While these observations certainly support the idea of plasticity in the neocortex, their more interesting implication is that we each appear to have two brains, not one, and we can do pretty well with either. If we lose one, we do lose the cortical patterns that are uniquely stored there, but each brain is in itself fairly complete. So does each

A very important point to note here is that information flows down the conceptual hierarchy as well as up. If anything, this downward flow is even more significant. If, for example, we are reading from left to right and have already seen and recognized the letters “A,” “P,” “P,” and “L,” the “APPLE” recognizer will predict that it is likely to see

Discoveries in neuroscience have established convincingly the key role played by the hierarchical capabilities of the neocortex as well as offered evidence for the pattern recognition theory of mind (PRTM). This evidence is distributed among many observations and analyses, a portion of which I will review here. Canadian psychologist Donald O. Hebb

Our emotional thoughts also take place in the neocortex but are influenced by portions of the brain ranging from ancient brain regions such as the amygdala to some evolutionarily recent brain structures such as the spindle neurons, which appear to play a key role in higher-level emotions. Unlike the regular and logical recursive structures found in

This learning process begins even before we are born, occurring simultaneously with the biological process of actually growing a brain. A fetus already has a brain at one month, although it is essentially a reptile brain, as the fetus actually goes through a high-speed re-creation of biological evolution in the womb. The natal brain is distinctly a

The primary idea in my three previous books on technology (The Age of Intelligent Machines, written in the 1980s and published in 1989; The Age of Spiritual Machines, written in the mid- to late 1990s and published in 1999; and The Singularity Is Near, written in the early 2000s and published in 2005) is that an evolutionary process inherently

Let’s think about what it means to be complex. We might ask, is a forest complex? The answer depends on the perspective you choose to take. You could note that there are many thousands of trees in the forest and that each one is different. You could then go on to note that each tree has thousands of branches and that each branch is completely

In the previous chapter I discussed how we can recognize a pattern even if the entire pattern is not present, and also if it is distorted. The first capability is called autoassociation: the ability to associate a pattern with a part of itself. The structure of each pattern recognizer inherently supports this capability.

One thinker whose position I believe is mischaracterized is the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes. His famous “I think, therefore I am” is generally interpreted to extol rational thought, in the sense that “I think, that is I can perform logical thought, therefore I am worthwhile.” Descartes is therefore considered the architect