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The Unexpected Brain Science Model

John Ball
Pat Inc
Published in
10 min readDec 10, 2024

compared with today’s **computer** model

Is this a picture of 7 people doing a jump, or one person moving through time? Our brain easily recognizes both since the image is the building block of a brain — either a set or a sequence. Photo by Jeffrey Brandjes on Unsplash

Last time we looked at the model of a brain as the organ of computation explained by famous cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker. It doesn’t stand up to scrutiny because how a computer works is intrinsic to the idea of computation. Concepts like encoded storage in binary, instructions, programs, and data don’t fit into a brain model.

Today I want to step through how a brain works based on: (a) what brain damage can do and what (b) brain scans show us. Both contain enigmas that are explained by a pattern-matching brain, not a processing one.

Brain damage

We can get a glimpse of how a brain works by looking at what happens when it is damaged. All human brains are different. The principle, plasticity, explains how a brain can use different areas for the same function. Equally, there are typical regions in a brain that perform the same function in other brains.

Let’s looks at some of the unexpected deficits in human brains that need to be explained by a valid brain theory.

Language regions

The first support for a brain to have localized function was by Paul Broca <www.simplypsychology.org/broca-area.html>. In 1861, his patient Tan was unable to produce

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Pat Inc
Pat Inc

Published in Pat Inc

A scientific breakthrough in #ConversationalAI. Meaning-based NLU vs. Deep Learning Intent NLU. Sign up for early access: https://pat.ai/

John Ball
John Ball

Written by John Ball

I'm a cognitive scientist working on NLU (Natural Language Understanding) systems based on RRG (Role and Reference Grammar). A mouthful, I know!

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