Playing Tetris may help ease traumatic flashbacks

New York, United States, January 10:Playing Tetris, a popular puzzle video game, may help ease the traumatic flashbacks of those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, suggests a new research.

According to the novel study from Oxford University, the video game Tetris may be able to disrupt the way the brain remembers traumatic sights and sounds, if it's played immediately after a traumatic event.

PTSD is a serious, potentially devitalizing condition that can occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event like a natural disaster or a serious accident. It is characterized by anxiety, re-experiences of the event through flashbacks and nightmares and avoidance of stimuli associated with the experience. People suffering from PTSD often remain sleepless, agitated and disturbed, and feel detached or estranged from loved ones.

Researchers hope their preliminary findings could help scientist develop new treatment to prevent traumatic flashbacks, which are major symptoms of PTSD, and are experienced by many soldiers who've served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"This is only a first step in showing that this might be a viable approach to preventing post traumatic stress disorder," Emily Holmes, a psychologist who led the study, said in a statement.

"This was a pure science experiment about how the mind works from which we can try to understand the bigger picture," Holmes added.

For the experiment, British researchers enrolled 40 healthy volunteers and showed them a move that included traumatic images of injury from several sources, including advertisements on the dangers of drunk driving.

Thirty minutes later half of the volunteers were given Tetris video game to play for 10 minutes, while the other half did nothing.

Holmes’ team found that those who played the game exhibited far fewer flashbacks of the film over the next week than those who remain idle during that period.

"We know there is a period of up to six hours in which it is possible to affect certain types of memories that are laid down in the human mind," said Catherine Deeprose, who worked on the study.

"We have shown that in healthy volunteers, playing Tetris in this time window can reduce flashback-type memories without wiping out the ability to make sense of the event."

The findings are published his week in the Public Library of Science Journal PLoS ONE.