A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence

by Jeff Hawkins

Mountcastle’s proposal looms in neuroscience like a holy grail. No matter what animal or what part of the brain a neuroscientist studies, somewhere, overtly or covertly, almost all neuroscientists want to understand how the human brain works. And that means understanding how the neocortex works. And that requires understanding what a cortical column does. In the end, our quest to understand the brain, our quest to understand intelligence, boils down to figuring out what a cortical column does and how it does it. Cortical columns are not the only mystery of the brain or the only mystery related to the neocortex. But understanding the cortical column is by far the largest and most important piece of the puzzle.