MIT, a client of Opts Ideas since 1998, asked Opts to come meet one of the newer groups at MIT, the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, a team of neuroscientists led by Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa.

The Picower Institute was moving into a new state-of-the-art facility, designed by famed architect Charles Correa. They wanted to celebrate this opening, and let the world know how critical the advanced basic research into learning and memory has become.

Create a world-class one-day symposium that would capture the attention and imagination of both the academic world and the world at large. Susumu Tonegawa invited 4 of his Nobel laureate peers, and Ira Flatow host of NPR's Science Friday agreed to moderate the day's forward-looking discussion about the brain's future.

Joining Nobel laureate and Picower Institute Director Susumu Tonegawa in what NPR host Ira Flatow called an "unprecedented assemblage of Nobel scientists" were fellow laureates Sydney Brenner of the Salk Institute; Richard Axel and Eric Kandel of Columbia University; and DNA pioneer James Watson of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Thomas Insel, Director of NIMH, Li-Huei Tsai of Harvard and Kerry Ressler of Emory University elucidated the progress being made in memory-related disorders.

Alexander Shulgin, known as "Dr. Ecstasy," promoted the idea that psychedelics tested in human subjects can lead to medical and basic science breakthroughs; Christoph Koch of Caltech explored the biological basis of consciousness; and philosopher Patricia Churchland of the University of California at San Diego spoke about the relationship between traditional philosophical inquiry and brain research.

The full day concluded with an after-dinner presentation by Dr. Oliver Sachs.

Most of what the world knows about the brain was represented on stage, and to the hundreds that heard, and the thousands that watched the webcast or listened to the Podcast, they could only marvel at the progress and promise of brain research.