School of Ideas in Neuroscience 2025

Dates: September 8-13, 2025, Warsaw, Poland

The applications are open until July 21, 2025 (midnight anywhere on Earth). The applications are closed now.

Please be aware that since the School is approaching fast, we may not be able to offer a deadline extension!

How is knowledge in neuroscience accumulated? 

How can we make sense of the terabytes of empirical data we collect every day?

In everyday work, we often forget that every scientific endeavour is embedded in a broader theoretical framework. At the same time, most courses and workshops in neuroscience teach us experimental techniques, giving us more tools to gather more data. But, we are not taught how to develop ideas and integrate our research with the existing knowledge.

We believe that theoretical thinking and idea development are skills that can be trained just as new methodologies and data analysis tools. At our school, we aim to teach participants how to think theoretically to collect data that makes sense and to make sense of collected data. 

The school is explicitly impractical. Instead of striving for measurable outcomes, we slow down for a moment to share and discuss our ideas with others.  In a series of 3-hours, discussion-based workshops we learn from experienced theoreticians, pass our own experiences, and come up with new concepts and solutions. We strive to create a relaxed atmosphere free from daily distractions that provides you the rare commodity that is time to think.

Sessions held in the school are divided into three sections – frameworks, metatheory, and tools workshops.

In the first section, selected theoretical frameworks serve us as examples. Together with their authors, we discuss how those ideas can be applied in empirical research, and explore the paths of theory creation.

In the metatheory section, we invite philosophers and historians of science, and we look at how ideas are developed, and how we build understanding in neuroscience.

In the tools section, we investigate the theoretical assumptions of some of the popular formal toolboxes and research methodologies, which can easily get lost in the day-to-day business of doing research.

Confirmed speakers are:

• Florencia Assaneo (UNAM – National Autonomous University of Mexico)
• Axel Cleeremans (Université libre de Bruxelles)
• Philipp Haueis (Leibniz University Hannover)
• Nedah Nemati (Columbia University)
• Angie Salles (University of Illinois at Chicago)
• Sara Solla (Northwestern University)
• Jonathan Whitlock (Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, NTNU)
• Detlev Arendt (EMBL Heidelberg) – cancelled

The school will take place in Warsaw, September 8th – 13th 2025 in Warsaw.

The applications are open until July 21, 2025 (midnight anywhere on Earth). – the deadline has passed now

We intend to share the results on August 4, 2025 with a registration deadline on August 18.

The participation fee is 700 EUR. We have a limited number of fee waivers and travel grants (covering flights and accommodation) available – these will be decided on an individual basis, in an effort to make the School as diverse and accessible as possible.

Organizers:

The poster is made by Milena Lebenglik, ⁦milenalebenglik.com⁩

The School is a grassroots initiative organised bottom-up by early career researchers and it wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of our sponsors: