Week 5: PTSD + Tetris = Fewer Flashbacks

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (or PTSD) occurs when people experience flashbacks and nightmares after extreme psychological trauma. It often causes long-term social problems. PTSD occurs most often in soldiers and veterans. Researchers have been looking into it, and they have found a semi-cure from an extremely odd source: Tetris. PTSD involves visuo-spatial/sensory-perceptual mental processes. These processes often fully encode events into memory within 6 hours, so disruption of the memory needs to occur before that. Since Tetris is a visual-spatial computer game, the flashbacks would be disrupted while competing with a game of Tetris for mental resources. The end result is that soldiers who play Tetris within 6 hours of a traumatic event experience significantly fewer flashbacks and score better on tests which measure amounts of trauma. This new finding could play a large role in aiding these soldiers with PTSD, and it could greatly reduce the suffering that our soldiers experience. War hospitals might soon be equipped with Nintendo DS's.