Special session on “brain-targeted and brain-inspired computing”

With the advent of diverse enabling technologies, brain-related research has, in recent years, been seriously amplified and has already started yielding impressive findings across various fronts. With respect to computing, these findings can be classified under two major categories: neuroinformatics and brain-inspired computing. By and large, neuroinformatics is the discipline, which conducts brain exploration chiefly through construction and evaluation of computational brain models. Conversely, brain-inspired computing strives to suitably migrate already understood brain mechanisms to non-biological systems in the hopes of building better, cheaper and/or smarter computing machines. Various challenges arise on each side of the spectrum, be it the need for executing increasingly accurate and massive brain models or the need for conceiving improved computer architectures for more efficient, brain-like computations.