Brain Science Podcast #54 is an interview with Dr. Michael Merzenich, one of the pioneers of neuroplasticity. We talk about how the success of the cochlear implant revealed unexpected plasticity in adult brains and about how brain plasticity can be tapped to improve a wide variety of problems including dyslexia, autism, damage from disease and injury. Healthy people of all ages can also tap the resource of brain plasticity to help maintain and improve their mental functions.
Listen to Dr Merzenich’s Interview
Episode Transcript (Download PDF)
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Links and References
- Dr. Merzenich’s Blog
- Posit Science Corporation
- Scientific Learning (Fast Forward™)
Previous Episodes on Brain Plasticity
Send email feedback to Ginger Campbell, MD at docartemis at gmail.com
{ 10 comments }
Ginger, Thanks for the excellent interview with Dr. Merzenich! He clearly knows how to speak to a broad audience; your questions gave him ample opportunity to lay out the history and important educational implications of neuroplasticity! I know my coaching clients and students will appreciate hearing Merzenich’s thoughts on the differences between visual and auditory sensing.
Synaptically yours,
Dr. G.
Founding Director/Publisher, The George Greenstein Institute, creating a sustainable future by coaching bodies, brains and minds!
P.S. I especially appreciated Dr. Merzenich’s address of scientific daring — the vision and fortitude one must bring to conducting long term research that leads to great paradigmatic break through!
Let’s here it for the scientists who use the scientific method to think outside the box!
Hi Ginger,
Thank you for another great program. Although, I acknowledgde that Dr. Merzenich’s work re brain training has been groundbreaking, I wish that you had the opportunity to address his claims regarding the effectiveness of programs such as Fast For Word.
Dr. Merzenich stated that his program rely on rigorous research; however, a review conducted by the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy indicated that randomized controlled trials showed no significant effect on students’ reading achievement.
http://www.evidencebasedprograms.org/Default.aspx?tabid=147
Howell,
Thank you providing this important reference. It should be noted that none of the children in the study you site were dyslexic or autistic. While Dr. Merzenich made no explict claims during our conversation about using Fast Forword in the general classroom setting, I agree that such claims are implied on the Fast Forword website. Clearly this study indicates that the program may not be effective for all children.
If I have a chance to talk with Dr. Merzenich further I will ask him about this.
Hi I just wanted to say that this was a most inciting podcast! Special thanks to DR Campbell for some great questions that she put to DR Merzenich.
I would like to also add that being dyslexic, I find some of what DR Merzenich had to say a little not in keeping with my own experiences. I think DR Campbell points this out very well (blog) highlighting potential problems with some of what was talked about.
I would like to back this up with the fact that I am very Dyslexic but learned to speak a second language fluently & also that without a doubt learning via visual stimulation (strong association) has been my brake through. This also backs up Dr Campbell (blog underlining the word heterogeneous, Learning Impairment)!
Though one can’t argue with clinical data and I’m sure that this is all well and good but I would like to think that there is more than one way to skin a cat & as for the monkeys talked about in the program, I can imagine it must have been difficult to categorize the monkeys different levels of learning disabilities.
I am also a little confused about the way when you go to the fast forward site or link to it there are no examples of how you go about your training. I understand that you must charge for this but maybe if it is so successful shouldn’t the government be bringing this in front of the schools and public eye.
On thing is definite the great plasticity of the brain may well be why so many people who don’t fit into the great education main stream system still manage to get by. With a little more effort in anything you set your mind to do, a lot more can be achieved.
I find this site great for my boys:
http://www.childu.com/sampleactivity.html
Anyway keep up the good work to the both of you.
Kind regards,
Jonathon
ps one Q. how much is the fast forward program, sorry for not doing more research.
I honestly don’t know how much Fast Forword™costs.
Jonathon makes a very good point that it is a mistake to think that a one size fits all approach is appropriate for something like dyslexia, which probably represents wide range of problems.
I would like to mention that back in Episode 29 I interviewed Dr. Maryanne Wolf, from Tufts University. Dr. Wolf specializes in helping children, including those with dyslexia, learn how to read. She has created a different approach to the problem and in her interview she talked specifically about the diversity of problems that are currently labeled “dyslexia.”
It is interesting to me that so many comments have focused on the commercial products that Dr. Merzenich has helped developed. I thought the most exciting thing about his lecture was the idea that brain plasticity is available to everyone. You don’t need to buy anything. You just need to stay engaged in life and be open to new challenges.
Ginger,
While I do personally find neuroplasticity exciting, at 25 I feel capable of consciously exercising my brain by trying new things (much like Norman Doidge talked about as well). I, like your fellow listeners, am interested in Dr. Merzenich’s computer programs for my relatives. In particular, my grandmother, who is currently in her 80s. She just graduated from college 2 years ago (!) and seemed to be doing a great job maintaining her mental wherewithal. Since graduating, however, I think she is not getting nearly the same stimulation she previously had.
I am hoping that if we buy her one of Dr. Merzenich’s programs that they will help her maintain her mental faculties for longer. So, like the people in the other comments, I too am most curious about his commercial programs. They are rather expensive ($400 each last I looked), and I’m not really sure which one to get (one is more visually based, the other more hearing based).
Either way, thanks for your work on the podcast–I only came across it a few weeks ago and had been looking for something like it for a while.
John
PS-Oh, and about the cost of FastForward: I’m pretty sure it’s not for sale to individuals. I believe it’s marketed to school systems. I think there might be some kind of summer camps as well (that’s what the case detailed in Norman Doidge’s book seemed to be describing).
John,
First, thank you for making the clarification about Fast Forword. However, one does get the impression from the Scientific Learning website that the product can purchased by parents. I have not had occasion to determine if this is so, but since most states fund programs for children with learning disabilities it seems logical that this would be purchased by schools. The study Jonathan sited above found that it was not effective in helping children without diagnosed dsylexia.
Your grandmother’s story illustrates the challenge that older people face. Most don’t have the chance to go to college in their later years, and it takes conscious effort to learn new skills, especially outside the classroom setting. The price tag of the Posit Science programs puts them out of reach for many elders. As far as whether the hearing or vision program would be best, I suggest you talk with your grandmother to see if she has noticed problems in one area or the other, or if she finds one or the other more appealing. (Its too expensive to buy without making sure she will use it.) For example, after listening to Dr. Merzenich’s interview, my husband (age 62) commented that he has recently noticed that when he is watching football on TV he now misses infractions away from the ball that he used to see without effort. This is an real life example of the sort of thing Dr. Merzenich mentioned.
My thanks to you, and to Dr. Merzenich, and to your transcriber Jenine John. I have had the Posit Science Brain Fitness Program 2.0 for over a year, after seeing the first PBS show hosted by Peter Coyote that some called an “informercial” for it, and I’ve worked with it. I found it somewhat boring, to tell the truth. But after hesitating since I got it about introducing it to my computer-phobic father I’m going to try to do so, and the transcript of your podcast will help me. My father has complained about not being able to understand fast speech, and maybe this is an angle I can use – as well as showing him that the controls for the program are relatively simple. It won’t be easy, but as he recently stated that he thinks he may live to be one hundred years old, possibly I could convince him to try it.
In a different podcast I’ve heard, of a speech Merzenich gave at PARC – the Palo Alto Research Center – he stated that his mother, in her 80s, was at the fifth percentile of speech perception for her age, but after training she moved to the 80th percentile. The PARC speech is downloable from http://tinyurl.com/cw2e7z
This gives me hope my dad may experience meaningful improvement. He’ll be 96 this summer, and although he tires easily and started to use a walker last year he’s in relatively good health generally speaking – I’m 61 and take more maintenance medications than he does.
After your generosity in sharing this transcript, I I hesitate to suggest any improvements, but here they are. There are a couple of words that the transcriber wasn’t sure of. I believe they are as follows:
PAGE 15
you cannot really generate a FACILE reader
PAGE 23
But when they hear words in a continuous FLOW they have enough information
And – a truly minor point – it would be helpful, when printing the transcript, for each page to be numbered.
Thanks again.
Thanks so much for the feedback, especially with regards to the transcripts. I agree that the pages should be numbered and I will be sure to do that in the future.
I hope you will consider letting us know how things turn out with your dad. Please consider posting to our Discussion Forum at http://brainscienceforum.com. There has been a mixed response to Dr. Merzenich’s interview and I am sure others would be interested in your actual experience with the Posit Science program.
I would like to thank you for the excellent interview with Dr Merzenich. I am interested in finding out how I can find out more about “fastforward” for my daughter who has language difficulties. She is young, and only at the beginning stages of learning to read, so I believe it is a perfect time to try implement the programme for her. We do not live in America, and I am interested to know how I could go about trying to find out whether there are professionals in other countries working with this programme. I am very keen to begin as soon as possible, so if you have some details as to whom I can contact I would really appreciate it.
Thanks again,
Shifra
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