A group of researchers at NYU have been given funding to “discover the learning algorithm of the brain“.
This will be some exciting work, many scientists believe the easiest method to general artifical intelligence is through duplicating the human brain, that the sum of the parts is the soul so to speak. These researchers will be focusing on the visual system and how it manages to identify all the important bits in a photograph or any real world scene. They will then apply what they learn from these experiments to see if the same methodology works on similar brain structures.
I am not certain but this research may be related to the recent full simulation of the human visual cortex on Roadrunner currently the most powerful computer in the world. This full simulation of the visual cortex was a simulation system called PetaVision which actually was a full simulation of all the neurons that compose the human optic system and visual cortex that could be run in real time.
Slap some ears on it, a nose, and a neocortex and we have a beautiful baby AI.