Yet the cochlear implant suggested otherwise. Science at the time held that after a period of "plasticity" in childhood, the structure of the brain became fixed. He met a surgeon and helped him work on a device for the hearing impaired that shocked the acoustic nerve, mimicking the electrical patterns sent to the brain to represent sound. The program assesses the brain's level of functionality, then continues to calibrate tasks with improvement, pushing and challenging users with harder tasks as they move forward.įor Merzenich, the road to becoming an entrepreneur began when he was a young assistant professor at the University of California at San Francisco. The brain-fitness program is offered on Posit's website at $395 for one user and $495 for two. They sold their first consumer version last year, and are distributing them through Humana, the second-largest health insurer in the United States.Įarlier this week, the company announced its first deal with a long-term-care insurer, Penn Treaty, which will offer the brain fitness programs to its members at no cost. Already its product is used in "brain fitness centers" in more than 150 retirement communities across North America.
#Brain gym merzenich software
But executives say the company had its first two profitable quarters this year, and the market for its software is growing. Posit does not disclose its financial results. But its chief executive, Jeff Zimman, says it is too early to say when and if Posit Science will go public. I think the company is approaching a threshold of awareness that could take it to the next level."īegun in October 2003, Posit Science has raised $30 million in venture capital. But we hope they'll be a multibillion-dollar global company. "I'd call it a growth-stage, or pre-I.P.O. "Mike's work has deep implications for the way we live our lives," says Steve Jurvetson, a managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and the biggest investor in Posit Science. Some prominent technology venture capitalists have invested in Posit, which got its start four years ago. If this is a revolution, Merzenich has plenty of followers in Silicon Valley. This is an effort to create a juggernaut. We're going to broadly deal with problems in the brain. "It's also going to explode in the number of ways it's used and it's going to be everywhere.
"This is going to explode in acceptance," he says. Through Posit Science, Merzenich hopes to develop programs that will tackle a wide array of problems previously treated with traditional medicine, ranging from traumatic brain injuries to neurological disorders like Parkinson's to acquired movement disorders to pathological aging-even schizophrenia.
Instead of medications, he sees a business rooted in neuroscience that will use noninvasive computer exercises to rewire the brain, gradually training it back to mental health.
He wants to go far beyond simply sharpening memory and cognitive ability to tackle diseases as well. He envisions his company as part of a new industry that will become a "mirror" of the drug industry. (The Food and Drug Administration has not issued an opinion on mental-fitness programs.)īut Merzenich has loftier ambitions.
For an aging baby-boom generation that seeks to keep physically fit, there is a ready market for such mental fitness programs, and Posit sells tens of thousands of them. The business based on the science has so far involved selling software programs that give the brain a workout-improving skills like memory and processing speed. But research by Merzenich and others has demonstrated the ability of the brain to adapt to new conditions in ways previously thought not possible. Scientists once believed that the adult brain was largely unchangeable.
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