UC San Diego

The goal of the 79th Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology on Cognition held on May 28-June 2, 2014 was to survey recent advances in cognitive neuroscience and assess future prospects. The symposium succeeded beyond the dreams of the organizers and the participants were treated to an extraordinarily rich feast of 58 long talks, six short talks, and 137 posters. Equally important to the success of the symposium was the perfect setting for informal scientific exchange between 260 participants generously provided by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. The sense that emerged from the symposium was that a threshold had been crossed and a new era in the study of cognition was underway. My attempt here will be to capture that sense of awakening, to trace the strands that gave rise to it, and to access its implications for future discoveries.