RSS
Twitter
New PTSD Cure: Tetris
from the where-have-all-the-gameboys-gone dept
A newly published study from Oxford University suggests that Tetris is a useful tool for treating post-traumatic stress disorder. The study doesn't seem wholly comprehensive, but the basic idea is that the game engages the mind in such a way that it's essentially too busy working out where to put the pieces to have flashbacks. The key is that the game requires "visuospatial cognitive tasks" that preclude the mind's ability to generate mental images, so it's not necessarily Tetris itself that's the treatment, but rather it and other games that engage the mind in the same way -- so we'll go out on a limb and say first-person shooters and other games probably wouldn't be ideal. The author of the Guardian post raises a good question, though: what happens when you turn people hobbled by PTSD into people hobble by Tetris addictions?
Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
