What it means for humans to understand has been posited by Jeff Hawkins as a combination of synaptic links within and between cortical columns, resulting in a p

What it means for humans to understand has been posited by Jeff Hawkins as a combination of synaptic links within and between cortical columns, resulting in a physical neural construct that activates when stimulated past a sufficient threshold of inbound signals. Constructs can suppress nearby clusters of neurons, or contribute an increase in readiness to signal, or self modulate the activation threshold of constructs within the cortical column. The findings are consistent with current understanding of neuroscience, and align with discoveries such as grid cells. They also provide a basis for explaining what's actually happening in the brain with phenomena like memory palaces, rapid and efficient physical control of the body, combining sense modalities such as sight and touch when catching a ball, and so on. Understanding is what happens when your brain has developed a neural structure such that it's able to predict events successfully based on the thing that was understood.