Merkin Prize Awarded to Merzenich: He Overturned Dogma about the Brain to Create a Miracle for Addressing Deafness and 21st Century Digital Medicine
· Financial Post
SAN FRANCISCO, June 15, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dr. Michael Merzenich was named today as a recipient of the Richard N. Merkin Prize in Biomedical Technology, which recognizes novel technologies that have improved human health. The prize was established by the visionary health care executive for whom it is named, and is administered by the Broad Institute, one of the world’s leading biomedical research institutes. Dr. Merzenich and his fellow recipients were recognized for the invention of the cochlear implant, which has restored hearing to more than a million people with deafness. The cochlea is an inner ear organ that turns sound waves into electric pulses, which the brain interprets as sound. Dr. Merzenich is credited with solving the practical problem of how to connect a cochlear implant to the brain, given that the natural cochlea has thousands of connections. He figured out how to do it with just eight connections, by relying on his novel insight into how adult brains react to new input. Read More
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