Not too far off base from my understanding. But the first few layers are like firmware they provide the neural interface between hardware (reflexes, processing

Not too far off base from my understanding. But the first few layers are like firmware they provide the neural interface between hardware (reflexes, processing sensations, etc) and the rest of thinking. So it’s a system that it’s very deeply tied to how we perceive and interact with our bodies and through them the world. And in fact the first level or two of the hierarchy happen outside the brain in the nervous system or spine (unless hearing or sight related obvs) There’s one piece missing though and that’s goals/control variable. My thoughts about this is how we encode things and act of things. When we recognize a tree there’s a set of nodes that activate then some higher layer recognizes trust as a tree and a higher layer still decides how to use that information or how to interact with those nodes (it sets a desired state. Ie. Walk to the tree, write the word, recognize the picture, etc). Take a look into Hierarchical Perceptual Control Theory.