I 3D Printed My Brain

I bought a 3D printer for the first time a few weeks ago, and one of the first things I made with it was a life-size model of my own brain!

By: TheHans255

3/1/2026

First, pictures:

I used a painterly effect to obfuscate the actual model a bit, since it's technically protected medical information, but you get the idea.

The story of how I got this was that a few years ago, I participated in a study at the University of Washington where they wanted to see how Autistic peoples' brains fired while doing various cognitive/visual tests, such as watching objects flash into peripheral vision. So they had me do a bunch of sessions in an MRI where they scanned my brain and I did these tests, along with a few other measurement methods such as EEG. In addition to paying me a modest amount of money for participating, they also gave me the full 3D scan of my brain that they had built up during this process. They said that you could send it in to a 3D printing service like Shapeways to get it as a model, but that it would cost somewhere between $700-$1000 to do it, so I just held tight.

Until I had some extra money to spend, so I spent it on that, and now I could print that 3D model for less than ten bucks' worth of PLA. So here it is!

It's been a fun conversation piece for everyone I've shown this to. There is certainly a creepy element to it, since it would be just a bit nasty if your actual brain was visible in real life (gore warning for link). But it's still pretty cool to have a picture of what it actually looks like.

I think at some point I'm gonna seal it up with resin and put it in a jar, like something out of a Frankenstein movie.