Past event

2025 Autumn School: Sustainability and Cognitive Neuroscience

The 2025 Autumn School was held on weekends from October 25 to November 16, 2025 at Shanghai International Studies University.

Overview

The 2025 Autumn School at SISU, “Sustainability and Cognitive Neuroscience: Time in Aesthetics / Aesthetics of Time,” was held on weekends from October 25 to November 16, 2025. The program provided students with an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural academic setting for engaging with cognitive neuroscience, aesthetics, time perception, image science, language, and the relationship between art and science.

The Autumn School was designed to strengthen collaboration between SISU and leading international academic institutions in cognitive neuroscience and related fields. Under the general theme “Sustainability and Cognitive Neuroscience: Time in Aesthetics / Aesthetics of Time,” the program explored cutting-edge questions of human cognition through the lenses of time and aesthetics.

The program featured internationally recognized scholars as instructors and mentors, including members of national and international academies. Lectures and discussions addressed the cognitive processing of aesthetics and time, cross-cultural understanding, spatial cognition, image science, language, and the intersection of art and science. The Autumn School offered students an opportunity to broaden their academic perspectives and engage in face-to-face exchange with scholars from Europe, China, and other academic contexts.

Organizers

The Autumn School was organized by:

Neurocognitive Image Laboratory (NIL), SISU
World Art History Institute (WAI), SISU
Federation of German Scientists (VDW)
Institute of Medical Psychology (IMP), Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU)

Program Snapshot

The Autumn School was held over several weekends and included:

Faculty lectures on aesthetics, time, cognition, image, language, and art-science interaction
Open discussions following lecture sessions
Student report preparation and presentation
Interdisciplinary exchange among domestic and international students
Mentorship and academic dialogue with invited scholars

Faculty and Academic Themes

The program brought together faculty members from SISU, Peking University, LMU Munich, the University of Bamberg, the University of Oldenburg, Nanyang Technological University, the Romanian Academy, the Russian State University of the Humanities, University College London, and other institutions.

Key themes included aesthetics and time, cognitive modeling of art perception, embodied semantics and cultural cognition, image and music, mathematical aspects of image, neurobiology of aesthetics, self-referential processing in human imagery, temporal perception, discrete and continuous time, digitalization of image cultural heritage, and attention to time.

Highlights

The Autumn School focused on the intersection of sustainability, cognitive neuroscience, aesthetics, and time.
The weekend format supported an extended learning structure across several weeks.
Lectures connected aesthetics with time perception, spatial cognition, image science, language, art, and neuroscience.
Students engaged with internationally recognized scholars through lectures, discussions, and report presentations.
The program strengthened NIL’s continuing development of interdisciplinary training activities in aesthetics, cognition, and image-related research.

Selected Moments

A selection of photos from the event, including lectures, discussions, group work, and informal academic exchange.

Certificate

Students who successfully completed the program received a certificate from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), Germany.