A reasonable near-term goal is to get OpenWorm [1] to work well in simulation. That's the simplest known organism with a system of neurons, and the connections have been fully mapped out. Until that works, there's little point in trying anything more complex.

The "the next step is the human brain" people have a poor track record. Rodney Brooks tried that once. He'd done a good reactive-controller insect, and then immediately tried to jump to human-brain level with Cog.[2] When he gave a talk at Stanford proposing Cog some years ago, I asked him "Why not try for a mouse next? That might be within reach." He said "I don't want to go down in history as the man who created the world's best artificial mouse". Cog was an embarrassing failure.

The Human Brain Project should be put on hold until OpenWorm works and that technology has been advanced to at least the lizard level. The Human Brain Project is likely to turn into an expensive supercomputer boondoggle.

[1] http://www.openworm.org/ [2] http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/cog/c...