How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

by Ray Kurzweil

First, let me explain why this section specifically discusses the neocortex (from the Latin meaning “new rind”). We do know the neocortex is responsible for our ability to deal with patterns of information and to do so in a hierarchical fashion. Animals without a neocortex (basically nonmammals) are largely incapable of understanding hierarchies.1 Understanding and leveraging the innately hierarchical nature of reality is a uniquely mammalian trait and results from mammals’ unique possession of this evolutionarily recent brain structure. The neocortex is responsible for sensory perception, recognition of everything from visual objects to abstract concepts, controlling movement, reasoning from spatial orientation to rational thought, and language—basically, what we regard as “thinking.”