Mental Imagery: Towards the causal study of consciousness

• Ephesus, Turkey

• May 30th to June 7th, 2026

• 20 participants

• 850€ - Participation fees will include accommodation for 6 days, all meals and the workshop fee.

• A limited amount of bursaries will be available for participants who wouldn’t be able to attend otherwise, covering part or all of the fees

• Application deadline: March 15th 2026, 23:59 anywhere on earth

Mental Imagery: Towards the Causal Study of Subjective Experience

Mental imagery research spans a remarkable range of phenomena, from visual imagery, motor imagery, inner speech, dreaming, hallucinations, psychedelics to mind-wandering (just to name a few). We believe it is time to bring these conversations into the same room! The field is vibrant and expanding. Across paradigms and traditions, scientists are uncovering how the mind generates experience in the absence of external input. By gathering researchers working on these diverse forms of imagery, we aim to explore the broader landscape of internally generated experience — and to discover new connections that only emerge in dialogue. Over one intensive week, we will bring together researchers across these domains to ask a shared question:

What can internally generated experience teach us about the mechanisms that produce subjective experience?

Rather than treating imagery as a niche phenomenon, we will examine how its many forms — voluntary and spontaneous, enriched and impoverished, perceptual and motoric — can serve as a powerful experimental window into how conscious content is constructed.

The MESEC recipe

We will gather 20 researchers in training and 5 experienced researchers for a week-long workshop in an inspiring setting on the Mediterranean coast. Participants live together, share meals, walk, argue, think, and return to the same questions from different angles throughout the week. The human-scale format gives us something rare in academia: sustained cognitive bandwidth. Time to refine ideas, challenge assumptions, and build collaborations that extend beyond a single talk. During the week, participants will form interdisciplinary teams and develop original experimental paradigms centered on mental imagery. The format includes structured but low-pressure debates — designed as an experimental space to test ideas, explore disagreement, and practice theory-driven thinking without the constraints of formal academic performance.

The emphasis is not on competition, but on intellectual play, rigor, and collective refinement. By the end of the workshop, each team will have drafted a structured experimental proposal, with the possibility of further development into a registered report.

The MESEC values

MESEC is a grassroots association run by and for researchers-in-training. Our events are guided by three core values:

• Intellectual Curiosity — We encourage pluralism, open discussion, and engagement across theoretical and methodological boundaries.
• Inclusive Empowerment — We aim to lower barriers to participation, support early-career researchers, and create a space where diverse academic trajectories can flourish. To this end, we offer a limited number of need-based bursaries to help ensure that financial constraints do not prevent talented applicants from participating.
• Shared Qualia — We believe that meaningful shared experiences — sunset discussions, long conversations — nurture scientific partnerships and long-term collaboration.

Our workshops are deliberately human-scale and located in awe-inspiring Mediterranean environments to foster openness, imagination, and depth of exchange.

Who Should Apply?

This workshop is designed for advanced early-career researchers — late-stage PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and highly motivated Master’s students — who are working on any aspect of internally generated experience. If your research engages with mental imagery in any of its forms — whether empirical, theoretical, computational, or philosophical — and you are excited by the idea of connecting your work to a broader landscape, we encourage you to apply. This is for researchers who want to think beyond their immediate paradigm, integrate experimental rigor with theoretical ambition, and engage in sustained, cross-disciplinary dialogue. We will select 20 participants based on motivation, openness to collaboration, and alignment with the workshop’s scientific vision.