Now the accuracy of that claim and the validity of the project is being called into question.  Henry Markham, a leading neuroscientist blasted the project and Mr. Modha's claims calling them a "hoax".  Ironically, Mr. Markham also works on a project affiliated with IBM, dubbed "Blue Brain".  He complains that Mr. Modha simply put together a "PR stunt here to ride on Blue Brain.”

He describes in an open letter to Bernard Myerson, IBM’s Chief Technology Officer, "What IBM reported is a scam - no where near a cat-scale brain simulation.  I am absolutely shocked at this announcement. Not because it is any kind of technical feat, but because of the mass deception of the public."

He continues:

All these kinds of simulations are trivial and have been around for decades - simply called artificial neural network (ANN) simulations. We even stooped to doing these kinds of simulations as bench mark tests 4 years ago with 10’s of millions of such points… If we (or anyone else) wanted to we could easily do this for a billion “points”, but we would certainly not call it a cat-scale simulation. It is really no big deal to simulate a billion points interacting if you have a big enough computer. The only step here is that they have at their disposal a big computer. For a grown up “researcher” to get excited because one can simulate billions of points interacting is ludicrous.

…This is light years away from a cat brain, not even close to an ants brain in complexity. It is highly unethical of Mohda to mislead the public in making people believe they have actually simulated a cat’s brain…. That IBM and DARPA would support such deceptive announcements is even more shocking.

Mr. Modha had claimed last week that his simulation of a billion neurons and 10 trillion neural synapses on IBM hardware was roughly the equivalent of a cat brain.  His colleagues lauded the accomplishment, with some comparing his work to the magnitude of work done on the Large Hadron Collider project.

Mr. Myerson's criticism is diverse.  Among other things he says that the point representation of neurons are incomplete as they don't simulate the complex effects of ion channels or more complex phenomena like neuronal branching. 

He says the "brain" developed isn't even as complex as an ant brain and is hardly praise worthy.