A study conducted by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden found that the video game Tetris assisted in helping victims of motor vehicle accidents have fewer intrusive memories merely a week after the experience.
The human mind is a curious biological process that will spend hours working on a single memory, pushing out proteins to solidify a recollection among neurons. Without that process, none of us would acquire long-term memories. Unfortunately, when a traumatic event occurs, intrusive memories can plague
The other half of the group was tasked with jotting down what they did at the hospital in a journal, whether that be texting, completing crossword puzzles or reading. Patients kept adding entries in their journals for a week after the accident.
Researchers reported that the patients who played Tetris after the accident had an average of nine intrusive memories. That's 62 percent less than the average number of memories experienced by those who kept a journal. By playing the video game, it dulled or blurred visual memories, according to Holmes. "The memory becomes less intense. It takes the edge off of it."
[caption id="attachment_12674" align="aligncenter" width="416"] Number of intrusive memories of the traumatic event in the intervention (Tetris) and control (Journal) conditions / journal Molecular Psychiatry[/caption]
Although the success of this study is astounding and a real breakthrough, don't expect to be seeing Game Boys popping up in hospitals any time soon. Mark Salter, a British consultant psychiatrist, told CNN that, "The study is small ... and not everyone plays Tetris or is computer literate." However, he was eager to add, "What's exciting about this is that it happens quickly."
Even Holmes is not entirely convinced Tetris would work well as a medical intervention. She said she viewed the research done by her team as validation of their ten years spent in the laboratory. In other studies, it's been shown that visual tasks, such as sketching or games similar to Tetris like Candy Crush, have helped participants dull intrusive memories.
It also brings up the question if Tetris could help in different types of traumatic events, like mothers who have undergone emergency C-sections. Holmes said that future clinical studies would only be a matter of funding.
The study also raised questions it did not intended to answer, could Tetris – being played in the same way as described in the study – dull visual memories we would prefer to retain vividly? As a response, Holmes said, "It is possible that inadvertently performing a competing task affects intrusive memories that we would want to remember. Some people like to have intrusive memories, such as a vacation." As of right now, however, it is too early to say for certain.
The study was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
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