close enough
wellllll
nerve signals aren't always on/off digital. last time i was really involved in neurobio, the field had just begun to agree that neurons transmit both a binary action potential
and the analog signal present in the cell body.
it's also important to note that this
electric potential opens calcium ion gates between nerve cells and electric potential pulses travel through synapses
is a little misleading; if a cell fires an action potential, that action potential doesn't flip adjacent cells ON or OFF - rather, it contributes an excitatory or inhibitory potential to connected neurons (EPSP or IPSP), altering the probability that that cell will fire in a graded fashion summed across all contributing nerves. so individual nerve signals aren't exactly 'on/off' variety; even the action potential itself, as it turns out, isn't on/off
this is a really important mechanistic difference between computers and brains and it's one that makes computational neuro a tricky field
the brain still interpretes sensory input as largely analog signals, depending on how many nerve endings are sending the same signal, in which case the signal amplitude increases
this is also a bit problematic. there's not a direct correlation, exactly, between number of nerves firing and signal amplitude, nor between stimulus intensity and number of nerves firing. some sensory nerves inhibit others; some are frequency-dependent; some have specialized modality-linked functions. psychophysics is also a really interesting field.
it's important to note that the brain does a VAST amount of postprocessing on most sensory data, much of it additive and interpolative rather than reductive
The resulting jumble of nerve signals results in personality and consciousness

It would be expected that a neural network assembled with evolutionary algorithms would become largely similar system, with no specific designed features, but instead stuff that just works as needed
this is...a very interesting question, and one that i'm not totally prepared to hypothesize on (regarding the convergent development of a simulated neural system)
i spent the weekend in the neuro lab at NYU and they are really ****ing with what i thought were accepted dogmas in the neurobio and neuropsych field