>>8
At the higher level of "abstraction" the brain just works by storing and retrieving cached patterns of patterns of ... patterns (a bit less than 2 dozen layers in depth, with each layer being smaller). For example, you retain very tiny areas (think of it like 4x4 or 16x16, although our brain isn't anything as simple, it's a lot more stochastic) of visual patterns in the lowest layer (such as V1), and then the detected patterns(both spatial and temporal) are passed to the next layer which itself finds patterns and passes them on to the next and so on (up until the top, your prefrontal cortex). This isn't just for visual information, it happens for all senses, including touch, aural and many others (including internal ones such as those coming from the reward system and emotional systems). The patterns themselves unfold back to lower layers from upper ones and so forth (thinking, imagining, inner voice, talking and other processes are like this). This allows the system to cope with a lot of randomness and ever-changing (always unique) environments, however all these environments will of course always have high-level patterns which can be understood and made use of (if no such patterns existed, it's unlikely a nervous system as advanced as the mammalian one would have evolved).