Professor John P. Donoghue

John P. Donoghue, Ph.D., M.S. is Professor of Neuroscience and Engineering at Brown University and Director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science.
 
John’s laboratory investigates how the brain turns thought into voluntary behaviors and how that knowledge can be used to help persons with paralysis. He studies how populations of neurons represent and transform information as a motor plan becomes movement. This approach has required the creation of a novel recording array to study neural ensembles. With the knowledge he has gained about movement representation, he has translated his lab’s findings to a clinical application in which humans with paralysis can use their neurons directly to control devices.
 
His papers include Sensors for Brain–Computer Interfaces, Connecting cortex to machines: recent advances in brain interfaces, Decoding 3D reach and grasp from hybrid signals in motor and premotor cortices: spikes, multiunit activity, and local field potentials, Assistive technology and robotic control using motor cortex ensemble-based neural interface systems in humans with tetraplegia, and Decoding Complete Reach and Grasp Actions from Local Primary Motor Cortex Populations.
 
John earned his B.A. in Biology at Boston University in 1972. He earned his M.S. in Anatomy at the University of Vermont in 1976. He earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Brown University in 1979.
 
Watch John Donoghue at Nobel Conference 47 and Simons Science Series — John Donoghue. Read What Are the Best Scientists Working On? and Connecting Brains to the Outside World.