Merzenich’s brilliance inspires many of his colleagues, but there are still questions about how far he can take his ideas. Harvard neurobiology professor John Maunsell, who has studied plasticity in the visual cortex, says he has not found the same degree of change as Merzenich has reported in the somatosensory and auditory systems. The discrepancy could be due to differences in how his team carried out its research, even the different species of monkeys involved, he says, but “there’s a question here that needs to be answered.”?
Maunsell credits Merzenich as a pioneer in brain plasticity, yet adds: “The scientist is supposed to be this model of objectivity and completely disinterested in the outcome. You can’t do that when you’re promoting a product, so he has to sort of walk a line. And there are going to be compromises on both sides.”
Merzenich dismisses the rap with a smile. “I don’t give a shit if the academic community criticizes this,” he says. “My feeling is simple. If you have something that can impact tens of millions of people, it’s a responsibility to deliver it. And the only way you can effectively deliver it is in the real world. The simple fact is that if things don’t work in the real world, ultimately they don’t go very far. In the real world, people commonly measure things. If they don’t work, they don’t buy them and don’t use them. That’s really what matters to me.” ?
To be sure, this perspective raises some questions about the enduring popularity of wrinkle creams and diet supplements. Still, there is no lack of real-world endorsements for Merzenich’s training programs. When it comes to Fast ForWord, Randy Poe, deputy superintendent of schools in Boone County, Kentucky, says, “We’ve had some testimonials from different parents that would make you cry.” The program, he says, has delivered “significant gains in 7 out of 10 students.”
The Brain Fitness software is collecting similar praise at the residential homes where Posit Science has been testing it. At the Redwoods, in Mill Valley, California, Cora Parick, a lively 92-year-old with a perfect white bouffant hairdo, says the course has improved her performance at the nightly domino games—“I can count better and remember the tiles”—and her ability to recall telephone numbers. When I asked if she thought any part of the improvement might be due to a placebo effect, or the considerable stimulation of learning to interact with a computer, she replies, “Who cares, if it works?”
Is plasticity as powerful as Merzenich believes? I am taken aback, in one phone conversation, when he casually says: “If you give me someone for three months, I could do anything to them. I could turn a Republican into a Democrat.”
When asked about the comment several weeks later, Merzenich says that he was joking. In any case, the size of his vision has become his personal trademark. “The first time I had my interview with him, I’d read up on all his papers and felt I could handle whatever he threw at me,” says Dan Polley, a former student, now an assistant professor at Vanderbilt Medical School. “But his first question was, ‘What’s it all about’?”
Merzenich spends about 40 hours a week in his UCSF lab, where he has been pursuing basic research on cognition and perception as well as collaborating on behavioral therapy for a condition known as focal dystonia, the loss of control of one or more fingers, also known as occupational hand cramp. At Posit Science, meanwhile, “there are about a billion other things we’re interested in,” Merzenich says. High on the list are programs to cope with the cognitive losses suffered by brain-injured people and chemotherapy and heart-surgery patients. Merzenich is also interested in testing the program on people with autism and bipolar disorder to see if their cognitive function could be improved.
With all this going on, Merzenich still manages to follow his own advice about living a life that is good for your brain. He exercises and does The New York Times crossword puzzle regularly and recently celebrated 40 years of marriage to his high school sweetheart, Diane Merzenich. He travels abroad often and comes home to tend a beehive, a garden, an orchard, and a vineyard at his Sonoma wine-country second home. And of course, he loves his work.
“If UC decided to cut my salary in half, I would not quit,” he says. “I get up every day and don’t know what I’m going to do, but I know it’ll be good. What a life!”
