Games Like Tetris Might Reduce Unwanted Thoughts

Thirty years after its debut, Tetris has become one of the most indelible video games in our culture, appealing to people of all ages and skill levels. But this block-matching puzzle game may be more than just a fun diversion to pass the time in a subway or waiting room; several researchers are leveraging the game’s visual and puzzle-solving elements to help strengthen the mind.

As Jackie Andrade, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the Cognition Institute of Plymouth University, explained, playing a game like Tetris focuses the brain’s visuospatial centers, which may divert a person from concentrating on other things he or she wants, but maybe shouldn’t have—like chocolate, alcohol, or cigarettes.

“Cravings can be seen as embodied sensory images related to a particular desire,” she said, describing a concept known as elaborated intrusion theory. “When you crave a nice, hot cup of coffee, you are imagining drinking that coffee right now.”

Previous studies in Andrade’s lab found that playing Tetris could reduce cravings for caffeine or cigarettes. Building upon this research, she and her group decided to expand the paradigm and look at how Tetris might alter other cravings in a real-world setting.

They enlisted 31 healthy undergraduate students as participants and gave each one an iPod outfitted with a questionnaire; half the subjects were also given Tetris. Over the course of a week, the students were asked to periodically report any recent cravings they had, how strong the craving felt, and whether they had given in and indulged that craving. Each time they reported a craving, the participants in the Tetris group were asked to play the game for three minutes and then report again on how strong their craving felt.

As published in Addictive Behaviors, Andrade and her team found that these short bursts of Tetris were enough to reduce craving intensity by about 20 percent. Tetris was equally effective in reducing all of the cravings measured, which included alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, food and beverages, and activities such as playing video games or engaging in sex.

“While the [nearly] one-fifth decrease might not sound like much, it’s enough to turn a craving that is unbearable into one that is tolerable until it goes away naturally,” said Andrade.

Desirable cravings are not the only mental images people may want to go away, however. For people who have experienced abuse, loss, or trauma, painful memories of those emotional events often resurface and can lead to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Emily Holmes, Ph.D., who heads the Emotion Group at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University, has been exploring Tetris as a way to prevent traumatic imagery from becoming consolidated as an emotional memory.

Their research has shown that people who played Tetris either during or shortly after watching a traumatic film reported fewer intrusive memories of that film. Much as in Andrade’s studies, the visuospatial nature of Tetris produced competition for the brain’s resources, which Holmes believes kept the images in the film from being consolidated as emotional memories.

As a comparison, her group has found that simply playing a pub quiz after watching the traumatic film was not effective in reducing intrusion.

“Now it doesn’t have to be Tetris, or even a video game,” Holmes said. “The important elements are that the activity keeps the visuospatial parts of the brain engaged with elements like color and motion.”

Holmes’ latest work shows that Tetris may even be able to reduce intrusive memories after they have become imprinted in the brain through a process known as reconsolidation. “A memory is a bit like plasticine,” Holmes explained. “It’s got a firm shape, but if you warm it up—start thinking about it—it becomes malleable, and you can reshape it.”

In her study, published in the August issue of Psychological Science, 72 adult volunteers watched a short trauma video and then came back to the lab 24 hours later. The volunteers were then split into four groups: one listened to music, the second viewed some still images from the film to trigger memory reconsolidation, the third played Tetris for 12 minutes, and the fourth viewed the imagery and played Tetris.

Over the next week, only the participants in the group that viewed the images from the film and played Tetris reported fewer intrusive memories than their counterparts. “So simply playing the game is not enough,” Holmes said. “It has to be combined with the reactivation of that memory to have an effect, which supports the idea that the game provides a level of interference.”

Of course, while visuospatial interference seems an effective and simple strategy to employ, Holmes and Andrade did caution that their studies were carried out with healthy people. There is a substantial gap between watching a film with disturbing imagery and actually experiencing abuse or combat trauma that leads to PTSD, noted Holmes, and the next step is to see if this approach translates to a real-world setting.

Likewise, while playing Tetris might help encourage healthy behaviors such as dieting or reducing coffee intake, Andrade would not recommend Tetris as an addiction therapy. “Addiction is a very complex problem and requires more than the quick fix that Tetris might confer,” she said.

“However, evidence suggests the cravings of addiction are basically the same as regular cravings, but just much higher in strength,” she continued. “Tetris could therefore be part of a treatment regimen—whether with a professional or through a self-help program—to help people who are particularly troubled by cravings.”

These studies were supported by the UK Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust Clinical Fellowship, Colt Foundation, and research fellowships from the Royal Society and Plymouth University. ■

An abstract of Andrade’s study, “Playing Tetris Decreases Drug and Other Cravings in Real-World Settings” can be accessed here. “Computer Game Play Reduces Intrusive Memories of Experimental Trauma via Reconsolidation-Update Mechanisms” is available here.