UM hosts 6th Macau Symposium on Cognitive and Brain Sciences

To promote interdisciplinary collaboration and academic exchange, the Institute of Collaborative Innovation (ICI) at the University of Macau (UM) held the 6th Macau Symposium on Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MSCBS 2025). The event brought together experts and scholars from renowned universities and research institutions including Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology, Peking University, The University of Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to discuss related topics. Over 270 attendees joined the symposium.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, UM Vice Rector Ge Wei, highlighted the vital role of cognitive and brain sciences in deepening our understanding of human behaviour, as well as in fostering synergies among disciplines such as psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.

During the keynote session, Allan Reiss, Howard C. Robbins Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Medicine at Stanford University, explained the complex concepts and unresolved issues in neuropsychiatry and clinical neuroscience. Dean Mobbs, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology, presented a psychobiological framework for distinguishing between anxiety and fear. Benjamin Becker, professor in the Department of Psychology at The University of Hong Kong, presented an integrated translational approach to pinpointing the neural basis of emotions using machine learning. Qiu Anqi, director of the Mental Health Research Centre at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, examined fetal programming and its connections to maternal mental health, child brain maturation, and psychopathology.

The symposium featured four keynote talks and ten guest talks, covering key areas such as addiction and decision-making, language and cognition, emotion, child development and cognitive ageing, visual perception, neuroimaging, psychiatric and neurological disorders, and emotional artificial intelligence. The event also featured a poster session displaying 52 posters, with ten Best Poster Awards and ten Merit Awards presented by the poster committee.

The symposium was also attended by Cheang Kun Wai, member of the Administrative Committee of the Science and Technology Development Fund of Macao; Xu Cheng-Zhong, dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology and interim director of ICI at UM; Yuan Zhen, associate director of ICI and head of the Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences at UM, and chair of the organising committee of MSCBS 2025; Christian Montag, Distinguished Professor and associate director of ICI at UM; and scholars from other local universities.

The 6th Macau Symposium on Cognitive and Brain Sciences

Ge Wei

A group photo of the guests