Areas of research include neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and physics. Physics & Astrophysics B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The current project is on sensory distinguishability, sensory diversity, and their effects on neurologic function. Director of Supremum Labs.
Humans are constantly immersed in a world of precisely repeated stimuli. Digital screens flood ou... more Humans are constantly immersed in a world of precisely repeated stimuli. Digital screens flood our sensory systems with light of uniform color and amplitude. Buildings are consistently created with right angles, and directions we travel are often paved with perfectly straight lines. These properties of our surroundings did not exist for most of human evolution. The goal of this paper is to explore the dependencies the structural connectome has on our environment that could cause the difference in schizophrenia and dementia rates among males and females, respectively. For the ease of reading, the term structural connectome is referred to solely as connectome in the remainder of this paper. The connectome of the male and female brain differs greatly. The male brain primarily utilizes neural networks that are contained within a single hemisphere to process information. The female brain primarily creates neural networks that travel between the two hemispheres. This is because the female connectome and its left-right connectivity may prove to be better suited for the absorption of information from two-dimensional sources such as books and digital screens. The connectome differences combined with the fact that most modern informational sources are two-dimensional are collectively hypothesized to cause the large variation in rates of dementia and schizophrenia between genders. The root of these hypotheses originate from the same set of environmental conditions, however the mechanisms through which problems manifest differ between the genders. Therefore, the hypotheses on dementia and schizophrenia are mutually independent of one another.
One way the bees have stabilized their evolution is through asexual reproduction that produces on... more One way the bees have stabilized their evolution is through asexual reproduction that produces only male bees that are spawned from the single female parent. Bees mitigate the genetic bottleneck of asexual reproduction with some of the queens going for a social fly-around. This fly-around is to mate, during which the queens gather enough genetic material from their male counterparts to last the rest of the queen’s life. Another reason these fly-arounds happen is because this allows for the increased likelihood of mating with a foreign hive with different genetics. Until the modern age, this method has worked for millions of years. This was because of the mutualistic relationship where the bees maintain a diverse plant environment, and in return, the diverse plant life supports the beehives with edible pollen. Due to the development of the modern world, there has been a drastic decrease in the variety of plant life. This lack of plant diversity dramatically changed the environment the bees have lived in for millions of years. This lack of diversity is hypothesized to be the root cause of colony collapse disorder. The non-diverse stimuli from the local environment cause the bees to abandon its hive in hopes of finding a new hive with a more plant-diverse location to pass its genetics onto. This problem is heightened by massive pollination operations on farms, where a beekeeper and their hives will travel from farm to farm pollinating hundreds of acres of the same plant in every direction. This horizon of uniform plant life is like nothing the bees have experienced in their millions of years in evolution. Therefore, until bees have evolved toward being comfortable with a less genetically diverse ecosystem or are artificially aided, their population numbers will continue to be erratic, and populations will dwindle.
Modern humans are consistently immersed in a world of uniform stimuli. From the white photons in ... more Modern humans are consistently immersed in a world of uniform stimuli. From the white photons in the background of digital documents, to the subtle hum of a motorized fan, these stimuli are not just repetitive but also homogeneous. For the majority of life’s evolution, these homogeneous sources of stimuli have not existed, unlike digital screens, even the photons reflecting from a paper book vary depending on the angle of the background light. In excess, the homogeneous and indistinguishable stimuli of the modern world may prove to be detrimental to optimal brain function. Experiments from others have indicated that increasing an environment’s complexity is favorable to learning. Other studies also have shown that increasing the number of stimuli a person experiences can increase their capacity to learn. The hypothesis of this research is that increasing the amount of distinguishable stimuli for two-dimensional documents, such as text, increases the brain’s ability to recall memories and decreases the time it takes to create them. This is based on the concept that all data in a memory store needs distinguishing characteristics for it to be useful in recall. The experiment proposed in this paper increases the distinguishability of text and background colors of the participant’s digital documents and then analyzes the consequential effect on memory creation and recall. The participants will be split up into four groups, each with two digital text documents of comparable content and difficulty. The control group will have no change made to their two documents, and the other three groups will have either the text colors differentiated, the background made non-solid, or both. There will be no change made to each of the experimental groups’ second paper. The changes to the differentiability will be consciously noticeable upon close examination yet will be as non-distracting to the reader as possible. The read times and content recallability of the readers will then be recorded and analyzed.
Humans are constantly immersed in a world of precisely repeated stimuli. Digital screens flood ou... more Humans are constantly immersed in a world of precisely repeated stimuli. Digital screens flood our sensory systems with light of uniform color and amplitude. Buildings are consistently created with right angles, and directions we travel are often paved with perfectly straight lines. These properties of our surroundings did not exist for most of human evolution. The goal of this paper is to explore the dependencies the structural connectome has on our environment that could cause the difference in schizophrenia and dementia rates among males and females, respectively. For the ease of reading, the term structural connectome is referred to solely as connectome in the remainder of this paper. The connectome of the male and female brain differs greatly. The male brain primarily utilizes neural networks that are contained within a single hemisphere to process information. The female brain primarily creates neural networks that travel between the two hemispheres. This is because the female connectome and its left-right connectivity may prove to be better suited for the absorption of information from two-dimensional sources such as books and digital screens. The connectome differences combined with the fact that most modern informational sources are two-dimensional are collectively hypothesized to cause the large variation in rates of dementia and schizophrenia between genders. The root of these hypotheses originate from the same set of environmental conditions, however the mechanisms through which problems manifest differ between the genders. Therefore, the hypotheses on dementia and schizophrenia are mutually independent of one another.
One way the bees have stabilized their evolution is through asexual reproduction that produces on... more One way the bees have stabilized their evolution is through asexual reproduction that produces only male bees that are spawned from the single female parent. Bees mitigate the genetic bottleneck of asexual reproduction with some of the queens going for a social fly-around. This fly-around is to mate, during which the queens gather enough genetic material from their male counterparts to last the rest of the queen’s life. Another reason these fly-arounds happen is because this allows for the increased likelihood of mating with a foreign hive with different genetics. Until the modern age, this method has worked for millions of years. This was because of the mutualistic relationship where the bees maintain a diverse plant environment, and in return, the diverse plant life supports the beehives with edible pollen. Due to the development of the modern world, there has been a drastic decrease in the variety of plant life. This lack of plant diversity dramatically changed the environment the bees have lived in for millions of years. This lack of diversity is hypothesized to be the root cause of colony collapse disorder. The non-diverse stimuli from the local environment cause the bees to abandon its hive in hopes of finding a new hive with a more plant-diverse location to pass its genetics onto. This problem is heightened by massive pollination operations on farms, where a beekeeper and their hives will travel from farm to farm pollinating hundreds of acres of the same plant in every direction. This horizon of uniform plant life is like nothing the bees have experienced in their millions of years in evolution. Therefore, until bees have evolved toward being comfortable with a less genetically diverse ecosystem or are artificially aided, their population numbers will continue to be erratic, and populations will dwindle.
Modern humans are consistently immersed in a world of uniform stimuli. From the white photons in ... more Modern humans are consistently immersed in a world of uniform stimuli. From the white photons in the background of digital documents, to the subtle hum of a motorized fan, these stimuli are not just repetitive but also homogeneous. For the majority of life’s evolution, these homogeneous sources of stimuli have not existed, unlike digital screens, even the photons reflecting from a paper book vary depending on the angle of the background light. In excess, the homogeneous and indistinguishable stimuli of the modern world may prove to be detrimental to optimal brain function. Experiments from others have indicated that increasing an environment’s complexity is favorable to learning. Other studies also have shown that increasing the number of stimuli a person experiences can increase their capacity to learn. The hypothesis of this research is that increasing the amount of distinguishable stimuli for two-dimensional documents, such as text, increases the brain’s ability to recall memories and decreases the time it takes to create them. This is based on the concept that all data in a memory store needs distinguishing characteristics for it to be useful in recall. The experiment proposed in this paper increases the distinguishability of text and background colors of the participant’s digital documents and then analyzes the consequential effect on memory creation and recall. The participants will be split up into four groups, each with two digital text documents of comparable content and difficulty. The control group will have no change made to their two documents, and the other three groups will have either the text colors differentiated, the background made non-solid, or both. There will be no change made to each of the experimental groups’ second paper. The changes to the differentiability will be consciously noticeable upon close examination yet will be as non-distracting to the reader as possible. The read times and content recallability of the readers will then be recorded and analyzed.
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Papers by Patrick H White