Dr. Reiss, author of (perhaps) the strongest Go program at the moment (Go++) got inspired by Jeff Hawkins' work as well, and came up with the an Earth-shattering theory (at least for me):
http://www.reiss.demon.co.uk/neural/neural.htm
Mick postulates: "If this theory was proven correct then it may suggest that the most common task being performed by neurons in real brains is to continuously attempt to learn to predict the activities of other neurons but based on different inputs."
