Independent Research in Sensory Neurobiology
This site explores the full architecture of human perception — beyond the five senses Plato defined — through the lens of neurobiology, evolutionary theory, and physics.
The Three-Part Framework
A specialized biological structure that responds to a specific class of environmental stimuli — some familiar, some buried deep in the skin.
The neural route from the detector through the midbrain's filtering structures toward the cerebral cortex. Not all stimuli make the journey.
The region that receives, processes, and stores recognition patterns. Without stored patterns, even arriving stimuli go unrecognized.
The five senses Plato defined 2,500 years ago remain the default model in textbooks, classrooms, and clinical practice — despite more than a century of neurobiology identifying far more sensory receptors, pathways, and cortical regions than five.
This paper proposes a precise three-part definition of a sensory system (detector, midbrain pathway, cortical lobe) and applies it alongside a foundational evolutionary premise: for every stimulus present in the human environment, the body has evolved a system to detect it.
Where a stimulus is known to exist and no detector has yet been identified, the correct scientific conclusion is not that humans cannot sense it. It is that the detector has not yet been found.
The paper identifies 13 sensory detectors, examines the categorical error of grouping cutaneous receptors under "touch," and presents magnetoreception as a case study — with a testable hypothesis identifying the Meissner or Pacinian corpuscles as probable magnetoreceptive detectors. Five lines of experimental investigation are proposed.
Articles & Research Notes
Sensory Systems
A complete theoretical framework for the 13 human sensory detectors, the lumping problem in neurobiology, and the energetic senses.
Memory · Artificial Systems
A first-person argument for memory as the third substrate. Co-written with Claude (Anthropic): cellular, chemical, and now artificial memory — and what selective memory should look like.
Sensory Systems · Theoretical Framework
Energetic stimuli, encapsulated corpuscles, and the senses that evolution built before Plato named five. Candidate stimulus hypotheses for each of the five cutaneous corpuscles.
Forthcoming: The Magnetoreception HypothesisCore Propositions
Proposition I
For every stimulus present in the human environment across evolutionary time, the human body has developed a system to detect it. The sensory map is incomplete, not closed.
Proposition II
E=mc² establishes that the material world is an infinitesimal fraction of reality. A sensory system mapped only to material stimuli is a sensory system missing most of the picture.
Proposition III
Grouping all cutaneous receptors under "touch" is a categorical error that conceals an entire class of energetic sensory systems from scientific investigation.
About the Researcher
Neurobiology was the focus of post-graduate study, followed by decades of independent research and personal investigation that have continued far beyond any textbook.
This site presents a theoretical framework developed over many years: that the standard five-sense model inherited from Plato is not merely incomplete but actively misleading — and that neurobiology already has the tools to map what is missing, if it asks the right questions.
The work has been published in peer-reviewed psychology literature and continues here as an evolving body of theoretical and applied research. Theoreticalneurobiology.com serves as the public home for this ongoing inquiry.