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>View discussions about this entry País: United States
Organization: Happy Neuron Inc.
Year work began: - 1998
Focus of activity - Service/process
Project URL: http://www.happy-neuron.com
Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions
What is your signature innovation in one sentence? - Happy Neuron provides a variety of personalized, low-cost neurocognitive stimulation to maintain neuropsychological health.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field? - Happy Neuron offers a broad range of scientifically-proven and personalized cognitive stimulation workouts. Designed for people of any age, the programs maximize the brain’s capacity to learn, adapt to new information, enable mental sharpness and minimize the natural effects of aging. Program effectiveness is optimized through the availability of thousands of hours of fun and challenging brain games and guided by an online personal coach.
What makes us different is the depth and variety of our cognitive exercises, the scientific basis for their efficacy and the personalized, on-line counseling afforded our clients over five major domains of neurocognitive functioning. Happy Neuron offers a comprehensive, multifunctional approach to cognitive stimulation. What barriers exist that are creating the problem your innovation is hoping to address/change? - In developed societies, as people age, cognitive stimulation may decrease significantly. People retire from lifelong employment, social networks deteriorate, families move away, physical activities become more circumscribed and the sphere of one's usual activities may gradually devolve. Conversely, in order to maintain intellectual acuity with age, one needs daily challenge with mental activities that keep the brain attuned, alert and engaged across several specific domains.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing. - Happy Neuron has a library of over 3000 hours of unique game playing time with a great variety of games and puzzles, all developed with scientific rationale, and with fun in mind. Activities are designed to stimulate five major domains of neurocognitive functioning: memory, attention, language, executive functioning and visual-spatial skills. Happy Neuron provides intelligent analysis based on demographics of Age, Gender & Education Level. Scores are compared to others in a similar demographic group within our online database of over 7.5M games completed to date. The electronic coach suggests specific exercises to ensure comprehensive brain cross-training. Tips for performance improvement and application to every day life are provided.
How do you plan to scale your innovation? - Happy Neuron has already reached a large audience through multiple channels and continues to grow. Thirty thousand book copies have been sold to date, published in four languages. More than 1.5 million CD/DVD's have been sold in nine different countries. Seven and a half million single-player games have been completed online to date in four languages. Happy Neuron has targeted both on-line and retail distribution, reaching people directly and through specialty channels. The solutions are suitable for the widest possible audience with computer access, reaching across the age range and across cultures in several languages.
Provide one sentence describing your impact. - Happy Neuron's products are designed to forestall the symptoms of age-related cognitive decline and to remediate early symptoms of dementia.
What impact has your innovation had to date? Exactly who are the beneficiaries of your innovation? - A pilot study of Happy Neuron games was conducted by a multi-disciplinary team of scientists and physicians in Des Moines, Iowa. Funded by the U.S. National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this study concluded that participants diagnosed with memory problems improved their cognitive skills significantly after consistent weekly workouts over a period of six months with Happy Neuron games. The study suggests the potential plasticity of the human brain and the potential afforded by Happy Neuron's unique approach to cognitive stimulation. Happy Neuron has the potential for preventing, reducing and delaying symptoms of cognitive decline. It has empowered individuals to be proactive in protecting their mental health. Beneficiaries cut across education, gender, age and socio-economic status, potentially assisting anyone who wants to maintain optimal mental health.
Please list any other measures reflective of the impact of your innovation - Increasing numbers of hospitals, clinics, retirement homes and private physician's offices are recommending or using Happy Neuron products in their daily practice. Many health professionals such as psychologists, speech therapists, ergo therapists, and graphotherapists have discovered the benefits of our products and services. Happy Neuron products have also been offered by insurance companies. Importantly, Happy Neuron is a thoroughly multi-national and cross-cultural enterprise.
What are the main barriers to creating your impact? - The main barriers to creating our impact are, first, the necessity to conduct a comprehensive program of neuropsychological outcomes research and, second, the task of disseminating accurate, understandable research results that increase public awareness of the benefits of brain fitness.
How is your initiative financed? - Happy Neuron Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Scientific Brain Training, France.
The company is privately funded. Provide information on your finances and organization: annual budget, annual revenue, number of staff: - Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff. The team is a small group of people, both full-time and part-time. All are specialized and committed to the area of brain health and wellness.
What is the potential demand for your innovation? - The potential demand is enormous in view of the aging "baby boom" generation and the underlying science of brain fitness and its benefits. For example, according to an analysis of census data conducted by the Metlife Mature Market Institute (2000), "baby boomers" represent 26% of the American population with over 40 million "baby boomers" aged 50 and over. By the year 2030, it is estimated that "baby boomers" aged 66-84 will make up about 20% of the total US population.
What are the main barriers to financial sustainability? - The main goals and challenges of many small businesses - fueling continued growth in order to further the research in cognitive fitness and bring the benefits of cognitive science to the public through continued creative product innovation.
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story. - In 1998, the founders of Happy Neuron, Bernard Croisile, MD, Ph.D, Michel Noir, Ph.D, and Franck Tarpin-Bernard, Ph.D., a neurologist/neuroscientist, a doctor of education and a computer scientist respectively, began a collaboration to turn neuroscience knowledge into computer based cognitive exercises:
2000 Scientific Brain Training founded (SBT) Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material - Dr. Bernard Croisile, MD, Ph.D., is a respected neurologist and neuroscientist with an international reputation for his research on aging and cognition. Recipient of the Alzheimer's Disease Parke-David Award in 1998, he has written at least a hundred peer-reviewed articles on aging and cognition. Currently, he is Chief of the Neuropsychology Laboratory at the Neurological Hospital of Lyon, France and Vice-President of Scientific Affairs, and Director of the Memory Clinics of Lyon's hospitals.
Contact Information:
Bernard Croisile
Chief Scientist Happy Neuron Inc. (Business) Discussions about this entry |
Use It or Lose It! Brain Training for a better quality of life with age.
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I wonder whether you've yet had a chance to see, or hear about, the NYT article whose writers argue that the "case" proving the success of "brain-training" games is quite weak.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/opinion/08aamodt.html?em&ex=1194757200&en=cc24b7f2823ab62f&ei=5087%0A
I'm so eager to hear whatever thoughts you might be willing to share.
Best,
Diane
Changemakers
Thanks for your entry. It prompts a question.
You've indicated that your product's distinction (from other brain-training devices) is its massive online database of 7.5 million games that (you suggest) have been proven to work. Yet, when it comes to testing, you refer to a single test (or round of tests) (done in Des Moines with CDC funding.) I'm having trouble making sense of what seems a discrepancy. Might you help?
I look forward to hearing your response.
Diane
Changemakers
Diane,
Sorry for the misunderstanding. Happy-Neuron maintains an inventory of over
60 distinct games and puzzles, each with multiple variables and categorized
by five functional components including attention, memory, spatial
abilities, language and executive functioning. Taken together our games and
puzzles afford 3000 unique hours of game playing time and have been played
online over 7.5 million times since early 2006.
All of Happy Neuron's products have emerged from multi-year programs of
neurocognitive research under the direction of Happy Neuron's chief
scientist, Dr. Bernard Croisile. Previous research by Croisile (2002, 2006),
Stern et al. (2004), Wilson et al. (2002), and Willis et al. (2006), among many
others, successfully demonstrated the generally salutary effect of cognitive
stimulation on the aging brain. Our CDC funded pilot study in Iowa is the
inaugural study of online stimulation that we hope will initiate a
comprehensive program of continued research in collaboration with leading
neuroscientists from around the world. Open questions for the field as a
whole remain: exactly how much of what kind of stimulation yields what
specific outcomes in which target populations?
Happy Neuron's strengths are the richness and variety of its games at
various levels of difficulty that keep the player interested and challenged.
Diana Miner
Scientific Product Manager
Happy-Neuron Inc.