Tetris used to prevent post-traumatic stress symptoms | University of Oxford
www.ox.ac.uk
A single dose psychological intervention, which includes using the computer game Tetris, can prevent the unpleasant, intrusive memories that develop in some people after suffering a traumatic event.
  • doublejay1999@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    2 years ago

    This work perfectly for most of my lectures in Quantitative Methods in college.

    When it came to the exam, I couldn’t recall a thing.

  • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
    4·
    2 years ago

    yo… everyone is laughing cause its kind of funny but I had a really intense and traumatic childhood… and I also played a lot of tetris as a kid. Like more than 12 hours a day of it.

    Is that seriously why my trauma didn’t effect me like it would have with other people??

    That’s fucking nuts. Like what.?.

  • Space Sloth@feddit.dk
    3·
    2 years ago

    My mum used to work with criminaly insane people in an asylym. I realize now why she frequently jacked my Gameboy to play Tetris.

    • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Can I ask what role she did? I read a book last year called ‘The Devil You Know - Tales of Forensic Psychiatry’. It was very illuminating and interesting, each chapter a different (anonymised) story of one of her patients. Especially her ‘bike lock’ theory of why some people can commit such horrific crimes.

        • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          She posits that some people have a ‘combination lock’ which, when the right numbers all come up together, pushes them over the line into a horrific violent act.

          EG if someone was beaten by their father as a child, go through some trauma as an adult, are under a lot of stress, then some guy in the street who looks a lot like their dad used to starts screaming at him because he bumped into him, then BLAM they’re smashing his face in with a nearby brick before they understand what’s happening.

      • Space Sloth@feddit.dk
        0·
        2 years ago

        Uh, I think she was a handler, of sorts. Don’t rightfully know, I just know it was a job with a lot of risks and it was hella stressful. Her workplace had one “inmate” escape and murder a 9-year old one time and that was just, well devastating.

  • paddirn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Can confirm, I’ve been playing tetris for three hours and I’ve almost completely forgotten about the dead hooker in my trunk.

  • eyy@lemm.ee
    0·
    2 years ago

    it’s a lie perpetuated by Big Tetris!!

    jk, good to know. I assume this should work similarly for any game that doesn’t contain violent content and yet activates the brain.

    • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      I wonder if there’s any research on that? It’s been a while since I read the study but iirc there’s something specific about Tetris that increases the effect, something to do with manipulating objects to fit into neat rows.

      So maybe trying to fit the shopping in the back of a car would be as effective! Anyway I posted this hoping it would be of use to some of the people affected by the latest lemmy attack.

        • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          Someone is uploading child porn to one instance, which then gets federated across other instances. I suspect it’s the same dude who, after being banned for trying to wreck the site by creating ridiculous amounts of communities, vowed to continue wrecking the site.

          Unfortunately it’s still ongoing, I saw something which I think was probably CSAM. Reported it immediately and the report wouldn’t go through so assume it was already removed, very quickly. There shouldn’t be any porn on sh.it.just.works (or however the instance is spelled) so if you see anything that looks pornographic on there, report it and don’t click on it unless you want to be scarred for life.

    • Damizel@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      I would imagine crossword puzzles or anything similar in that nature could also apply.

    • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Probably to some extent, but there’s a few aspects that probably make Tetris exceptional for this

      First, you have to pay attention and plan ahead, but in a simple enough way and fast enough that it discourages fully forming thoughts. You also can’t do it on autopilot - you can’t pattern match or rhythm your way through, so you can’t zone out. So while you’re playing, you probably can do very little to ruminate over the event and reinforce it

      Second, it’s spatial reasoning, working + short term memory, and very visual. We encode long term memories like carving groves into wood - the longer we think about it while it’s in short term memory, the clearer the details. If ASAP you overwrite the short term spatial and visual memories with meaningless combinations of blocks, you lose a lot of detail. That’s going to result in a much weaker association of the emotions to a location or an image, making triggers less likely and easier to break

      Third, it ties up your visual systems - as the primary sense of humans, visual processing is a huge portion of what our brains do. It’s tied up in complex ways with the way we predict things and access memories, and for reasons I barely understand that can be used to weaken triggers and dampen emotional response

      So putting it together, it distracts you from effectively building a narrative by putting your thoughts into language. While that’s going on, it overwrites aspects of your short term memory over and over with meaningless junk data. Finally, it’s just soothing - you get little hits of dopamine and jolts of stress response

  • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
    0·
    2 years ago

    We just watch Keeping Up Appearances for half an hour. Nothing could be as traumatic as trying to drink tea from fine bone china with hand painted periwinkles

      • Duranie@lemmy.filmEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        I get being curious, but different people have different timelines and levels of comfort when processing their trauma.

        If they’re ready to discuss and let you know what happened, they’ll offer the amount of information they’re prepared to share. If they don’t offer, then please respect their space.

        • Serinus@lemmy.world
          0·
          2 years ago

          That’s good advice for real life. But this is the internet. The social consequences for just not answering the dude are zero. It’s not even rude to completely ignore him. The story was teased, almost begging for the question. They may have wanted it asked.

          If they want to share, they’ll share. I don’t think they’re going to feel prsssured because the internet asked.

          • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
            0·
            2 years ago

            Right? And if they don’t respond, its not like anyone here is gonna fucking hammer them to reply. This thread will die of obscurity like they always do and most people won’t even remember chatting here.

            I have C-PTSD and I hate when people try to get all over protective about trauma. People can ask things. Especially if they are brought up.