Michael Merzenich

Oct 25, 2024 | psychologytoday.com | Michael Merzenich |Michael Merzenich Ph.D |Henry Mahncke

By Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. and Henry Mahncke, Ph.D.Next weekend, almost all of us in the United States and Canada will engage in that semi-annual ritual of adjusting our clocks by an hour. However, we are not just messing with our clocks. To some extent, we are messing with our brains.

Oct 21, 2024 | psychologytoday.com | Michael Merzenich |Henry Mahncke |Michael Merzenich Ph.D

By Michael Merzenich, Ph.D., and Henry Mahncke, Ph.D.We are in a season of fear. We are facing election fears just five days after Halloween. The quadrennial political election has become a quadrennial battle that seemingly threatens our existence. People ask: What’s going on in our brains? Why do we experience so much fear? The simple answer: Scary stuff activates the brain. When you encounter scary stuff, the brain kicks in—with vigor—to figure out survival.

Aug 9, 2024 | mdedge.com | Michael Merzenich

Publish date: August 9, 2024 Once again, America is deeply divided before a national election, with people on each side convinced of the horrors that will be visited upon us if the other side wins. ’Tis the season — and regrettably, not to be jolly but to be worried. As a neuroscientist, I am especially aware of the deleterious mental and physical impact of chronic worry on our citizenry.

Nov 8, 2023 | medscape.com | Michael Merzenich

"He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak." [Mark 7:37] I was privileged as a young scientist to lead a team that helped develop the modern cochlear implant, which (in several different forms) has restored hearing to approximately 800,000 formerly profoundly deaf individuals.

Oct 6, 2023 | mdedge.com | Michael Merzenich

Two antiamyloid drugs were recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating early-stage Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In trials of both lecanemab (Leqembi) and donanemab, a long-held neuropharmacologic dream was realized: Most amyloid plaques – the primary pathologic marker for AD – were eliminated from the brains of patients with late pre-AD or early AD.