Three leading neuroscientists -- pioneers in the study of sleep, pain and cognition -- will keynote a March 29-30 meeting to honor their renowned UC Davis colleague, Edward Jones, the director of the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience.

The meeting in the Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center marks Jones' 65th birthday and will feature more than 30 talks by researchers who study two areas of the brain--the thalamus and the cortex--and how they communicate.

Keynote speakers will include:

• William Willis, professor and chair of the Department of Anatomy and Neurosciences, University of Texas Medical Branch, who will talk from 11 a.m. to noon, March 29, on "The Dorsal Column Visceral Pain Pathway."
• Mircea Steriade, professor and head of the neurophysiology laboratory at Laval University in Quebec, who will speak from 4 to 5 p.m., March 29, about his research on the role of the thalamus and cortex in sleep and waking states. His lecture, "Neuronal Properties in Thalamocortical Systems and Their Modulation by Behavioral States," is sponsored by the Division of Biological Sciences' Major Issues in Modern Biology Lecture Endowment.
• Rodolfo Llinas, neuroscience professor and chair of the physiology and biophysics department at New York University School of Medicine, who will talk from 4 to 5 p.m. March 30 on "Thalamocortical Dynamic Coherence and Cogitation." His speech is sponsored by the School of Medicine's Nelson Medical Lecture Endowment.

Other speakers include Center for Neuroscience researchers, as well as scientists from the National Institutes of Health and universities across the United States, Canada, Japan, Spain and Italy.

Jones, the past president of the Society for Neuroscience, joined UC Davis in 1998 as a psychiatry professor and director of the Center for Neuroscience.

The cerebral cortex carries out higher mental functions in humans and other mammals, such as perception, thought and directing movement of the body. The thalamus, located just under the cortex, serves as a sort of relay station for information coming into the brain.

The Center for Neuroscience has grown rapidly since its establishment in 1990 with 25 faculty members and more than $27 million in grants as well as several prestigious awards. A neuroscience graduate program, administered by the center, has 41 students and draws more than 50 faculty members from 15 departments across campus.