It certainly seems, based on flying, that it does much more than simply dampen out disturbances. Certainly much more so than heli rate mode gyros of old. For example, I have a plane that was almost impossible to maintain a constant roll rate in a cross wind. Things like rolling harriers were always extremely difficult to perform with this airplane as it always would want to stop rolling depending on what the wind was doing and it would require almost full aileron to get it going again. The same plane, with the Cortex set to normal mode doesn't have this issue at all. Simply give it enough aileron to start it rolling at the desired rate, hold that input and the Cortex appears to take care of the rest. It seems to very effectively maintain a constant rate of change, for each axis based on stick input.