Sharp as a Tack
[27 March 2006 - Forbes magazine] Aging minds can be made young again. New insights into the brain�s ability to rearrange itself, or �plasticity,� offer hope for fighting senility, Alzheimer�s and old age. Give Michael Merzenich 40 hours and he'll take ten years off your brain. He says. Merzenich, a professor of neuroscience at the University of California at San Francisco, has spent nearly his entire 35-year career divining the intricate electrophysiology of the brain. When he started his work, the reigning experts believed that our gray matter was hardwired, that once a human reaches adulthood, the mind does little more than fade away. But in the mid-1980s Merzenich started to prove the opposite, that brains are �plastic,� malleable, reprogrammable, capable of steady improvement through carefully designed exercises. Brain plasticity, the field that Merzenich helped pioneer, is now one of the hottest areas in medicine, one with hugely positive implications for an aging society. Six years ago 450 million people, or 7% of the world�s population, were over 65. By 2050, 16% of the world�s population, nearly 1.5 billion people, will have turned 65. Almost half of Americans older than 85 develop Alzheimer�s disease. ...

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