Jeff is going to hate this idea as it is not yet found in nature!!
The neo-cortex is made up of four layers. My guess is that at one time
this started off as just one layer, which evolved to split into two and
eventually four. What if more layers are added to this model? Isn't this
the next step of evolution?
The reason why this is interesting is that I was listening to Michio
Kaku's *The Future of the Mind* and started thinking about his description
of levels of intelligence, N0 (simple feedback system like a thermostat),
N1 (e.g. insect which can react to their surroundings), N2 (creatures which
are able to work collectively and identify gestures in others), N3 (system
able to project multiple scenarios into the future). The question is what's
the next level of intelligence able to do, which we as humans cannot? Does
intelligence roughly correlate to the number of membranes in the
neo-cortex? A wild speculation is that N4 should be able to run all of
these scenarios in parallel and able to process them simultaneously, sort
of simulate a quantum processor? I think this line of reasoning was
triggered by the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind article. Has
anyone tried to expand NuPIC to allow for more layers?
