| $5 submissions |
11-13-2010 01:21 PM |
Do you have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Playing Tetris might help you
Besides being useful for wasting tons of time, Tetris might helps PTSD sufferrers avoid flashbacks that trigger anxiety
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/tech...lashbacks.html
Quote:
Oxford University researchers think the game might help prevent the flashbacks that can signal the onset of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Tetris, they said in a study published Wednesday in the journal PLoS ONE, could be a ?cognitive vaccine? if played soon after exposure to traumatic events.
Researchers used two experiments. In one, 60 healthy participants watched a film featuring scenes involving injury and death. Then, after a half-hour break, one-third of the group played Tetris while the rest played a quiz-style video game or did nothing.
The Tetris players were found to have the fewest flashbacks; the players of the quiz players had the most. Researchers theorized that players who used language and trivia skills were tapping a different part of their brains that couldn?t interfere with the flashbacks, which use visual images.
The second experiment was nearly identical but involved 78 participants who took a four-hour break after viewing the film. The results were roughly the same.
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