The same type of hierarchy is involved in our ability to recognize objects and situations. We recognize the faces of people we know well and also recognize that these faces contain eyes, a nose, a mouth, and so on—a hierarchy of patterns that we use in both our perceptions and our actions. The use of hierarchies allows us to reuse patterns. For example, we do not need to relearn the concept of a nose and a mouth each time we are introduced to a new face.
In the next chapter, we’ll put the results of these thought experiments together into a theory of how the neocortex must work. I will argue that they reveal essential attributes of our thinking that are uniform, from finding the toothpaste to writing a poem.
CHAPTER 3
A MODEL OF THE NEOCORTEX: THE PATTERN RECOGNITION THEORY OF MIND
The brain is a tissue. It is a complicated, intricately woven tissue, like nothing else we know of in the universe, but it is composed of cells, as any tissue is. They are, to be sure, highly specialized cells, but they function according to the laws that govern any other cells. Their electrical and chemical signals can be detected, recorded and interpreted and their chemicals can be identified; the connections that constitute the brain’s woven feltwork can be mapped. In short, the brain can be studied, just as the kidney can.
Suppose that there be a machine, the structure of which produces thinking, feeling, and perceiving; imagine this machine enlarged but preserving the same proportions, so you could enter it as if it were a mill. This being supposed, you might visit inside; but what would you observe there? Nothing but parts which push and move each other, and never anything that could explain perception.
A Hierarchy of Patterns
I have repeated the simple experiments and observations described in the previous chapter thousands of times in myriad contexts. The conclusions from these observations necessarily constrain my explanation for what the brain must be doing, just as the simple experiments on time, space, and mass that were conducted in the early and late nineteenth century necessarily constrained the young Master Einstein’s reflections on how the universe functioned. In the discussion that follows I’ll also factor in some very basic observations from neuroscience, attempting to avoid the many details that are still in contention.
First, let me explain why this section specifically discusses the neocortex (from the Latin meaning “new rind”). We do know the neocortex is responsible for our ability to deal with patterns of information and to do so in a hierarchical fashion. Animals without a neocortex (basically nonmammals) are largely incapable of understanding hierarchies.1 Understanding and leveraging the innately hierarchical nature of reality is a uniquely mammalian trait and results from mammals’ unique possession of this evolutionarily recent brain structure. The neocortex is responsible for sensory perception, recognition of everything from visual objects to abstract concepts, controlling movement, reasoning from spatial orientation to rational thought, and language—basically, what we regard as “thinking.”
The human neocortex, the outermost layer of the brain, is a thin, essentially two-dimensional structure with a thickness of about 2.5 millimeters (about a tenth of an inch). In rodents, it is about the size of a postage stamp and is smooth. An evolutionary innovation in primates is that it became intricately folded over the top of the rest of the brain with deep ridges, grooves, and wrinkles to increase its surface area. Due to its elaborate folding, the neocortex constitutes the bulk of the human brain, accounting for 80 percent of its weight. Homo sapiens developed a large forehead to allow for an even larger neocortex; in particular we have a frontal lobe where we deal with the more abstract patterns associated with high-level concepts.
This thin structure is basically made up of six layers, numbered I (the outermost layer) to VI. The axons emerging from the neurons in layers II and III project to other parts of the neocortex. The axons (output connections) from layers V and VI are connected primarily outside of the neocortex to the thalamus, brain stem, and spinal cord. The neurons in layer IV receive synaptic (input) connections from neurons that are outside the neocortex, especially in the thalamus. The number of layers varies slightly from region to region. Layer IV is very thin in the motor cortex, because in that area it largely does not receive input from the thalamus, brain stem, or spinal cord. Conversely, in the occipital lobe (the part of the neocortex usually responsible for visual processing), there are three additional sublayers that can be seen in layer IV, due to the considerable input flowing into this region, including from the thalamus.
A critically important observation about the neocortex is the extraordinary uniformity of its fundamental structure. This was first noticed by American neuroscientist Vernon Mountcastle (born in 1918). In 1957 Mountcastle discovered the columnar organization of the neocortex. In 1978 he made an observation that is as significant to neuroscience as the Michelson-Morley ether-disproving experiment of 1887 were to physics. That year he described the remarkably unvarying organization of the neocortex, hypothesizing that it was composed of a single mechanism that was repeated over and over again,2 and proposing the cortical column as that basic unit. The differences in the height of certain layers in different regions noted above are simply differences in the amount of interconnectivity that the regions are responsible for dealing with.
Mountcastle hypothesized the existence of mini-columns within columns, but this theory became controversial because there were no visible demarcations of such smaller structures. However, extensive experimentation has revealed that there are in fact repeating units within the neuron fabric of each column. It is my contention that the basic unit is a pattern recognizer and that this constitutes the fundamental component of the neocortex. In contrast to Mountcastle’s notion of a mini-column, there is no specific physical boundary to these recognizers, as they are placed closely one to the next in an interwoven fashion, so the cortical column is simply an aggregate of a large number of them. These recognizers are capable of wiring themselves to one another throughout the course of a lifetime, so the elaborate connectivity (between modules) that we see in the neocortex is not prespecified by the genetic code, but rather is created to reflect the patterns we actually learn over time. I will describe this thesis in more detail, but I maintain that this is how the neocortex must be organized.