I naively believe that the lack of performance is one of connectivity. Animal brains don't use directed graphs, probably for the very reason that latching states, like holding a button, become unreasonable. Our brains probably use small network graphs [1][2].

[1] definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_network

[2] evidence for our brains: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Small-world-directed-n...