Figuring out the brain:
Basic functions such as autonomic body operation, and curiosity, manifesting as explorative behavior, will be hard-coded as a mental foundation. The global thought pattern will be a narrative algorithm. Goal, conflict, result, emotion, reason, anticipation, choice, next goal, and so on.
The goal will arise from the needs of the body and solutions in the environment. Conflict arises naturally as it is unfortunately the prerogative of obstacles to stand nonchalantly in front of solutions. Results can be a worsening of the problem, a situational non sequitur, or an improvement. Emotion lets you know if the problem intensity trend-line was bad, neutral, or good. Reason stands on the shoulders of emotion, gets pointed in a productive direction, and is set loose on the facts of the situation. (The emotion provides a nice vague boundary to prevent the reason from coming down with intellectual over-extension, or the cure for it, self-referentialism.) Anticipation climbs on to the shoulders of reason to see even further. It estimates future changes to the situation. The most important events are anticipated the most. Importance is a measure of predicted positive/negative effect. Importance dims with temporal distance. The next goal seeks the brightest solution, and so on.
Each main stop on the algorithm will probably require a bunch of sub algorithms.
The artificial neuron ideas are also progressing. At the moment it's rubber cubes. The contacts (slightly raised) are magnets, four on each face, five on the power sides (opposite each other). The flexibility of the rubber will allow all the magnets to make contact. The spaces between the cubes will be used for cooling, if I find a non-conductive non-corrosive fluid for both iron and rubber. Such a structure would be simple to understand, easy to power, forgiving of impacts, maintainable, and compact. On the inside, microcontrollers, small batteries (redundunduncy), wires, air.