A nice overview (~200pages) of the brain and the emerging science of consciousness is:
"Stairway to the mind" By Alwyn Scott; 1995 Copernicus
Here is a much more optimistic assessment (from the perspective of the AI advocate),
where the writer (1996) thinks that one teraflop = one human brain
http://www.rfreitas.com/Nano/TheFutureOfComputers--Analog--March1996.htm
I think that is way too optimistic (and it is in Analog) therefore I am still googling to see if anyone other than SciAm, with University credentials, has in the past few years, looked into this cross-comparison. By the way, the 10^16 would be 10 petaflops. Sounds kinda like the DAs summation in the Michael Jackson trial summation.
Anyway, the problem is equating a flop with a ping. Keith seems to think that the synapse-ping is more potent, and that the cross-comparison works out to100 flops/synapse-ping.
This is a crucial determinant in any cross-comparison. My prior best guess on this was the reverse and more like to10 synapse-ping/flop.
In the mean time, I'm trying Keith's caffeine-fix solution.
Jones
