Clive Hyland explains how understanding the workings of the triune brain will help HR develop more effective performance strategies

We spend a great deal of time and energy analysing performance, and searching for it via a vast array of claims and theories. Within this complexity, we are in danger of missing the point: there are certain fundamental principles we should keep sight of to re-establish some much-needed simplicity in this debate. A great starting point is to understand the triune brain.

The triune brain

This model represents the important distinctions between the three evolutionary stages of human brain development. These layers are the basal region (the reptilian brain) sitting at the base, just above the brainstem; the limbic system (the mammalian brain) located in the middle; and the cortex, which comprises the outer layer at the top and sides of the brain. All three regions play an important role in establishing our behavioural responses and performance, but treating them as broadly the same thing misses a huge opportunity to unlock our potential.

The contribution of each layer is significantly different. The basal region is the realm of our instincts, where we respond instantaneously to external stimuli without analysis and reflection. In instinctive mode, we react quickly and decisively.

The limbic region is all about emotional and energetic connection. Our limbic systems were our main machinery for interpersonal connection and communication long before we had language and sophisticated thinking ability. This capacity to connect energetically remains with us today and is the key to sensations such as fear or trust, anger or peace, anxiety or gravitas.

And then, in evolutionary terms, came the cortex, the thinking region, where we learned to become rational, reflect, plan and imagine competencies that set us apart from other species.

A performance strategy

The point here is that any human performance strategy whether individual, team or organisational needs to draw the best from each of these brain regions if it is to unlock our true potential. In practical terms, this means:

Having the right machinery in place

Ensuring appropriate relationships are sustained, and

Most crucially, working to establish a believable vision

The machinery

Machinery here means things such as plans, analysis, tactics, operating structures, roles and responsibilities. The goal of the cortex is to seek out clarity, and it will set down in the neural pathways of our brains precise rules of engagement. But, as we sometimes learn to our cost, being clear about what to do is not always the same as doing it. As we enter the arena of public performance we face emotional demands that are more than capable of swamping our rational thoughts.

Relationships

A performance strategy therefore needs to build and sustain relationships based on trust, where we feel able to perform with the support of our colleagues. In a place of trust our limbic system will trigger hormonal responses that are vital to effective motivation, concentration and team engagement. Perceived threat will cause our bodies and minds to close down and focus only on personal survival, where we remain tuned in to fear and blocked to free-flowing performance.

A believable vision

Having created clarity and trust, the crucial third step is establishing a vision that depicts an environment where we feel we belong. If we perceive an environment (whether an external one, or an internally imagined one) where our instincts tell us we can thrive, we will be focused and confident.

The essence here is belief. Belief sits at a deep place within us an inner state known as physiological entrainment where our brain, heart and gut energetically synchronise to become one united force. When we have belief, our energy is calm and our attention targeted; we can visualise success, there is no fuss and no distraction just a job we know we are equipped to perform.

Collective organisational confidence is a hugely significant goal. By understanding the inner dynamics of the different brain regions, we are making a significant step in transforming the elusive into the understandable and the actionable.

Clive Hyland is a people adviser at The Happiness Index and author of The Neuro Edge, which will be published in April

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Opinion: Neuroscience is the key to unlocking high performance - CIPD (blog)

April 3, 2017 at 3:55 AM

Prior Scientific announces V-Deck - an ultra-stable platform for neuroscience and electrophysiology that offers you the ability to quickly and precisely adjust sample height.

The new V-Deck sets a new benchmark for operational stability. Versatility to optimally image from thin sections right through to whole animal samples is ensured through the available of a wide range of height adjustable, lockable platform posts.

The V-Deck offers a large sample area, with a M6 x 25 breadboard, that allows heating, cooling, perfusion and incubation chambers, micromanipulators, stereotaxic instruments and other equipment to be precisely mounted. Consequently setting up microscopic imaging of an electrophysiology or neuroscience experiment to your exact specifications is quickly and routinely achievable.

Dovetail slides on the V-Deck enable the horizontal position of your sample to be simply and rapidly adjusted. The entire V-Deck platform is compatible with almost any commercially available vibration isolation table.

The V-Deck is designed to be used on conjunction with the recently released Prior Scientific Translation stage. The Translation stage allows an entire microscope to be quickly yet precisely moved, allowing your sample to remain immobile - essential for precision electrophysiology and neuroscience experiments where it is vital for the sample to stay completely still and as vibration free as possible.

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Prior Scientific offers new ultra-stable platform for neuroscience and ... - News-Medical.net

Unless you've been living in a cave the last few years, someone has no doubt recommended meditation to you. With top entrepreneurs swearing by the practice and a parade of articles suggesting mindfulness for everything from stress reduction to better concentration, meditation is undeniably hot.

Is it also science-backed? With its religious origins, spiritual cast, and mysterious mechanisms, to the skeptically minded meditation can appear like just another dubious self-help craze.

But if you're not the type to spend time aligning your chakras or harmonizing your aura, be aware that meditation doesn't need spirituality to sell itself (though, of course, that's a fine reason to start a practice if you're so inclined). A huge body of research has found that meditation has very real effects on your brain.

The many benefits of meditation, in other words, are thoroughly backed by science and can be seen plain as day on a brain scan, a fact Buffer writer Belle Beth Cooper delved into in depth on the startup's blog. Her complete post is well worth checking out if you want a deep dive into how meditation physically alters your brain, but here are a few highlights.

Meditation has been shown to measurably reduce anxiety. How does it accomplish that? Cooper explains:

There's a section of our brains that's sometimes called the Me Center (it's technically the medial prefrontal cortex). This is the part that processes information relating to ourselves and our experiences. Normally the neural pathways from the bodily sensation and fear centers of the brain to the Me Center are really strong. When you experience a scary or upsetting sensation, it triggers a strong reaction in your Me Center, making you feel scared and under attack.

When we meditate, we weaken this neural connection. This means that we don't react as strongly to sensations that might have once lit up our Me Centers. As we weaken this connection, we simultaneously strengthen the connection between what's known as our Assessment Center (the part of our brains known for reasoning) and our bodily sensation and fear centers. So when we experience scary or upsetting sensations, we can more easily look at them rationally.

Another benefit of meditation is improved memory recall. It turns out this might be a side effect of another positive effect of mindfulness--better concentration and focus.

Researcher Catherine Kerr "found that people who practiced mindful meditation were able to adjust the brain wave that screens out distractions and increase their productivity more quickly that those who did not meditate. She said that this ability to ignore distractions could explain 'their superior ability to rapidly remember and incorporate new facts,'" writes Cooper.

These changes are only the tip of the iceberg, however. Specific types of mediation have been shown to increase creativity, for instance, while a mindfulness practice can also help turn back on the clock on aging brains. Get all the details in Cooper's post.

If all this has convinced you that meditation is less self-help fad and more ultimate life hack, how do you get started? It's less difficult than you probably imagine. As Cooper points out, there are tons of apps like Headspace to help, and you only need a few minutes of meditation every day to reap rewards.

Read more:
Neuroscience: This Is How Meditation Changes Your Brain for the Better - Inc.com

The Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis hosts a wonderful temporary exhibit highlighting the medical illustrations of neuroplasticity pioneer Santiago Ramon y Cajal. Titled The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramn y Cajal, it will remain open until May 21st, 2017.

Who was Ramon y Cajal? Why does his research matter?

Well, let's start with the concept of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity--or brain plasticity-- refers to the brain's ability to change throughout life, to rewire itself based on experience. The human brain has an amazing ability to reorganize itself by generating new neurons and by forming new connections between neurons.

It was believed for a long time that, as we got older, the brain became "fixed." Now we know that the brain never stops changing, and that neuroplasticity is the capacity of the brain to change with learning, and that's why there's so much interest and hope around ways to harness that neuroplasticity to lead better lives, to enhance our brains, to delay brain health decline.

And Ramon y Cajal was one of the first scientists to see this and to create the foundations of modern neuroscience.

Fortunately for us he wrote a fascinating memoir--titled "Recollections of My Life"--so we gain peak directly into his research and thinking.

Since he said, "Every man can, of he so desires, become the sculptor of his own brain," thereby emphasizing what we now call lifelong neuroplasticity, let's see what he had in mind by discussing some other things he had to say in his book--published exactly 100 years ago, in 1917:

My comment: Here he shows a strong and hopeful belief in neuroplasticity, even if he couldn't prove it then scientifically.

My comment: Want to encourage neuroplasticity? Go and live in a new city or country for a while.

My comment: Beautiful display of the scientific mindset.

My comment: What a display of wisdomwhat a display of a beautifully-sculpted brain.

And a final reflection to wrap-up this article: What will we think and do about neuroplasticity 100 years from now, in 2117?

-- Alvaro Fernandez is the co-author of The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness: How to Improve Brain Health and Performance at Any Age. SharpBrains.com is a popular blog tracking the latest on neuroplasticity, cognitive health and brain fitness, combined with fun brain teasers and games to help adults sharpen their minds.

Start your workday the right way with the news that matters most.

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Neuroplasticity as seen by neuroscience pioneer Santiago Ramn y Cajal 100 years ago - Huffington Post

SAN FRANCISCO, March, 29, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --The San Francisco Giants have partnered with Halo Neuroscience, a San Francisco-based company that develops neurotechnology to unlock human potential for both performance and medical applications.

The strength and conditioning staff for the Giants completed a successful proof-of-concept test of Halo Neuroscience's first product, Halo Sport, and measured accelerated gains in player performance. As a result, the Giants began to incorporate Halo Sport into the team's core training protocol.

"We are extremely excited to integrate Halo's neurostimulation technology into our core training regimen to improve and refine on-field player performance and athleticism," said Dave Groeschner, Head Athletic Trainer for the San Francisco Giants. "After testing the product internally, we've determined that incorporating Halo Sport 'Neuropriming' into our training programs produces measurable and significant results. "

The Giants first started working with Halo Neuroscience one year ago during the team's 2016 January Conditioning Camp in Phoenix, AZ. At this time, the team's coaches split top minor league prospects into two groupsone Halo and one control groupand then compared each group's progress across nine standard performance measures.

Training and testing lasted two weeks, during which all athletes completed the same program: twenty-minute warm-ups followed by sixty minutes or more of focused training to improve skill, speed, and power. Athletes in one group wore Halo Sport headsets during the 20-minute warm-up, whereas athletes in the other did not.

At the conclusion of the two-week period, the Halo Group saw the greatest improvements in speed workthe area most heavily emphasized during Neuropriming sessions with Halo Sport. In the 20-yard dash, for example, almost all the athletes tested demonstrated significant improvement after two weeks, versus athletes in the control group who only demonstrated modest improvement.

"Our goal with Halo was to improve our team's speed and explosiveness," said Geoff Head, Sports Science Specialist at the San Francisco Giants. "Overall, all players at camp showed general improvements in the testing parameters, but there was an additional increase in testing results in the players who used Halo Sport as compared to the players in the control groupespecially in the 20-yard dash."

As a result of these findings, the Giants will continue to implement Halo Sport to improve movement-based training for the athletes in the organization.

"As a San Francisco-based company, we are thrilled to be working with our hometown team. With the Giants' league-leading, innovation-based approach to player development, we were able to earn our way into their winning formula," said Dr. Daniel Chao, CEO and Co-Founder of Halo Neuroscience.

For more information about the San Francisco Giants' partnership with Halo Neuroscience, and to learn more about Halo Sport, please visit blog.haloneuro.com.

About Halo Neuroscience

Halo Neuroscience develops neurotechnology to unlock human potential for both performance and medical applications. The company's first product, Halo Sport, utilizes Neuropriming technology to accelerate the neurologic gains of strength and skill learning that result from athletic training. Halo is now used by teams and athletes from the military, Olympics, MLB, NBA, NHL, and NFL, in addition to thousands of other athletes, musicians, and gamers around the world.

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San Francisco Giants and Halo Neuroscience Announce New Partnership - Yahoo Finance

The sixth annual Distinguished Lecture in Neuroscience and Nu Rho Psi honorary society induction will be held Friday, March 31, at 3 p.m. in John Roach Center, Room 126. The neuroscience program will induct 15 new members into Nu Rho Psi, the neuroscience national honor society.

The new members who will be inducted in Nu Rho Psi are: Kaycie Anderson, Katelyn Baier, Elizabeth Baker, Joana Beyer, Brooke Finch, Salman Irfanullah, Katherine Leininger, Tyler Lifke, Kha Lor, Elliot Magnuson, Zachari Mertes, Catherine Minz, Hannah Moyer, Molly Richardson and Georgianna Younger.

Following the program, Dr. Keith B. Hengen will deliver the Distinguished Lecture in Neuroscience. Hengen, an assistant professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis, uses computation approaches to explore the homeostatic self-organization of intact neural networks that support sensation, perception and cognition, and how appropriate information transmission in these systems is established during development and disrupted in disease. His lecture, Keeping it together at every level: Self-organization of neurons and networks will discuss the role of sleep wake in chaperoning the interactions between distinct plasticity mechanisms.

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Neuroscience Honor Society Induction Will Be March 31 - University of St. Thomas Newsroom

When Halo Neuroscience designed the Halo Sport headset, it was evident that its use extended into various sports. The device is designed to stimulate a special part of the brain called the motor cortex and help any type of athlete get the most out of their brain and their workout.There has already been documented use from NFL players, the Golden State Warriorsand Olympians.

Now Halo is announcing a new partnership with the San Francisco Giants, who have implemented Halo Sport as part of the teams core training regimen to improve player performance.

The Giants are our neighbors, and weve become pretty close over the last year, said Halo Neuroscience CEO Dr. Daniel Chao, whose company is based in San Francisco.

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As Chao said, the formal announcement of the partnership hardly means that these two organizations just met. In January 2016, the Giants and Halo started working together at the teams conditioning camp in Phoenix. The invitation-only extended to the organizations top prospects. Players were split into two groups one made use of Halo Sport and the other did not.

It was a perfect proving ground for us, Chao said. We did before-and-after testing and the group that used Halo Sport got results that we would expect. That was enough to lead to a one-page summary that got circulated up the chain to the front office appealing for budget.

The metric keyed in on most was the 20-yard dash. They were looking for an improvement in short burst speed something that would show up in stealing bases and chasing down fly balls or grounders. After two weeks, almost all the players in the group that did 20-minute neuropriming sessions with the Halo Sport headset prior to their workouts showed significant improvement while the control group only demonstrated moderate improvement.

A similar study of MLB players training with Sparta Sciencerecently produced results as well for players who neuroprimed.

Theres nothing like data to win a sale, Chao said when asked what ultimately attracted the Giants to Halo. Thats what we want to be known for; lets point to numbers, numbers sell themselves.

Since Ive been using Halo Sport, it really has taken my game to the next level, Giants top pitching prospect Tyler Beede said in a video released by Halo Neuroscience. When you use it over the course of a season, over the course of the day-in, day-out activities that youre doing, your brain just becomes so in tune with what youve been doing that it can memorize and it can enter your movements that take you to that next level.

The partnership will be a rather broad deployment. Chao says that there will be Halo Sport stations at all the Giants various training facilities not just limited to the ones in San Francisco and Scottsdale, Ariz.

Even though a 162-game schedule doesnt leave much time for practice, there are still a couple areas where Chao sees Halo Sport being beneficial to the big league club.

If you think about a position player, what they have to do during the game is play nine innings, but most of them show up early to take batting practice, Chao said. Even in the on-deck circle, for example, they are taking practice cuts. All of that added up is probably a hundred swings per day. What can we do to make those swings more meaningful? Pairing that with Halo Sport is one way you can do that.

Who knows? Maybe Halo Sport can be a driving force in helping the Giants win their fourth World Series title in eight seasons.

We are extremely excited to integrate Halos neurostimulation technology into our core training regimen to improve and refine on-field player performance and athleticism, Giants head athletic trainer Dave Groeschner said in a statement. After testing the product internally, weve determined that incorporating Halo Sport Neuropriming into our training programs produces measurable and significant results.

Link:
San Francisco Giants Partner With Halo Neuroscience To Improve Speed, Explosiveness - SportTechie

By Daniel Terdiman 03.29.17 | 9:00 am

The next time a San Francisco Giant hits a game-winning home run or turns a great double play to end a rivals rally, you may be able to thank neuroscience.

Today, Halo Neuroscience, a San Francisco startup thats developed a device aimed at boosting the performance of athletes, announced it has officially been helping the Giants get the most out of its players.

[Photos: courtesy of Halo Neuroscience]

The device, the Halo Sport, stimulates the brains motor cortex, energizing motor neurons, which then send athletes muscles stronger signals, allowing them to get more powerful and efficient with every training rep.

The Halo Sport, which looks almost exactly like a pair of headphones, isnt new. But Halo hasnt previously revealed much about its partnerships with any professional sports franchises, especially not ones that have progressed beyond the experimental stage.

The Giants, with their proximity to Silicon Valley, are exposed to lots of intriguing technology that could be used to improve athletic performance, says Geoff Head, the teams sports scientist. But before jumping at any of that tech, the three-time World Series champions like to do our homework.

Austin Slater warming up.

Last season, Head says, the Giants conducted a two-week trial involving 18 top minor league prospects at the teams off-season conditioning camp. The idea, he explains, was to give nine of the players Halo Sports and compare the results of their training and workouts with nine players who didnt get the devices but went through the exact same conditioning.

Afterwards, he says, the team found there to be significant-enough improvement results in the Halo group compared to the control group to where it opened up our eyes to the devices value.

To be sure, the improvements were smallon the order of 1% to 2%. But with these athletes at the major league level, Head says, thats sometimes enough to be the difference between winning and losing.

Based on those trials, the Giants signed a formal partnership with Halo Neuroscience and have been utilizing the startups devices during the current spring training at both the major league level and for players at four different levels of the minor leagues.

According to Head, Halo cofounder Daniel Chao had explained that the peak benefit of the companys device comes in the 60-to-90-minute window after wearing it, a data point that matched what the team had learned from its in-house study.

The greatest improvements we found in the players in the [test] group, he says, were the skills work we were doing when they were wearing the Halo headset. As soon as they players took off the headsets . . . we would get into some advanced mobility worktrying to learn new postures, speed drills, and so on.

Asked why players didnt just wear their Halo headsets all day, Head says its simply a matter of diminishing returns. When wearing the Halo Sport, the areas you work on receive a higher level of stimulation. If you constantly stimulate over the course of a day, he explains, youre definitely not going to get as much bang for your buck. Its like working out all day. You would get the best results in the first part of the day.

The key for the Giants, as the team seeks to get the most from its use of the Halo Sport, is to figure out which skill set each individual player needs the most work on and have them wear the headset immediately prior to doing that work.

So, for example, if a pitcher is trying to work on changing the arm angle at which he throws, he would want to wear the Halo Sport in the morning in the 20 minutes or so before beginning his 10 a.m. workout. Even after stretching, the pitchers throwing session would still be within the devices 60-to-90-minute effectiveness window.

San Francisco Giants pitcher Tyler Beede

And the benefit may not be limited solely to what a player can do on his own, Head says. In fact, the Halo Sport improves learning as well. So players will be more likely to internalize training feedback from coaches if it happens during that time frame.

The benefit even extends to getting stronger, Head says. So if a players biggest weakness is, excuse the pun, his strength, he will do well to wear the Halo Sport prior to doing his weight liftingand may even want to wear it for the first 20 minutes of those sessions, Head says.

Given that baseballs regular season hasnt yet started, its too early to tell if Halos technology will help the Giants actually get more wins. And even after the games begin, theres of course no way to know if there was actually a true benefit.

But the results of the Giants experiment last season suggest theres reason to believe that Halo can help the team do better. A baseball season is 162 games. It generally takes around 90 wins to guarantee a playoff spot. Over the course of that span, a 1% to 2% improvement works out to between 1.62 and 3.24 additional wins.

So, Giants fans, if your team makes the playoffs by three wins or less, therell be a reasonable argument to be made that its due to neuroscience.

Daniel Terdiman is a San Francisco-based technology journalist with nearly 20 years of experience. A veteran of CNET and VentureBeat, Daniel has also written for Wired, The New York Times, Time, and many other publications.

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How Neuroscience Might Help The San Francisco Giants Win The ... - Fast Company

Dr Anne-Lise Goddings studied for her doctorate at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and UCL Institute of Child Health. She used a wide variety of methods to test the widely held theory that pubertal maturation influences the timing and trajectory.

She has been described as an exceptional and dedicated researcher who has made a highly significant contribution to adolescent cognitive neuroscience through her PhD work.

That work has already led to seven papers in high-impact journals and a book chapter, and she has presented her work at several international meetings.

Among those papers are ones inDevelopmental ScienceandNeuroimagethat were submitted in support of her nomination for this award.

Dr Goddings said:

It is a real honour to receive this prestigious award. I am extremely grateful to both my PhD supervisors, Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Professor Russell Viner, for their inspirational support and training, and to all my collaborators and fellow researchers.

I look forward to continuing my research in my new NIHR Clinical Lecturer role at the UCL Institute of Child Health, investigating how chronic disease impacts on the developing adolescent brain.

Professor Peter Kinderman, President of the Society, said:

How we develop as human beings - how our brains develop during puberty - is an endlessly fascinating subject. Dr Goddings research into the ways in which both age and hormones affect the brain during adolescence is an important part of our continuous struggle to piece together the mysteries of the human brain. Her success, as a doctoral student, is impressive, and suggests that Dr Goddings, her future employers and colleagues, have a bright future ahead of them."

This award is made each year to recognise outstanding contributions to psychological knowledge made by postgraduate research students while carrying out research for their doctoral degrees in psychology.

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Society award for contribution to adolescent cognitive neuroscience - The British Psychological Society

Man paralyzed in accident from shoulders down can now feed himself, drink water -- even scratch his nose

PROVIDENCE, R.I. In another dramatic breakthrough for BrainGate, the neuroscience consortium that includes Brown University and the Providence VA Medical Center, new technology has allowed a man paralyzed from the shoulders down to move his arm and hand again. He can now feed himself, drink water from a mug -- and even scratch his nose.

For somebody whos been injured eight years and couldnt move, being able to move just that little bit is awesome to me, said the man, Bill Kochevar, 56, who suffered a severe spinal cord injury in a bicycling accident. Its better than I thought it would be.

Kochevar achieved these abilities with the use of BrainGates investigational brain-computer interface in combination with a the consortiums so-called functional electronic stimulation system, which was implanted in the Cleveland mans arm.

The advance is deemed so significant that it is featured this week on the online edition of The Lancet, one of the worlds leading medical journals, published since 1823.

Its so inspiring to watch Mr. Kochevar move his own arm and hand just by thinking about it, said Dr. Leigh Hochberg, a study co-author and director of the BrainGate2 pilot clinical trial. As an extraordinary participant in this research, hes teaching us how to design a new generation of neurotechnologies that we all hope will one day restore mobility and independence for people with paralysis.

The technology works by detecting neural signals acquired from electrodes implanted in the surface of the motor cortex of the brain," according to Brown.Those signals are translated by the collaborations algorithms into movement commands for assistive devices. In the new research, the movement commands were relayed to a functional electronic stimulation system that electrically stimulated Kochevars muscles, allowing him to bypass his injury and once again deliver his brains motion plan to his arm.

The BrainGate consortium also includes Case Western Reserve University, which led the latest research, Stanford University and Massachusetts General Hospital.

In February, the team announced another ground-breaking development: technology that allowed three people with paralysis to type using only brain control.

As with the development reported in February in the journal eLife, Hochberg said more work remains before the technology that benefitted Kochevar could be available to more people.

While todays exciting report was made possible by incredible team science and vital federal funding for fundamental, translational and clinical research, these are still just the first steps, he said. Watching him move his hand again reminds me of the enormous potential for research to provide the new insights and technologies that will reduce the burden of neurologic disease and restore function.

WATCH a video of Kochevar using his arm and hand and talking about the accident that left him a quadriplegic.

gwmiller@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7380

@GWayneMiller

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Another neuroscience breakthrough from Brown, VA BrainGate partnership - The Providence Journal