There are a lot of differences certainly, but there have been papers written about the similarities, such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26697892 (arguments against are included there too).

The main reason why I draw parallels is because my main objective is progress towards machines achieving human-level intelligence. We already have an "AGI" which works incredibly well; the human brain. We should be studying it as deeply as possible and borrowing its means & mechanisms for use in our machine intelligence systems. Trying to re-invent the brain from scratch is surely going to be far harder.