Electric Charge in an Aging Brain

• The brain has electric charge.
• The brain has a charge density.
• The brain decreases in size over time.
• Charge density increases if charge stays the same.

The charge has two sources: internal and external. But there is a limit to the amount of charge that the brain can contain. And as charge density increases the limit decreases.

Total signal= Internal + External

Sensory data input are electrical signals from the external world. There is also an internal source of electricity. But if there is a limit to the amount of charge the brain can have at any one time, and the internal source of charge increases [due to a change in volume], the brain may limit the other inputs to regulate this charge.

In the case of aging, the body may gather more signals to counter the lack of signal sensitivity. I’m sure you’ve heard that the ears and nose don’t stop growing. This is likely why. As the brain shrinks, it needs more and more molecules or vibrations to make a distinguishing identification.

Note: The eyes do not and cannot grow because they are a source of charge. Not just a signal, but also electric charge.

Sources:

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2596698/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_density

The Brain as a Heat Source

We’ve talked about why brains got bigger with time, but the Neanderthals stood out as an outlier and needed further research and explanation. We’ve also shown the benefits of larger heads in sports, but we never really answered the question: how did they get this way?

Neanderthals heads were bigger. “Neanderthal populations in Europe endured many environmental changes, including large shifts in climate between glacial and interglacial conditions, while living in a habitat that was colder overall than settings where most other hominin species lived. Some of the environmental shifts they endured involved rapid swings between cold and warm climate.”

Other ancient men’s heads were smaller, and were hairier. If the brain is a heat source, these other ancient men need additional heat to survive.

Races of people in cold environments have larger heads [and smaller eyes].

People in warmer climates typically have smaller heads. And we’ve theorized about the strengths and weaknesses of each of these qualities.  

If the brain is a heat source, that would explain all of these cases. Colder environments need more heat, and hot environments need less. Further, over thousands of years, the climate would naturally select some of the distinguishing qualities of these races.

Sources: 

1. http://humanorigins.si.edu/research/climate-and-human-evolution/climate-effects-human-evolution
2. https://www2.palomar.edu/anthro/homo2/mod_homo_2.htm
3. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2018/09/21/neanderthal-brains-bigger-but-not-necessarily-better/#.XRTh-ZNKjSw

‘Precision under pressure’

We use this term is several of our recent posts. It’s an idea that needs further explanation.

I’ll start by summarizing our theory of time perception in the brain: proportional to stress. So the more stress, either external or internal, the slower time is perceived. There is not shortage of application or development of this theory in other posts. 

This is important because brain entropy is internal pressure. The more stress we put on athletes, mental or physical, the more brain entropy they have, and the slower they perceive time.

How does that apply to precision? Imagine your golf swing as a single fluid motion. If you are 50% accurate with your swing, about half the balls will go where you want them to. But if your swing has two motions, there is twice as much room for error. So the more thought you have in your swing, the less accurate it can be. And the more stressed you are, the slower time is for you. The more time for thought in the swing, and more room for error on the shot. Therefore, less stress equals less entropy equals faster time perception which equals more accurate movements over a longer period of time.

This is why a swing will break down under pressure. And why a natural athlete needs to be aware of the fundamentals of their practice. Because in crunch time, things feel different. You have more time to swing, throw, or kick. So if you don’t know how to tune out the pressure or adjust to it, you will become unpredictable over time.

This is why practice is crucial. You practice to develop your skills but also tune them to each level of stress. If you casually hit tennis balls every day, you may not be match ready. There is more stress. And as the match wears on, you get more tired, which also increases stress.

With this in mind, you can start to see the advantage of a bigger brain. The bigger the brain, the greater the volume the athlete can reach without reaching the same level of entropy. There is essentially just more room for pressure.

And when pressure gets high, entropy gets high, and time gets slow. And when time gets slow, it gets harder and harder to accurately do the same thing over and over again with predictable results.

 

The Biggest Brain of All

Nearly every Olympics sees Chinese champions in certain events. They dominate ping pong, gymnastics, shooting, badminton, diving, and weight lifting. The question is why.

We recently explore the athletic head, and used it to explain the racial disparity of some sports. We then looked at the bigger head and used our model to predict and explain the advantages of having a bigger brain in sports. Well, the Chinese brain is the biggest of all. 

So why would the group with the biggest brains in the world dominate these sports?

Badminton and ping pong are repetitive and very precise repeated movements. A bigger brain helps make these movements more predictable over time.

More precision under even more pressure. Diving and gymnastics are choreographed. They come down to who can execute the most difficult routines with the most precision.

Even more sleep. With an even larger brain, it takes even longer to cool off.

Less muscle endurance. The brain uses more energy leaving less for the rest of the body.

Why do they dominate weightlifting? You would assume that the smaller brain with the best acceleration would be king here. It’s just not the case. 

So lets assume that you have two people that are the exact same strength and exact same weight. One has a larger brain. The lift itself becomes more of a choreographed dance at this point. The lifter who can have the best form, while staying relaxed will lift more weight. The smaller brain, although with a greater ability to accelerate, also has much more room for error. Under duress, the smaller brain could produce less predictable movements. Or worse form. The smaller brain would reach its pressure threshold first, leaving the larger brain the winner. 

Sources:

1. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/press-release/poll-reveals-sleep-differences-among-ethnic-groups
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29400417/
3. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scmp.com/news/china/article/2054126/why-do-asians-have-bigger-brains-europeans-or-africans
4. http://blog.tutorming.com/expats/sports-that-china-wins-at-olympics
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_at_the_Olympics

The Advantages of the Bigger Brain in Sports

We recently explored the athletic head. What about the rest of us?

A bigger skull means a lower likelihood of stroke. The bigger the skull, the lower the chance of it reaching its pressure limit.

Better mental endurance. Thinking for longer periods of time.

More sleep required. More time will be needed to cool off this entropy. Even if the brain has the same theoretical temperature, the larger volume will take longer to cool off.

More precision in pressure. I always think of Tom Brady or Peyton Manning. If bigger brains play with more precision over time, it seems like atmosphere, time, and other conditions would not effect the large brains as much.

Better at repeatable movements over a long period of time. While the small brains fire more quickly, they also have less precision and endurance. I would look at the massive racial disparities in golf and tennis. 

I think we have to assume that economics alone do not explain this disparity. We have to assume that if there was a massive pool of untapped talent hiding in low-income communities, someone would’ve found it by now.  

 

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Let’s look at home field advantage again with this in mind. The black-dominated sports have the biggest home field advantages. And the white-dominated sports have much less of an advantage at home. In that article, we said that it was the nature of the sport that was the difference in the home field advantage. I think there is more to the story.

So why is home field advantage so strong in the NBA?. Because speed and explosiveness come at a premium. It doesn’t matter if you have someone who literally has never missed a three-pointer in his life, if he can’t move and get the shot up quickly, he can’t play in the NBA. So if speed and explosiveness come at a premium, the fastest and most explosive people will likely be better at it. If I have a team of track stars and you have a team of shooters, we’ll win because we can run past the defense and shoot a higher percentage. We’d also have better close-out defense, and get more rebounds. So instead of having the absolute best shooters on the planet in the NBA, we have the best athletes that can shoot. 

Why is hockey so different? Why is its home field advantage so much less than basketball? Because explosiveness is undervalued. Apollo Ono could be on the ice but never make a huge difference. The rink is shorter, so there are fewer breakaways, and nobody leaves the ice. So jumping doesn’t matter.  Precision is important, but explosiveness is not premium. 

So the nature of the sport determines the type of athlete that is most valued. That value determines the type of brain that can perform best under the conditions of the sport. Those criteria determine which races dominate different sports. And those races determine the relative difference of home field advantage.

Sources:

1. http://harvardsportsanalysis.org/2014/07/a-different-measure-of-diversity-in-pro-sports/
2. https://infogram.com/2012-racial-breakdown-of-major-us-professional-sports-1g8djp9o0xykpyw
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Precision_sports
4. http://blackyouthproject.com/black-people-dont-playlike-hockey/
5. https://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/where-are-all-black-golfers-nearly-two-decades-after-tiger-woods-arrival-golf-still-st
6. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pg5njm/does-tennis-have-a-race-problem

What about those skulls?

Don’t they prove evolution? Not exactly. They don’t prove that humans were once apes. They prove that humans once looked different.

Let’s look at the brain as a computer. Except as our computer speeds get faster and faster, the processors get smaller and smaller. So a decent computer now is hundreds of times faster than those decades ago, but it’s also much, much smaller.

But the brain does not offer us that opportunity. The substance of the brain has not changed in millions of years. But the speed of life and number of decisions that we make every day has increased exponentially. Why does that matter? Because if we didn’t make more efficient computer chips, if we just used the materials that they had in the 1970s to create computers now, computers today would be behemoths. There would be no portable smartphone, especially at this speed.

So if we need better processing power, with the same materials, the computers get bigger. So the heads would be smaller years ago, when the demands were so much lower.

If you look at entropy in the brain, and assume that stress causes higher entropy. We also assume that the brain has a stress or entropy limit. As the demands on the brains grew, the brain had to get bigger. Otherwise, it would overheat.

So, of course, any ancient skulls you find will probably be smaller. This is more evidence of how well the human body can adapt to stress than proof that we evolved from apes.

But not all ancient skulls are smaller. Neandrathals are roughly the same size as humans today. So we have some more exploring to do. 

Update: Exploring done.

If I Can See – Now on Amazon

So, I’m pretty excited to let y’all know that I finally put everything together in book format. This is the best place to start. Feel free to share with your friends and family. If you like it, be sure to sign up to follow my blog, so you can read the latest theories before anyone else.

If I Can See – Free eBook

So, I’m pretty excited to let y’all know that I finally put everything together in book format. This is the best place to start. Feel free to share with your friends and family. If you like it, be sure to sign up to follow my blog, so you can read the latest theories before anyone else. Read Now or buy on Amazon.

Concussions Resolve Themselves

Because they are mini-strokes. 

So how in the world are we going to try to relate these two events? It’s simple, if you accept some of my other proofs. But if you don’t, I would just stop reading right here. Here are the prerequisites to understanding this correlation:

• High blood pressure starts in the brain
• Entropy and the Brain
• Here’s Your Brain Model
• Concussions do not cause CTE

What are the symptoms of a mini-stroke?

• Weakness or numbness in your arms and/or legs, usually on one side of the body
• Dysphasia (difficulty speaking)
• Dizziness
• Vision changes
• Tingling (paresthesias)
• Abnormal taste and/or smells
• Confusion
• Loss of balance
• Altered consciousness and/or passing out

What are the symptoms of a concussion?

• Headache or a feeling of pressure in the head
• Temporary loss of consciousness
• Confusion or feeling as if in a fog
• Amnesia surrounding the traumatic event
• Dizziness or “seeing stars”
• Ringing in the ears
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Slurred speech
• Delayed response to questions
• Appearing dazed
• Fatigue

What are the causes of a mini-stroke?

• Blood pressure readings higher than 120/80 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg)
• Cigarette smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke
• High cholesterol
• Diabetes
• Obstructive sleep apnea
• Cardiovascular disease, including heart failure, heart defects, heart infection or abnormal heart rhythm
• Personal or family history of stroke, heart attack or transient ischemic attack.

Other factors associated with a higher risk of stroke include:

• Age —People age 55 or older have a higher risk of stroke than do younger people.
• Race — African-Americans have a higher risk of stroke than do people of other races.
• Sex — Men have a higher risk of stroke than women. Women are usually older when they have strokes, and they’re more likely to die of strokes than are men.
• Hormones — use of birth control pills or hormone therapies that include estrogen, as well as increased estrogen levels from pregnancy and childbirth.

We’ve studied almost all of these different causes and can tie them all back to the brain. [The hormones and sleep apnea posts are coming soon.]

Concussion Causes: Impacts to the head

The only symptom that really needs explanation is nausea, and that is a factor of strokes that just seems to not be included in most lists. But then I found this:

A stroke that takes place in the cerebellum can cause coordination and balance problems, dizziness, nausea and vomiting. 

So if you can wrap your head around the prerequisites, I can neatly tie these together. A stroke literally happens when the pressure of your brain gets too high. What happens to the pressure inside a closed sphere if you impact it with something at high speed? Pressure goes up dramatically. The greater the force of the impact, the higher the pressure gets.

So what’s the major take away here? Mini-strokes resolve themselves and do not require any further medical attention. They do not cause any long-term damage. Meaning that concussive blows should resolve themselves within twenty-four hours, and if there are no symptoms, the brain is fine. 

Sources:

1. https://www.utdallas.edu/research/FAS/
2. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/stroke/symptoms-causes/syc-20350113
3. https://www.utdallas.edu/research/FAS/
4. https://www.webmd.com/stroke/news/20100415/can-you-recognize-symptoms-of-minor-stroke

ED is a Brain Disease

You’ve heard the story of Viagra. It started out as a blood pressure drug, and doctors noticed that it was having consistent positive side effects in men.

The question is why. If high blood pressure starts in the brain, what did this drug do that helped men…perform?

If Viagra helps relax men and gets them closer to their ground state, why don’t we all just take it daily? Because it has side effects. And that is no way to function day in and day out.

Here are the causes of erectile dysfunction, according to the Mayo Clinic:

• Heart disease
• Clogged blood vessels (atherosclerosis)
• High cholesterol
• High blood pressure
• Diabetes
• Obesity
• Metabolic syndrome — a condition involving increased blood pressure, high insulin levels, body fat around the waist and high cholesterol
• Parkinson’s disease
• Multiple sclerosis
• Certain prescription medications
• Tobacco use
• Peyronie’s disease — development of scar tissue inside the penis
• Alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse
• Sleep disorders
• Treatments for prostate cancer or enlarged prostate
• Surgeries or injuries that affect the pelvic area or spinal cord

Psychological causes of erectile dysfunction

• Depression, anxiety or other mental health conditions
• Stress
• Relationship problems due to stress, poor communication or other concerns

Whoa. We’ve posted about almost all of these disorders. What does it all mean? It means that the only obstacle between you and a great sex life is you. 

Most of these disorders originate in the brain, whether or not we know it yet. You may need to take a look at my archived posts.

Remember: There was a time when everything worked properly, and it’s not too late to get back there again…without medication. Your health and sanity depends on it. 

So what is the next step? 

Identify the root of your problems. Identify your stresses, and confront them head on. The solution is different for everyone, but the condition is reversible. The fact that your penis doesn’t work is not your main problem. It’s a symptom of the stress in your life keeping you from reaching your ground state, where you were meant to be.