An ET point of view of neuroscience

How would an extraterrestrial view the state of the art of our neuroscience research? The paper "Neuroscience and the correct level of explanation for understanding mind: An extraterrestrial roams through some neuroscience laboratories and concludes earthlings are not grasping how best to understand the mind–brain interface" (a really long title...) in Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2010 Jul; 14(7)) describes a possible point of view from ET (or more realistically, from a high-level point of view of the big picture). Specifically, the author argues that studying the low-level neural mechanisms, like the behavior of individual neurons, may not be the right way to understand mind, just like we do not need to understand quantum mechanics before understanding the Newtonian mechanics. This reminds me of the long-standing symbolism vs. connectionism debate in AI research. What is the right level of research towards an artificial general intelligence? Symbols? neurons? Or somewhere in-between?