“Can Playing the Computer Game ‘Tetris’ Reduce the Build-up of Flashbacks for Trauma?”

Traumatic memories can become nightmares called flashbacks, experienced waking or while asleep; flashbacks, especially those of war veterans and witnesses to murder, have ruined lives. But scientists at Oxford University have come up with an ingenious new treatment for them: the video game Tetris.

The scientists hypothesized that people who played video games (like Tetris) immediately after witnessing a violent event might have fewer “cognitive resources” to devote to the formation of a traumatic memory. Their hypothesis was based on previous knowledge about the human brain. Our brains can only record a limited number of memories during a fixed period of time.

They tested this idea by showing people gruesome videos of surgery and car accidents, then having them play several hours of Tetris. And in fact, subjects who played the video game did suffer fewer flashbacks and nightmares, as long as the subjects availed themselves of the game within six hours of receiving the mental trauma. Tetris is only one of the games that “should” produce fewer flashbacks.

Read the research paper: