Interpreting has been studied at three levels: social and relational, as mediated communication; cognitive, as a specific configuration of mental operations; and neural, in search of the specific correlates of this expert activity in the brain. With new and more flexible models of the mind's potential from cognitive science, and recent advances in brain research, a plausible cognitive and neurolinguistic picture is gradually taking shape. Interpreting is a live, situated, real-time activity. While this poses major methodological challenges for research, it also provides a clue to its feasibility: Given certain minimal working conditions, the situated, contextualized nature of the task provides cognitive opportunities that can be leveraged in support of the apparent linguistic feat. Neurolinguistic research has already provided some evidence of the gradual configuration of the bilingual brain for this task with increasing expertise.