Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne computational neuroscientists hope to model a complete rat brain within two years on their IBM Blue Brain supercomputer and download it into a robotic rat to develop like a real rat--one with a "mind of its own."
They also want to simulate what that brain experiences, and generate a movie of its reality rooted in the details of its brain.
Computer simulation of the upper layer of a rat brain neocortical column (Alain Herzog/EPFL)
Beyond that, they want to simulate the trillion synapses in the human brain--about 500 petabytes of data--within 10 years.
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/03/out_of_the_blue.php?page=all&p=y