Michael Merzenich on Brain Training, Assessments, and Personal Brain Trainers

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 17, 2009 |

Inter­view with Dr. Michael Merzenich, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor at UCSF, a lead­ing pio­neer in brain plas­tic­i­ty research. In the late 1980s, Dr. Merzenich was on the team that invent­ed the cochlear implant. In 1996, he was the found­ing CEO of Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (Nas­daq: SCIL), and in 2004 became co-founder and Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer of Posit Sci­ence. He was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in 1999 and to the Insti­tute of Med­i­cine this year. He retired as Fran­cis A. Sooy Pro­fes­sor and Co-Direc­tor of the Keck Cen­ter for Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San Fran­cis­co in 2007. You may have learned about his work in one of PBS TV spe­cials, mul­ti­ple media appear­ances, or neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty-relat­ed books.

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Cars don’t work because they don’t fly

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 9, 2009

Study Ques­tions Effec­tive­ness Of $80 Mil­lion Per Year ‘Brain Exer­cise Prod­ucts Indus­try for Elder­ly (Sci­ence Dai­ly) — “There is much research on the ben­e­fits of cog­ni­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion strate­gies among elder­ly who already expe­ri­ence mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI) or Alzheimer’s dis­ease, as well as on the pos­i­tive impact of phys­i­cal exer­cise. The researchers, how­ev­er, want­ed to evaluate…

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Your comments on cognitive training, Posit Science, Alzheimer’s Australia, gerontology, games

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 3, 2008 |

I have fall­en behind on answer­ing a few excel­lent recent com­ments ‑on cog­ni­tive train­ing over­all, Posit Sci­ence and Alzheimer’s Aus­tralia, geron­tol­ogy and the brain, the val­ue of videogames‑, so let me address them here: 1) Nicks says (Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams For Seniors Hous­ing, Health­care and Insur­ance Providers: Eval­u­a­tion Check­list) “This report is inter­est­ing and it addresses…

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