A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence

by Jeff Hawkins

This view of the neocortex as a hierarchy of feature detectors has been the dominant theory for fifty years. The biggest problem with this theory is that it treats vision as a static process, like taking a picture. But vision is not like that. About three times a second our eyes make quick saccadic movements. The inputs from the eyes to the brain completely change with every saccade. The visual inputs also change when we walk forward or turn our head left and right. The hierarchy of features theory ignores these changes. It treats vision as if the goal is to take one picture at a time and label it. But even casual observation will tell you that vision is an interactive process, dependent on movement. For example, to learn what a new object looks like, we hold it in our hand, rotating it this way and that, to see what it looks like from different angles. Only by moving can we learn a model of the object.