We only understand a small part of a big story, but we do understand that small part and it does look like matrix multiplication. Most of what goes on in the br

We only understand a small part of a big story, but we do understand that small part and it does look like matrix multiplication. Most of what goes on in the brain is up for debate. But not that part. Incidentally, this is the whole reason why reductionist approaches are so important: without reductionism, you can never get a foothold. You are adrift in a sea of woo and can never make any progress towards understanding because one nonfalsifiable holistic theory is as good as the next. However, if you break the system down into pieces until you do understand a piece, you can start to put the puzzle together. Dendrites, synapses, action potentials, thresholds, potentiation, plasticity -- these things are real, we do understand them under an ever growing set of circumstances, and while the picture on the puzzle is still anyone's guess the corner that looks like matrix multiplication is fully assembled and not going anywhere.