Cognition is an emergent property

For a long time, the brain was thought to function like clockwork, with specialized parts working together due to physical connections. However, in recent decades, our understanding has undergone a major shift. While the individual parts and anatomical connections are still important, many cognitive functions are driven by emergent properties - higher-level properties that arise from the interactions between the parts. A key aspect of these emergent properties are brain waves, oscillating rhythms of electrical activity that allow millions of neurons to self-organize and control our thoughts, much like a crowd doing 'the wave'.