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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."
Yeah! They should be zombified through good old American Television!
Productivity? PTSD is productive?
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Yeah, and Duke Nukem Forever will cure all illnesses. You ever wondered why it's not out yet? It's because of the pharma industry is concerned about their profit.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
This is a very interesting idea. I gather that the next question to ask is what aspects of tetris and popquiz produce the effects they do?
I'm guessing that it has to do with tetris having no real life context (you're pushing around sets of coloured squares, which would not really apply to anyone except maybe traumatized bricklayers), while popquiz requires you to actively think about and recall real life events and concepts.
Which would suggest that other games (video or otherwise) that don't mimic real life concepts would provide a similar effect.
You're only treating the symptom though. Learning cope with bad flashbacks is a difficult process and in the end: You're still having bad flashbacks.
It's not magically "numbing" it so that you don't have to deal with it, it's making it so that you don't HAVE the flashbacks, or at least as many. Wouldn't you rather NOT have flashbacks than having to learn to deal with them?
Your method while soundly makes a person capable of functioning again - it's simply not as efficient as reducing the flashbacks with a simple inexpensive trick.
Trauma victims should surf around 4chan for a few months. That would pretty much cure them from any mental trauma that they have encountered.
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.
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Many people may not realize that many vets drink alcohol to get longer periods of REM sleep, so playing Pub Quiz may not be good for you, but if it also involves drinking alcohol, the negative effects (flashbacks) may be outweighed by the positive effects (more sleep).
The best solution, of course, is to play the version of Tetris in Monty Python's computer game based on King Arthur, where you fill a pit with decomposing plague-ridden corpses.
This is both funny and will usually lead to the consumption of alcohol.
Mind you, creatine is cheaper than alcohol and has fewer side effects and gives you longer sleep periods, so maybe playing Tetris while having creatine may be the optimal solution.
Even if it won't be half as fun.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Pub Quiz is cause for PTSD. There are good games, bad games, and the games that keep you up at night shivering in terror and endless questions of why, why WHY didn't I answer d? I knew that question, I knew it. It should have been obvious. The horror, THE HORROR. If only I hadn't picked c. I was just careless. It shouldn't have mattered. But it all came down to that one question. Why dear god why!?
I think that resolving the trauma is the best approach, which is different than merely coping. It's also the most difficult.
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.
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. ;)