HAPPYneuron Brain Games: Brain Training Product Review Survey

As part of our ongo­ing mar­ket research we’d like to ask past and cur­rent users of HAP­PYneu­ron prod­ucts to share their expe­ri­ence with us via this 3‑question anony­mous sur­vey.  Please take this sur­vey if you have used a HAP­PYneu­ron prod­uct your­self or have seen some­one else use it.

Take this 3‑question Survey

Please note that we do not endorse this prod­uct (or any oth­er) or any of the claims below. We inde­pen­dently track and ana­lyze emerg­ing brain/ cog­ni­tive sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy and inno­va­tion, and their real-world appli­ca­tions. This sur­vey helps us learn more about the latter.

Com­pany name: HAP­PYneu­ron.

Com­pany descrip­tion (in their own words, in their own web­site): “HAP­PYneu­ron is an award win­ning brain fit­ness pro­gram, which offers enter­tain­ing brain games that are fun and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly devel­oped and val­i­dat­ed to chal­lenge your mind and keep it in top gear at all times. The com­pre­hen­sive cog­ni­tive pro­gram stim­u­lates your atten­tion, lan­guage, mem­o­ry, visu­al-spa­tial and exec­u­tive func­tion skills. Incor­po­rate brain fit­ness into your lifestyle and start build­ing your cog­ni­tive reserve today. Try our risk free sev­en day tri­al mem­ber­ship. Start improv­ing your brain with­in min­utes. Designed for peo­ple of any age, the HAP­PYneu­ron brain fit­ness pro­gram min­i­mizes the nat­ur­al effects of brain aging by max­i­miz­ing the brain’s nat­ur­al capac­i­ty to learn and its abil­i­ty to adapt to new infor­ma­tion. The pro­gram’s effec­tive­ness is opti­mized through the avail­abil­i­ty of thou­sands of hours of fun and chal­leng­ing brain games, which are auto­mat­i­cal­ly adapt­ed to your abil­i­ty. Con­tin­u­al guid­ance is pro­vid­ed by your very own vir­tu­al per­son­al coach.”

Main prod­uct name/s: Mem­o­ry Games, Atten­tion Games, Lan­guage Games, Exec­u­tive Func­tion Games, Visu­al Spa­tial Games — for all ages.

Prod­uct descrip­tion (in their own words, in their own web­site): “Mem­o­ry Games: There are sev­er­al dif­fer­ent types of mem­o­ry: “Work­ing mem­o­ry” process­es infor­ma­tion over a span of about 15 sec­onds, “short-term mem­o­ry” retains infor­ma­tion for up to about 60 sec­onds and “long-term mem­o­ry” stores infor­ma­tion indef­i­nite­ly. Sus­tained prac­tice with mem­o­ry games helps to strength­en your mem­o­ry functions.

Atten­tion Games: Atten­tion and focus are crit­i­cal skills that help us to absorb, process and mem­o­rize infor­ma­tion. Atten­tion is also involved in pro­cess­ing the details, in under­stand­ing a writ­ten text and in men­tal­ly search­ing for a par­tic­u­lar word or term. Atten­tion exer­cis­es strength­en our abil­i­ty to focus and con­cen­trate on crit­i­cal information.

Lan­guage Games: The abil­i­ty to use lan­guage well is an impor­tant part of human cog­ni­tion and, in con­tem­po­rary soci­ety, ver­bal skills are of para­mount impor­tance. Lan­guage games train us to rec­og­nize, remem­ber and under­stand words. They also exer­cise our flu­en­cy, gram­mat­i­cal skills and vocab­u­lary. Fur­ther, reg­u­lar prac­tice can expand our knowl­edge of new words and make retrieval of famil­iar ones much easier.

Exec­u­tive Func­tion Games: Games that chal­lenge our exec­u­tive func­tion­ing help to train and sharp­en the high­ly com­plex cog­ni­tive process­es of log­ic, strate­gic plan­ning, prob­lem solv­ing, and deduc­tive rea­son­ing. In addi­tion to shap­ing these abstract process­es, the brain’s exec­u­tive sys­tem is also required for deci­sion mak­ing, rec­og­niz­ing errors, cop­ing with new sit­u­a­tions and inhibit­ing habit­u­al reac­tions when they are judged to be inap­pro­pri­ate. Thought to be local­ized main­ly in the pre­frontal cor­tex, the exec­u­tive sys­tem has been likened by neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists to the con­duc­tor of an orches­tra, help­ing to direct and con­trol a wide array of diverse men­tal process­es. To extend this metaphor, exec­u­tive func­tion train­ing gives us the prac­tice and rehearsal we need to keep the sym­pho­ny of our brain’s activ­i­ty in harmony.

Visu­al-spa­tial Games: Pro­cess­ing visu­al infor­ma­tion in a 3‑dimensional world is crit­i­cal. Our abil­i­ty to make sense of what we see helps us to inter­pret and nav­i­gate the world around us. Good visu­al and spa­tial skills help us to walk, run, dri­ve and enjoy much of the artistry in life. Visu­al and spa­tial games give us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to exer­cise these skills and help to keep us attuned to what is going on around us.”

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To learn more about Sharp­Brains’ gen­eral analy­sis of emerg­ing sci­ence, com­pa­nies, tech­nolo­gies and prod­ucts, please see…

• Our com­pre­hen­sive mar­ket report for deci­sion-mak­ers & inno­va­tors: Trans­form­ing Brain Health with Dig­i­tal Tools to Assess, Enhance and Treat Cog­ni­tion across the Lifes­pan: The State of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket 2010 ($975)
• Our book/ con­sumer guide for every­one with a brain, named a Best Book by AARP: The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews, to Keep Your Brain Sharp ($15 paper­back; $8 eBook)
• To Eval­u­ate Prod­ucts Mak­ing Brain Fitness/ Brain Train­ing Claims: 10-Ques­tion Eval­u­a­tion Check­list (free; online,  one-pager, bookmark)