1. A data processing system comprising: a pattern recognizing engine, comprising: multiple pattern recognizer processors that form a hierarchy of pattern recognizer processors, the pattern recognizer processors including a child pattern recognizer processor at a lower level in the hierarchy and a parent pattern recognizer processor at a higher level of the hierarchy, where the child pattern recognizer processor is configured to provide a first complex recognition output signal to a pattern recognizer processor at a higher level than the child pattern recognizer processor, where the parent pattern recognizer processor is configured to receive as an input a second complex recognition output signal from a pattern recognizer processor at a lower level than the parent pattern recognizer processor, where each of the multiple pattern recognizer processors is configured to recognize a respective pattern and is implemented in a respective data processing apparatus comprising one or more processors and memory storing pattern recognition instructions that when executed by the one or more processors cause the pattern recognizer processor to recognize the respective pattern that the pattern recognizer processor has been configured to recognize, where each pattern recognizer processor has one or more simulated axons that each have a respective probability threshold, and each pattern recognizer processor accepts a linear sequence of inputs from one or more other pattern recognizer processors and triggers one or more simulated axons of the pattern recognizer processor to generate a complex recognition output signal for the pattern recognizer processor if the respective probability threshold of the simulated axon is met by an output generated by processing the linear sequence of inputs in accordance with a respective weight for each of the inputs, and where each pattern recognizer processor implements a hidden Markov model and the entire hierarchy of pattern recognizer processors implements a hierarchical hidden Markov model, and a hidden Markov model processor configured to produce new levels of the hierarchy by adding pattern recognizer processors to the hierarchy.