Monday’s Mental Minute
Forget what mom said about video games being bad for you. It turns out that scientists from the Mind Research Network have found that playing old school Tetris(R) for 30 minutes a day can sharpen your brain.
And of course, a sharper brain translates into a calmer, more productive you.
The researchers studied one group of adolescent girls who played the video game Tetris every day for three months, while another group of adolescent girls did not.
Before and after MRI scans showed the Tetris girls had increased brain efficiency in areas associated with critical thinking, reasoning, and language and processing.
The Tetris girls also developed a thicker cortex (a sign of more gray matter). However, the thicker cortex was in different areas of the brain–areas believed to be responsible for planning complex, coordinated movements and multisensory integration.
So exactly how a thicker cortex and greater brain efficiency are related remains a mystery.
The researchers used Tetris because it requires many cognitive processes, such as attention, eye-hand coordination, memory, and visual spatial problem solving–all working together in a very short span of time.
On a different note…other research from Oxford University shows that Tetris may also help reduce flashbacks from traumatic events, if played a short time after the event, by competing for the brain’s resources for sensory information.
So I wonder if playing the game after less traumatic events–such as a presentation gone bad or big social gaffe–could keep you from painfully playing the scene over and over again in your head…
Given that 25-year-old Tetris is the best-selling mobile phone game and is available on nearly every gaming platform–not to mention, for free at www.tetrisk.com–it shouldn’t be too hard to find when you have some downtime.
