2026 CapoCaccia Neuromorphic Workshop

Day 2   opened with wonderful clear weather, light winds, and a “simple” question from Dan Goodman : Can skills (tools) ever be uploaded into a brain? Or on a neuromorphic device? This question opened up a bigger discussion on a fundamental problem in both neuroscience and AI: how is intelligence organized? What distinguishes humans? Ability to quickly learn to use tools? And how agentic AI increasingly includes LLMs that use added tools, e,g, calculators and IDE integrations to do particular tasks. We talked about modularity - the idea that large functions can be decomposed into smaller specialized parts. But what exactly counts as a module? At one extreme lies strict modularity : isolated units communicating through tight connections. Efficient, reusable, and great for generalization. At the other extreme is the “ blob ”: densely interconnected systems, where function emerges from entanglement rather than separation. This tension runs through both neuroscience and AI. In b...

  The 2026 workshop kicked off on a beautiful sunny clear morning with light winds. The participants were welcomed by Giacomo Indiveri who presented the history of the workshop since its inception in 2007, 20 years ago. There have been 18 CCNW since then not counting 2 year break for COVID. Giacomo, Stan Kerstjens , and Saray Soldado reiterated that the morning events are discussions, led by people in certain directions but not presentations. No slides are allowed, not even pre-preparation of the flipchart boards. No applause is allowed, just as in a discussion around a table. Chiara Bartolozzi explained that the projects can start at CCNW, continue  at Telluride  and also BNEW (Bangalore Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop) or in the home labs. Participants were reminded to record all contributors to the projects for later possible publication of the results. Rodney Douglas explained the history of the Telluride workshops. His own experience at Oxford doing neurophysio...