> Neuroscientists are split between a traditional view that the brain is organized as a hierarchy, with most regions feeding into the "higher" centers of consci

> Neuroscientists are split between a traditional view that the brain is organized as a hierarchy, with most regions feeding into the "higher" centers of conscious thought, and a more recent model of the brain as a flat network similar to the Internet. "Higher" centers of consciousness seems to be a predictable bias given our view of humans in relation to the outside world. What are these ambiguously "higher" centers of conciousness that are most advanced in humans? I think it is succinctly described as the following: analogical reasoning. The capacity for not just associating relations between things, but the capacity for relating relationships. What makes humans unique is our massive capacity for analogical reasoning. Humans have by far the highest capacity for analogical reasoning in the animal kingdom, with bottle-nose dolphins coming in a more distant second and great apes third.