Narrator: From a very young age, Glenna Dowling -- the department chair of physiological nursing at UCSF - seemed destined for a career in medicine.
Dowling: "I always knew from the time I was little that I wanted to be a professional ...I was the one in 8^th grade who brought the sheep brains home.. ...older people.....and the brain... about the brain. Older people have always been important.... view older people differently."

Narrator: And one way she is doing that...is by modifying a popular video game...to help her patients stay active and independent.

Dowling: "A lot of the people that I deal with clinically and in research have Parkinson's disease...at risk for falling... balance... We recently received some NIH funding to adapt the Nintendo Wii platform to develop a series of games so that people can do it whenever they want; they don't have to leave home. We'd like to develop a dual player version eventually, so that people could play with their grandkids or their partners or whatever.

Narrator:   At UCSF's Mission Bay campus, I'm Shipra Shukla.