On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Tinnitus. A special example of a failure mode for your plastic brain.
Millions of individuals (2% of humankind) are plagued by continuous sounds generated in their skulls, not coming from the real world. Because these ringing or roaring sounds are inescapable and because they strongly influence emotional-control processes in the brain, they can literally drive an individual who hears them incessantly just a little bit crazy. No one dies from tinnitus (although … Continue reading → (Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D.)
Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. - June 13, 2009 Category: Neurologists Authors: Dr. Michael Merzenich Tags: Aging and the Brain Brain Fitness Brain Fitness Program Brain Plasticity Brain Science Brain Trauma, Injury Neuroscience Posit Science Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Brain plasticity monitored and induced by magnetic stimulation
I had the pleasure of spending a day last week talking with a world authority on brain plasticity issues, Harvard professor Alvaro Pascual-Leone. Dr. Pascual-Leone has employed a special tool in many of his studies, both to document brain change, and to induce it for the benefit of patients. That tool is direct magnetic stimulation of the brain. A very … Continue reading → (Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D.)
Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. - June 11, 2009 Category: Neurologists Authors: Dr. Michael Merzenich Tags: Aging and the Brain Brain Fitness Brain Plasticity Brain Science Neuroscience Posit Science Source Type: blogs

Nature vs Nurture, redux
I made the mistake of watching a NOVA program that celebrated the career and scientific achievements of an important biological scientist, Professor E.O. Wilson. Dr. Wilson has been a wonderful observer of the behaviors and lives of ants, termites and other ‘social insects’. He describes them as instinctive creatures whose behavior is strictly determined by their programmed genetics. In an … Continue reading → (Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D.)
Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. - June 9, 2009 Category: Neurologists Authors: Dr. Michael Merzenich Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Autism and early oxygen deprivation
In a July 9th, 2008 post, I added oxygen deprivation incurred at childbirth as another factor potentially contributing to an increased incidence in autism. As I noted in that blog: “We have published compelling evidence that peri-natal anoxia meets all of the other criteria for adding to “noisy” brain processing. It can have strong, selective impacts on cortical inhibitory processes, … Continue reading → (Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D.)
Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. - May 30, 2009 Category: Neurologists Authors: Dr. Michael Merzenich Tags: Autism Origins, Treatments Brain Fitness Brain Plasticity Brain Science Childhood Learning Cognitive Impairment in Children Cognitive impairments Hearing Language Development Neuroscience Posit Science Reading and Dyslexia Scientif Source Type: blogs

A good life, spent usefully, to help
I was on the organizing committee and attended a National Academy of Sciences and W.M. Keck Foundation-sponsored meeting several months ago addressing the science and technology of “Smart Prosthetics”.  “Smart” prosthetics use information from the brain (or deliver information to the brain) to guide or control their functionality — for example, to control an artificial limb, to restore hearing or vision, to re-animate a paralyzed trunk or arm, etc.  One of the important young contributors to this meeting was a young Engineering (Biomechanics) Professor, Kevin Granata, a world authority on th...
Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. - April 19, 2007 Category: Neurologists Authors: Michael Merzenich Tags: Brain Fitness Brain Trauma, Injury BrainHQ Source Type: blogs

Why we do research
Why do we study autistic or dyslexic or schizophrenic or other subjects, in our scientific experiments? That is a question that was asked, rather impolitely, by “dyslexic in LA”, who challenged the “arrogance” of a perspective that engages such individuals as “scientific guinea pigs”. There are two simple answers to this question. We want to understand. If possible, we want to help. There are few if any individuals in the current era who have contributed more to understanding and helping autistic individuals than Tito, Soma, and Portia. I’ve tried to help them. I have the GREATES...
Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. - April 18, 2007 Category: Neurologists Authors: Michael Merzenich Tags: Aging and the Brain Autism Origins, Treatments Brain Fitness Brain Trauma, Injury Childhood Learning Cognitive Impairment in Children Cognitive impairments Language Development Reading and Dyslexia Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, et ali Source Type: blogs

The brain and the law, when Bobby goes bad
Each year I deliver a “guest lecture” in a medical ethics course at Stanford. My friend Bill Hurlbut, a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, is the course director. The issues that I raise in this course were addressed in part by an interesting cover story in the March 11th New York Times Sunday magazine (“The Brain on the Stand”), which considered some of the ways that contemporary neuroscience could be used in our legal system to neurologically determine truth from falsehood, or guilt from innocence. The article stated, quite correctly, that it should soon be possible to reconstru...
Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. - April 18, 2007 Category: Neurologists Authors: Michael Merzenich Tags: Aging and the Brain Brain Fitness Brain Trauma, Injury BrainHQ Childhood Learning Cognitive Impairment in Children Cognitive impairments Language Development Reading and Dyslexia Source Type: blogs

Another factor contributing to PTSD onset; the NUMBER of traumatic events
A scientific friend and colleague, Professor Thomas Elbert from Konstanz University in Germany, has had a long interest in applying “simple” treatments to individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSDs). With his wife Maggie and others, he has developed and applied such treatments to war victims, primarily in Africa and Sri Lanka. There, literally millions of individuals have endured great personal losses and multiple horrifying experiences. If and when these individuals are resettled back to their homes in Uganda or Liberia or Sierra Leone or Rwanda or Sudan or the Congo Republic or wher...
Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. - April 16, 2007 Category: Neurologists Authors: Michael Merzenich Tags: Brain Fitness Brain Trauma, Injury Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, et alia Source Type: blogs

How can the same brain plasticity-based training programs help individuals with cognitive losses arising from normal aging, exposure to IED explosions, or chemotherapy?
Over the past two weeks, I have specifically discussed the potential value of intensive brain plasticity-based brain fitness training for individuals with ALL of these (and other, related) personal histories. How in the heck can “one size fit all”? How on earth can the losses in mental faculties stemming from an explosion of little bubbles in the brain accompanying an IED blast be related to those derived from a slow, deliberate chemical poisoning of regenerative processes in the brain designed to limit the proliferation of cancerous tissues that are usually not even IN the brain, or to the normal deteriorati...
Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. - April 16, 2007 Category: Neurologists Authors: Michael Merzenich Tags: Aging and the Brain Brain Fitness Brain Trauma, Injury Childhood Learning Cognitive Impairment in Children Cognitive impairments “Chemobrain” and Related Causes of Cognitive Impairment Source Type: blogs

“What’s Normal?” The diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children is on the rise
In an article in the April 9th issue of the New Yorker, Jerome Groopman writes lucidly about the explosion in the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children. Reading it made me thank my lucky stars once again that I am not a child neurologist or child psychologist or child psychiatrist who actually has to address the problems presented by the instable child personality, one child at a time. As in the case of the ADHD “epidemic” that has resulted in the continuous medication of hundreds of thousands of children with strong neuro-active drugs, a rapidly growing population of kids are now being given even more po...
Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. - April 16, 2007 Category: Neurologists Authors: Michael Merzenich Tags: Autism Origins, Treatments Brain Fitness Childhood Learning Cognitive Impairment in Children Cognitive impairments Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, et alia Source Type: blogs

Alvaro asked a tough question: How do you define SMART?
Alvaro asked this question as a comment after a blog entry discussed recent evidence that physical exercise contributes to academic success. Alvaro, “smart”, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. You do not necessarily want a computer jockey next to you in your foxhole. You do not necessarily want a great world scholar managing your finances. If I lifted you up and dropped you down into a community of Aleuts or Bedouins or Ainu, it would take a very, very long time before anyone in that community viewed you as “smart”. “SMART” IS CONTEXTUAL. We commonly define “smart&...
Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. - April 16, 2007 Category: Neurologists Authors: Michael Merzenich Tags: Autism Origins, Treatments Brain Fitness Brain Science Childhood Learning Cognitive Impairment in Children Cognitive impairments Language Development Neuroscience Reading and Dyslexia Source Type: blogs