Hawkins is taking a radically new approach to the brain, and that approach has major implications. Hawkins' idea, which he calls the "thousand-brain theory of intelligence," says that the brain is organized into thousands and thousands of individual computing units, called "cortical columns." All of these columns process information from the outside world in the same way, and each builds a complete model of the world. But because each column has different connections to the rest of the body, they each have a unique frame of reference. The brain produces all of these patterns by making a vote. Thus, the primary function of the brain is not to construct a single idea, but to manage thousands of individual thoughts every moment. With this powerful new framework, Hawkins is able to re-evaluate some of neuroscience's most difficult problems, such as: Why does pain have to be painful for it to be useful? And how can we understand that our perspective of something changes as we move around it? And why can we? Humans are conscious, but individual parts of our bodies are not.