A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence

by Jeff Hawkins

Vernon Mountcastle proposed that every column in the neocortex performs the same basic function. For this to be true, then, language and other high-level cognitive abilities are, at some fundamental level, the same as seeing, touching, and hearing. This is not obvious. Reading Shakespeare does not seem similar to picking up a coffee cup, but that is the implication of Mountcastle’s proposal. Mountcastle knew that cortical columns aren’t completely identical. There are physical differences, for example, between columns that get input from your fingers and columns that understand language, but there are more similarities than differences. Therefore, Mountcastle deduced that there must be some basic function that underlies everything the neocortex does—not just perception, but all the things we think of as intelligence.