There is probably not going to be any singular common code for all brains, this is pattern recognition in a fatty sponge that grew from a single cell. There will be families of similar neural networks in roughly the same locations according to where the input/outputs are. My best intuition is for some people who have "savant"-like powers are they were fortunate to grow exceptionally useful networks for their needs.<p>If you're a bio-hacker with a penchant for hardware upgrades, I think that you don't need to wait for anyone to discover "the encoding" to install an interface to your mind. Just do it, and like everything else in your brain, you'll spend a few weeks training your mind to use the new sense and digital motor skills. Bio-feedback technology is already here.
Starts with the assumption that brain / brain activity = conscious self.<p>I am not aware of any evidence that this is the case. (That is not to say that I think the two are unrelated, I just think this assumption ought to be challenged, rather than taken for granted).
If you wan't a good intuitive understanding of the neocortex then I seriously suggest reading up on Sparse Distributed Representations. A theory refined by Gerard Rinkus and Jeff Hawkins.
I liked this article after reading it. Before I read it, I thought it would be yet another <i>Technology Review</i> article by a staff writer, a superficial look at unreplicated research, but I find as I reach the end of the article that the two co-authors are both leading researchers on the topic and the second co-author is Gary Marcus, a psychology professor who is a diligent author of popular books about psychology to explain the latest findings from neuroscience-based psychology to the public. This is worth a read. It's not the last word on the subject, as the title alone should make clear, but it's a good introduction to the current research program and the complications it is discovering as scientists seek to develop a deeper understanding of the function of the human brain.
> <i>What matters most is not precisely when a particular neuron spikes but how often it does; the rate of firing is the main currency.</i><p>I'm not too sure about that.<p>My gut feeling is that at least half of the information in the brain is encoded in the exact timing of the spikes. In a model that takes time into account, certain neurons function as a "coincidence detector" sensitive to certain events.<p>e.g. your brain deduces which direction a sound is coming from by analyzing the delay difference for the sound input from each ear to arrive to the brain. Specifically, sound-orientation detector neurons read from neurons of different lengths to each ear. You know the sound is coming from front-and-left if the coincidence-detector neuron that has a short lead to the left ear and a long lead to the right ear fires.