At UCSF, Merzenich quickly made his mark. His work mapping the auditory cortex of different species of animals led him to work with the team that in the mid-1980s developed the commercial version of the cochlear ear implant. The device, which is implanted in a two-hour surgery, restores hearing by stimulating the auditory nerve. It was this work that impressed upon him the incredible power of the brain to remake itself and the profound effect science could have in people’s lives.

 

Since its release more than 20 years ago, the device has been implanted in about 100,000 people worldwide. Its success has given Merzenich a real sense of urgency about the work, says Posit Science CEO Jeff Zimman. “He’s really a man with a mission,” Zimman says. “He’s in a hurry to get science out into the world.”

 

Brain Fitness has yet to achieve anything like the cochlear implant’s level of market penetration, but approximately 150 retirement communities across the United States and Canada now use the program. Meanwhile, one insurance company, Humana, has been offering the $395-program free or at a reduced price to its Medicare members since 2006. 

 

Charline Truitt, the owner of a company in Orange County, California, that audits mortgage banks, started using the program more than three years ago when she noticed that she was beginning to misplace her keys. “It sounds like a stereotype, but I would find myself in a room and not know why I was there,” she says.

 

Merzenich likens the aging brain to a radio not quite tuned into the right frequency. Doing the program, he claims, will sharpen how you take in and process information, similar to making a signal clearer. Truitt, who started the program in 2004, when she was 60, says she saw dramatic improvement after only a few weeks. “It’s amazing really,” she says. “The most pronounced was the improvement in my hearing. I had a hard time hearing in noisy rooms, but now I can hear fine. It was phenomenal.”

 

Posit Science has a new project partnering with Easter Seals, the nonprofit organization that works with people with disabilities, to bring the improvements in memory, communications skills, and clarity of thinking seen in older adults to veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have suffered traumatic brain injuries.

 

When not pursuing his entrepreneurial concerns, Merzenich leads the life of a typical academic scientist. From his 8th floor office at UCSF, he responds to scores of emails he gets from former students and colleagues looking for help with grants and getting papers published. He attends conferences and writes papers, reads up on the latest developments in his field and beyond, and advises the postdoctoral students who work with him.

 

On a recent morning, he met with Tom Babcock, a research assistant who is doing an experiment to try to ameliorate tinnitus—a persistent ringing in the ears—using himself as a subject. Merzenich reviews the results with him and discusses possible ways to improve them. Gracefully, he segues into a meeting with postdoctoral student Xiao Ming Zhou to talk about his experiment on rats and schizophrenia. Main order of business: Advising him where best to try to publish the results. During this conversation, another postdoctoral student, Linda Wilbrecht, comes in to try to set up a meeting.