Video Games vs. the Aging Brain

In his twenties, Mike Merzenich dreamed of mapping the neurobiology of the soul. “I was interested in the genesis of the self,” he says. “It’s the kind of thing you think about when you’re young and dumb.” Four decades later, he has scaled back his ambitions. Now a graying 64, he hopes merely to reverse the toll of aging on the brain and cure schizophrenia. Without surgery or drugs.