The brain is like a surface, its circuts drawn tight in a certain state of tension. You toss in a pebble - that´s your sensory input - and you immediately get ripples of activity. [...] The overall shape of the system has an effect on the patterns you see. Nothing is being calculated. The response of the system evolves organically. Or to use the proper term, dynamically. [...] And as we throw more pebbles - or rather - experiences - into this particular pond, we change its shape, and thus the kinds of patterns it tends to produce. This is a system that learns,