Dickey et al. (2022) has established that 70-ms duration, 90 Hz ripples are synchronized to within 500 ms throughout human neocortex. This occurs within and between hemispheres (including the parietal, the temporal, and the frontal association cortices) and it involves the rhythmical spiking of pyramidal neurons. This process is presumed to merge information between different sensory modalities during memory consolidation, as required for the acquisition of language (Chomsky 1965). Even though declarative information is stored in fragments throughout the neocortex (Tehovnik 2017), as evidenced from single-unit recording and focal electrical stimulation (Brecht and Freiwald 2012; Bruce et al. 1981; Doty 1969; Freiwald and Tsao 2010; Ibayashi et al. 2018; Metzger et al. 2023; Ojemann 1983, 1991; Penfield and Rasmussen 1952; Penfield and Roberts 1966; Rolls 2013; Schwarzlose et al. 2005), each single unit representing a complex percept, such as a visual object or a word, is connected synaptically to an array of neurons that provide a context for the stored information at the single cell level (Doty 1969; Dickey et al. 2022; Lu and Golomb 2023;Tehovnik, Hasanbegović, Chen 2024). A single declarative conscious unit, which includes a single ‘consolidated’ neuron plus all its connections within and across the association cortices (Tehovnik, Hasanbegović, Chen 2024) is established serially via the hippocampus during the consolidation of new information that takes place during immobility and sleep (Dickey et al. 2022; Wilson and McNaughton 1994). Thus, the order of consolidation is critical to memory recall. Whether the hippocampus concatenates the neocortical neurons to facilitate the retrieval process is unclear since extremely distant memories are still retrievable following hippocampal damage (Corkin 2002). The flow of retrieved information, however, is highly fragmented in hippocampal patients (Hassabis et al. 2007ab), much like the percepts evoked by stimulating a single site in temporal or parietal cortex (Penfield and Rasmussen 1952; Penfield 1958, 1959, 1975).

When adding new information to the brain (e.g., Chen and Wise 1995ab), the first task is to determine if there are any existent information stores that can be updated with the new information or whether a new topic must be started afresh. Neocortical libraries of the brain are laid down early in childhood development. By elementary grades two to three, children are introduced to different topics such as language, mathematics, social studies, art, music, and physical education, and maybe even a second language. At these early grades, children are six to seven years of age which means the brain is still adding new neurons via mitosis, a process that begins to slow by the age of twelve (Charvet and Finlay 2018; Sanai et al. 2011; Sorrells et al. 2018), but synaptic rewiring, which is critical for information storage, continues for the duration of one’s life (Hebb 1949; Kandel 2006). Now some have objected to the methods used in school since it is largely an assembly-line approach to the transmission of knowledge from teacher to child (significantly birds learn to sing through repetition with guidance from a teacher, Carouso-Peck, Goldstein 2018; see Footnote 1), but having a universal educational system per country after the 1950’s has been as important for human development as the first written languages, the creation of paper, the invention of the printing press, the globalization of the internet, and now maybe the engineering of artificial intelligence.

Patient HM whose hippocampus was severely damaged was able to engage in dialogue with no difficulty (Corkin 2002). A rapid exchange of speech is dependent on an efference-copy representation, which is mediated by the cerebellum (Bell et al. 1997; De Zeeuw 2021; Guell, Schmahmann et al. 2018; Loyola et al. 2019; Shadmehr 2020; Tehovnik et al. 2021; Wang et al. 2023). To carry out a volitional act that requires memory, neocortical-cerebellar loops must be intact as verified with anatomy and optogenetics (Hasanbegović 2024). Thus, it should not be surprising that complete language capability depends on an intact neocortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum (Guell, Schmahmann et al. 2018; Hassabis et al. 2007ab; Kimura 1993; Penfield and Roberts 1966), and it is the neocortical ripple activity that merges the fragments of consciousness, as stored in the neocortex, to produce a continuous stream of thought and/or stream of movement (James 1891). Finally, since the merging of information via ripple activity occurs within 500 ms it can be assumed that this represents one temporal unit of consciousness, which is consistent with previous estimates (based on binocular rivalry, Varela 1999ab).

Footnote 1: Both Albert Einstein and Noam Chomsky were no fans of the Western educational system, complaining that rote learning is not creative learning (Chomsky 2023; Kremer 2015). But in defense of having a standardized educational system, the human population of the world is now more literate and smarter than ever before. One can object to this standardization of education, but many of our outstanding scientists came from institutions with a standard educational program and it did not seem to interrupt their creative process: e.g., Sir Isaac Newton (education: Trinity College), Hermann von Helmholtz, (education: Friedrich Wilhelm Institut), Nikola Tesla (education: Graz University of Technology), Albert Einstein (education: Federal Polytechnic School), Lord Edger Adrian (education: Trinity College), Sir Charles Sherrington (education: University of Cambridge), Wilder Penfield (education: John Hopkins University), Donald Hebb (education: University of Chicago), Noam Chomsky (education: University of Pennsylvania), Vernon Mountcastle (education: Roanoke College), Edward O Wilson (education: Harvard University), David Hubel (education: McGill University), Thorsten Wiesel (education: Karolinska Institute), Case Vanderwolf (education: McGill University), and Peter H Schiller (education: Clark University), to mention but a few.