Accordingly to the amazing “On Intelligence” book by Jeff Hawkins:

• The neocortex stores sequences of patterns.
• The neocortex recalls patterns auto-associatively.
• The neocortex stores patterns in an invariant form.
• The neocortex stores patterns in a hierarchy.

Further insights in the book. Don’t forget that word (pattern) when you do your everyday tasks, or when you develop software. It will help you being efficient, even if you think that it is not necessary for a tiny simple shell script And read that book! I’m on page 70 and I’m hooked on it (and I think that I can compare this feeling with when I read “El quinto día” by Frank Schatzing, believe me).