The Neurocognitive Image Lab (NIL) plans to conduct interdisciplinary research across the sciences of image, brain, and aesthetics, exploring how humans perceive, experience, and create meaning through images. The research frame of NIL includes five interlinked and mutually reinforcing domains:

Image Science

Encompasses visual perception, cognitive processing, image representation, and computational modeling. It investigates how both humans and intelligent systems perceive, interpret, and communicate images, forming the scientific foundation of visual cognition and communication

Neuroaesthetics

Explores the neural and psychological mechanisms underlying aesthetic experience, artistic creation, and the perception of beauty. It bridges psychology, neuroscience, and art, integrating empirical data with theoretical perspectives from the humanities.

Image Aesthetics

The overlapping field between Image Science and Neuroaesthetics, where perceptual, cognitive, and neural mechanisms converge to explain how aesthetic value arises from visual images.

Dynamic Information Integration

Examines how the brain and mind integrate dynamic visual, auditory, and multimodal information across time and space. It focuses on the temporal unfolding of perception, the binding of sensory features, and the coherence of aesthetic experience as a dynamic process rather than a static state.

Temporal and Spatial Processing

This is the foundational operating platform that supports all research domains. By studying how the human brain encodes, organizes, and integrates temporal and spatial information, NIL aims to understand how time and space structure our perception, cognition, and aesthetic experience.