In this episode of Brains and Machines, EE Times regular Sunny Bains talks to Elisabetta Chicca, head of the bio-inspired Circuits and Systems research group at the University of Groningen, about building neural chips with memristors, adding electronic brains to neural robots, some of the current difficulties with learning algorithms for spiking systems and more. Discussion follows with Giulia D’Angelo from the Italian Institute of Technology and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.