A recent study hints that soldiers witnessing a horrific, traumatic event may be able to prevent flashbacks due to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) simply by playing a little Tetris.
Playing Tetris appeared to interfere with the brain’s ability to form a significant visuo-spatial memory of the traumatic event. Such memories are an important component to flashbacks. No such memories means a reduced likelihood of future flashbacks.
Granted, the study was conducted on undergraduate students as opposed to soldiers and the “traumatic” incident was a film not a true PTSD-inducing incident. Despite these limitations, this study is interesting in its implications.
First of all, do these findings suggest that in the future soldiers in the field will have a military-grade GameBoy tucked in their belt for emergency innoculations? (“Omigod! They shot Kenny! Break out the GameBoys, men!”) Will this have an effect on the efficacy of the military? (“How could you have missed that sniper on your perimeter check, Private?” “I was giving myself a PTSD shot, sir.”) Will the major video game companies be vying for military contracts?
On the other side of the coin, consider what this has done to those of us who have played way too much Tetris in our time. Is this visuo-spatial interference the reason I don’t remember my high school graduation? How I totalled my car the first time? The name of that girl I dated for three years?
If you want to conduct further studies on your own, you can play a free online version of Tetris here. Say good-bye to both your fears of PTSD and your productivity.
T. Keith Edmunds
4 Responses to “Innoculate yourself against PTSD: Play Tetris”
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I wonder if it is Tetris specifically, or any kind of simple-yet-challenging action that requires your brain to kind of zone out.
As I understand it, it’s the visuo-spatial aspect of Tetris that affects the ability to form memories (within a specific window of time). Other similar tasks/actions/games would probably have the same effect.
IMHOTEP (Wisdom to You!) BRTHRs Grant & Keith,
Indeed the “visuo-spatial” aspect of Tetris is what is conducive to Healing.
The reason behind this is that shapes are abstract– like the MIND.
Tetris & gameplay like it do not “affect the ability to form memories,” rather, educing the Power of the MIND by Concentrating on the abstract overrides the ability of memory to traumatize the affected individual(s).
We at The Dohgon University of Thought provide HEALING via meditation practices & gameplay that initiates the MIND to control & diminish the rampantly disastrous effects of unchecked emotional trauma.
Contact Professor Momoh for more information:
http://www.dohgonuniversity.com/contact.html
NARMER
(Think with a Unified brain & MIND!),
Todd M. Skorich
http://veight.wordpress.com
Agreed, although, I’d like to offer my own interpretation: One of the reasons why PTSD occurs is because traumatic memories are encoded with more clarity when the amygdala is called into play (ie memories with a strong emotional component). Gaming offers a distraction which may throw a monkey wrench into the memory formation process, and I would say that any game that a) pushes us to meet a time limit ; and b) is easy to win or score would provide a similar effect. A time limit keeps the brain focused on the game and less on the traumatic experience. Plus, winning gives us a happy little dopamine glow and encourages us to keep going. Oh, and we can’t forget about the prefrontal cortex, which certainly starts to whirr when we need to solve problems, thus shifting our brain from a less emotional, limbic state to our logical problem-solving state. Cool stuff, at least lab-wise. Further experimentation will be needed to assess the theory’s real-world practicalities.