The brain is a lot of different components working together. Perhaps the bits which do statistical learning are functionally distinguishable from the bits which generate permutations on the data.
(This is in fact how modern neural network training often works: start with a set of 50,000 images, run them through a bunch of permutations — translation, rotation, lighting changes, etc. — and produce a training set of 1 million images which yield better generalization when trained against.)
(This is in fact how modern neural network training often works: start with a set of 50,000 images, run them through a bunch of permutations — translation, rotation, lighting changes, etc. — and produce a training set of 1 million images which yield better generalization when trained against.)