It is too early to say whether the brain uses anything like Eliasmith's mathematical technique to
build structure into vectors and then translate them into neural activity. But his work suggests one
possible mechanism whereby the brain might combine concepts into more complicated kinds of
relational representations. Hence we have a start at seeing how concepts can function in the
explanatory way suggested by the knowledge view: explanations are built out of complexes of
relations that can be represented in brain patterns. Moreover, because concepts on this view have the
same underlying nature as patterns of activation in neural populations, the knowledge view remains
compatible with prototype, exemplar, and multimodal views of concepts. In those rare cases where
strict definitions of concepts are available, as in a triangle is a figure with three sides, the necessary
and sufficient conditions can be represented by relations between concepts that can be captured by
vectors of vectors and then modeled as neural activity.