’Tetris’ may help reduce flashbacks to traumatic events

Playing 'Tetris' after traumatic events could reduce the flashbacks experienced in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), preliminary research by Oxford University psychologists suggests. If this early-stage work continues to show promise, it could inform new clinical interventions for use immediately after trauma to prevent or lessen the flashbacks that are the hallmark symptom of PTSD. Existing treatments can only be provided once PTSD has become established. The researchers report in PLoS ONE that for healthy volunteers, playing 'Tetris' soon after viewing traumatic material in the laboratory can reduce the number of flashbacks to those scenes in the following week. They believe that the computer game may disrupt the memories that are retained of the sights and sounds witnessed at the time, and which are later re-experienced through involuntary, distressing flashbacks of that moment. 'This is only a first step in showing that this might be a viable approach to preventing PTSD,' says Dr Emily Holmes of the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford University, who led the work. 'This was a pure science experiment about how the mind works from which we can try to understand the bigger picture.