I know I told you that I would send you practical information, but I think this will appeal to the sciency folks out there. The website below is of a TED talk given by a scientist who is working on developing a working supercomputer model of the human brain. He discusses the nature of perception and reality, and the development of the neocortex. He has some very cool animated sequences that simulate neural firing and neocortical activity. The presentation is about 15 minutes long, and it can be downloaded to an iPod for later viewing.