![]() Merzenich is one of the few scientists and doctors who, in the past 30 years, have transformed the field of neurology by overturning the dogma that our mental abilities are immutable and fixed early in life. Ryan would have never have recovered from such an injury if the human brain didn't have a remarkable capacity to change." "I choose not to talk about these things publicly because I don't want people to think that if you have 30 per cent of your frontal lobes removed you can expect this kind of recovery," Merzenich says. Last time he spoke to Ryan, he was driving again, playing the guitar, had a job and was talking about getting married. Merzenich keeps in touch with the Reitmeyers. ![]() ![]() "We can improve and often fix it, whether you're 90 or when you're nine" One of his mantras is to hear, feel and taste as if he were a child again. ![]() He talks with the confidence of someone who believes he's usually right. Merzenich has silver hair and exudes bonhomie. He researched brain-damage therapies and attended conferences and seminars, until he came upon the work of Michael Merzenich, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, and founder of Posit Science, a company pioneering brain-fitness software to improve memory and processing speed in older adults. Reitmeyer was willing to prove the medics wrong, so he took early retirement and dedicated his life to helping his son make a full recovery. When Doug Reitmeyer asked the surgeon if he could save his son's life, the surgeon said that he could, but that Ryan would probably never be able to speak or live independently again. Surgeons had to remove part of his brain's frontal lobes, leaving him with an indentation in his head, where parts of his brain and skull were missing. Surgery to remove the shattered bone that had pierced his brain lasted several hours and he was in a coma for two weeks. The Sea Ray's five occupants went overboard and Ryan's head was crushed between the two boats. Ryan, 29, was driving the small Sea Ray boat across lake Travis, a reservoir on the Colorado River in Texas, when it collided with a ten-metre black Carver cabin cruiser that had no lights on. At about 9.45pm, four of Ryan's friends had asked him to take them back to their car across the lake. Reitmeyer's son, Ryan, had had a devastating boat accident two years earlier. One day in January 2007, a US federal government construction contractor called Doug Reitmeyer arrived at the offices of a brain-fitness software company called Posit Science, in downtown San Francisco. “These findings are quite exciting given that they both reproduce critical elements of the study of this technology in older adults and suggest that this treatment approach can have powerful effects across the lifespan and in distinct populations with specific cognitive deficits,” said Joaquin Anguera, from the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry at UCSF and lead author of the study.Īkili’s Project: EVO is currently still under evaluation in a large clinical trial with ADHD patients, a study that aims to get the game FDA approved as a medical treatment. In the clinical study, 57 children with sensory processing disorder, a condition that affects how the brain receives and responds to sensorial information, played Project: EVO for four weeks.Īfter the treatment, the symptoms in 33 per cent of the patients had improved to the extent that they no longer met the criteria for the disorder. *Update: :*On 5 April, Akili Interactive Labs announced the results of a study demonstrating its cognitive-training computer game, Project: EVO, improves the symptoms of children with cognitive deficits.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |