Kwabena Boahnen and his work

Read an interesting article in the Discover magazine about the work of Kwabena Boahnen and his team from Stanford.

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/oct/06-brain-like-chip-may-solve-computers-big-problem-energy/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=

I think the approach taken by them is pretty interesting and might result in new kinds of circuits inspired from the principles of brain. His approach might have interesting application in sensor processing or in other applications. But when coming to proper neuroscience applications there are one main shortcoming in their approach. Brain-science research is one of the most fast moving fields with most ideas having a very short-life period. Thus what is currently needed is some cheap, massive programmable multiprocessor platform like the work done by Steve Furber Group's SPINNAKER. This has much value to really test drastic ideas rather than a fixed hardware platform similar to neurogrid.