I'm not sure if I saw the same program or not, but I saw something on there that might be related. Apparently, there are a number of scientists working on creating a chip that would be capable of replacing the hipocampus of an animal (I don't know what kind ... only caught part of the show). The last part of the segment showed them working on an interface to allow it to connect to the neurons in the animal's brain. From what I caught, they actually removed a hipocampus from an animal and started running currents through different pathways in order to determine what the correct resopnses for each input would be, essentially allowing them to back-engineer the artificial hipocampus.
neat, huh ?
Michael
(damn it jim, I'm an artist not a nanotechnician)