The story of MindPulse and the start-up It’s Brain begins with Sandra Suarez, the start-up’s current CEO and scientific director, deciding in 2008 to design a new tool to help with the diagnosis of attention and executive disorders. While working as a psychologist-neuropsychologist following a career in basic research in the field of neuroscience, she spotted there was a gap. “I realised that there was a huge gap between recent advances in neuroscience research and the tests used by clinicians, so I thought it was time to develop a tool which reflected these advances.” Since the cognitive functions which the tool aims to measure are related to brain function, they are similar in mammals and humans, regardless of language. This was the driving force behind the neuropsychologist’s idea. “I wanted the tool to be used across the world, with no cultural barriers.”

From an idea to a project with the NeuroPSI Institute

Sandra Suarez found the right concept in 2010 and was ready to turn her idea into a reality. It involved creating a test which generated enough data to apply algorithms to analyse attention and executive functioning in a very advanced way. The results would then be used to identify and measure patients’ loss of attention or concentration and to detect the origin of this. Sandra Suarez put this idea to her friend, Sylvie Granon, now a lecturer in neurobiology at NeuroPSI. Enthused, Sylvie Granon joined the project in 2011. Thanks to her expertise and experience with reaction times and decision making in animals, she added, among other things, a new aspect to the idea in order to avoid false positives. The patient is asked to hold the mouse and release it in response to the stimuli, and not to click. “As this approach requires a commitment to act, it prevents loss of attention during the task,” Sylvie Granon explains.