example measuring keypress duration. It's easy enough to use as they pack everything you'd need on Windows, including a customized version of Notepad++ with shortcuts for compiling and running a program. The odd thing is that the examples from the website seem missing from the 145Mb package, but they work compiled with it.

I don't have any high-speed camera to test the accuracy, but from a quick test on myself, I didn't see any large deviations. Using a long-stroke PS/2 keyboard I get around 95ms press time (that seem on par with the paper you mentioned). With a short stroke USB keyboard , I get as low as 55ms, if I focus specifically on just making short strokes (and this does seem to come at the cost of reaction time, I need sorta "prepare myself" to make a really short stroke; in normal typing I'm still in the habit of pressing longer, even though this keyboard doesn't need it). Here's an example of the later:

---
Tags: measurement, methodology, psychophysics
---


# Question
Title: Body Language: Why do we give each other the grumpy/frowning fake smile?
I've recently become aware of this - I kinda knew I was always doing it, but just now it got me self conscious and thinking about it:

When crossing paths with a stranger, you are supposed to be friendly and smile at them, acknowledge them through a nod, and so on.

This is particularly the case in many service industries:

grocery stores - associates and customers acknowledging each other (not during checkout, but just walking around in the store)

fellow gym members as well as staff and members (again only walking around, not during particular business related interactions)

Another example might be you walk in a public bathroom and someone just comes out the door, you'll look each other briefly in the eyes, "smile", nod, acknowledge each other, and move on.

Now here's the thing I've become aware of, and mostly guys do this:

**We don't actually smile.**

In fact, we are kind of grumpy looking. Our mouth and eyebrows go into a frown, we press our lips together, and the only thing close to a smile that we do is to create a crease on the sides of our mouth.

Hard to explain... And hard to find actual pictures of this...

besides that he looks in the distance and he looks concerned, but imagine he looks at you and gives you a nod like that. pretty close!

he looks slightly more surprised, and worried, then what people usually look like, especially because the eyebrows are going up.

he's got too much "darnit!" on his face, and his eyes are sad looking, but again, the general idea comes across.

he has an actual upward curved smile going on, but definietly the lips pressed together like that

So again:

* Mostly guys do it
* it is done for acknlowledgement/politeness when you cross paths
* it usually goes with a nod and brief eye contact, whereas the nod goes down
* the eyebrows might seem kind of like a frown, since you're noding down, while looking upwards in the persons eyes
* your lips are pressed together
* often the mouth will actually go into a reverse smile curve (meaning frown)
* the mouth gets kinda pulled to the sides, like we're making a wide mouth, just like when smiling.

First of all: Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you do it? Has it been done to you?

Does it have a proper name?

Why do we do it? Why don't we actually smile? We do we look rather grumpy when smiling like that?

I've noticed that we do a similar face in many different situations. Sometimes someone might tell you something that might make you smile or even laugh, but to them it's rather sincere, so you press your lips together, trying to make a frown, but you still can't help to smile a little. There are many expressions that this kind of face can express (as you can see in the pictures), they all have a certain subtle difference to them, and definitely very different meanings, but I feel as if the mouth pressed together and kinda mixing a grin with a frown remains constant. The particular facial expression I am talking about is also accompanied by a nod, making it distinct.

Why do we do this so often?

Are we hiding something? Is this some sort of a default expression?

# Answer
> 7 votes
Since this (excellent) question has been around for a while without any answer, I thought I'd give my two cents.

I think we do this as a gesture of *respect* to the other person. We may fear that if we don't acknowledge them at all, it will come off as rude or arrogant. Maybe we fear that if we don't even look at the other person, we're basically pretending as if they're not there. So we want to acknowledge them in some way. However, they are often a total stranger, so we may feel that saying "hi" or anything like that, is a bit over the top. (Sometimes we may actually say "hi" combined with the frown, though.)

So, as you suggest in the question itself, it's a way to acknowledge the other person.

Now, why not give an authentic smile? Well, because it's a little bit difficult to give a real smile without actually being happy about something. If you see a dear friend for the first time in months, you'll probably give a real smile, because you are *genuinely happy to see them.* When you meet a total stranger, the truth is that that person doesn't really mean much to you. You might not really feel that you have anything to smile about.

Have you ever tried to smile for a photograph, when you're actually not very happy? It's not easy. The smile often looks inauthentic. Similarly here, we try our best to greet the passing person with respect, but it's not that easy to smile authentically.

Not wanting to look like a fake smiling clown, we may not even try that hard. The other person knows that we're just trying to acknowledge them. They're not looking to give us an Oscar award anyway. And we know that they know that.

If we were to make eye contact with them without altering our facial expression at all, we might end up looking a bit mad. (Imagine it, you cross paths with someone, and they just look into your eyes without altering their facial expression at all. Personally, I would be a bit freaked out if that happened.) Most changes in our expression will be better than nothing (except, of course for a downright hostile or angry face). It means we acknowledge that they are there, and we are making an effort to do so.

There's another possible reason: *Fear of rejection.* We want to acknowledge the person. So why not give them a real smile? Well, what if you do, and they respond with a careful nod, a frown like the ones in OP, or even totally ignore you? (This is quite possible, since it's not that easy to produce a genuine smile.) When you genuinely smile at someone, you are giving a little part of yourself out to them. If they then merely nod at you, or something like that, most people will feel uncomfortable. As if they just gave someone a gift and the other person was uninterested in the gift. I'm not saying this is a reasonable feeling, I'm just saying it's the way people might feel, thus motivating their behavior.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I suspect that it's rooted in primal responses to seeing a human being you are not expecting to see. This would in part explain the gender difference.

If you've ever seen two cats unexpectantly try to walk past each other, you'll get the problem here: what if the 'unexpected other' perceives you as a threat and attacks you in self defence. For this reason, cats freeze, careful to to pass until they've asserted their dominance, say by arching their back to look bigger (because there is a decent chance they will be attacked).

With humans, we're social creatures. So we use our advanced social nature to communicate we are friendly. For this reason, women/some men give a nice smile, with warm bright eyes. This says 'I come in peace'.

But men might still have a primal need to show he's not a threat, but also suggest willingness to fight back if attacked. Let's look at the thrown/smile for clues of this:

-lips tightly pressed together. This indicates a strong desire to not show teeth. Showing teeth can be interpreted as aggressive. -frowning is an assertive sign of discomfort. Not passive. -shoulders tense up a little and head is loweres, making the shoulder area look bigger and stronger. -eye contact is less direct than the 'female' version. Avoiding being aggressive.

# Answer
> 0 votes
> Why do we do this so often? Are we hiding something? Is this some sort of a default expression?

It's a psychological defense mechanism involving the conflict between the true feelings of the authentic self and the persona we believe protects ourselves or others from harm or pain. There are two opposing basic scenarios for this phenomenon:

1. The authentic self would naturally like to smile warmly and show true friendliness toward the person they encounter, but not knowing the person well, is afraid to either:

a) encourage too much social intimacy, too soon (i.e. appear overly friendly); or b) unwittingly provoke anger or some other irrational behavior in some potentially unhinged individual; or c) both.

2. The authentic self really does not want to smile at all (is very sad about something, or doesn't really like the person they encounter), but makes a feeble attempt anyway, for the purpose of covering up 'negative' feelings because:

a) they don't want to negatively affect the other person; or b) they don't want to talk about personal matters; or c) they don't want to appear rude; or d) any combination of the above.

As implied in my opening paragraph, the persona is attempting to set or adjust physical, emotional, and/or psychological **boundaries**.

Also the author of the question is quite right in suggesting that this type of defense mechanism generally works differently in men and women; because, many women tend to set boundaries for all of the above reasons, and then some.

So to answer the germane questions:

* It occurs more frequently in metropolitan areas, where we are more likely to encounter people we don't know very well.
* Yes, we are hiding something, but in this case for valid reasons.
* It can be characterized as a sort of "default expression", and that's a good way to describe it.

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


# Question
Title: How might the "Imposter Syndrome" typology be reconciled with the robustness of the "self-serving bias"?
**TL;DR What on Earth is going on in someone's head to invert a cognitive bias that is robustly observed in people who are psychologically healthy (Cohen's *d* = 1.28) and still present in depression (Cohen's *d* = 0.21)? I am looking to reconcile the *self-serving bias* with either the *Imposter Syndrome* or *mental illness*.**

*"Some people"*, as the familiar trope notes, *“are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.”* While we are all familiar with individuals who are thoroughly unable to accurately attribute the true cause of their achievements, rarely do we ever consider the possibility that we too are guilty of the *self-serving bias*.

The self-serving bias appears to be both universal and robust. Moreover, an attenuated bias is associated with mental illness:

```
Mezulis, A. H., Abramson, L. Y., Hyde, J. S., & Hankin, B. L. (2004). Is
There a Universal Positivity Bias in Attributions? A Meta-Analytic
Review of Individual, Developmental, and Cultural Differences in the
Self-Serving Attributional Bias. Psychological Bulletin, 130(5), 711–747.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.130.5.711

```

Others, on the other hand, seem to be afflicted with an attribution bias *antipodal* to the self-serving bias. These people seem to completely unable to internalise their achievements as truly their own, and appear to dismissively attribute their successes to external factors most people do for *everyone* but themselves -- the Imposter Syndrome.

Clance and Imes (1978) first characterised the Imposter Syndrome typology among their high-achieving female patients:

```
Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The imposter phenomenon in high
achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy:
Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), 241–247. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006

```

So, how can we reconcile what seem to be two antipodal phenomena?

From a very cursory consideration of things, it seems that for individuals with the Imposter Syndrome, the self-serving bias is either greatly attenuated, or dare I say, inverted. For that to occur, we might presume two things:

1. They have crushingly low self-efficacy and/or;
2. They are processing information in an aberrant manner.

So, how does social, cognitive, or abnormal psychology reconcile the self-serving bias with the Imposter Syndrome? Is the Imposter Syndrome even a *thing* or simply a cognitive style that occurs among people with depression? If so, what are their similarities, and what are their departures? In other words, is the phenomenology of someone with severe depression effectively the same as someone with the Imposter Syndrome?

Where possible, please include references.

# Answer
> 4 votes
You might as well ask how comes there's depression (or low self-esteem in general) if everyone has self-serving bias. The answer is that the self-serving bias is reduced in depressed individuals; see Greenberg et al.(1992) or Alloy & Abramson (1979) for original investigations; the latter paper has some 2000+ citations in Google Scholar. Allan et al. (2007) do note that there have been some successes and some failures replicating the Alloy & Abramson experiments, so it's perhaps not a totally settled question. There's even a 2012 meta-analysis by Moore & Fresco; quoting its abstract:

> The current investigation represents the first meta-analysis of the depressive realism literature. A search of this literature revealed 75 relevant studies representing 7305 participants from across the US and Canada, as well as from England, Spain, and Israel. Results generally indicated a small overall depressive realism effect (Cohen's d=-.07). Overall, however, both dysphoric/depressed individuals (d=.14) and nondysphoric/nondepressed individuals evidenced a substantial positive bias (d=.29), with this bias being larger in nondysphoric/nondepressed individuals. Examination of potential moderator variables indicated that studies lacking an objective standard of reality (d=-.15 versus -.03, for studies possessing such a standard) and that utilize self-report measures to measure symptoms of depression (d=.16 versus -.04, for studies which utilize structured interviews) were more likely to find depressive realism effects. Methodological paradigm was also found to influence whether results consistent with depressive realism were found (d's ranged from -.09 to .14).

When you study self-serving bias in the general population you might not get enough depressed subjects in your sample to notice the heterogeneity of self-serving bias, particularly since the difference doesn't seem big.

---

While I cannot give you any numbers on the change in self-serving bias in the impostor syndrome group relative to individuals unaffected by it (I could not find research on this specifically), I will point out some correlations between impostor syndrome and other psychometric measures linked to (depressive) psychopathology.

Bernard et al. (2010) looked at how impostor syndrome related to Big Five personality factors and found that Neuroticism correlated fairly well (0.52 or 0.47 depending on the impostor scale used; 0.52 on a combined measure) as did conscientiousness (-0.31 on both scales; -0.38 combined). In a hierarchical regression model:

> In Regression 1, Neuroticism made a significant contribution accounting for 27% of the variance (p \< .001), whereas Conscientiousness contributed just 3% (p \< .01). When the order of entry was reversed in a second regression, Conscientiousness accounted for 15% in a first step (p \< .001), but Neuroticism accounted for another 15% in a second step (p \< .001). As expected, the other three NEO–PI–R domain scales did not contribute to the prediction of IP, accounting for less than 1% of the variance. In other words, unconfounded by Conscientiousness, Neuroticism explained 15% of the variance of IP scores, whereas Conscientiousness unconfounded by Neuroticism explained 3%; the overlapping variance explained by both traits was thus 12%. In short, Neuroticism is the best predictor of IP scores, but Conscientiousness adds to the model.

Sonnak and Towell (2001) found a strong correlation of impostor syndrome with low self-esteem (on the Rosenberg scale) as well as with poorer mental health on the GHQ-12, which is mainly a measure of depressive symptoms. Correlated with the CIPS imposter scale, these two measures had r = -0.67 (self-esteem) and 0.33 (GHQ) respectively.

# Answer
> 2 votes
> is the phenomenology of someone with severe depression effectively the same as someone with the Imposter Syndrome?

Yes and no. Allow me to begin by stating that fundamentally, the two syndromes being compared in your question result from particular cultural and social pressures. It is revealing that Asians and Women, both fairly distinct cultural groups, reportedly score low on what really amounts to **self-esteem**. Low self-esteem, in turn tends to produce anxiety and depression, and is strongly associated with Imposter Syndrome.

Furthermore, ADHD people suffer similar social pressures which are again deleterious to their self-esteem. It is also common knowledge that psychopaths have severe issues with ego, which probably involves self-esteem. Psychopathy is strongly associated with high rates of suicide among otherwise physically healthy people, which could indicate serious self-hatred.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/14d1/cccd6387cc9d545980bfc398a36cd8c7ccfb.pdf

So it appears that particular external social pressures may unfortunately become internalized, causing precipitously low self-esteem, major depression, and intense anxiety. People with Imposter Syndrome have terrible problems with identity / ego. They rarely feel worthy or deserving of love or any other social rewards (such as career success). They barely even feel like human beings, because psychologically they have become so dehumanized somehow along the way.

Many people, for various **self-serving** reasons, are taught or conditioned by the general or dominant society to be extremely submissive, modest, humble, and -- **selfless**.

On the other hand, people with strong self-serving bias are people whose sense of self or ego has rarely ever been trifled with, or who have been resilient enough or resourceful enough, to resist subjugation by the dominant society. Their self-esteem is fully intact. They know who they are, and feel an unshakable sense of pride in that knowledge.

So in conclusion, the key to understanding the contrasting relationship between self-serving bias and Imposter Syndrome -- hinges on issues involving the development of Ego or Self. The problem is that some people **identify themselves** with failure, shame, and disappointment -- rather than with success and praise or pride. They do so, because they have somehow been made to feel emotionally subhuman.

And the reason some people are able to resist that sort of emotional abuse, oppression, or deficit (thereby preserving the Self, while keeping their self-esteem intact), while others cannot -- may be partly due to differences in intelligence. I have noticed that very intelligent people tend to be genuinely self-confident (even if they try to be modest about it), compared to people of average or lower intelligence. And bottom line: intelligence is a valuable resource for mental health.

---
Tags: social-psychology, abnormal-psychology, bias, attribution, causal-inference
---


# Question
Title: Is Fluid Intelligence Dropoff With Age an Established Fact?
The picture below represents the idea that fluid intelligence declines with age. Is this commonly accepted as true and established, even if fitness/learning levels do not decline?

# Answer
> 12 votes
You are asking two very excellent questions.

## Is the decline in fluid intelligence commonly accepted as true?

These days it seems generally accepted, that the trend is true. However, this hasn´t been the case a few yeas ago, e.g. see the introduction in Elsayed, Ismail, & Young (1980) for a little impression. The reason behind this is the limited comparability between different studies

1. due to different designs (longitudinal vs. cross sectional), that come with their own difficulties (f.e. longitudinal = drop out bias/survivorship bias, repetition bias; cross sectional = confounding of cohort and treatment effects - see Hofer & Sliwinski (2001) for more details about that).
2. due to different intelligence tests, concepts and facets (= "how do we define fluid/ crystallized intelligence"), that have been used (e.g. some solely defined crystillized intellgence as vocublary, see Wang & Kaufmann,1993).
3. of course there are many other aspects, that are not solely limited to the study of intelligence like small sample sizes, unrepresentative samples or publication bias.

However, as I mentioned at the beginning: these days - after a huge discussion and a lot of studies - it seems fairly accepted, see Verhaeghen & Salthouse (1997) with a meta-analysis or Baltes (1996) for a review-like paper - Kaufman, Salthouse, Scheiber, & Chen (2016) could also be relevant. The main reason behind this seems to be a decline in processing speed and working memory.

On a large scale this seems to come from a general (biological) decline across the lifespan (see Baltes & Smith, 2004), which brings me to your second question.

## ... even if fitness/learning levels do not decline?

There are a lot of studies, that show, that physical activity and general fitness seems to have benificial effects on fluid intelligence. This seems to hold for every age (see Elsayed, Ismail, Young (1980) or Linde & Alfermann (2014)(an older sample)). The reasons behind this has not yet been clarified -

1. one can assume beneficial biological reasons like hightend blood circulation (see. Singh-Manoux, Hillsdon, Brunner, & Marmot, 2005)
2. or the reduction of distress, which might enhance cognitive functioning.

I would recommend you to read the introductions and discussions of the cited papers (if possible) for further information. However, (sadly) I don't know any studies explicitly investigating the development of fluid intelligence across the lifespan in regard of exercise/physical fitness (I just know, that exercise/fitness has a beneficial effect on fluid intelligence, but how exactly this has an impact on the decline is - for myself- unknown.)

However, I would say, that there will be a decline in older age, which can be buffered by remaining exercising/a good level fitness, but not really stopped. There should still be a decline - at least at a smaller scale. Or as to say in the words of my professor: "it won´t get better".

Of course all assumptions count for the general/average case, not for a single person.

* Mohamed Elsayed, A. H. Ismail, R. John Young; Intellectual Differences of Adult Men Related to Age and Physical Fitness Before and After an Exercise Program, Journal of Gerontology, Volume 35, Issue 3, 1 May 1980, Pages 383–387
* Hofer, S. M., & Sliwinski, M. J. (2001). Understanding ageing. Gerontology, 47(6), 341-352.
* Wang, J. J., & Kaufman, A. S. (1993). Changes in fluid and crystallized intelligence across the 20-to 90-year age range on the K-BIT. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 11(1), 29-37.
* Verhaeghen, P., & Salthouse, T. A. (1997). Meta-analyses of age–cognition relations in adulthood: Estimates of linear and nonlinear age effects and structural models. Psychological bulletin, 122(3), 231.
* Kaufman, A. S., Salthouse, T. A., Scheiber, C., & Chen, H. (2016). Age Differences and Educational Attainment Across the Life Span on Three Generations of Wechsler Adult Scales. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 34(5), 421-441.
* Baltes, P. B. (1997). On the incomplete architecture of human ontogeny: Selection, optimization, and compensation as foundation of developmental theory. American psychologist, 52(4), 366.
* Baltes, P. B., & Smith, J. (2004). Lifespan psychology: From developmental contextualism to developmental biocultural co-constructivism. Research in human development, 1(3), 123-144.
* Linde, K., & Alfermann, D. (2014). Single versus combined cognitive and physical activity effects on fluid cognitive abilities of healthy older adults: a 4-month randomized controlled trial with follow-up. Journal of aging and physical activity, 22(3), 302-313.
* Singh-Manoux, A., Hillsdon, M., Brunner, E., & Marmot, M. (2005). Effects of physical activity on cognitive functioning in middle age: evidence from the Whitehall II prospective cohort study. American journal of public health, 95(12), 2252-2258.

---
Tags: intelligence, iq
---


# Question
Title: Effects of treatment versus psychotherapy on mental health of transgender people
Has any reliable study been done to compare mental health (e.g. depression or suicide rate) of transgender people before and after procedures (hormone or surgery) intended to change their bodies to have characteristics that match their gender identity compared with psychological therapy intended to try and make them more comfortable with their biological sex?

I have heard some people claim that John's Hopkins used to perform sex-change procedures but stopped after failing to find it benefiting the mental health of those who they were performed on. But I have also heard people claim that these treatments really do cause a practical improvement in the mental health of transgender people. I'm not sure who, if either side or both, to trust.

Please avoid political discussion or debate on whether a transgender person can actually switch sexes or if it's a delusional disorder, even if your opinion on that might inform what you think the proper way of treating transgender people is. I'm just curious about reliable data on the psychological effects of the alternatives.

# Answer
> 4 votes
Johns Hopkins did stop doing gender reassignment surgery and one of their psychiatrists apparently says that

> The suicide rate among transgendered people who had the surgery is 20 times higher

He also apparently says that

> transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder.

According to this website, the Johns Hopkins psychiatrist involved has a history of speaking out against transgendered people.

On the flip side, the DSM-5 (5th Edition of the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual) in 2013 added Gender Dysphoria as the new term for Gender Identity Disorder in order to try and prevent stigma; and current case reports offer no evidence that psychotherapy offers total and long-standing change of gender dysphoria.

# Answer
> 4 votes
**TL;DR**: There's many studies which point to better mental health outcomes as a result of treatment, such as hormones and surgery, of transgender individuals.

It's also important to consider that there's a range of gender identities and a range of treatments which are tailored to the individual. There's a lot of factors to consider.

---

# WPATH Standards of Care

The best place to start would be the WPATH Standards of Care, available from www.wpath.org. I'll quote from this:

> Although Harry Benjamin already acknowledged a spectrum of gender nonconformity (Benjamin, 1966), the initial clinical approach largely focused on identifying who was an appropriate candidate for sex reassignment to facilitate a physical change from male to female or female to male as completely as possible (e.g., Green & Fleming, 1990; Hastings, 1974). This approach was extensively evaluated and proved to be highly effective. Satisfaction rates across studies ranged from 87% of MtF patients to 97% of FtM patients (Green & Fleming, 1990), and regrets were extremely rare (1-1.5% of MtF patients and \<1% of FtM patients; Pfäfflin, 1993). **Indeed, hormone therapy and surgery have been found to be medically necessary to alleviate gender dysphoria in many people (American Medical Association, 2008; Anton, 2009; The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, 2008).**

It's also worth noting that there's a range of treatments which are individualized:

> **Treatment is individualized: What helps one person alleviate gender dysphoria might be very different from what helps another person.** This process may or may not involve a change in gender expression or body modifications. Medical treatment options include, for example, feminization or masculinization of the body through hormone therapy and/or surgery, which are effective in alleviating gender dysphoria and are medically necessary for many people. **Gender identities and expressions are diverse, and hormones and surgery are just two of many options available to assist people with achieving comfort with self and identity.**

---

# Example research papers

There's many research papers which compare mental health of transgender people before and after procedures. For example:

In a sample of 359 gender-dysphoric persons who completed "several psychometric measures":

> ... during \[cross-sex hormonal treatment\], \[gender-dysphoric persons (GDs)\] **reported a significant reduction of general psychopathology, depressive symptoms, and subjective GD, whereas social and legal indicators of GD showed a significant increase across time** ...
> Fisher et al., Cross-Sex Hormone Treatment and Psychobiological Changes in Transsexual Persons: Two-Year Follow-Up Data, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 2016.

In a sample of 61 participants who were surveyed:

> **The present study suggests a positive effect of hormone therapy on transsexuals' QoL** after accounting for confounding factors. These results will be useful for healthcare providers of transgender persons but should be confirmed with larger samples using a prospective study design.
> Gorin-Lazard et al., Is Hormonal Therapy Associated with Better Quality of Life in Transsexuals? A Cross‐Sectional Study, The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2012.

Here, QoL = Quality of Life.

In a meta review for transgender men:

> **Multiple studies have shown the positive effect of gender affirming hormonal therapy and gender affirming surgery on quality of life of trans persons and several studies describe an increase in their psychological wellbeing.** In addition, satisfaction rates after gender affirming surgery are high and surgery is rarely regretted. However, as only one study has addressed cost-effectiveness of gender affirming treatment in trans men, further research is necessary. Defreyne et al., Healthcare costs and quality of life outcomes following gender affirming surgery in trans men: a review, Expert Review of Pharmacoeconomics & Outcomes Research, 2017.

There's many more I haven't listed; they can be found by searching PubMed.

---

# Johns Hopkins

Also note that Johns Hopkins have subsequently reaffirmed their stance:

> **We have committed to and will soon begin providing gender-affirming surgery as another important element of our overall care program, reflecting careful consideration over the past year of best practices and the appropriate provision of care for transgender individuals.**
> Johns Hopkins Medicine's Commitment to the LGBT Community, October 7, 2016.

---
Tags: abnormal-psychology, sexuality, depression, gender, therapy
---


# Question
Title: How to stain for orexin neurons in mice?
I am interested in studying possible depletion of orexin levels in the brains of some mice, and am wondering if anyone knows of a staining substance/technique for use on slices of fixed mouse brains that would highlight orexin-producing neurons of the hypothalamus such that their number/volume could be examined.

**Context** \- Orexin is also known as hypocretin. It is a neuropeptide associated with sleep regulation that's produced primarily in the hypothalamus. It was originally discovered in rats and it's important to me because it is well-known that depleted orexin-producing neurons are connected to narcolepsy (Tsujino & Sakurai, 2009). I'm part of a large lab studying other conditions that share some symptoms with narcolepsy, and am interested in looking at orexin-producing neurons in our animal models. I don't currently have access to means to use transgenic orexin knockout mice as are mentioned in the article by Tsujino & Sakurai (though if anyone's used them before I'd be interested to know for the future), but I do have means to stain, view, and photograph fixed brain slices from our existing animals.

So, I'm wondering if anyone is familiar with a substance/approach to determine the approximate amount or volume of intact orexin neurons of the hypothalamus in WT mice (for comparison between animals) using a staining technique.

<sub> Tsujino, N., & Sakurai, T. (2009). Orexin/hypocretin: a neuropeptide at the interface of sleep, energy homeostasis, and reward system. Pharmacological reviews, 61(2), 162-176. </sub>

# Answer
Let's work backwards.

> I don't currently have access to means to use transgenic orexin knockout mice as are mentioned in the article by Tsujino & Sakurai (though if anyone's used them before I'd be interested to know for the future)

Just so we're on the same page: orexin knockout mice lack orexin receptors. Have you considered finding a highly selective orexin antagonist? Very loosely speaking, a good antagonist ought to instantiate the functional equivalent of the receptor knockout.

> Orexin antagonists, especially those that block OX2 or both OX1 and OX2 receptors, clearly promote sleep in animals, and clinical results are encouraging: Several compounds are in Phase III trials. As the orexin system mainly promotes arousal, these new .... Orexin peptide knockout mice also seem to have severe sleepiness, with an inability to maintain long bouts of wakefulness during their active period (50, 51).

Scammell, T. E., & Winrow, C. J. (2011). Orexin receptors: pharmacology and therapeutic opportunities. Annual review of pharmacology and toxicology, 51, 243-266.

> So, I'm wondering if anyone is familiar with a substance/approach to determine the approximate amount or volume of intact orexin neurons of the hypothalamus in WT mice (for comparison between animals) using a staining technique.

Yes, there's a number of methods. One of the common methods is using Fos immunohistochemistry. A summary is as follows:

An immediate-early gene called c-fos will be expressed as a consequence of neuronal excitation. If you administer an orexin agonist, e.g. modafinil (actually perhaps something far more selective than that) or subject the mice to your orexin-activating intervention, then the neurons where that receptor is present ought to upregulate c-fos express when they fire.

You then cut up your rat into fine slicies and apply a high-contrast stain that will bind to the c-fos protein... It's something to do with the antigen-binding site of the protein, but this is all very vague to me without a reference on hand. You then wash the rat slices. If performed correctly, the stain will remain where the c-fos has been expressed.

You then spend many, many hours counting up the stained dots. You compare this against a control, and the difference allows you to reasonably infer where the orexin receptors are.

The following may help:

Estabrooke, I. V., McCarthy, M. T., Ko, E., Chou, T. C., Chemelli, R. M., Yanagisawa, M., ... & Scammell, T. E. (2001). Fos expression in orexin neurons varies with behavioral state. Journal of Neuroscience, 21(5), 1656-1662.

> I'm part of a large lab studying other conditions that share some symptoms with narcolepsy, and am interested in looking at orexin-producing neurons in our animal models… So, I'm wondering if anyone is familiar with a substance/approach to determine the approximate

This is what I don't get: why don't you ask your supervisor and say, "yo, is anyone in our lab doing staining?" -- maybe they are, maybe they aren't. If not, you ask your supervisor, "who among your colleagues does staining?" And they will know or know someone who knows. You then get in touch with said researcher. How it works is that you get taught the staining technique, and in exchange, they get free labour. Alternatively, if they're not down with that arrangement, you simply ask them that the next time they're doing staining, if you can drop by and just watch. It's a simple courtesy that they accommodate your request, and I guarantee you that you will learn far more in one afternoon than you could hope to on SE.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: neuroimaging, animal-cognition, experimental-neuroscience
---