Tetris Could Help Those With Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
According to a British study, Tetris, a popular video games created by Alexey Pajitnov in 1985, reduced flashbacks in people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after a traumatic event.
The findings could lead to new treatments to prevent flashbacks in people suffering from PTSD, said the Oxford University researchers.
"This is only a first step in showing that this might be a viable approach to preventing post traumatic stress disorder," said study leader, and psychologist Emily Holmes.
"This was a pure science experiment about how the mind works from which we can try to understand the bigger picture," she added.
PTSD is common in soldiers who have been through wartime traumas such as seeing others killed, or being wounded.
Symptoms of the disorder can range from inability to sleep to outbursts of anger. Those with PTSD relive their traumatic event often.
To conduct the study, the team from Oxford showed a film filled with traumatic imagery to 40 healthy volunteers.
After a waiting period of 30 minutes, half of the volunteers played Tetris for 10 minutes, and the remaining volunteers did nothing.
Those who participated in Tetris had significantly fewer flashbacks over the following week.
Tetris is a puzzle game that involves moving shapes composed of 4 square blocks while they fall down a screen. The goal is to create a full line with the blocks. Once a line is created it disappears.
The Oxford team believes that recognizing the shapes, and moving them in the game competes with the images of trauma stored in the sensory part of the brain.
The group, whose findings are published in this week’s edition of the Public Library of Science Journal PLoS ONE, believes the process may interfere with how sensory memories are formed following a traumatic event.
"We know there is a period of up to six hours in which it is possible to affect certain types of memories that are laid down in the human mind," said Catherine Deeprose, who worked on the study.
"We have shown that in healthy volunteers, playing Tetris in this time window can reduce flashback-type memories without wiping out the ability to make sense of the event."
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