Investigators at the Mayo Clinic and the University of Southern California conducted the randomized and controlled IMPACT study, and Posit Science funded it with a research grant to the two institutions. In the study, half of the 524 participants, aged 65 to 93, did Brain Fitness about an hour a day, five days a week, for eight weeks. Members of the control group watched educational programs and then were quizzed on them. But the gains the controls showed were statistically not as significant as the gains of those who used Brain Fitness.

 

Nearly half of seniors 85 or older in the United States have full-blown dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, and Merzenich says there’s no time to waste. “We have the capacity to make almost everybody, every child and adult, stronger, healthier, better from the point of the machinery they are carrying around in their skull,” he says. “And what an impact that could have—what tremendous value it would have—to keep people healthier in their brain.”

 

Some researchers are skeptical about what Merzenich says the Brain Fitness program can do. Among the critiques, there’s doubt that older people developing cognition problems will have the concentration or the stamina to follow the program for the suggested hour a day for eight weeks.

 

For others, the notion of a scientist having “clients” is troublesome. Harvard University neurobiology professor John Maunsell says he admires Merzenich’s research but feels he is walking a thin line. “It’s always a concern when you have scientific reports coming from people who are not completely disinterested in the outcome,” he says.

 

Merzenich brushes aside such criticism, saying that going into the “real world” of commerce, as he calls it, is the way to help real people. As for the rigor of Brain Fitness, Merzenich concedes that changing the brain is hard work, but he says the effort is worth it, and points to his web sites, which are loaded with testimonials from users. “It’s like I’ve walked out of a fog,” Ed Steenerson says in one. “Anyone who’s known me over the past several years will have seen a real turnaround.”

 

Some of Merzenich’s drive to help others stems from his upbringing in rural Lebanon, Oregon. His father, a foreman at a lumber mill, and his mother, a homemaker, both had a strong work ethic, and their six children were expected to give something back to society. Merzenich credits his grandfather, an architect and building contractor who had emigrated from Germany, with fostering his scientific curiosity. His mother’s decline from Alzheimer’s helped focus his attention on the problems of older people with cognitive impairment.

 

A kid who built a radio from scratch and served as president of his high school’s science club, Merzenich graduated from the University of Portland in 1964 as valedictorian in a class of more than 300 students. He went straight to Johns Hopkins, where he earned his Ph.D. degree in neurophysiology in 1968. After his postdoctoral studies in sensory physiology at the University of Wisconsin, Merzenich headed west to the University of California, San Francisco as an assistant professor of otolaryngology and physiology.