Michael Merzenich

Michael M. Merzenich is a professor emeritus neuroscientist from UCSF. His contributions to the field are numerous. He took the sensory cortex maps developed by his predecessors like Archie Tunturi, Clinton Woolsey, Vernon Mountcastle, Wade Marshall, and Philip Bard, and refined them using dense micro-electrode mapping techniques. Using this, he definitively showed there to be multiple somatotopic maps of the body in the postcentral sulcus,^[1][2] and multiple tonotopic maps of the acoustic inputs in the superior temporal plane.^[3] He led the cochlear implant team at UCSF,^[4] which transferred its technology to Advanced Bionics,^[5] and their version is the Clarion cochlear implant.^[6] He collaborated with Bill Jenkins and Gregg Recanzone to demonstrate sensory maps are labile into adulthood in animals performing operant sensory tasks.^[7][8][9] He collaborated with Paula Talla, Bill Jenkins, and Steve Miller to form the company Scientific Learning,^[10] which was based on software they co-invented that remediates language-learning impairment.^[11] A six week training course leads to an expected two standard deviation improvement in speech skills in 6-10 year old children. Currently, Merzenich's second company, Posit Science, is working on a broad range of behavioral therapies.

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Merzenich has been honored by election into the National Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded the Ipsen Prize, Zülch Prize of the Max-Planck Institute, Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award, the Purkinje Medal, and Karl Spencer Lashley Award. Dr. Merzenich has published more than 200 articles. His work is also often covered in the popular press, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsweek. He has appeared on Sixty Minutes II, CBS Evening News and Good Morning America. He holds over 50 US patents.^[12][13]

Born in rural Oregon in 1942,^[14] Merzenich grew up fascinated by science. He attended Portland University, where he was valedictorian, receiving only one non-A, a C in a philosophy course in which he argued with the instructor. He earned his PhD in Physiology at Johns Hopkins Medical School in the lab of Vernon Mountcastle, studying neural coding of stimulus magnitude in the hairy skin.^[15] He left Johns Hopkins to conduct his postdoctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin under Jerzy Rose. There, he did a cross-species analysis of the cochlear nucleus in large game cats and pinnipeds, did the first auditory cortical microelectrode maps in the macaque with John Brugge, and the first somatosensory maps in the macaque with neurosurgeon Ron Paul. He left Wisconsin to join the faculty at UCSF as the only basic scientist in the clinical Otolaryngology department.^[16] He remains in the same department, now as a professor emeritus and holds the Sooy Chair.

References

1. ^ Brain Research 36:229-49, 1972
2. ^ J. Comp. Neurol. 181:41-73 1978
3. ^ Brain Research 50:275-96 1973
4. ^ Med. Biol. Eng. Computing 21:241-54 1983
5. ^ Advanced Bionics web page
6. ^ Clarion Cochlear implant web page
7. ^ J. Neurophysiol. 63:82-104 1990
8. ^ J. Neurophysiol. 67:1031-56 1992
9. ^ J. Neurosci. 13:87-103 1993
10. ^ Scientific Learning Home Page
11. ^ Science 271:77-84 1996
12. ^ Merzenich bio at Posit Science
13. ^ Lashley Award Recipients
14. ^ A Childhood in the Sticks, author MM Merzenich
15. ^ Exp. Brain Res. 10:251-64 1970
16. ^ OHNS at UCSF

Websites

• "On the Brain" Dr. Merzenich's blog
• Posit Science Corporation
• The Brain Fitness Channel
• Scientific Learning Corporation

See also

• Brain fitness
• Cognitive neuroscience
• Fast ForWord
• Neuroplasticity