The Berlin School of Mind and Brain
Higher cognitive functions – such as decision-making and free will, consciousness and perception, and our human sociality – are among the most distinctive and most complex human abilities, yet they are still comparatively poorly understood. Recent progress in neuroscientific methods has brought some of these problems to the fore of neuroscientific research and empirically informed philosophy.
Even if neuroscientific studies have made significant contributions to our understanding of the relevant neural mechanisms, any serious investigation of these abilities requires insight from numerous other disciplines. In fact, many of the most interesting questions regarding higher cognitive and social abilities of humans require interdisciplinary cooperation between traditional “brain sciences” like neurobiology or neurology, and traditional “mind sciences” like psychology, linguistics, psychiatry, or philosophy.
Interdisciplinary cooperation, in turn, can be successful only if the cooperating scientists are not only experts in their own field of research but also have sufficient interdisciplinary training. This need is exactly where the graduate program of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and its academic aims come in. Connecting cutting-edge research and excellent training at the interface between mind sciences and brain sciences is our primary aim.
Building on the thriving research environment in Berlin, the Berlin School of Mind and Brain focuses on six research topics covering important cognitive abilities, their development, and their disorders:
Read more: Research
Since 2007, the three-year doctoral program of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain has been preparing junior scientists for this challenging interdisciplinary work and has received national and internal recognition for its achievements.
Doctoral program update 2026: The Berlin School of Mind and Brain currently still supports more than 60 doctoral candidates in its structured research, education, and training program. However, in order to be able to meet future challenges, the School is restructuring its doctoral program. The last cohort based on the current model was accepted in 2024, with start in October 2024. There will be no further Berlin School of Mind and Brain calls for doctoral applications based on the current model. The School will be making an announcement on these pages as soon as the restructuring process has been completed, but probably not before 2027.
Read more: Doctoral program
In addition to the continuing education and training for doctoral candidates, in 2013 the School set up a highly successful interdisciplinary two-year Master’s program (M.A./Mind track and M.Sc./Brain track).
Read more: Master’s program
Based at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the graduate school plays an essential role in the close integration of university research in the greater Berlin area (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin and the universities of Potsdam, Leipzig, Magdeburg), clinical research (Charité University Medical School) and non-university research (Max Planck institutes in Berlin and Leipzig; Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine).
Read more: People
