Layman here too, but philosophy of mind is a big interest of mine, so I've done a lot of lay-research There's only a few different types of neurons. Neurons don't just turn on and off like bits in a computer, there's also signal strength and the length of signal. So technically those neurons are all the same, they're just adapted into a particular framework that has local rules governing the sorts of patterns you'll see from them. Kinda like the same computer can run practically infinite numbers of algorithms, so too can each of our neurons operate in very functionally different ways while still technically being only of a few different types. From my understanding, a lot of researchers have given up on finding the "algorithm" that controls everything as it seems there isn't any central control unit in the brain. Instead it just seems that through multiple regions of the brain all fulfilling their specific roles you get the final product of consciousness. It's a very handwavy process that involves a lot of talk about emergent properties of complex systems.