The short version is the individual neurons aren't directly responsible for much at all, but rather they are a medium for brain waves to propagate and the brain

The short version is the individual neurons aren't directly responsible for much at all, but rather they are a medium for brain waves to propagate and the brain waves are the currency which thought is conducted in. Things are represented with waves, not with individual neurons being on or off. I've written elsewhere how I think existent machine learning may be doomed to plateau because the things that are still difficult for machines have elegant solutions in frequency space but no analogous solution in the existing models.