The Theory
Hawkins' basic idea is that the brain is a mechanism to predict the future, specifically, hierarchical regions of the brain predict their future input sequences. Perhaps not always far in the future, but far enough to be of real use to an organism. As such, the brain is a feed forward hierarchical state machine with special properties that enable it to learn.
The state machine actually controls the behavior of the organism. Since it is a feed forward state machine, the organism responds to future events predicted from past data.
The hierarchy is capable of memorizing frequently observed sequences (Cognitive modules) of patterns and developing invariant representations. Higher levels of the cortical hierarchy predict the future on a longer time scale, or over a wider range of sensory input. Lower levels interpret or control limited domains of experience, or sensory or effector systems. Connections from the higher level states predispose some selected transitions in the lower-level state machines.
Hebbian learning is part of the framework, in which the event of learning physically alters neurons and connections, as learning takes place.
Vernon Mountcastle's formulation of a cortical column is a basic element in the framework. Hawkins places particular emphasis on the role of the interconnections from peer columns, and the activation of columns as a whole. He strongly implies that a column is the cortex's physical representation of a state in a state machine.
As an engineer, any specific failure to find a natural occurrence of some process in his framework does not signal a fault in the memory-prediction framework per se, but merely signals that the natural process has performed Hawkins' functional decomposition in a different, unexpected way, as Hawkins' motivation is to create intelligent machines. For example, for the purposes of his framework, the nerve impulses can be taken to form a temporal sequence (but phase encoding could be a possible implementation of such a sequence; these details are immaterial for the framework).
Read more about this topic: On Intelligence
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