I’ve seen this story linked all over the place today, so it must be true: researchers at Oxford University claim that playing Tetris can be an effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder because it helps prevent the formation of bad memories.

Speaking from personal experience, it has been my belief for a long time that there is indeed something about Tetris that is a bit psychoactive. It’s easy to slip into almost a trance-like state when playing Tetris if one’s surroundings foster concentration and eliminate other distractions. The so-called “Tetris Effect” is a known and studied phenomenon; a 2000 study found that 60 percent of subjects who played Tetris had dreams about playing the game. I know I had Tetris dreams for a very long time about 20 years ago, when I used to play it for hours every evening. Those researchers were looking at what is called “hypnagogic sleep” — learning a task while asleep through the mechanism of dreams. Something about the game triggers a response in the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain responsible for generating and “fixing” memory. This new study shows that playing Tetris in the near aftermath of a traumatic event acts to prevent the formation of memories by redirecting the hippocampus to focus on the spatial relationships of the game.

Y’know, there was already a Star Trek episode about this, where a sneaky alien babe tries to take over the Enterprise by getting everyone addicted to a video game…and Tetris WAS written by a Russian software developer at the height of the Reagan Era…maybe this is some leftover Soviet mind control that imperils Democracy And Freedom™! Quick, somebody alert President Obama and…..what? He’s playing what on his Blackberry? Oh, never mind.

See Also

• March 10, 2010 -- Would You?
• March 20, 2009 -- Another Look At “Tetris As Life”
• March 13, 2009 -- Tetris As A Metaphor For My Life