This kind of reminds me of what I took away from Gerald Edelman's work ([0]). The gist as I remember it was that he theorized that the cortex is composed of as

This kind of reminds me of what I took away from Gerald Edelman's work ([0]). The gist as I remember it was that he theorized that the cortex is composed of assemblies of neurons formed in development (in the womb, potentially with epi-genetic factors). Each assembly, just by chance of it's structure, is likely good at something. Over time, assemblies take up the tasks they happen to be good at and further specialize with experience. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Darwinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Darwinism