At a University of Pennsylvania neuroscience lab, measuring cognitive function, the question that would eventually become NSAG first appeared: if we can measure what the brain is doing, why can't we measure what institutions are doing to brains?
NSAG is a research-led practice founded and led by Rayven-Nikkita Collins, working with a network of named institutional affiliations and collaborators listed below rather than a standing staff. That is deliberate: the framework, the writing, and the advisory work are the product of focused, accountable authorship. When this site says "we," it means that practice and its collaborators — not a claim to be a large organization. The work is grounded in peer-reviewed publications, neuroscience training, and the affiliations shown here, and it is honest about what is established, what is in development, and what is still being validated.
Work-study, first semester at the University of Pennsylvania. Measuring cognitive function. Learning to treat the brain's activity as something observable, documentable, governable. The first encounter with the gap between what a system produces and what it can see it produces.
Clinical neuroscience research. Brain imaging. The physiological reality of how environment and experience shape neural function in measurable, physiological terms. The intersection of neuroscience and institutional context begins to take shape.
The governance layer. What are institutions obligated to do once they know what the brain is doing? What governance frameworks should exist for knowledge about neural function? The gap between scientific evidence and institutional accountability becomes the central question.
Working with Diana Zuckerman. The gap between what a medical institution knows about the safety of its tools and what it governs. The governance gap is not theoretical — it has documented, measurable consequences for specific people.
The thesis work: racialized stress, allostatic load, and medial temporal lobe volumes in Black and Afro-Caribbean older adults. The physiological consequences of institutional environments on the brain — measured directly, in tissue. The science that became NSAG's foundational claim.
The governance framework needs the legal infrastructure. Law is how institutions are held accountable. NSAG's framework is a scientific claim and a governance standard with legal and policy implications.
Scoring AI legislation across 30+ US jurisdictions. The policy layer. What does governance actually look like when it becomes law? How does the scientific evidence base translate into enforceable institutional standards?
The operational layer. A neuroscience-informed AI strategy and regulatory-trust practice, building governed AI systems for regulated organizations — NSAG’s sister practice under the same firm.
Neuroscientist. Law student. Governance framework builder. The person behind NSAG has spent her career at the intersection of brain science, institutional design, and the question of what institutions are obligated to do once they know what they're producing in the people inside them.
NSAG is an advisory practice built on a single claim: every institution is already shaping how people think, feel, and participate — in real, physiological terms. Through physical environment, procedural language, digital tools, disclosure architecture, and organizational structure, institutions produce measurable effects on the nervous systems of the people inside them. And the framework belongs to the governed as much as the governor: any individual inside an institution can use it to recognize those effects and ask for better.
Most institutions are producing these effects without measuring them, without intending them, and without governance infrastructure designed to make them intentional. That gap — between what an institution is producing and what it can see and govern — is the governance gap NSAG exists to close.
The sequence that makes everything else possible: governance must come before systems design. An institution that redesigns before it governs is redesigning in the dark. Nervous-System-Aware Governance is the infrastructure that makes the sequence possible.
The organization. The advisory practice. The 15 modules. The governance assessment tools. The institutional relationship that makes the governance work real.
The framework theory. The intellectual claim that institutions govern nervous systems whether or not they intend to — and that governance infrastructure can make those effects intentional.
What it means in practice: designing from a governance framework that specifies what the institution must produce, how it will measure whether it is producing it, and what accountability exists when it falls short.
Fifteen published scopes, free to read, each stating the evidence base for one institutional design problem and the six governance dimensions it turns on. The self-serve assessments that once accompanied them are retired; the scopes are the work.
Paid positions, commissioned writing engagements, and research collaborations — organized by relevant module.
Honolulu is a living laboratory for every NSAG module. Hawaiʻi's regulatory environment, indigenous practices, and demographic profile create deployment conditions unavailable elsewhere in the United States.
The Hawaiian practice of talk story — informal community conversation as civic participation — is a pre-existing nervous-system-aware governance mechanism. It governs through relationship, storytelling, and shared physical presence rather than procedural formality. Before NSAG named the framework, Hawaiʻi was already practicing it.
Hawaiʻi's state court system, Legal Aid Society, and University of Hawaiʻi William S. Richardson School of Law create a contained legal ecosystem for testing trauma-informed and AI-navigated legal design interventions at manageable scale.
Hawaiʻi's medical cannabis program (operational since 2015), its federally qualified health centers serving Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations, and active legislative development on psychedelics create an active policy laboratory for M4 and M9.
Near-equatorial light, ocean views, and year-round indoor-outdoor conditions make Hawaiʻi among the world's most evidence-rich environments for biophilic design research. The climate's year-round indoor-outdoor access creates real-world testing conditions for every M5 assessment dimension that are unavailable in mainland climates.
Hawaiʻi's geographically isolated hospital system, its unique relationship between military healthcare (TRICARE at Tripler), and a concentrated urban healthcare corridor in Honolulu create accessible conditions for M10 healthcare built environment research.
Hawaiʻi's single statewide school district, its multilingual learner population, and Richardson School of Law's community-focused legal education mission create a replicable case environment for M12 education system research.
Hawaiʻi's nurse vacancy rate and physician shortage create acute burnout conditions across the healthcare system. Geographic isolation limits recovery pathways and amplifies institutional stress, making Honolulu a high-stakes deployment environment for M8 organizational design interventions.