Michael Merzenich

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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 Tallal, Bill Jenkins, and Steve Miller to form the company Scientific Learning,[10]. This was based on Fast ForWord software they co-invented that produces improvements in children's language skills that has been related to the magnitude of their temporal processing impairments prior to training.[11] The benefits of this software for remediating poor language skills in general remains largely unsubstantiated [1]. Currently, Merzenich's second company, Posit Science, is working on a broad range of behavioral therapies. Their lead product is brain-training software called Cortex (TM) with InSight (TM)[12].

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.[13][14]

Born in rural Oregon in 1942,[15] Merzenich grew up fascinated by science. He attended the University of Portland, 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.[16] 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.[17] He remains in the same department, now as a professor emeritus and holds the Sooy Chair.

[edit] 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. ^ Posit Science Cortex™ with InSight™ - Posit Science Corporation
  13. ^ Merzenich bio at Posit Science
  14. ^ Lashley Award Recipients
  15. ^ A Childhood in the Sticks, author MM Merzenich
  16. ^ Exp. Brain Res. 10:251-64 1970
  17. ^ OHNS at UCSF

[edit] Websites

[edit] See also