Smart kids to face off in Qld brain bee

There's plenty of buzz about the Great Australian Spelling Bee, and now a "brainier" competition has come to town.

Queensland is hosting The International Brain Bee, a neuroscience competition featuring 23 of the world's brightest high school students.

They will battle against each other on topics such as anatomy, histology and patient diagnosis.

And, like Network Ten's Great Australian Spelling Bee, competitors will face off by answering questions on a big stage.

It's a no-brainer you have to be pretty intelligent to qualify and it's something that weighs heavily on the mind of Australian competitor Jade Pham.

"It's very daunting," she told AAP.

"They sound really, really smart and I don't know if I can live up to my expectations."

There's plenty of pressure on the year-11 student given Australia has won the international final twice and finished second in the past three years.

Jade, a student at James Ruse Agricultural High School in Sydney, wants to become a neurosurgeon.

She would like to have had more time to study an 800-page textbook to prepare for for the week-long competition, which starts in Cairns on Thursday.

Other competitors include a Nepalese student who won the national final between the recent earthquakes and a Ukrainian student who was almost unable to make it because of internal political conflict.

Professor Linda Richards, a neuroscientist at the University of Queensland's Brain Institute, said the idea of the competition was to challenge students to learn about neuroanatomical and brain function, as well as how neurological diseases and mental illnesses occur.