PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Peking University hosted the 5th APRU Symposium on Brain and Mind Research in the Asia-Pacific (BMAP 2014) during August 28–30, 2014 at Peking University. The organization committee chaired by Prof. Shihui Han invited 4 keynote speeches and 3 workshops. Keynote speakers included Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg from University of Heidelberg, Germany, Keiji Tanaka from Riken Brain Science Institute, Japan, Yi Rao from Peking University, China, Shinobu Kitayama from University of Michigan, USA. The topics of keynote speeches and workshops covered multiple fields such as neural mechanisms of mental disorders, cognitive genetics, and cultural neuroscience. Over 120 participants from China, USA, Germany, UK, New Zealand, etc submitted 87 abstracts. Presentations and discussions promoted communication and exchange of new ideas and methods of brain research and led to possible cooperation in future.