Prize-Winning Images of the Brain

Check out this year’s winners of The Art of Neuroscience competition

WINNER: VIALS OF BEETROOT JUICE
From: "FOR ALL SAD WORDS OF TONGUE AND PEN, THE SADDEST ARE THESE, 'IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN'". In this performance piece artist Lynn Lu presents blood as a vital pathway connecting body, brain and emotion... Lynn Lu
WINNER: FINGER PRICKS
From: "FOR ALL SAD WORDS OF TONGUE AND PEN, THE SADDEST ARE THESE, 'IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN'". Vestal McIntyre
WINNER: TRANSCRIBING NARRATIVES
From: "FOR ALL SAD WORDS OF TONGUE AND PEN, THE SADDEST ARE THESE, 'IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN'". Vestal McIntyre
WINNER: ANNIE'S REGRET
From: "FOR ALL SAD WORDS OF TONGUE AND PEN, THE SADDEST ARE THESE, 'IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN'". Lynn Lu
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HONORABLE MENTION: SPIN GLASS
What forms an animal’s sense of direction as it explores the world? Each turn of a rat’s head activates neural pathways unique to a particular direction. In this glass-and-wire installation inspired by the research of Kate Jeffery at University College London, the flicker of lightbulbs represents the stimulation of these directional pathways as the rat looks around the lab... Jenny Walsh, Kate Jeffery, Jeremy Keenan; Photo: Kip Loades
HONORABLE MENTION: COMPLEX RHYTHM SUSTAINING COMPLEX LIFE
Our bodies’ most vital movements are ones we do not consciously control. The autonomic nervous system keeps our hearts pumping day and night. But it doesn’t pound out a perfectly periodic rhythm, not even when we sleep, according to researcher Yishul Wei at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience... Yishul Wei Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience
HONORABLE MENTION: THE FABRIC OF THOUGHTS--RECOGNIZING AN ODOR
These tapestries evoke bird’s-eye scenes of a verdant island on a dark sea, or waterways winding through marshland. But rather than Earth from above, the fabrics depict microscopic “neuronal landscapes” within the glomerulus, the brain structure that encodes our sense of smell... Carles Bosch Piñol The Francis Crick Institute; Francesca Piñol Torrent Escola Massana
HONORABLE MENTION: HUMAN ASTROCYTOMA CELLS
Alwin Kamermans, a researcher at VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, uses color to represent a third dimension—depth—in this intimate portrait of human brain tumor cells... Alwin Kamermans VU University Medical Center
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EDITORS' PICKS: LIQUID GOLD
Like flowing water, information streams from the ear to the brain via the auditory nerve. University College London, audiologist Dan Jagger used fluorescent microscopy to photograph the structure in a mouse... Dr Dan Jagger, UCL Ear Institute, University College London
EDITORS' PICKS: SEQUENCING THE WORM'S ETHOME
Read from top to bottom, each column of this fiery array describes the movement of a roundworm. Alex Gomez-Marin, a researcher at the Neuroscience Institute of Alicante in Spain, mapped each of 90 unique body postures to a specific hue... Alex Gomez-Marin Neuroscience Institute of Alicante
EDITORS' PICKS: STRIATAL SPINDLE
This seemingly galactic photograph was snapped not by telescope but by microscope. A superhighway of axons—the brain’s spindly signal-carriers rendered in blue and orange—barrels through the maroon haze of the striatum near the brain’s center... Karoline Hovde / Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Centre for Neural ComputaUon, Egil and Pauline Braathen and Fred Kavli Centre for CorUcal Microcircuits
EDITORS' PICKS: FLAMES OF EMINENCE
Leopard geckos have the remarkable ability to regenerate lost limbs. They may also be able to regenerate parts of their brain damaged by injury, according to research by Rebecca McDonald at University of Guelph in Ontario... Rebecca McDonald at University of Guelph
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EDITORS' PICKS: BRAINBOW
Brainbow is a technique neuroscientists use to visualize individual neurons, each in a distinct tint, within a broader network. Artist Sarah Ezekiel completed this painting of a brainbow image using software that tracks the movement of the artist’s eyes... Sarah Ezekiel

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