November was Alzheimer’s Awareness Month.
It was suggested that it would be appropriate if I helped to publicize this by reviewing a new set of online games designed to keep your mind healthy and your brain fit: Happy Neuron online brain games.
I forgot.
Better late than never, after the jump.
Increasing scientific evidence shows that actively participating in appropriately designed brain fitness workouts can defer the onset of diseases like Alzheimer’s. Happy Neuron online brain games were developed by cognitive psychologists and are designed to keep your five main cognitive functions sharp (memory, attention, language, executive functions, visual/spatial).
With more than 25 online games and a personal, virtual coach to guide you through the customized brain workouts and gauge your progress/identify areas of weakness, Happy Neuron provides an easy and fun way to break a mental sweat.
Happy Neuron games can be accessed by the individual online, from any computer without the need for a separate game or console. While they are similar to some of the Brain Games currently being marketed for the Nintendo and Sony PSP systems, the online availability is a real plus. If nothing else, you can stretch your brain at work while you’re waiting on hold without looking like you’re playing on a handheld game.
The games are entertaining Flash-based exercises and are accessible from any Flash enabled browser. Happy Neuron offers two memberships: a monthly membership for US $9.95 a month and an annual membership for US $99.95 a year. Each membership comes with a free 7 day trial.
The games are divided into five categories aligned around specific critical thinking skills:
* Memory
* Attention
* Language
* Executive Functions
* Visual and Spatial
According to the company’s web site, they focus on training both short and long-term memory, attention and focus, visual and spatial processing, functions of logic, strategy, planning, problem solving and deductive reasoning. I found most of them to be both challenging and entertaining. And conveniently, most of them can be played in a short enough time frame to meet the needs of my available free time at work and my attention span which I often liken to being that of a Golden Retriever puppy.
Keeping with the adage that you can’t improve what you can’t measure, Happy Neuron provides each registered user with an online “coach,” who tracks your progress, compares it with others’ performances and recommends topics to work on. This provides the opportunity to compare your own performance on specific skills to the performance of others your age, gender, and education level to give you a sense of where you need to work even harder and where you can just glide through.
I had a friend that drank a lot of beer while we were in college together. OK, I had a lot of friends who drank a lot of beer while we were in college. But this particular friend had a deeply held rationalization for his habits. When asked if he was worried if he was killing so many brain cells with his partying, he replied, “Nahh. I’m only killing the weak ones!” His theory was that like a pack of wildebeest being hunted across the veldt by hungry lions, every now and then you have to sacrifice a weak member of the herd to strengthen the overall population.
I don’t necessarily subscribe to that theory, but hey, if you’re willing to spend $9.99 on a six pack of Amstel Light to kill some brain cells, why not spend the same amount once a month to help protect and stimulate the ones you have left?
Check out Happy Neuron online brain games at their website.
