Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stop to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In
Speaker 1: Today's episode is part two of a two part episode
Speaker 1: about the science of Tetris, really the science of Tetris,
Speaker 1: get also the history and philosophy of Tetris, because, as
Speaker 1: I said in the last episode, I have a very
Speaker 1: very strong intuition that Tetris is not just an invented
Speaker 1: artifact of the work of human hands and human minds,
Speaker 1: but is somehow a natural, fundamental outgrowth of the phantasmagorical
Speaker 1: blood magic of the universe. It comes from the cosmos itself.
Speaker 1: It's not just something we made. It was here, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen four the creator of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov, discovered it.
Speaker 1: I like that the idea of discovering Tetris as this, uh,
Speaker 1: this sort of dimension of of mathematical perfection, Yeah, underlying
Speaker 1: reality totally. And in the last episode we talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about that, about where Tetris came from and
Speaker 1: its influences, and then about the Tetris effect. This uh,
Speaker 1: this syndrome, this experience commonly reported by Tetris players, where
Speaker 1: they where it sort of takes over their minds. They
Speaker 1: see Tetris in everything throughout the world, They hallucinate it,
Speaker 1: they dream about it, And we talked about some possible
Speaker 1: explanations for that, as well as how Tetris skills develop
Speaker 1: in the brain and the interesting fact that that people
Speaker 1: who cannot form episodic memories can still form hallucination recall
Speaker 1: for Tetris that counterintuitively, expert Tetris players use less brain
Speaker 1: energy than novice Tetris players at higher levels of play.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot that's very fascinating and weird and
Speaker 1: mysterious about the game Tetris itself. But today we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about how some of this science of tetris, uh,
Speaker 1: how it works as a game, and how Tetris can
Speaker 1: be used to solve problems in the real world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of this, uh the first portion of
Speaker 1: this episode, a lot of it relates to just why
Speaker 1: do we love it? So? Why is it so satisfying
Speaker 1: to play tetris? Um and uh, and the the science
Speaker 1: behind us is it's a lot more interesting than you
Speaker 1: might think. It's it it goes pretty deep into just
Speaker 1: how we think and how we process the world. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So if you haven't listened to part one, go back
Speaker 1: listen to part one, uh first, and then come and
Speaker 1: join us again here where we will continue the cosmic
Speaker 1: journey of Tetris and clear those lines again and again
Speaker 1: and again. All right, So why do we love Tetris?
Speaker 1: Why don't we play it so much? Why did it
Speaker 1: have such an impact to begin with? Well, we should
Speaker 1: back up and ask why we play any games so much?
Speaker 1: Why do we love any game? I mean, as we
Speaker 1: observed in the last episode, there there's a difference between
Speaker 1: a really good game and a not so good game.
Speaker 1: And it's not just I mean, these days a lot
Speaker 1: of people might refer to things because of the complexity
Speaker 1: of games on newer generations, and things like graphics and
Speaker 1: story and you know, because you have these action adventure
Speaker 1: games that are that are so complex and all that.
Speaker 1: There's more, you're immersing yourself in a an unreal world.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, So ignoring all that and just getting
Speaker 1: back to the basics of simple types of games and gameplay,
Speaker 1: puzzle games. Uh, playing Tetris versus playing I don't know,
Speaker 1: what's another early puzzle game, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre video game,
Speaker 1: on which did really exist. Don't don't bother looking at it,
Speaker 1: field just get sad. Yeah, w wanted. Why are these games? So?
Speaker 1: Why don't we immerse ourselves in? And how does this work?
Speaker 1: One idea that seems pretty strongly supported is that very
Speaker 1: rewarding and enjoyable game play and game mechanics come from
Speaker 1: the psychological process that's been described under the term cognitive
Speaker 1: flow flow. Yeah. Yeah, at heart, any good game is
Speaker 1: tapping into cognitive flow. As Sean Baron broke down in
Speaker 1: a two thousand twelve Gama Sutra article, it breaks down
Speaker 1: as follows and Tetris boils this down perfectly to a
Speaker 1: highly concentrated mental gaming experience. You have concrete goals and
Speaker 1: manageable rules, plus goals that fit player capabilities, plus clear
Speaker 1: and timely feedback, plus an elimination of distractions, and this
Speaker 1: equals cognitive flow. Yeah. So it's a game essentially where
Speaker 1: you understand how to play, You can play, you have
Speaker 1: the skill. It's yet it's challenging enough that it's not boring.
Speaker 1: You're constantly getting feedback on how well you're doing, and
Speaker 1: there's not extreme a stuff going on. It's just perfect focus,
Speaker 1: zeroing in on a perfect brain consuming task that is
Speaker 1: just challenging enough to always keep you engaged. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: that's not to say that cognitive flow is just a
Speaker 1: result of gaming EXPERI yeah, we cure it in our
Speaker 1: daily lives. Be it in your work if you're lucky,
Speaker 1: or you know, in your hobbies, or even in just
Speaker 1: random chores that you have down, you know, skill wise.
Speaker 1: Um in the term itself comes from psychologist Mihi. Chick
Speaker 1: sent me high, the Hungarian psychology professor who pioneered the
Speaker 1: study of cognitive flow. I like this guy's research. I've
Speaker 1: read about it before, and it's interesting to me because
Speaker 1: this is what people would, I think often call positive psychology.
Speaker 1: So much of what is studied in psychology or psychiatry
Speaker 1: deals with people who are having less than optimal experiences.
Speaker 1: And this is an attempt to study, well, what's going
Speaker 1: on when humans are just really at their peak mental experience,
Speaker 1: when they're feeling great, when things are going well inside
Speaker 1: their heads. What's happening there? And and and the thing he
Speaker 1: identified is that a key to a sort of happy
Speaker 1: existence or a happy experience is this process of flow. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, it's interesting looking back to the
Speaker 1: previous episode where the stick Gold study started off and
Speaker 1: ended up getting into the Tetris area by considering people
Speaker 1: who engaged in um in rock climbing, and then they
Speaker 1: would perceive rock climbing later. Uh and and overall his
Speaker 1: study was about looking at people who engage in novel
Speaker 1: physical or mental activities for extended periods of time and
Speaker 1: how they often experienced a hallucinatory replay of the activity.
Speaker 1: And with the check semi hi, we see rock climbing
Speaker 1: come up again because as an avid rock climber, that's
Speaker 1: where he first took note of this special feeling in
Speaker 1: his own experience that he got while inching his way
Speaker 1: up at challenging rock face. He began thinking about it
Speaker 1: in terms of his psychology studies, and he laid it
Speaker 1: out pretty much as we've been discussing that flow is
Speaker 1: about having set goals, having uh a self contained universe.
Speaker 1: So you especially see this in gaming right where they're
Speaker 1: something like Tetris. The rules, the space, it's all pretty
Speaker 1: well defined. There's there's less ambiguity. You get immediate feedback
Speaker 1: if you're doing it right. Contains a manageable challenge. It's hard,
Speaker 1: but you can do it. Sense of control over the situation,
Speaker 1: at least until you reach the upper levels uh, And
Speaker 1: you're completely involved in what you're doing. And so this
Speaker 1: results in a sense of ecstasy um, great interclarity, a
Speaker 1: confidence that what you're doing is doable, and then you
Speaker 1: have the skills to tackle it, a sense of serenity,
Speaker 1: a sense of timelessness, and intrinsic motivation to keep going.
Speaker 1: It becomes fun in itself. I mean, there's no reason
Speaker 1: you have to play a tetrisa. You know, nobody, nobody's
Speaker 1: give being you tangible rewards or punishments based on how
Speaker 1: many lines you clear. But it becomes intrinsically motivating. There's
Speaker 1: something about the activity itself that's pleasing enough that you
Speaker 1: have to go on. And it shuts down the chatter
Speaker 1: and your brain. It shuts down that default mode network,
Speaker 1: all those little voices and the that are worrying about
Speaker 1: the path or the future. It all goes dull as
Speaker 1: your brain uh tackles the problem at hand, be it
Speaker 1: climbing a rock, working on an article, mowing the yard,
Speaker 1: or playing tetris. Yeah, totally. So if you look at
Speaker 1: all of the conditions that must be present to create
Speaker 1: the optimal sense of flow. I think Tetris is almost
Speaker 1: perfectly designed to satisfy them. Like, it's hard to think
Speaker 1: of a cleaner distillation of exactly what those conditions are.
Speaker 1: The clear goals, stack them, clear lines, manageable rules, it's
Speaker 1: absolutely clear what's going on in Tetris. Uh. Tetris adjusts
Speaker 1: itself to your capability. So at the beginning it's easy. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you are a very good player, you can move
Speaker 1: up to higher difficulties pretty quickly. Gives you an adjustment period.
Speaker 1: But the difficulty changes and tracks with you as you play.
Speaker 1: You know, as you go up higher, you get farther,
Speaker 1: it gets harder and more challenging. There's feedback and that
Speaker 1: you can like. The music is an interesting feedback thing
Speaker 1: in Texas, Texas, I say Texas again. In Tetris. As
Speaker 1: you keep stacking higher, I don't know if you remember that,
Speaker 1: the music gets faster. It's letting you know, okay. And
Speaker 1: of course there's very obvious visual feedback. You know, you
Speaker 1: you can clearly see as you're getting towards the ceiling
Speaker 1: of the screen, this is not what you want and
Speaker 1: what is there that's extraneous, I mean nothing, It's it's
Speaker 1: all there. And uh, and of course it works even
Speaker 1: better if you can just uh sort of like put
Speaker 1: a black blanket over your head and tape your eyes
Speaker 1: directly to the Tetris screen and so that nobody can
Speaker 1: walk in and say, like, hey, there's a fire, you
Speaker 1: need to have activate the building. I mean, you just
Speaker 1: you're there, You're in the zone. But there's some other
Speaker 1: theories we've come across that that help explain exactly why
Speaker 1: Tetris feels like such a perfect game for our brains.
Speaker 1: And one of the ones I wanted to mention was
Speaker 1: actually something I saw alluded to in a brain Craft video.
Speaker 1: Some of our periscope followers. We were talking to him
Speaker 1: last Friday, and we mentioned that we were going to
Speaker 1: do this episode and they said, oh, you should watch
Speaker 1: the Braincraft videos. So there, I think they're PBS. Yea
Speaker 1: PBS is behind it. I watched this as well. I
Speaker 1: was entertaining, yeah, and so they but they mentioned something
Speaker 1: called the Zigarnic effect in reference to Tetris. So what
Speaker 1: is the deal with this? Okay, so the Zigarnic effect
Speaker 1: comes to us again. We looked to UH to Soviet thinking.
Speaker 1: Here it comes from Soviet to psychologist and psychiatrist Bluma
Speaker 1: Wolvovna Zigarnick. She lived from nineteen dred to nineteen eight
Speaker 1: and she first observed this in the nineteen twenties. UM,
Speaker 1: and it basically boils down to this. It's the it's
Speaker 1: the psychological tendency for us to remember incomplete or interrupted
Speaker 1: tasks better than complete ones. UM and Tetris. Of course,
Speaker 1: to tie that in is a continuous stream of incomplete task,
Speaker 1: constant sense of achievement, but also a constantly unachieved finish.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned in the previous episode, there's no hey,
Speaker 1: you won screen in Tetris. It just keeps getting harder
Speaker 1: and harder and harder until you perish. And of course
Speaker 1: it's made up of lots of little individual incomplete tasks,
Speaker 1: right because every time there's a gap in a row
Speaker 1: in Tetris, that's a little thing that there's a little
Speaker 1: flag in your brain that says I need to go
Speaker 1: back and fix that, and I'll get there eventually. So
Speaker 1: it's a one huge incomplete task forever being incomplete, made
Speaker 1: up of an infinite number of incomplete tasks. UH. It's
Speaker 1: almost as if this was in mind when it was designed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's a Garnic effect, of course, plays into the
Speaker 1: typical human drive to finish what we started, to see
Speaker 1: things through to the finish, and the associative associated negative
Speaker 1: psychological renovocations of doing the opposite. You know, where you're
Speaker 1: you're haunted by that model airplane you never finished, or
Speaker 1: that novel that you have have completed, or you know,
Speaker 1: or whatever chores around the house are, and god knows,
Speaker 1: when you have a house, there's always some something that's
Speaker 1: not quite finished about everything. And how those just continue
Speaker 1: to stick in your mind? Um. There's a one explanation
Speaker 1: of the Zigaronic effect that I found that I thought
Speaker 1: was pretty uh, pretty nice comes from Roy Bambinster and
Speaker 1: Brad Bushman in their two thousand and eight textbooks Social
Speaker 1: Psychology and Human Nature. They said, the Zigarnic effect is
Speaker 1: a tendency to experience automatic, intrusive thoughts about a goal
Speaker 1: that one has pursued, but the pursuit of which has
Speaker 1: been interrupted. That is, if you start working toward a
Speaker 1: goal fail to get their, thoughts about that goal will
Speaker 1: keep popping into your mind while you're doing other things,
Speaker 1: as if to remind you to get back on track
Speaker 1: and finish reaching that goal. So not only is this
Speaker 1: something that is related to the motivation we have to
Speaker 1: keep playing Tetris, but it also might sort of explain
Speaker 1: what we talked about in the previous episode because this
Speaker 1: mentions intrusive thoughts about the incomplete task. So in the
Speaker 1: last episode we talked about the Tetris effect where people
Speaker 1: experience dreams and hallucinations about Tetris if Tetris is never
Speaker 1: finished yet it's always this intrinsically motivating task that remains
Speaker 1: incomplete in the mind. It kind of makes sense through
Speaker 1: this method that it would keep jumping up into into
Speaker 1: your thoughts. Yeah, yeah, I think it plays nicely into
Speaker 1: into just trying to figure out Tetris syndrome, the Tetris
Speaker 1: effect in general. And then there's a broader lesson here
Speaker 1: though that applies well beyond games, and that is that students,
Speaker 1: be it an you be an official student, or just
Speaker 1: somebody studying up on something in your life. Uh, it
Speaker 1: pays to suspend your studies, to take a break, to
Speaker 1: come back to it and not try to wipe it
Speaker 1: all out in one massive cramming session. Absolutely, I find
Speaker 1: this to be extremely useful in my own work. So
Speaker 1: if I'm trying to uh to think clearly about maybe
Speaker 1: an episode I'm researching or something like that, I find
Speaker 1: it's way more useful to uh to start on it
Speaker 1: before I end work for one day. So if it's
Speaker 1: you know, five thirty and I'm trying to quit work
Speaker 1: for the day, um, and I'm at the end of
Speaker 1: one task, it's better to do ten percent of the
Speaker 1: next task and then come back to it the next day.
Speaker 1: My thoughts about it are gonna be a lot clearer
Speaker 1: than to break from work in between when tasks are
Speaker 1: concluded and when the next one starts. Yeah, and generally
Speaker 1: also if you have some sleep in between, then you're
Speaker 1: you're going to to consolidate those memories. All that working
Speaker 1: is working in your favor as well. But also it's
Speaker 1: pointed out a lot that if the if the task
Speaker 1: is intimidating, just started, because if you just started, then
Speaker 1: you get to benefit from the Zigarnic effect, because that's
Speaker 1: effect is going to be in play to encourage you
Speaker 1: to come back and work more on it. So beginnings
Speaker 1: are difficult, but begin and then take a break and
Speaker 1: then come back. Yeah, This isn't gonna become the self
Speaker 1: help show, but but try that one at least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I highly advocate that strategy. Get it started, it'll
Speaker 1: be easier. Another thing that is UM. I can't remember
Speaker 1: exactly where I came across this, but I feel like
Speaker 1: it was in UH. It was in something that was
Speaker 1: linked to from that Braincraft video. But but anyway, however
Speaker 1: I came across this. Another thing that I saw referenced
Speaker 1: UH with regard to Tetris is the idea of epistemic action.
Speaker 1: And I had actually never heard about this phenomena before,
Speaker 1: but I it turned out to be pretty interesting. So
Speaker 1: in nine David Kirsch and Paul Maglio published a paper
Speaker 1: in Cognitive Science called on Distinguishing Epistemic and Pragmatic Action,
Speaker 1: and Kirsh and Maglio make the distinction between two different
Speaker 1: kinds of actions that a person can perform. So you've
Speaker 1: got pragmatic action, and this is one. It's an external
Speaker 1: action that changes something in the external world in furtherance
Speaker 1: of you achieving a goal. So if you are stranded
Speaker 1: on a tiny island and starving, throwing a rock at
Speaker 1: a seagull would be a pragmatic action. To unlock that
Speaker 1: seagull's delicious meat. Or you could make a much smaller action.
Speaker 1: You could say, press a button while playing tetris to
Speaker 1: move a Tetris piece with the goal of actually moving
Speaker 1: it to the spot where you want to place it.
Speaker 1: You're just doing an action to reach a goal. But
Speaker 1: then they distinguish this from a different kind of action,
Speaker 1: a different kind of external action, which is what they
Speaker 1: call astemic action, and this is making a change to
Speaker 1: the world in order to simplify a problem solving task.
Speaker 1: So imagine you remember those spot the difference puzzles and
Speaker 1: children's books, you know what I'm talking about. They'll show
Speaker 1: you two pictures of a scene. One's Mickey Mouse, you know,
Speaker 1: roller skating, and the next one's Mickey Mouse roller skating,
Speaker 1: but the clock hands are pointing to a different time
Speaker 1: and something like that. And let's say you've got a
Speaker 1: children's work book with with two of these on different pages. Um,
Speaker 1: and what you do is you tear out one of
Speaker 1: the pages and then hold the pictures right next to
Speaker 1: each other. That would be an epistemic action, because they're
Speaker 1: what you're doing is an action that is really designed
Speaker 1: to change the nature of a problem inside your head
Speaker 1: to simplify the task. So when you see them next
Speaker 1: to each other, or maybe you um lay them on
Speaker 1: top of each other and hold it up to a
Speaker 1: light to see what's different. In the two pages, you're
Speaker 1: using external action to reduce the mental complexity of a task.
Speaker 1: And they looked at Tetris in this paper actually and
Speaker 1: pointed out how experience Tetris players use epistemoic action in Tetris,
Speaker 1: and this is the way it works. You've got a
Speaker 1: block falling down and you want to fit it in,
Speaker 1: and instead of doing all the work of flipping the
Speaker 1: block around in your head to see where it would fit,
Speaker 1: the players flip it. They physically flip it, plus press
Speaker 1: the button to flip it to offload some of the
Speaker 1: cognitive work required to see where it would fit. So
Speaker 1: by visually seeing exactly what the block looks like in
Speaker 1: all its orientations, you can see, okay, here's exactly where
Speaker 1: it would fit without having to flip it in your mind,
Speaker 1: thus freeing up some mental resources to look at what's
Speaker 1: the next block in the in the preview bar. So
Speaker 1: so essentially it is using physical action and to make
Speaker 1: mental work easier. They say epistemic action can be used
Speaker 1: to reduce the memory involved in a mental computation. UH,
Speaker 1: it can be used to reduce the number of steps
Speaker 1: involved in completing a mental computation, or it can be
Speaker 1: used to reduce the probability of error in a mental computation. UM.
Speaker 1: And so if you follow this idea, you can conclude
Speaker 1: that when you play Tetris, it's again kind of a
Speaker 1: perfect back and forth between body and mind. It creates
Speaker 1: a constant, flowing, rapid feedback cooperation between mental problem solving
Speaker 1: and then this external epistemic action. You use the body
Speaker 1: to simple simplify a problem. You press the button, flip
Speaker 1: the block, see where it would fit. Then you use
Speaker 1: your mind to solve the problem. Then you use the
Speaker 1: body again to execute the solution, and you just keep
Speaker 1: going back and forth on repeat. Alright, so once again
Speaker 1: we see a manner in which Tetris illuminates how our
Speaker 1: brain works. And we've discussed they just almost perfect way
Speaker 1: that Tetris captures our mind. So we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break and when we come back, we're gonna explore
Speaker 1: some some of the applications that that scientists have have
Speaker 1: explored have actually looked into and some some very real
Speaker 1: possibilities for tetris as a as a treatment option for
Speaker 1: a few different ailments. All right, we're back. Okay, So Robert,
Speaker 1: we've talked about the tetris cure. What can you cure
Speaker 1: with tetris potentially at least because I was quite surprised
Speaker 1: to see some of this research, but once I read
Speaker 1: into it, it started to make a lot of sense
Speaker 1: to me that you could potentially use tetris in maybe
Speaker 1: in place of drugs or other types of therapies and
Speaker 1: lots of scenarios. Yeah, because we've again just think back
Speaker 1: to all the ways we've discussed in which tetris captures
Speaker 1: your mind, How it plays into two different modes of memory. Um,
Speaker 1: how it uh it's got the skeleton key to a
Speaker 1: deep part of your brain. Yeah, it's it's involved in
Speaker 1: flow state. It really reminds me of a lot of
Speaker 1: what one is setting to do a set out to
Speaker 1: do with meditation and yoga to to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: except you kind of have a leg up on it
Speaker 1: by it being this fun, engaging game as opposed to, uh,
Speaker 1: to something that takes a little more deliberate mental or
Speaker 1: physical force. Okay, So let's imagine that I am two
Speaker 1: packs a day kind of guy and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: quit smoking. Can Tetris help me? Potentially? Yes, And which
Speaker 1: sounds crazy, especially anyone who has firsthand experience with just
Speaker 1: how how powerful, uh that addiction can be. But we
Speaker 1: do have some evidence to back it up. This is
Speaker 1: a new study. This came out August two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: and it's from a team of psychologists from from Plymouth
Speaker 1: University and Queensland University of Technology in Australia. So this
Speaker 1: is how it how it went down. Uh, they got
Speaker 1: together thirty one participants ages eighteen through twenty seven, and
Speaker 1: they were monitored for levels of craving and also prompted
Speaker 1: seven times a day to report their cravings. Fifteen of
Speaker 1: these individuals, so roughly half, were required to play three
Speaker 1: minutes of Tetris before reporting their craving levels. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of like you, you have problems with different cravings
Speaker 1: for different things, and somebody's gonna call you and ask
Speaker 1: how you're doing with those cravings. But half of the
Speaker 1: group get to play Tetris first before they're quiz done it.
Speaker 1: So cravings were recorded in thirty percent of occasions, most
Speaker 1: commonly for food and non alcoholic drinks, which were reported
Speaker 1: on nearly two thirds of those occasions. So of the
Speaker 1: cravings were for drug related instances, and these included coffee,
Speaker 1: cigarettes when one, and beer and spice. Yeah, and spice
Speaker 1: were for miscellaneous activities such as sleeping, playing video games
Speaker 1: which I found interesting, socializing with friends, and sexual intercourse.
Speaker 1: Food cravings tended to be slightly weaker than those and
Speaker 1: other categories. But they claimed this is the first demonstration
Speaker 1: that cognitive interference. Again, that's Tetris coming into your life,
Speaker 1: captivating your brain, shutting out everything else. Cognitive interference can
Speaker 1: be used outside the lab to reduce cravings for substances
Speaker 1: and activities other than eating. So in this we could
Speaker 1: see how Tetris or some variation of Tetris, some variation
Speaker 1: of a you know of a puzzle solving game, could
Speaker 1: be used as a support tool for curbing addictions. Not
Speaker 1: not again, not the primary tool, but but an additional tool.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure that they didn't find that that it
Speaker 1: would completely eliminate cravings. But but did they have an
Speaker 1: estimate for by how much the cravings were reduced? Yeah,
Speaker 1: by approximately one Okay, So I mean that that's you
Speaker 1: could look at that as small, or you could look
Speaker 1: at that as big. I mean if if all it
Speaker 1: takes is Tetris and you don't have to you know, uh,
Speaker 1: this is without some other kind of like drug interference
Speaker 1: or major behavioral therapy or anything. Yeah. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: trying to curb this addiction. So any tool at your
Speaker 1: disposal that that put gives you an advantage is certainly
Speaker 1: worth taking up. So yeah, I could see this being again,
Speaker 1: a part of one's treatment. Certainly not the only part
Speaker 1: of one's treatment, but it could help. It could certainly help. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wonder the extent to which Tetris is special here,
Speaker 1: Like how would this compare to other video games? I
Speaker 1: feel like Tetris is kind of special because we haven't
Speaker 1: feel the same way, rather because we haven't really touched
Speaker 1: on this as much. This is something I find in
Speaker 1: gaming in general these days, especially um with a three
Speaker 1: and a half year old running around in my life,
Speaker 1: is that blessed is the game that can be enjoyed
Speaker 1: in very small allotments of time. Yes, true, Tetrisses is
Speaker 1: perfect for that. It is one of them. I just
Speaker 1: the other day When we were preparing for this episode,
Speaker 1: I was doing some research. I decided to play a
Speaker 1: little bit of Tetris, and I several different times I
Speaker 1: played for maybe three to five minutes, and oh man,
Speaker 1: that was a session. You can't have a three to
Speaker 1: five minute session of I don't know what do people
Speaker 1: play these days of Fallout four? Yeah, these are games
Speaker 1: that require vast periods of time, vast immersive periods of
Speaker 1: time where there's always time for Tetris, and and it's
Speaker 1: never a situation where I can't play Tetris now this
Speaker 1: environment is too distracting. No, you can play Tetris in
Speaker 1: a war zone, which is kind of insightful given the
Speaker 1: next thing we're going to discuss. Yeah, because I think
Speaker 1: it is time to talk about Tetris and traumatic memory formation.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people probably know this, but it's
Speaker 1: worth explaining a little bit. Sometimes when people have a
Speaker 1: traumatic experience, they can form a kind of recurrent toxic
Speaker 1: memory pattern that can cause serious trouble for them after
Speaker 1: the traumatic incident is over and done with. So you
Speaker 1: mentioned a combat zone. Yeah, imagine you're in a combat zone,
Speaker 1: whether you are a soldier or just a bystand or whatever.
Speaker 1: You're at a place where people are fighting and there's
Speaker 1: a sudden eruption of gunfire, and that leads to intense
Speaker 1: fear maybe maybe two personal injury, to the threat on
Speaker 1: your life, to witnessing the death or injury of others,
Speaker 1: and this can lead to post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
Speaker 1: One of the main symptoms of PTSD is the presence
Speaker 1: of what are known as flashbacks, or these distressing, intrusive
Speaker 1: memories of the traumatic experience that come rushing into your
Speaker 1: mind like an irresistible torrent and can have debilitating effects.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you don't want to be you know,
Speaker 1: driving the kids, discore will and suddenly just utterly possessed
Speaker 1: by memories of the time when somebody shot you in
Speaker 1: the shoulder. Yeah, I mean, it's the one of the
Speaker 1: worst moments of your life is suddenly just popping up
Speaker 1: in your day and in in the course of your daily
Speaker 1: life during what should be the best moments of your
Speaker 1: life at times. Right, So, there has been a lot
Speaker 1: of research into ways of treating PTSD and people who
Speaker 1: already have it. So some treatment courses involve cognitive therapy.
Speaker 1: You know, that's gonna be talk therapy or exposure therapy
Speaker 1: exposing yourself to the problem. Some include drugs like anti
Speaker 1: anxiety medications or antidepressants, and there are even some kind
Speaker 1: of weird and controversial therapies that have been suggested, like
Speaker 1: have you ever read anything about eye A movement, desensitization
Speaker 1: and reprocessing or e M d R. No. I don't
Speaker 1: think I've run across this, yew. This is where you
Speaker 1: expose yourself to the traumatic memory, and while you're doing that,
Speaker 1: you practice specific patterns of eye A movement in conjunction
Speaker 1: with the anxiety inducing thoughts. This is a side note.
Speaker 1: I find this less one really fascinating, and I would
Speaker 1: love to hear from listeners who are psychiatrists or or
Speaker 1: from people who have practiced this method personally. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Do you all think there's validity to it. I've read
Speaker 1: what seemed to be credible scientists saying that there is
Speaker 1: empirical research to show that this works, but I've also
Speaker 1: read that it's controversial. It sounds like one of those
Speaker 1: weird scientific discoveries that might be too good to be true,
Speaker 1: like you can really have an effect just by moving
Speaker 1: your eyeballs around. Remind there are some yogic meditation techniques
Speaker 1: that involved the movement of your eyes, and uh, I
Speaker 1: haven't played around with them a lot, but it's it's
Speaker 1: certainly present there. So I wonder if there's some connective
Speaker 1: tissue between the two. Yeah. Well, anyway, that's interesting by itself,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to hear from listeners about it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: back to the to the tetris um, what if there
Speaker 1: were a way to all of those things I mentioned
Speaker 1: before were if you already have PTSD, you've already got
Speaker 1: this traumatic flashback problem. But what if there were a
Speaker 1: way to inoculate yourself against PTSD before the symptoms begin
Speaker 1: to take hold. Okay, so this is the idea here,
Speaker 1: is that something traumatic has occurred. What can I do
Speaker 1: to keep from the to keep that trauma from taking
Speaker 1: root in my brain? Yeah, I'd be like if you
Speaker 1: get bit by a dog with rabies and you immediately
Speaker 1: go to the hospital for rabies vaccine, you get bit
Speaker 1: by a zombie and you get to to cut your
Speaker 1: arm off. Yeah, so this would be a cognitive vaccine
Speaker 1: against traumatic memories. So in January two thou nine researchers
Speaker 1: led by Dr Emily A. Holmes of Oxford University. They
Speaker 1: published a study on the effects of Tetris on the
Speaker 1: formation of traumatic or intrusive memories and it's called Ken.
Speaker 1: Playing the computer game Tetris reduced the build up of
Speaker 1: flashbacks for trauma, a proposal from cognitive science. So they
Speaker 1: had two pieces of knowledge that they were starting with.
Speaker 1: One of them was cognitive science suggests that the brain
Speaker 1: has selective resources, is with limited capacity, so your brain
Speaker 1: can't do everything. You can only devote so much energy
Speaker 1: resource to a limited number of things at a time.
Speaker 1: And the second fact is the neurobiology of memory suggests
Speaker 1: a six hour window to disrupt memory consolidation. So that
Speaker 1: you know that there's this idea that about six hours
Speaker 1: after a memory takes places, when the window for consolidating
Speaker 1: that memory in the brain is, you know, forming that
Speaker 1: strong recurrent pattern memory. So if you deny the brain
Speaker 1: the resources it needs to form visuospatial memories during that
Speaker 1: crucial few hours after the event takes place, could you
Speaker 1: stop bad memories from consolidating with such great emphasis in
Speaker 1: the mind. And they tested it. They tested it out
Speaker 1: by getting forty volunteers and making them watch faces of death. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know Actually they didn't say the name of
Speaker 1: the tape because I remember covering this study like way
Speaker 1: back in the early like the initial version of this
Speaker 1: podcast episode with Alson Loudermilk, and I don't remember Faces
Speaker 1: of Death, but then maybe I overlooked it. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it was it was something like that. They were they
Speaker 1: were showed a film. Uh, shown a film full of
Speaker 1: horrible images designed to simulate a traumatic experience. Quote. All
Speaker 1: participants viewed a traumatic film consisting of scenes of real
Speaker 1: injury and death, followed by a thirty minute structured break.
Speaker 1: They described the film as a twelve minute film that
Speaker 1: contained eleven clips of traumatic content, including graphic real scenes
Speaker 1: of human surgery, fatal road traffic accidents, and drowning. So
Speaker 1: that was pretty had disturbing student film, I guess. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were all made to watch that tape from the ring.
Speaker 1: So after viewing the film and taking a real nice
Speaker 1: thirty minute break, half of the participants, half of these
Speaker 1: forty people were given nothing to do except sit quietly
Speaker 1: for ten minutes. This was a control group, and the
Speaker 1: other half played Tetris for ten minutes. Pretty simple experiment. Um.
Speaker 1: Then they checked to see how often members of each
Speaker 1: group experience flashbacks during the ten minutes. No surprise that
Speaker 1: people playing Tetris experience fewer flashbacks, but that's not really
Speaker 1: surprising they were playing Tetris. Then, here's where it gets interesting.
Speaker 1: The researchers sent the volunteers away with instructions to keep
Speaker 1: a diary on how many times they had flashbacks to
Speaker 1: to to the Faces of Death basically over the next week,
Speaker 1: and the different groups had different rates. They found that
Speaker 1: the people who played Tetris for ten minutes after watching
Speaker 1: the film had significantly fewer flashbacks to the Faces of
Speaker 1: Death type video and less symptomology consistent with PTSD when
Speaker 1: they checked back seven days later. Crucially, both groups had
Speaker 1: equivalently strong voluntary recall of the film. And this is
Speaker 1: an interesting aspect too, because they could both remember the
Speaker 1: film fine. They could remember what they saw. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: just that the group that played Tetris had less trouble
Speaker 1: with the unbidden recurrence of these memories throughout their day
Speaker 1: to day lives. So so again, it's not it's not
Speaker 1: just a matter of hey, Tetris distracted them from initially
Speaker 1: thinking about it, but Tetris interfered with the brains codifying
Speaker 1: of the experience as a traumatic Yeah. And they concluded
Speaker 1: from this that it's not just distraction like you say,
Speaker 1: it's something about the visuospatial nature of tetris. This is
Speaker 1: something that they call out specifically that tetris is of
Speaker 1: visual and spatial or visuospatial task, because verbal and other
Speaker 1: distracting tasks have been demonstrated ineffective before against trauma flashbacks.
Speaker 1: In some cases they even intensify them. So in this
Speaker 1: first study, one of the things they wanted to point
Speaker 1: out that they were not saying, people who already have PTSD,
Speaker 1: you can get better by playing tetris, though they speculate
Speaker 1: this could be a possibility, and this gets revisited in
Speaker 1: a later study. And they were also not suggesting that
Speaker 1: playing any video game would have the same effect, and
Speaker 1: they get into that in another experiment and a bit,
Speaker 1: but just a couple of comments. One of the things
Speaker 1: is it's hard to test something like the formation of
Speaker 1: traumatic memories leading to PTSD because for obvious ethical reasons,
Speaker 1: you can't expose somebody to life shattering trauma for the
Speaker 1: sake of the experiment. So the best they could do
Speaker 1: is show somebody a really disturbing movie. And even that
Speaker 1: seems kind of weird. I mean when you read like, yes,
Speaker 1: they were showed the graphic images of death, and then
Speaker 1: we asked them how troubled they were. Now, you could
Speaker 1: imagine a scenario where they are trauma metic rushes out,
Speaker 1: begins treating the individual who is is down on the
Speaker 1: ground with that and is wounded, and then passing out
Speaker 1: game boys exactly to those soldiers in their nets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the other half. It seems impractical to seek out
Speaker 1: people who have just been shot or hit by a
Speaker 1: car or something and then give them Tetris. But these
Speaker 1: findings have been followed up on in subsequent studies. So
Speaker 1: the same group did another study in two thousand and
Speaker 1: ten where they they attempted to answer the questions would
Speaker 1: all games have this effect via distraction or enjoyment or
Speaker 1: might some games even be harmful? And then second, would
Speaker 1: the effects be found if administered several hours post trauma.
Speaker 1: Because this first one it was just Tetris and they
Speaker 1: played thirty minutes after they saw the movie, So they
Speaker 1: essentially repeated the experiment, but instead of just Tetris, they
Speaker 1: tried Tetris and then this game called pub Quiz Machine
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. Um, and yeah, I looked up a
Speaker 1: video of somebody merely playing public Quiz two thousand eight
Speaker 1: pub Quiz Machine two thousand eight on YouTube, and I
Speaker 1: think that alone could cause traumatic memories. But but anyway,
Speaker 1: they had those two and they concluded that no, the
Speaker 1: pub Quiz did not do as well as Tetris. In fact,
Speaker 1: they found that the pub Quiz made the traumatic experience
Speaker 1: flashbacks more intense. So if you if you have a
Speaker 1: traumatic experience and then play pub Quiz, it's going to
Speaker 1: be even worse for you. Don't do that. But Tetris
Speaker 1: still performed better. And they also found that even four
Speaker 1: hours after watching the film, Tetris had significant reduction in
Speaker 1: flashback because window. Yeah, so you can wait four hours
Speaker 1: after the event play some Tetris and supposedly this discourages flashbacks.
Speaker 1: Just another reason to make sure Tetris is on your
Speaker 1: phone just in case. Now, again, I wonder about Tetris
Speaker 1: versus non verbal visual games. So if you're playing Metroid
Speaker 1: or Shack Fou or something like it, does does the
Speaker 1: game have to provide a certain level of challenge? Is
Speaker 1: there a difference between the effects on experience tetris players
Speaker 1: and on novices. So there are a lot of questions
Speaker 1: that haven't been answered yet. Um. But then there was
Speaker 1: another study from this year and this is the last
Speaker 1: one in psychological science, in a group of researchers, again
Speaker 1: including Dr Emily A. Holmes, who was on the other studies,
Speaker 1: published findings that visual spatial game tasks can block traumatic
Speaker 1: memories even after the memories are already formed. So remember
Speaker 1: earlier I was like, well, they weren't saying that you
Speaker 1: can cure PTSD or not cure, but but help or
Speaker 1: alleviate some aspects of PTSD just by playing tetris after
Speaker 1: it's already formed. Here they found maybe you can do that.
Speaker 1: And because what they did is they had people after
Speaker 1: the memory formation had already taken place, recall the memories,
Speaker 1: so bring up voluntarily in the mind the traumatic memories
Speaker 1: and then play tetris, and they found that this also
Speaker 1: reduced flashbacks. Well that that makes sense given the nature
Speaker 1: of memories. The example I always bring up when we
Speaker 1: discussed this is that that every memory in your head
Speaker 1: is not a little stone statue of the event, but
Speaker 1: a clay statue of the event, and it's it's it's
Speaker 1: something that it can be, it's valuable, it can be changed,
Speaker 1: it can be altered every time you draw it out there.
Speaker 1: And also when you draw it out it is susceptible,
Speaker 1: uh to positive change if it's traumatic. Um, so that
Speaker 1: would make sense. Yeah, So in all of these studies,
Speaker 1: they chalk this up to competition for resources in in
Speaker 1: visual visuospatial conception in the brain. Essentially that they're saying
Speaker 1: that the disturbing images that come in your flashbacks when
Speaker 1: you're you know, remembering that you got shot or hit
Speaker 1: by a car, you know, threatened by a guy with
Speaker 1: a chainsaw or something whatever that is, that's terrifying you.
Speaker 1: It's essentially a visual spatial problem in your brain. And
Speaker 1: if you can if you can dampen that, if you
Speaker 1: can just kind of uh smudge that memory with competition
Speaker 1: by the part of your brain that you used to
Speaker 1: solve tetris puzzles, you significantly we in the hold it
Speaker 1: has over you. So anyway, I would love to see
Speaker 1: more research in that area, and it seems very interesting
Speaker 1: and hopefully promising. I mean, if people can get relief
Speaker 1: from this, I I think that's a wonderful thing. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: So we have one more area of potential tetris treatment
Speaker 1: to discuss here, and it concerns UH, something that's commonly
Speaker 1: referred to as lazy I. We're talking about amblyopia here.
Speaker 1: It's a disorder of sight and it results in decreased
Speaker 1: vision in an eye that otherwise appears normal or out
Speaker 1: of proportion to associated structural problems of the eye. So
Speaker 1: up to three percent of the population suffers from amblyopia.
Speaker 1: And it's it's ultimately caused by poor processing in the brain,
Speaker 1: which results in the suppression of the weaker eye by
Speaker 1: the stronger eye. Huh. Now that the common method of
Speaker 1: treating this has always been patching, So you wear an
Speaker 1: eye patch over the good eye. Um and uh and
Speaker 1: and eventually brings things back back to order. But UM,
Speaker 1: this is this is generally more helpful with the younger
Speaker 1: cases and not with older individuals who are suffering from
Speaker 1: lazy eye. So two thousand thirteen, a research team led
Speaker 1: by Dr Robert Hess from mcgel University and the Research
Speaker 1: Institute of the mcgel University Health Center looked in to
Speaker 1: to possible use of tetris as a means of treating UH.
Speaker 1: Individuals are suffering from again yeah, once more. So they
Speaker 1: they found that by distributing information between the two eyes
Speaker 1: in a complimentary fashion, Tetris trains both eyes to work together,
Speaker 1: which is which again is countered to previous treatments such
Speaker 1: as patching. So you're forcing both eyes to cooperate, which
Speaker 1: increases the level of plasticity in the brain and allows
Speaker 1: UH the the the individual's brain to real or essentially
Speaker 1: relearn how to look at something and take individual data.
Speaker 1: So they did this by using a head mounted video goggles.
Speaker 1: They displayed the game dicoptically, so one I was allowed
Speaker 1: to see only the following objects and the other eye
Speaker 1: was allowed to see only ground plane objects. So this
Speaker 1: forced the two eyes to work together. So you have
Speaker 1: to be they have to die, have to be working
Speaker 1: together to get the full image. Wait, which I could
Speaker 1: see the preview box or where they're playing without the
Speaker 1: preview box. Maybe they were playing without the preview box.
Speaker 1: See this is this is really crazy because in that
Speaker 1: documentary about Tetris I mentioned in the UH in the
Speaker 1: other episode, it's called the Ecstasy of Order. Again, I
Speaker 1: really liked it, so I recommended there's a Tetris champion
Speaker 1: in their name Jonas Newbauer, and at one point he
Speaker 1: jokes around by demonstrating his secret weapon, and it's pointing
Speaker 1: his eyeballs separately in different directions, presumably. I think the
Speaker 1: joke is so that one can watch the falling block
Speaker 1: while the other watches the preview box to tell you
Speaker 1: which block is coming next. I think he's joking, but
Speaker 1: I'm not positive whether he's he actually uses this while
Speaker 1: playing or not. Huh, yeah, because he would be he
Speaker 1: would be doing the direct opposite of of the very
Speaker 1: thing about the tatris experience that is being uh utilized
Speaker 1: potentially treat lazy in this case. Yeah so uh as
Speaker 1: as far as this particular research goes, clinical trials worse
Speaker 1: at least initially scheduled, and the company Ambliotech purchased the
Speaker 1: research findings and licensed it to to you Be Soft
Speaker 1: for the creation of lazy eye treatment games, specific like
Speaker 1: therapy games. Yeah so, Ambliotech is currently seeking permission from
Speaker 1: the U S. Food and Drug Administration to market the therapy,
Speaker 1: such as their game dig Rush, which is is not
Speaker 1: tetris um and it looks, uh, it looks like it's
Speaker 1: basically like a little Digger character that's moving around on
Speaker 1: a If it ain't Tetris, I don't care. It's certainly
Speaker 1: US abstract. Yeah, but the thing is that it utilizes
Speaker 1: a tablet and three D glasses, so you get that
Speaker 1: red and blue, you know, disconnect and you have to
Speaker 1: use both eyes and concert to see the full picture.
Speaker 1: Um So anyway, they're they're seeking FDA approval for this
Speaker 1: according to the most recent report. It was the March
Speaker 1: BBC report. And if you want to learn more about
Speaker 1: that company and see some screenshots from their game, you
Speaker 1: can find them at www dot ambliothech dot com. That's
Speaker 1: a m B L y O t e c H.
Speaker 1: You know, Tetris has been such an interesting subject to
Speaker 1: do on this show because I I still have the
Speaker 1: intuition I had at the very beginning. I still feel
Speaker 1: like there's an ancient secret inside Tetris, or maybe Tetris
Speaker 1: is the ancient secret, And after doing all this research,
Speaker 1: I don't feel any closer to articulating what that that
Speaker 1: ancient mystery or that secret is. What's because the Holy
Speaker 1: Tetromino stands outside of our human world, and in playing Tetris,
Speaker 1: were able to dip into the deep currents of energy
Speaker 1: that underlie our reality. Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to come
Speaker 1: up with some kind of astronomical metaphor or or the
Speaker 1: stars Tetris blocks, but they're not really unless you start
Speaker 1: thinking about it. Yeah, and then there's no inn thinking
Speaker 1: about it. And wait a second, Yeah they are, yeah,
Speaker 1: they are. You ever notice how the Maria on the moon,
Speaker 1: the lunar oceans, that it's all Tetris blocks. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll buy into it. It sounds good to me. It's
Speaker 1: the big storm on Jupiter. Yeah, just another Tetris block.
Speaker 1: That's what two by two I think. Ultimately it is
Speaker 1: a very fast, swirling Z shaped blocks. So it's it's
Speaker 1: a storm because it's the troubling Z shaped block. Those
Speaker 1: blocks are the devil. All right, Well, we know that
Speaker 1: this is a topic that it resonates with a lot
Speaker 1: of people out there because tetris is just something that's
Speaker 1: unavoidable in our culture. At this point, everybody's seen it
Speaker 1: or played it. You have varying levels of experience with it,
Speaker 1: but chances are you had at least a little bit
Speaker 1: of time that you're addicted to it. Yeah. So if
Speaker 1: you know the ancient secret of Tetris and you understand
Speaker 1: why it is the strongest potion in the in the
Speaker 1: Digital Sorcerer's potion bag. You should let us know. That's right.
Speaker 1: You can find is that the Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That is our mothership. That's we'll find
Speaker 1: all the podcast episodes. You'll find, videos, will find blog posts.
Speaker 1: You'll find a link out to our social media accounts
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Speaker 1: both of those, and we are stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind on Tumbler. And if you want to get to
Speaker 1: us with your personal Tetris stories or any feedback on
Speaker 1: the show, or your thoughts about the cognitive science of
Speaker 1: gaming and Tetris, you can email us and blow the
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