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 2026. Now in its 13th 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 will receive a cash prize valued up to $500 USD. There will be a total of four (4) winning submissions (one from each category). Authors with honorable mention submissions — which may be up to eight (8) from across the four categories — will also receive a smaller cash prize. All authors with a winning or honorable mention essay will also receive a 1-year INS membership.
The submission deadline has passed. No more essays will be accepted to the contest.
Essays must be submitted by Monday, August 31, 2026, 11:30pm (PDT). This deadline has been extended from August 21. Incomplete submissions will not be accepted. Please carefully review all requirements related to references, categories, and eligibility We especially encourage submissions from students and trainees from underrepresented groups.
If you have any general questions or requests about the contest, contact the co-chairs of the Student/Postdoc Committee at nathan.higgins@monash.edu and diego.borbon1@uexternado.edu.co. If you are submitting to the IYNA-INS High School Neuroethics Essay category, contact Anish Kurra, Managing Editor of the IYNA Journal at akurra@youthneuro.org.
Share the call 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.
Topics
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: moral philosophy, moral psychology, free will, philosophy of mind, neurology, ethics of neurodegenerative illness, clinical ethics in psychiatry and neurosurgery, neurogenetics, neuroimaging, big data and neuroscience, neuro/brain stimulation, brain-computer interfaces, neuroenhancement, neurotechnology policy and regulation, neurolaw, and military applications of neurotechnology.
There are no restrictions on neuroethical topics, and authors are encouraged to take creative approaches with their essays. We welcome authors to review previous winning and honorable mention essays as a guide to how to prepare a competitive essay.
References
AI Tools
Use of large language models and generative AI is only acceptable if students use it in a responsible manner that involves a significant and original contribution of the author. Authors are permitted to use generative AI to assist in framing their thoughts, copy editing, translating, and typesetting. However, authors should exercise caution if using AI tools, must avoid using AI for content generation, and should check for potential distortion or hallucinated references, concepts, or content.
If an AI tool was used at all in the preparation of the essay, it is essential that authors disclose, at the end of the text, which AI tool was used and how it was used. Authors should not list AI tools as authors or co-authors. AI generated figures and tables are not permitted.
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. Engaging with existing research is especially important for essays in the academic category.
Strong 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 or about other citation styles).
As long as you choose 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.
Categories
Authors eligible for the Academic and General Audience categories may submit up to one (1) essay to each contest category. Authors eligible for the 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 written essays. All essays and videos must be submitted separately.
Scientific Abstracts: While not part of the essay contest, the INS accepts other scientific abstract submissions for the annual meeting. Review the calls for details, requirements and deadlines for the next annual meeting.
High School
Submissions to the IYNA-INS High School Neuroethics Essay competition should explore the relationship between ethics, neuroscience, and society in plain and simple 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. Essay length may not exceed 1,000 words. An abstract and references do not count toward the total word count. In-text citations and/or footnotes are included in the word count.
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 and simple language for the general public, as might be found in a magazine or news outlet aimed at non-specialist audiences. 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. Essay length may not exceed 1,000 words excluding references and disclosures.
Academic
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. Essays may not exceed 2,000 words excluding references and disclosures.
Video
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, Afrikaans, 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 or a link. References and disclosures should be displayed at the end of the video, which does not count toward the time requirement.
Eligibility
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 essay contest categories.
High School / Secondary School Students
Students in high school or an equivalent secondary school program any time from January to July 2026 must submit their essays to the High School category.
Post-Secondary Students / Early Career Trainee
‘Post-secondary students’ include 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 any time from January to July 2026 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 2026.
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 currently 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 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 at staff@neuroethicssociety.org.
Submission
The submission deadline has passed. No more essays will be accepted to the contest.
Essay submissions for the Academic, General Audience, High School, and Video categories must be uploaded through the online form. Review all eligibility and submission requirements above prior to writing and submitting your essay.
Essays must be submitted by Monday, August 31, 2026, 11:30pm (PDT). This deadline has been extended from August 21. Incomplete submissions will not be accepted.
Written essays should be submitted as a doc, docx or pdf file. Authors should 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. Filename should be in the format: ‘Essay-2026-SURNAME-Category.pdf’
Video essays should be an mp4 file, or authors may provide a link to a video publicly available on YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc.
Selection
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.
Notification of the winning and honorable mention submissions will be emailed to all participating authors by November 2026. 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, but past essay winners in prior years are not eligible to win again in that category. Previous winners are welcome to submit again to the contest and may be selected for an honorable mention.
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.
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.
Signup
To get email updates and notifications about the contest, become an INS member.
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