By EMS1 Staff
OXFORD, England — Tetris – a tile-matching video-game classic – is being credited as a new therapeutic tool for reducing the onset of PTSD.
“We wanted to have a task that really tapped into visual memory. With Tetris, it’s the colors, shapes and movements that are very absorbing,” Professor Emily Holmes, an expert in psychology at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said.
Holmes has spent years studying the game’s medical advantages, NY Post reported. A phenomenon dubbed the “Tetris effect,” which is when gamers spend hours gazing at falling pieces, can ease the impact of traumatic events.
Holmes’ team at the University of Oxford gave Tetris therapy to 71 volunteer patients suffering from shock after traffic accidents. After 20 minutes, memories of the events stopped being formed.
“Our findings suggest that if you engage in very visually demanding tasks soon after a trauma, this can help block or disrupt the memory being stored in an overly vivid way,” Holmes said.
Holmes said there is a six-hour window of opportunity after a traumatic event for the intervention to be successful.
“It would make a huge difference to a great many people if we could create simple behavioral psychological interventions using computer games to prevent post-traumatic suffering and spare them these grueling intrusive memories,” Holmes said.