The Algonauts Project 2023
How the Human Brain Makes Sense of Natural Scenes
Explore the ChallengeSession @ CCN 2023
Aug 10, 2023: We are happy to announce the Algonauts Challenge winners, who will give a talk at CCN: huze (70.85%), hosseinadeli (63.52%), UARK-SUNY-Albany (61.57%). Congratulations! For participants: to promote faster and open scientific development, we encourage you to submit your report and code, even if the Challenge is now over!
Jul 26, 2023: The Algonauts Challenge submission deadline has now passed. Thank you to the 100+ teams who participated! View the results here. For participants: please post your report/code by August 2nd here. We'll announce the winners soon!
Jan 14, 2023: The new Algonauts 2023 Challenge is now open for submissions! Watch this video for an introduction to the Challenge (5 min) and a detailed walkthrough of the development kit (30 min). Submit your best model predictions to the competition until July 26th, 2023.
The Algonauts Project, first launched in 2019, is on a mission to bring biological and machine intelligence researchers together on a common platform to exchange ideas and pioneer the intelligence frontier. Inspired by the astronauts' exploration of space, "algonauts" explore human and artificial intelligence with state-of-the-art algorithmic tools, thus advancing both fields.
Video for the Algonauts 2023 Challenge; introduction (5 min) and detailed walkthrough of the development kit (30 min).
The Algonauts 2023 Challenge focuses on predicting responses in the human brain as participants perceive complex natural visual scenes. Through collaboration with the Natural Scenes Dataset (NSD) team, the Challenge runs on the largest suitable brain dataset available, opening new venues for data-hungry modeling. The challenge is organized in partnership with the Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN).
Please find further information here on the previous Algonauts Challenges from 2019 (still images of objects) and 2021 (visual events from movies, CCN session video).
Inspired by astronauts who launched into space to explore a new frontier, the Algonauts Project aims to explore human and machine intelligence with the latest algorithmic tools. Comparing brains and models could lead to unexpected insights into what makes intelligent systems efficient, robust and trustworthy.
The brain has inspired many of the algorithms responsible for the recent and spectacular progress in artificial intelligence. Those algorithms are now critical in testing new theories about the brain. The Algonauts Project brings together intelligence researchers in both domains to accelerate the pace of innovation.
Hackathon-like competitions create an environment for sharing and collaboration, which are important for advancing science and ensuring that results are valid and reproducible. The Algonauts Project is committed to a spirit of open collaboration.
The Algonauts Project is designed to expand to other fields, from physics and biology to the social sciences, and to complement experimental, theoretical and computational disciplines. It will grow, in content and methods, with the communities that shape this endeavor.
The Algonauts Project 2023 Challenge will evaluate computational models on how well they predict human visual brain data recorded while humans perceive images of complex natural scenes, using a massive human brain dataset collected for that purpose (NSD project page, publication).
Watch the first video above for an introduction to the Algonauts 2023 Challenge and a detailed walkthrough of the development kit. When you are ready to participate, the second video will guide you through the CodaLab competition submission process.
Learn more about the Challenge
1st place: 1500€ prize and travel reimbursement up to 1500€ to present at CCN 2023.
2nd place: 1500€ prize.
3rd place: 1500€ prize.
The top three entries will be invited to co-author a paper with the Algonauts organizers about the 2023 Challenge.
The Algonauts Project 2023 Challenge will conclude with two sessions at the 2023 Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience. The schedule for the sessions is below.
Algonauts Main Session: August 25th, 5pm–7pm (UTC+1)
| 15 min | Introduction to the Algonauts 2023 Challenge |
| 45 min | Talks by the three best performing teams |
| 60 min | Panel discussion on the potential of benchmarks and challenges |
Click here to watch the recording of the Algonauts main session at CCN 2023.
Algonauts Hackathon Session: August 26th, 10:45am–12:30pm (UTC+1)
| 105 min | Hands-on hackathon on building a brain encoding model and submitting it to the Algonauts Challenge platform for evaluation. |
| Train data, test stimuli, and development kit released: | January 14th, 2023 |
| Challenge submission deadline: | July 26th, 2023 at 11:59pm (UTC-4) |
| Challenge report/code submission deadline: | August 2nd, 2023 |
| Challenge results released: | August 10th, 2023 |
| Sessions at CCN 2023: | August 25–26th, 2023 |
If you participate in the Challenge, use this form to submit the Challenge report and code.
For general inquiries about the Algonauts Project, please contact algonauts.mit@gmail.com.
For specific questions about the Algonauts Project Challenge, please use the CodaLab Forum.
If you use the data provided for the Algonauts Project 2023 Challenge, please cite the following papers:
