The largest annual gathering of neuroscientists is coming to San Diego.
The meeting of the Society for Neuroscience is expected to draw about 30,000 attendees to the San Diego Convention Center.
Starting on Saturday, researchers will gather to give talks and presentations on the latest research on a wide range of topics, including neurodegenerative diseases, brain development and the state of global mental health.
"There will also be opportunities for young scientists and scientists of all points in their career to present their latest data, hear feedback from their colleagues and exchange ideas about, basically, the current status of brain science," said Society for Neuroscience President Hollis Cline, who is also a neuroscientist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla.
About 40 percent of the society's membership is international, and Cline expects scientists from 80 different countries to fly into San Diego for the meeting.
Presentations will focus on basic research on the biology of the human brain, as well as applications of neuroscience beyond the lab. Among the San Diego scientists planning to attend, the Salk Institute's Tom Albright is scheduled to give a featured lecture on how new understandings of vision and memory are changing how forensic evidence is used in criminal investigations.
"I'm going to talk about efforts to try to reform forensic science to make it better and more likely to identify the correct people and not identify incorrect people," said Albright.
As an example of how human vision and bias can cloud investigations, he points to the arrest of a man mistakenly linked with the 2004 Madrid train bombings based on bad interpretations of fingerprint evidence.
"Your visual brain is basically a pattern-finding machine," said Albright. "We try to identify patterns. And when it's difficult, we naturally resort to our priors. We make judgements based on our expectations rather than the data in front of us. And this is a huge problem for forensic science."
The five-day meeting ends on Wednesday.
