The brain-like tissue phantom is the equivalent material tissue or digital model that can effectively simulate the shape and properties of human brain tissue. It can represent certain physiological properties of human brain tissue in the experiment to achieve specific research objectives. Based on its physical form, the brain-like tissue phantom can usually be classified into 3 categories: solid, liquid, and digital. Among them, the gelatin and agar phantom is the most common solid phantom, which has advantages of being easy to shape and simulate the brain tissue well; the most common liquid phantom is saline, which has advantages of simple configuration and good acoustic characteristics; the digital phantom is generated by computer, and its advantage is that it can not only develop and test the algorithm, but also carry out complex multi-physical field finite element simulation experiments. The brain-like tissue phantom is safe, economical, easy to configure and reusable thus is widely used in fields of brain disease diagnosis and system security evaluation, for instance, motor and neurological disorders, Alzheimer’s disease and craniocerebral injury. Configuring different types of phantoms to simulate the relevant brain physical characteristics can not only find and avoid the problems and risks that may exist in the real experiment, but also accelerate the experimental process and have irreplaceable advantages. However, at the current stage, brain-like tissue phantom still has a lot of room for development, such as reducing the gap between physical morphology and physical characteristics between brain tissue and real brain tissue, and configuring phantom which is more suitable for use in complex environment. This article discusses the classification, physical properties and applications of brain-like tissue phantoms for brain science research. By comparing the differences between the brain tissue phantom and real brain tissue, this article elaborates the promising application of the former in replacing real brain tissue in experiments.