On the heels of the Blue Brain project, here's another effort to simulate neural systems on a very large scale, with the provocative title "Cognitive Computing via Synaptronics and Supercomputing." This link is to the PI's blog:

www.modha.org

From DARPA's announcement: “The end goal: ubiquitously deployed computers imbued with a new intelligence that can integrate information from a variety of sensors and sources, deal with ambiguity, respond in a context-dependent way, learn over time and carry out pattern recognition to solve difficult problems based on perception, action and cognition in complex, real-world environments... The end goal is inevitable, but is unpredictable."