You can only experience a subset of the world at any moment in time. You can only be in one room of your home, looking in one direction. Because of the hierarchy of the cortex, you are able to know that you are at home, in your living room, looking at a window, even though at that moment your eyes happen to be fixated on a window latch. Higher regions of cortex are maintaining a representation of your home, while lower regions are representing rooms, and still lower regions are looking at a window. Similarly, the hierarchy allows you to know you are listening to both a song and an album of
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