On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

by Jeff Hawkins

Neuroanatomists have known for a long time that the brain is saturated with feedback connections. For example, in the circuit between the neocortex and a lower structure called the thalamus, connections going backward (toward the input) exceed the connections going forward by almost a factor of ten!

some anatomists have estimated that the typical human neocortex contains around thirty billion neurons (30,000,000,000), but no one would be surprised if the figure was significantly higher or lower.

Prediction is not just one of the things your brain does. It is the primary function of the neocortex, and the foundation of intelligence.

(The word itself is derived from the Latin words for “new bark” or “new rind,” because the cortex literally covers the old brain.)

I believe that a column is the basic unit of prediction. For a column to predict when it should be active, it needs to know what is going on elsewhere—hence the synaptic connections from hither and yon.

Brains have inhibitory cells that do just this. They strongly inhibit other neurons in a neighborhood of cortex, effectively allowing one winner.

Goal-oriented behavior is the holy grail of robotics. It is built into the fabric of the cortex.

synesthesia have brains that blur the distinction between the senses—certain sounds have a color, or certain textures have a color. This tells us that the qualitative aspect of a sense is not immutable. Through some sort of physical modification, a brain can impart a qualitative aspect of vision to an auditory input.

It is in the realm of exotic senses that, I suspect, the revolutionary uses of intelligent machines lie.