The game Tetris helps reduce post-traumatic stress
Author: Terra Lewis
The computer game Tetris helps reduce flashbacks after seeing pictures traumatic, which is not the case with other types of video games, according to a study by the University of Oxford published in the journal Plos One .
Tetris
In a previous study, researchers showed that the game Tetris could reduce flashbacks after seeing pictures traumatic. The flashbacks are a characteristic symptom of PTSD. In a new study, they compared the effectiveness of Tetris with that of Pub Quiz Machine 2008, a quiz based on words. Unlike Tetris, Pub Quiz increased the frequency of flashbacks.
Tetris is effective to reduce flashbacks when played in a critical window of six hours after watching a stressful film, says Emily Holmes of the Department of Psychiatry, who led the work.
These results support the theory that the mind (mind) has two separate channels: one channel that processes sensory direct perceptual experience of the world through sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, and a channel concept which is responsible for putting together these perceptual experiences significantly by placing them in context. In general, these two channels operate in equilibrium. For example, the perceptual channel is used to see and hear someone speak and another to understand the meaning of what he says.
But when a person is exposed to trauma, these channels would operate unequally so that the perceptual information is amplified at the expense of conceptual information. The person is thus less likely to remember an experience of road accident as a coherent story, and more likely to remember it by flashes of lights and noise of a crash. This information then appears perceptual repeatedly in the spirit in the form of flashbacks that cause great emotional distress, few have been associated conceptual sense.
Studies indicate that there is a maximum of six hours after injury during which it is possible to interfere with how these memories are formed.
During this period, certain tasks may be competing for the use of channels in the brain that are needed to form memories. Recognize the shapes and move blocks of Tetris compete with the images of the trauma. Instead, the verbal play between competing with the memory of the contextual meaning of the trauma, so that the memory of the visual channel is enhanced and the flashbacks are increased.
“While this work is still experimental and that any potential treatment is still far away, we begin to understand how intrusive memories (flashbacks) are formed after trauma and how we can use science to explore new preventive treatments “says Dr. Holmes. “Research is still at an early stage and action must be carefully taken before this can be clinically tested,” she says.
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