Gala Planning is Under Way!

INI is starting to plan our annual gala! This year marks a particularly special milestone as we celebrate our 10th Annual Gala! Our theme for the year is...

fundaMental Beauty! 

fundaMental Beauty will celebrate the architectural and functional beauty of the brain, especially relating to aesthetics and pattern recognition. 
The experience of fundaMental beauty emerges from our brain's capacity to perceive rich sensory arrays interpreted within the context of our social and cultural influences.

It never ceases to amaze me when I consider how much time is invested into planning a few hours of one day. On this day rests the expectations and efforts of several months prior of work, time, and energy. What makes it worth it? 

Memories. The goal in building an event like this is to create an experience so rich in sensory and emotional stimuli that becomes written into your neural code to be accessed by your hippocampus for the time to come. We have this ability to remember and recall, internally firing the same visual, auditory, emotional pathways that were activated by an external experience. 

And so we go. We're locking down a venue, vetting entertainment and speakers, exploring menus, recruiting volunteers. All of this because we want to curate an event for you, our esteemed guests, to experience and appreciate the fundaMental beauty of the brain just as much as we do.

We hope that as you see how marvelous and mysterious this bundle of nerves is and that it inspires you to want to preserve and protect this function for all.