BrainArt Competition 2026

Challenging the Zeitgeist: The Next Neural Revolution

🏆 2025 Jury and Popular Vote Winner

Berger Mandalas, Alberto Arturo Vergani

2026 Brain Art competition Submissions

Hosted by the OHBM Brain Art Special Interest Group (SIG), this annual competition celebrates the creative expression of neuroscience through art. This year's theme is " Challenging the Zeitgeist: The Next Neural Revolution " centers on moments of intellectual and creative rupture—when established norms are questioned, boundaries are crossed, and new ways of thinking emerge.

The submission website is now closed. We have received submissions in the following categories:

Challenging the Zeitgeist - Artworks interpreting this year's theme
Images - Static artworks including digital, analog, or mixed media
Videos - Short film, animations, or video-based art

🧠 We are accepting popular votes until June 18, 2026, please vote here. To ensure fairness and maintain the integrity of the competition, please refrain from voting on works where a conflict of interest may be present, including your own submissions or those created by close collaborators, colleagues, or friends.
🧠 Competition winners will be announced at the OHBM 2026 Closing Ceremonies and showcased on our website and social media platforms.

For more information, visit our website and follow us on social media:

Twitter/X: @ohbm_brainart | Instagram: @ohbm_basig | BlueSky: @ohbmbrainart.bsky.social

We look forward to seeing your future creations!

Challenging the Zeitgeist

From Nodes to Pathways (#1.1)

Sairanen.Viljami.FSCdemonstrationH264 - Viljami Sairanen.mp4

Functional connectivity has transformed neuroscience by revealing which brain regions act together. Yet these relationships are often represented as direct links between nodes; abstract connections detached from the physical architecture through which communication must ultimately occur. This work challenges that prevailing perspective by asking a different question: if two distant regions appear functionally correlated, which structural pathways might best support that relationship? Using real human diffusion and functional MRI data from the Human Connectome Project, the animation visualizes Function-Structure Coupling (FSC), a framework that shifts the interpretation of connectivity from isolated region pairs toward candidate pathways embedded within the brain’s structural network. Rather than treating functional relationships as direct region-to-region phenomena, FSC reveals how indirect structural relay regions and selected tractography streamlines may contribute to the observed functional correlation. By moving attention from nodes to pathways, the work proposes an alternative visual and conceptual language for studying brain networks. In doing so, it reflects the theme of “Challenging the Zeitgeist”: that new scientific understanding may emerge not only from new data, but from changing how we choose to represent and interpret it.

Visualization and scientific concept: Viljami Sairanen (Finland), Narration: Russ Johnson (USA), Music: Oleksandr Stepanov (Ukraine)

youtube: @viljamisairanen; @viljamisairanen.bsky.social; twitter: @ViljamiSairanen; https://www.linkedin.com/in/viljami-sairanen/

26,000 resolution elements ginsan (mr. silver) (#1.2)

Constructed from approximately 26,000 Miyuki glass beads suspended within an iron framework, this sculpture translates an open-access ultra-high-resolution brain atlas (BigBrain; 20-micrometer resolution) into a tangible three-dimensional form. Based on one of 7,404 histological sections of a human brain, the work transforms digital neuroanatomy into an embodied spatial experience.

The choice of materials contrasts the rigid constraints of hardware (the iron cage) with the granular, interconnected nature of biological data (the beads), illustrating the challenge of capturing neural complexity. The piece frames the “next neural revolution” not simply as advances in computation, but as a deeper, multisensory understanding of biological architecture and the human stories behind scientific data, including the donor whose brain made the dataset possible.

Celesti Kozub

Geworfenheit (#1.3)

To challenge the zeitgeist is still to think inside it. Geworfenheit (thrownness) names Heidegger's insight that we are always already inside a world we didn't choose—including its questions, assumptions, and horizons. The zeitgeist isn't a room you could leave; it's grammar, the precondition for any utterance, including "I reject the zeitgeist." In this piece, threads don't originate in the brain or terminate there. They pass through. The brain is a site of transit—transforming forces it neither generates nor escapes.

Carolyn Davison

Nagy_Zoltan__The_World_Within-Without_Video - Zig-Zag.mov

THE WORLD WITHIN – THE WORLD WITHOUT (#1.4)

This installation uses video projection to explore the relationship between the external world and the brain's internal representations. By visualizing perception as an active process of construction, the work highlights the dynamic nature of human experience.

Zoltan Nagy

OUr Amazing human Brain (#1.5)

Human which is an animal only on earth from our solar system has such an exceptional brain capable of having complex emotions and thoughts with extremely developed cerebrum. But AI brain created by Human brain is beyond space and time.

Kiaan Naik - 5th Grade

Where Boundaries Dissolve (#1.6)

For decades, neuroscience has looked inward — into the skull, into the scanner, into the synapse. The brain was the protagonist. Everything else, peripheral. This work challenges that Zeitgeist. “Where Boundaries Dissolve” reimagines a blood smear as a site of convergence — neurons threading through immune cells. A provocation: what if the next neural revolution doesn’t happen inside the brain, but in the blood that surrounds it? The brain speaks through the bloodstream, and the bloodstream was always listening. The boundary between neuroscience and immunology, between brain and body, between inside and outside — was never as solid as we thought.

Karolina Piasecka

The Brain as a Revolutionary Engine (#1.7)

This mixed-media artwork explores the transformation of human experience into scientific knowledge. The composition progresses from a grayscale, measurement-driven representation of the brain, through a zone of distortion and uncertainty, and ultimately into a vibrant, multidimensional landscape of color and texture. Incorporating acrylic painting, sculpted clay, and macramé elements, the piece reflects both the power and limitations of scientific measurement while celebrating the creativity, diversity, and interconnectedness that drive discovery. It proposes that the next neural revolution may emerge from better integrating lived experience with scientific approaches.

Daisy Hu

IMages

Neurox: Neurothinking outside the box (#2.1)

Can human imagination, stimulated by neuroscience, generate visual concepts that are more original, unexpected, and disruptive than those produced by generative AI?

Cecilia Avesani

Neurox: Neurothinking outside the box (#2.2)

Can human imagination, stimulated by neuroscience, generate visual concepts that are more original, unexpected, and disruptive than those produced by generative AI?

Cecilia Avesani

The Musculus of Manhattan: fortune favors the flexible (#2.3)

An anthropomorphized mouse stockbroker stands among two distinct stock market dynamics (line graphs and candlestick charts): one volatile (left) and the other stable (right). These environments symbolize the brain’s ability to make a decision using either recent reward history in dynamic environments or information integrated across a longer timescale in stable environments. Reward from positive choice outcomes illustrated as status-associated adornments such as jewelry and formal attire. Zhang et al. demonstrate that the flexible properties of neuronal tau within the Retrosplenial cortex enable the brain to adapt and shift between either decision-making strategy.

Ashley Medina

X: @ashleymedin21

turn on, tune in, turn up (#2.4)

This psychedelic spirited piece plays with the echoed words of Timothy Leary. Based on an anatomical MRI image of a subject wearing headphones, listening to a music stimulus, with the auditory network identified by independent component analysis overlayed.

Avogadro

https://www.instagram.com/avogadro.sodium/

brain pottery (#2.5)

Depicting a brain formed from pottery clay and shaped by human hands, this artwork reflects the reciprocal relationship between the brain and its environment. The piece suggests that the next neural revolution may arise not only from technological advances, but also from our ability to use them ethically and responsibly.

Clara Weber

SPARK THE ANSWER (#2.6)

"You have the power to be the force of change. You can be the spark."

This piece is a reflection on the role of individual ideas in driving societal and scientific change. By encouraging viewers to question existing assumptions, it highlights the transformative potential of curiosity and innovation.

Diego Jauregui

AT LEAST MOST OF THE ROCKSLIDES CAN BE EXPECTED OUTSIDE OF THE FOREBRAIN... (#2.7)

Double exposure of a brain silhouette on a map of the Alps.

Martin Lotze

Binding (#2.8)

Series of hand-embroidered needlepoint pieces depicting cortical receptor density distributions from PET neuroimaging data. Each piece in the series maps the spatial distribution of a distinct neurotransmitter receptor system across the human cortex.

Emily Dennis

Symbiotic (#2.9)

This piece reflects on how our understanding of the brain has often been treated in isolation from the body, environment, and lived context it is part of. By focusing on the brain alone, we risk missing how cognition is continuously shaped through ongoing interaction with the world. The work challenges that separation, suggesting instead a symbiotic relationship between mind and environment, where each is dependent on and is integrated with one another.

Andrea DeBauche

@andreas.cake.designs

Videos

The musical brain: neuroscience and classical music (#3.1)

This video explores how classical music and brain science intersect to redefine our understanding of cognition, emotion, and creativity. At a time when neuroscience is reshaping how we think about human experience, this video challenges prevailing assumptions about the separation between art and the brain. Rather than treating music as mere entertainment or cultural artifact, it positions classical music as a profound stimulus for neural dynamics, memory, pattern recognition, emotional processing, and neuroplasticity — all current frontiers in contemporary brain research.

Marianna Kapsetaki

SEROTONIN SYNDROME (#3.2)

SerotoninSyndrome.mp4.MP4

Combining 3D brain visualizations, personal memories, and archival home movies, this video examines how depression reshapes perception, memory, and identity. The work questions dominant narratives surrounding mental health treatment and highlights the complex relationship between lived experience and neuroscientific understanding.

Sam Krakowski

EEGweaver: new brain world (#3.3)

Frettoli.Simone.NEWBRAINSPECTRE - Simone Frettoli.mp4

EEGWEAVER is a long-term independent artistic research project based on raw EEG data collected using a 14-channel Emotiv Epoc system. Brain activity recorded across different states — including meditation and psychedelic experience (e.g., ayahuasca) — is translated through a novel decoding method into sound, vocalizations, and highly detailed visual artworks. Rather than heavily modifying or interpreting the data, the process preserves the original signal structure with minimal filtering, allowing neural oscillations to emerge as aesthetic forms derived from mathematical decoding. Frequencies are transformed into shapes that resemble musical compositions or fractal patterns, varying in complexity depending on mental state. Calm, coherent states tend to produce more harmonically structured and intricate forms, suggesting a relationship between neural synchrony and visual organization.

Simone Frettoli

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