Let’s review. The neocortex is a sheet of tissue about the size of a large napkin. It is divided into dozens of regions that do different things. Each region is divided into thousands of columns. Each column is composed of several hundred hairlike minicolumns, which consist of a little over one hundred cells each. Mountcastle proposed that throughout the neocortex columns and minicolumns performed the same function: implementing a fundamental algorithm that is responsible for every aspect of perception and intelligence.
