And Jeff Hawkin's (the founder of Palm Computing) has already put forth a fairly comprehensive theory on how the brain works in his book On Intelligence, and his group Numenta http://www.numenta.com/ are currently working on a simplified computer implementation.
Having read a fair amount into the topic, I'd say there's already enough information there to change how you might look at programming a certain task (especially if Numenta keeps pushing along). But it makes me think of humans more as complex memory machines rather than "compute-ers"
There has been some success with reverse engineering the spatial imaging happening in a monkey brain while it makes a maneuvre to reach some object. The path is clearly visible in the brain of the monkey before it gets executed.
For much interesting reading on this subject try Steven Pinker, How the mind works.