Why Performance Neurology

Neurology has traditionally oriented itself around disease. The tools and frameworks it has developed for understanding the nervous system are extraordinarily powerful, but they have been directed almost exclusively at diagnosing and treating what goes wrong. The question of what could go right, of how the same neuroscience might be applied to help healthy brains learn faster, perform more reliably, and sustain their capabilities over a lifetime, has largely gone unasked.

Meanwhile, the people most invested in brain performance have been left without a scientific home. Athletes train their bodies with extraordinary precision but have no neurological framework guiding the organ that controls everything. Musicians spend thousands of hours developing their craft but have no systematic way of understanding why they plateau, why they falter under pressure, or how to protect their abilities as they age. An entire industry has emerged around cognitive enhancement, and almost none of it is grounded in the depth of expertise that clinical neurology provides.

Much of the knowledge needed to address this already exists, though it has never been assembled into a coherent whole. Motor learning research has produced detailed accounts of how the brain encodes and refines skill. Sleep science has mapped the mechanisms of memory consolidation and cognitive restoration. Cognitive psychology has illuminated the architecture of attention, decision-making, and expert performance. Preventive neurology has identified the factors that protect brain function across the lifespan. But these fields have developed largely in isolation from each other. Their insights have never been integrated under a single framework directed at a single aim.

That is the gap the Institute for Performance Neurology was created to fill. Not by generating new science from scratch, but by bringing together the science that already exists, under the rigor and depth of understanding that neurology demands, and directing it toward the full spectrum of human performance: building capability, deploying it under real-world conditions, and protecting it over time.

The brain is the most consequential organ in human performance, and it deserves the same systematic, evidence-based attention given to every other aspect of human capability. That is what Performance Neurology provides.

The Institute

The Institute for Performance Neurology conducts consulting, research, and public education in Performance Neurology. The institute publishes across academic and popular platforms, translating the science of brain performance into forms that are both rigorous and accessible. It serves athletes, musicians, and anyone seeking to optimize their brain's performance, applying the framework of clinical neurology to the full spectrum of human capability.

Leadership

Josh Turknett, MD

Founder and Director

Josh Turknett is a board-certified neurologist whose work spans clinical neurology, applied neuroscience, research, public education, and musical performance. His clinical practice provided the foundation: years of diagnosing and treating disorders of the nervous system, developing the depth of understanding of brain function that underpins the Performance Neurology framework.

He has worked with thousands of musicians and athletes around the world, applying the diagnostic methodology of clinical neuroscience to help performers at every level identify and address the specific neurological mechanisms standing between them and their potential.

He created the Brainjo method, which applies principles of neuroplasticity to musical skill acquisition and has been used by thousands of people worldwide. That work led directly to the broader questions that became Performance Neurology: how neuroscience could be applied systematically to learning, performance, and capability across domains.

He is the author of Anyone Can Play Music and the forthcoming The Genius and the Impostor, co-host of the Better Brain Fitness podcast, an award-winning musician, and a former college athlete whose firsthand experience with the demands of performance informs the Institute's particular depth in practice optimization, creative access, and performing under pressure.

Tommy Wood, MD, PhD

Co-Director

Tommy Wood is a neuroscientist and associate professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at the University of Washington. He holds a degree in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, a medical degree from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in physiology and neuroscience from the University of Oslo. His research spans brain injury, neuroprotection, and the physiological and metabolic conditions that determine how well the brain functions across the lifespan.

Since 2016, he has served as a scientific advisor to Hintsa Performance and as a performance consultant in Formula 1, working with drivers and teams on sleep, nutrition, and cognitive performance at the highest level of motorsport. He has also consulted with Olympic athletes and world champions across multiple disciplines.

He is a director of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine, head of research for the dementia prevention charity Food for the Brain, and author of The Stimulated Mind. His work provides the Institute with deep expertise in the biological foundations of brain performance: the regulation, metabolic, and neuroprotective dimensions that underpin everything the framework addresses.