similarities in neocortical firing patterns promote analogical thinking. The pattern that represents lowering the position of your hand will be related to the pattern that represents lowering the pitch of your voice—and even to metaphorical lowerings, like the concepts for a falling temperature or a declining empire in history. Thus, we can form a pattern from learning a concept in one domain and then apply it to a completely different domain. The neocortex’s ability to draw analogies between disparate fields is responsible for many of the key intellectual leaps throughout history.
