So, what was Mountcastle’s proposal for the location of the cortical algorithm? He said that the fundamental unit of the neocortex, the unit of intelligence, was a “cortical column.” Looking at the surface of the neocortex, a cortical column occupies about one square millimeter. It extends through the entire 2.5 mm thickness, giving it a volume of 2.5 cubic millimeters. By this definition, there are roughly 150,000 cortical columns stacked side by side in a human neocortex. You can imagine a cortical column is like a little piece of thin spaghetti. A human neocortex is like 150,000 short
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