Playing Tetris Reduces Emotional Scarring
Researchers have found that patients who played the computer game Tetris soon after a trauma suffered less emotional scarring as a result. The Tetris patients were significantly less likely to experience flashbacks, for example, in the week following the traumatic event.
No evidence, so far, that playing Grand Theft Auto has the same effect.
January 9th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
As a psych/neuroscience major as an undergrad, this article made me spit my scotch & soda at the screen. Testing healthy individuals for emotional scarring after 30 minutes of “traumatic” pictures? Cute. And this is supposed to mean something? Please tell me I’ve misread the link — or I’m stupid or drunk. I know that newspapers often summarize even good scientific research incorrectly. So if there’s a copy of the original published article, I’d love to read it.
January 10th, 2009 at 10:00 am
I’m not sure what your worry is. Could you be more specific? I don’t know the details of the study, but these guys probably aren’t complete hacks–the study came out of Oxford.
January 10th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
I haven’t read full article, but it is at PLoS One. Here’s the link: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004153. If that doesn’t work, just go to plosone.org and search for Tetris. It’s a public access journal, so you should be able to view the entire article.