Jake's Virtual Laboratorium

I would like to open up my laboratory for public consumption to solidify my thinking into a tangible order. In the painting above, representing the alchemical work of Heinrich Khunrath's stage of eternal wisdom, all vanishes into a centralized perspectival point. Consider this as you explore this digital representation of my own alchemical exploration; I present my laboratorium, mounted upon my developing pillars of experience and reason.

In order to become a neuroscience PhD candidate, I must pass both a qualifying and comprehensive examination. These tests are meant to measure a student's mastery of fundamental principles in the field. Therefore, I have devised the current project as a creative study framework that takes advantage of the writing process. To maximize the potential of this work to advance my own understanding, I will be taking it upon myself to create an additional challenge: Not only will I write about neuroscientific concepts with great rigor (for I will be examined), but I intend to format it for the general public. In doing, I hope to represent my passion for what I am learning, my creativity, and my drive to understand more about the world.

The groundwork for the factual components of my work will come from Kandel's Principles of Neural Science, Sixth Edition, along with notes from lectures in Cellular Molecular Neuroscience, Comparative Neuroanatomy, and Systems Neuroscience. Check footnotes for citations and other resources.

Through my work I seek facere de necessitate virtutem - to make a virtue of a necessity.

In the Alchemist's laboratory, dormiens vigila is engraved above the entrance. Awake in sleep, how Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest describes his play within a play in a monolgue addressing a character and an audience, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on," that, once a performance, or some illusion, fades to thin air. In the Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae we are material only in the foreground, encircled by eternity, our work concentrating toward a singular point, a time within eternity--for in the seed lies the fruit. As Khunrath is seen praying in his oratorium, an oven positioned to the right of the centered table admonishes to Festine lente, hasten slowly. Take your time to cook. On the center table are strewn instruments, symbolic gifts of song and harmony that accompany the work of life.