Fifteen years into the millennium, we have witnessed great advances in cognitive science and in our understanding of principles of neural function at the subcellular, cellular, circuit and systems level.

The areas draw from each other, but their results often remain difficult to reconcile. From behavioural and brain-imaging studies, human cognitive scientists infer that the human brain must contain networks dedicated to the mental representation and manipulation of quantities, distances, probabilities and even more complex structures such as symbols and linguistic trees – yet their neuronal implementation remains uncertain. In the converse direction, through neurophysiological studies of behaving animals, neuroscientists describe the basic properties of circuits, single-neurons and their subcellular structures - but how do these mechanisms support systems-level computations?

The goal of the present meeting is to examine the possibility of identifying a small set of bridging laws linking neuronal codes to identified cognitive computations. We specifically focus on how the brain represents and manipulates quantities, probabilities, objects and symbols, and uses them to perform high-level cognitive inferences and confidence judgements.

This meeting is part of a new series of high-level bi-annual Brain Conferences in Europe. The Brain Conferences are organised by the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS, the major neuroscience association in Europe) in partnership with The Brain Prize. They bring together outstanding researchers in key broadly defined areas of contemporary neuroscience to discuss current concepts and define challenges for future research.