A new press release states, “Understanding how the human brain works is considered one of the greatest unsolved scientific challenges. Neuroscientists have amassed an enormous amount of detailed factual knowledge about the brain, yet there remains no unifying theory as to what intelligence is and how the brain produces it. After more than a decade of research, scientists at Numenta believe they have made a major advance toward solving this problem. In a new scientific paper titled, A Framework for Intelligence and Cortical Function Based on Grid Cells in the Neocortex,’ the Numenta researchers propose a broad framework for understanding what the neocortex does and how it works. ‘The neocortex is the organ of intelligence,’ explained Jeff Hawkins, the lead author of the new paper. ‘It is composed of a repeating circuit that creates our perceptions, language, and high-level thoughts. We identified a key piece of this circuit that had been missed, which led to a cascade of discoveries including a new interpretation of how the neocortex works as a whole’.”

The release goes on, “The key insight described in the paper relates to a type of neuron called grid cells. Grid cells exist in an older part of the brain that learns maps of environments. As you move, grid cells keep track of the location of your body relative to these maps. Numenta researchers deduced that grid cells also must exist throughout the neocortex. These ‘cortical grid cells’ track the locations of your sensors as they move relative to the objects in the world. The authors propose that cortical grid cells allow the neocortex to learn models of objects similar to how the older part of the brain learns maps of environments.”

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