One of the most fundamental questions in science is how our consciousness works. In the 1990s Nobel prize winning physicist Roger Penrose proposed a controversial answer. The brain’s neuronal system and the consciousness it produces obey the laws of quantum mechanics. Physicist Cristiane Morais Smith (Utrecht University) decided to put this hypothesis to the test. Does our consciousness indeed flow from quantum processes? A story about neurons and extraordinary patterns, with a special role for Picasso.