I recently read this interview with Nobel Laureate Gerald Edelman, who
has been giving a lot of thought to the idea of consciousness:

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/feb/16-what-makes-you-uniquely-you

I reproduce this relevant quote from page 3 here:

“Eugene Izhikevitch [a mathematician at the Neurosciences Institute] and I have made a model with a million simulated neurons and almost half a billion synapses, all connected through neuronal anatomy equivalent to that of a cat brain. What we find, to our delight, is that it has intrinsic activity. Up until now our BBDs had activity only when they confronted the world, when they saw input signals. In between signals, they went dark. But this damn thing now fires on its own continually. The second thing is, it has beta waves and gamma waves just like the regular cortex—what you would see if you did an electroencephalogram. Third of all, it has a rest state. That is, when you don’t stimulate it, the whole population of neurons stray back and forth, as has been described by scientists in human beings who aren’t thinking of anything.”

Maybe these guys should combine forces and resources.