Kevin Ravenhill wrote:

......... The only part the brain is required to play in
this process is to interpret the trace as letters and numbers - most of the
hard work has been done already.

I have to disagree. The brain has also the task to sort out white spots, caused
by noise, from true signal lines (or fragmented fractions of them).
And this is where the powerful pattern recognition mechanism embedded in our
personal  'CPU' plays an invaluable role. Wonder why the AI (Artificial 
Intelligence)
so much touted a decade and half ago hasn't taken off as they would have been
expected ? So far the brain has mainly resisted to divulge the secrets of its 
inner
algorithmical working. The only pale approximations to it are the neural 
networks,
which aren't a technological breakthough, at least with the present state of  
art.

73
Alberto    I2PHD