About 1,000 people are expected to show up at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting March 26-28 for the latest cluesabout how the brain perceives and remembers the world. Held at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, the meeting will include sessions on these timely topics: mental imagery and early visual processing, which has implications for eye-witness testimony; plasticity in brain development, where the lively nature vs. nurture debate has relevance for such controversies as innate intelligence; new imaging techniques that catch the human brain in action; and computational modeling, which may shed light on especially complex interactions. The society's rapid growth since its first meeting last year reflects both the emergence of new research techniques and renewed interest in determining how the mind is created by the brain, says Michael Gazzaniga, director of the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience, who helped establish the society and coordinate this year's meeting. Despite more than a century of probing into the mysteries of the brain, Gazzaniga says, "studies have yielded no agreed-upon suggestion -- or even plausible idea -- as to why I remember a phone number." Media may attend for free by signing in at the meeting registration desk.