I will start this colloquium by highlighting recent (I would say revolutionary) brain-excitements, in particular the so-called "Connectomics" endeavor, the "Brainbow" method and the "optogenetics" approach. I will then dwell on the "Blue Brain Project" (BBP)—an ambitious attempt to "reverse engineer" the mammalian brain at its fine (synaptic resolution) details. Being part of the BBP, I will discuss the pros and cons of this approach and will then touch briefly on a few ongoing projects in my lab. In particular, I will demonstrate our attempt to build a realistic model of a piece of the mammalian cortex—the cortical column. This 1mm³ module contains about 10,000 nerve cells of different types and about one billion connection (synapses), and is considered to function as a basic functional unit in all mammalian cortices—the "big brains" that were developed some 300 million years ago.