The International Neuroethics Society (INS) and the International Youth Neuroscience Association (IYNA) are pleased to announce a call for submissions for the Neuroethics Essay Contest in 2025. Now in its 12th year, the contest promotes interest in neuroethics among students and trainees around the world.
Four submission categories are available:
- IYNA-INS High School Neuroethics Essay
- General Audience Essay
- Academic Essay
- Video Essay
Authors of winning submissions — a total of four (4) with one from each category — will receive a cash prize valued up to $500. Authors with honorable mention submissions — which may be up to eight (8) from across the four categories — will also receive a cash prize.
All authors with a winning and honorable mention essay may also be eligible to receive:
- A 1-year INS student membership
- A registration waiver to the next INS Annual Meeting
- A travel stipend to attend the next INS Annual Meeting in-person.
The submission deadline for the 2025 contest has passed. We expect to announce next year’s call for essays in April 2026.
If you have any general questions or requests regarding accommodation and you are not submitting to the IYNA-INS High School Neuroethics Essay category, contact INS staff (staff@neuroethicssociety.org). If you are submitting to the IYNA-INS High School Neuroethics Essay category, contact Ashvin Kumar, Managing Editor of the IYNA Journal (ashvin.kumar@youthneuro.org).
Share the call for essays with your colleagues and students who are interested in neuroethics! We have images and documents to promote the contest available in multiple languages. Thank you for helping to spread the word.
Essay Topic & Requirements
Essay submissions can cover any topic in neuroethics and should address a focused problem at the intersections of the mind and brain sciences, ethics, and law.
Example topics include, but are not limited to: neuroenhancement, neurolaw, neurology, moral psychology, moral philosophy, neuro/brain stimulation, ethics of neurodegenerative illness, neurogenetics, neurotechnology policy and regulation, philosophy of mind, clinical ethics in psychiatry and neurosurgery, neural imaging, big data and neuroscience, brain–computer interaction, military applications of neurotechnology, and free will.
The committee makes no in-principle restrictions regarding neuroethical topics and encourages authors to take creative approaches with their essays. We encourage you to review previous winning essays as you put together your contest submission.
Use of Citations
While the essay contest encourages you to create original work, it also recommends that you draw inspiration from existing research. This can include reading primary research articles, review papers, books, and other scholarly sources while preparing your essay. We emphasize that looking at existing research is especially important for essays in the academic category.
The strongest essays clearly show how they relate to existing work—whether by discussing similarities, highlighting differences, or summarizing various sources to support a point. If you reference other work, you may use any citation style of your choice, as long as you remain consistent.
For example, let’s say you choose APA style, and would like to reference something you read from the following source:
Gleeson, P., Cantarelli, M., Marin, B., Quintana, A., Earnshaw, M., Sadeh, S., Piasini, E., Birgiolas, J., Cannon, R. C., Cayco-Gajic, N. A., Crook, S., Davison, A. P., Dura-Bernal, S., Ecker, A., Hines, M. L., Idili, G., Lanore, F., Larson, S. D., Lytton, W. W., Majumdar, A., … Silver, R. A. (2019). Open Source Brain: A Collaborative Resource for Visualizing, Analyzing, Simulating, and Developing Standardized Models of Neurons and Circuits. Neuron, 103(3), 395–411.e5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2019.05.019.
A sentence in your essay could say:
Researchers have recently developed the Open Source Brain platform for “sharing, viewing, analyzing, and simulating standardized models from different brain regions and species” (Gleeson et al., 2019).
Note: The “et al.” here means that there are multiple authors of the paper you are citing (learn more about APA style).
As long as you pick a citation style and stick with it, we care more that you cite your sources than whether you follow every rule of a style perfectly.
Use of ChatGPT and other AI Writing Tools
Use of large language models and generative AI is only acceptable if students use it in an ethical manner. Authors may occasionally use generative AI to assist in framing their thoughts and revising their writing. However, authors should exercise caution, avoiding sole reliance on AI. If an AI was used at all in the preparation of the essay, it is essential that authors disclose which AI tool was used and how AI was used. Authors should not list AI tools as authors or co-authors.
Contest Categories
Authors eligible for the Academic and General Audience categories may submit up to one essay to each contest category. Authors eligible for the IYNA-INS High School category are not eligible to submit to the Academic and General Audience categories. All authors may submit a video essay in addition to a written essay. Essays must be submitted separately.
IYNA-INS High School Neuroethics Essay
Submissions to the High School competition should explore the relationship between ethics, neuroscience, and society in plain language for the general public. Essays should be based on reliable primary and secondary sources. Wikipedia and similar sources are not acceptable.
Essays must be written in English by a single author enrolled in high school or an equivalent secondary school (see above). Essay length may not exceed 1,000 words. An abstract and references do not count toward the total word count. In-text citations are included in the word count.
Scientific Abstracts: While not part of the essay contest, the INS accepts scientific abstract submissions for the annual meeting. Review the open calls for details, requirements and deadlines.
Essay for a General Audience
Essay submissions to the General Audience category should explore a topic or story at the interface between ethics, neuroscience, and society in plain language for the general public, as might be found in a magazine or news outlet aimed at non-specialist audiences. Essays addressing neuroethical topics of high social significance are particularly welcome. Essays produced for or derived from previous coursework are eligible for submission as long as they meet all other requirements.
Essays must be written in English by a single author who is considered an eligible post-secondary student or early career trainee (see above). Essay length may not exceed 1,000 words excluding references and disclosures.
Academic Essay
Academic essay submissions should critically explore a current issue in neuroethics through rigorous, evidence-based argumentation. Essays should be succinct, polished final drafts that represent original, unpublished work and are suitable for publication in a topically-appropriate scholarly journal. Essays produced for or derived from previous coursework are eligible for submission as long as they meet all other requirements.
Essays must be written in English by a single author who is considered an eligible post-secondary student or early career trainee (see above). Essays may not exceed 2,000 words excluding references and disclosures.
Video Essay
Video essay submissions are an audio-visual equivalent of a creative arts-based essay. They should explore a topic or story at the interface between ethics, neuroscience, and society in plain language for the general public. Video essays can include audio, visual, and textual material to convey a narrative, story or poetic text. Your own video material, voice-overs, still images, music and other creative pieces may be included in the video. Appropriate credits must be provided for any content that is not produced by the submitter.
Video essays can be in English, Spanish, French, German, Telugu, KiSwahili, isiXhosa or Yoruba but must have subtitles in English. Videos must be by a single author. Videos should be a minimum of 5 minutes and maximum of 7 minutes in length and should be shared/uploaded as an mp4 file. References and disclosures should be displayed at the end of the video, which does not count toward the time requirement.
Author Eligibility
Education Level
Participation in the contest is open to any high school or secondary school student, any post-secondary student, and any postdoctoral fellow or similar early-career trainee from anywhere in the world. Students must be currently enrolled in school, accepted to a program for a future term, or preparing to apply to graduate programs. Depending on their education level, students will submit to specific categories (see Contest Categories above).
High School / Secondary School Students
Students in high school or an equivalent secondary school program during the Spring 2025 semester (January-July 2025) must submit their essays to the High School category.
Post-secondary Students / Early Career Trainee
‘Post-secondary student’ includes those enrolled in a degree-granting program at the undergraduate, graduate, or professional level. This also includes those enrolled in pre-university institutions such as CEGEPs, sixth form colleges, lycées, etc. Examples of ‘early-career trainees’ include recent graduates serving in a postdoctoral position, medical residents or fellows, postbaccs, judicial law clerks or articled students at law firms, research assistants, and contract or sessional lecturers/instructors in their first or second years out of graduate training. Those included in either of these categories during the Spring 2025 semester may submit an essay to either the Academic or General Audience categories. Authors may submit up to two different essays—one for each category.
Temporary Breaks
Students taking a temporary break or gap year from their studies, and prospective students who are actively applying to education programs, are eligible to participate in the contest. Students who have been accepted to an education or training program for an upcoming semester are also eligible. Those included in any of these categories should follow the guidelines for the category that best aligns with their most recent studies or experiences. However, you may not submit to the High School category if you graduated from high school before January 2025.
Professionals / Former Students
Professionals are not eligible to participate in the contest. For the purposes of contest eligibility, individuals who are solely employees and not engaged in a training program are considered professionals and are not eligible to participate in the contest.
Discipline / Status
There are no restrictions regarding an author’s program or area of study as long as they meet the education level requirements outlined above, and their submission meets all essay requirements.
Membership
Authors do not need to be members of the INS or IYNA to submit an essay.
If you have questions about eligibility, please contact INS staff <staff@neuroethicssociety.org>.
Submissions
The submission deadline for the 2025 contest has passed. We expect to announce next year’s call for essays in April 2026.
High School Essays
Essays for the IYNA-INS High School Neuroethics Competition category must be submitted to the IYNA Journal, and should follow the IYNA Format Guidelines. Contact Ashvin Kumar <ashvin.kumar@youthneuro.org>, managing editor of the IYNA Journal, with any questions about the submission and review process.
Submission form closed.
Academic, General Audience and Video Essays
Essay submissions for the Academic, General Audience and Video categories must be uploaded through the online form. (The form link will be available soon.) Written essays should be submitted as a doc, docx or PDF file. Authors are encouraged to use the essay format document (docx) to ensure your submission includes all required information on a cover page and no identifying information on any other page, so your submission can be easily anonymized for the review process. Video essays should be shared/submitted as an MP4 file, or authors may provide a link to a video publicly available on YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc. Contact INS staff (administrator@neuroethicssociety.org) with any questions about the submission process for the Academic, General Audience and Video categories.
Submission form closed.
Selection Process
All essays will be judged on their originality and structure of argument, conceptual clarity, rigor of defense, quality of writing, and conclusions as outlined in this year’s scoring rubric. Video essays will not be judged on their production quality. See the scoring rubric for written essays (PDF) and video essays (PDF).
Submissions undergo an anonymous review by two or more referees from the INS Student/Postdoc Committee or by a panel of judges chosen by the IYNA Journal Editorial Team. Contest referees include students and postdocs from the fields of neuroscience, law, medicine, philosophy, and other areas of the sciences and humanities. All decisions made by the INS Student/Postdoc Committee and the IYNA judges are final.
Recognitions will include:
- Four (4) winners will be selected – one from each contest category
- Up to eight (8) honorable mentions will be selected among all contest categories
Notification of the winning and honorable mention submissions will be emailed to all participating authors by November 2025. See winners and honorable mentions from previous contests.
Contest winners are warmly encouraged, but not required, to attend the upcoming INS Annual Meeting. Participation in the contest does not preclude future submission of an extended version of the manuscript to academic journals or other scholarly or general audience publications. Contestants are permitted to submit essays in subsequent years, regardless of prior participation.
Publishing
Winning and honorable mention essays will be posted on the contest website and may be considered for publication by another institution appropriate for the topic discussed. Recent winning essays have been published online by the Dana Foundation and past winners have gone on to publish essays in other outlets, such as Scientific American. All authors of submissions to the IYNA-INS High School Neuroethics Competition category may opt to be considered for publication in the IYNA Journal.
Participation in the contest does not preclude future submission of a version of the manuscript to other magazines, academic journals, or other scholarly or general interest publications.
Curriculum
Educators are encouraged to incorporate the contest into their curriculum or coursework. For an existing essay or written assignment, consider mentioning the essay contest and the range of topics that fit the broad definition of neuroethics. If looking for a new approach to bridge the humanities and the sciences or to have students investigate the philosophical and ethical considerations related to the brain, consider developing an assignment that fits the submission requirements of the contest. Essays produced for or derived from previous coursework are eligible for submission.
History
The INS started the Neuroethics Essay Contest to promote academic interest in neuroethics among students and early-career trainees around the world. The contest was started in 2014 thanks to the support and inspiration from Dr. Michael Patterson, a former editor of the Kopf Carrier and long-time supporter of neuroethics.
- 2014 – First year of the essay contest
- 2017 – General Audience category added
- 2018 – Started collaboration with IYNA
- 2019 – High School category added
- 2020 – Started recognizing honorable mentions
- 2023 – Video Essay category added
Over its 10+ year history, the contest has received more than 775 essays from authors from 69 countries.
We invite sponsors to support this initiative and help recognize outstanding scholarship worldwide.
Organizers
The International Neuroethics Society is an interdisciplinary group of scholars, scientists, clinicians, and other professionals dedicated to encouraging and inspiring research and dialogue on the responsible use of advances in brain science. People at all stages of their careers join the Society to interact, learn, and participate in dynamic discussions that further the growing field of neuroethics.
The International Youth Neuroscience Association is a global, youth-led nonprofit which supports and advocates for neuroscience education. The IYNA Journal publishes articles on neuroethics and other neuroscience topics. Since its founding at the 2016 USA National Brain Bee, the IYNA has expanded to represent over 1,000 members in 126 countries.