The Bakkens and their foundation have been major contributors to healthcare causes on the Big Island. Bakken served for years as board chairman of the North Hawai'i Medical Center in Waimea and contributed $3 million to the acquisition of an advanced magnetic resonance imaging device. He also provided seven defibrillators for use at rural fire stations, and last year pledged $900,000 to help cope with the island's crystal methamphetamine problem.

Although the foundation's latest gift is to an Ohio institution, officials said it will benefit Big Island residents by creating an affiliation between the urban Cleveland Clinic and the rural North Hawai'i hospital, which opened in 1996 and uses healing practices such as acupuncture and naturopathy to complement more traditional medical care.

Bakken was present Wednesday in Cleveland for the gift announcement, which included a Hawaiian blessing.

The center, to be called the Earl and Doris Bakken Heart-Brain Institute, will be housed in the new Cleveland Clinic Heart Center, scheduled to open in early 2008. Officials said it will be the first of its kind in the world, establishing the new field of heart-brain medicine.

"We recognize the heart and the brain as two of the most important interactive organs in the body, yet most research looks at them independently," said Dr. Ali Rezai, acting co-director of the new center. He called Bakken "a visionary" for his belief in a unified approach to the heart and brain as an interconnected and interdependent system.

A clinic news release said research in the area already has begun, including studies on how brain pacemakers and heart pacemakers might work in concert.