[simonster]

This is not my subfield of neuroscience, but here are some people I know who do spiking neural network simulation to understand how brains work:

http://www.math.pitt.edu/~bdoiron/

http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~larry/

http://www.cns.nyu.edu/wanglab/

http://alleninstitute.org/our-research/modeling-analysis-the... (modeling group)

http://www.nada.kth.se/~ala/

There are also some companies that are led by people with academic experience doing spiking neural network simulation and seem to be trying to commercialize it:

http://www.braincorporation.com/

http://www.evolvedmachines.com/