Neural Pathways began with a question from a science museum curator: can you make the brain beautiful? Not simplified, not diagrammatic -- genuinely beautiful, in a way that makes non-scientists want to understand what they are seeing.
The answer required bridging two worlds that rarely overlap: laboratory microscopy and cinematic visual effects. We started by spending three weeks in a neuroscience lab, learning to photograph brain tissue samples stained with fluorescent proteins under UV light. The resulting macro footage was stunning but insufficient -- it showed structure without conveying the dynamic activity of a living brain.
That gap between static structure and dynamic function is where AI entered the pipeline. We used Runway Gen-2 to generate sequences imagining what neural signals might look like if they were visible to the naked eye: rivers of bioluminescent light flowing through tissue, synaptic flashes like distant lightning. The key was ensuring these AI-generated elements seamlessly blended with the real microscopy footage.
The collaboration with scientists was ongoing throughout production. Every visual metaphor was reviewed for scientific accuracy. We could not show neurons firing in patterns that contradicted known neuroscience, even if those patterns looked more cinematic. The constraint was liberating -- it forced us to find beauty in what actually happens rather than inventing spectacle.
The final film exists as both a standalone short documentary and a permanent museum installation. The installation version runs on a loop with spatial audio, creating an immersive environment where visitors can sit surrounded by the visual language of their own brain activity.
