Uhm... yes, they most definitely are. There are many efforts underway right now building 'neuromorphic' architectures with memristors (which function very simi

Uhm... yes, they most definitely are. There are many efforts underway right now building 'neuromorphic' architectures with memristors (which function very similarly to neurons). I don't think there is any promise in the approach personally (our 'mind' is a property of the feedback loop between our body and the world, and can not exist without the body, dualism is just wrong) but there are many who disagree. Also, even going back to von Neumann it has always been expected that the brain will be able to be built in hardware, simply because neurons exhibit binary behavior. They fire or not, and all the rest is massive interconnectedness and adaptive changes to their activation potential. There's lots of argument about whether reproducing the behavior of neurons will result in a 'mind' or be useful, but no one would argue that we simply won't be able to build a brain workalike.