Tetris May Reduce PTSD, But Pub Quiz Makes It Worse

Last year we discussed news that researchers from Oxford University discovered playing Tetris after watching a disturbing film reduced the amount of intrusive flashbacks experienced by test subjects. The researchers then wondered if that was true for other games, so they began a new study, the results of which were just published in the journal PLoS ONE. Reader SpuriousLogic points out that while they repeated their earlier finding about Tetris, they also found that subjects who played trivia game Pub Quiz instead reported more flashbacks. "Research tells us that there is a period of up to six hours after the trauma in which it is possible to interfere with the way that these traumatic memories are formed in the mind. During this time-frame, certain tasks can compete with the same brain channels that are needed to form the memory. This is because there are limits to our abilities in each channel: for example, it is difficult to hold a conversation while doing math problems. The Oxford team reasoned that recognizing the shapes and moving the colored building blocks around in Tetris competes with the images of trauma in the perceptual information channel. Consequently, the images of trauma (the flashbacks) are reduced. The team believe that this is not a simple case of distracting the mind with a computer game, as answering general knowledge questions in the Pub Quiz game increased flashbacks. The researchers believe that this verbal based game competes with remembering the contextual meaning of the trauma, so the visual memories in the perceptual channel are reinforced and the flashbacks are increased."

Unusual.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't learning to cope with it be the better alternative, as opposed to using the brain's magical hardware to numb it away?

All things being equal, I am glad I learned how to cope with shock. Goatse? 2G1C? 1Guy1Jar? BME? I feel like I am better off handing them as opposed to trying to dull my memories of them with (admittedly interesting) brain tricks.

Re:Tetris

[Darkness404]

It works on the same principle. Tetris reduces thinking of things other than the game. With Pub Quiz and most things that are "productive" it is multi-dimensional thinking, you can't just focus on one task or you have downtime that allows those memories to reoccur.

Common knowledge

[slasho81]

Keeping soldiers busy has been practiced forever in most if not all military forces. There are several very good reasons to do that, and one of them is to prevent soldiers from dwelling on the horrors of war.

So, The Logical Solution Is...

[Plekto]

If it's just shapes and stimulus and so on, perhaps having them just sit in a room with videos of Tiesto or Daft Punk or similar playing would probably saturate their brains to the point of remembering nothing at all.

On a side note, I still remember going to see the Blue Man Group three months ago more vividly than my ex's face. So I know it really can work. ;)