0:05

Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is

0:07

Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

0:10

it's Saturday. Once again we were venturing

0:12

down into the vault, this time to come

0:14

back on part two of the episode

0:16

that we started last Saturday, that we re ran

0:19

from December. This is

0:21

going to be an episode that aired on December

0:23

three called Better

0:26

Living through Tetris. More colored

0:28

blocks, rushing out of the void of the

0:30

vault to Healless which

0:32

do you think is the most healing of the Tetris

0:34

shapes? Is it? Is it the L Is

0:36

it the T? No? No, it's the straight

0:39

line of four blocks, because that's the

0:41

that's the money block. That's the one that allows

0:43

you to get that that wonderful four rows

0:46

eliminated at one time, catching money.

0:49

All Right, without further ado, let's dive

0:51

in. Welcome

0:55

to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how

0:57

Stuff Works dot Com.

1:05

Hey you welcome to Step to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert

1:07

Lamb and I am General McCormick, and today's

1:09

episode is part two of a two part

1:12

episode about the science of Tetris,

1:14

really the science of Tetris, but also the

1:16

history and philosophy of Tetris,

1:19

because, as I said in the

1:21

last episode, I have

1:24

a very very strong intuition that

1:26

Tetris is not just an invented

1:28

artifact of the work of human hands

1:31

and human minds, but is somehow

1:33

a natural, fundamental outgrowth

1:35

of the phantasmagorical blood

1:37

magic of the universe. It

1:40

comes from the cosmos itself.

1:42

It's not just something we made. It

1:45

was here and in nineteen

1:47

eighty four, the creator of Tetris, Alexei

1:49

Pajutnov, discovered it. I

1:52

like that the idea of discovering Tetris

1:55

as this uh, this sort of dimension

1:58

of of mathematical affection.

2:00

Yeah, underlying reality totally.

2:02

And in the last episode we talked a little bit about

2:05

that, about where Tetris came from and its influences,

2:07

and then about the Tetris effect, this uh,

2:10

this syndrome, this experience

2:12

commonly reported by Tetris players where

2:14

they where it sort of takes over

2:16

their minds. They see Tetris in everything

2:19

throughout the world. They hallucinated, they dream

2:21

about it, and we talked about some possible

2:23

explanations for that, as well as how

2:26

Tetris skills develop

2:28

in the brain and the interesting fact

2:30

that that people who cannot

2:33

form episodic memories can still form

2:35

hallucination recall for Tetris

2:38

that counterintuitively, expert Tetris

2:40

players use less brain energy than

2:43

novice Tetris players at higher levels

2:45

of play. So there's a lot that's

2:47

very fascinating and weird and mysterious

2:49

about the game Tetris

2:51

itself. But today we wanted to talk

2:54

about how some of this science of tetris,

2:56

uh, how it works as

2:58

a game, and how Tetris can be used

3:01

to solve problems

3:03

in the real world. Yeah, and a lot of

3:05

this, uh. The first portion of

3:08

this episode, a lot of it relates to just

3:10

why do we love it? So? Why is it so

3:13

satisfying to play tetris? Um

3:15

and uh, and the the the science

3:17

behind this is it's a lot more interesting than

3:19

you might think it's it. It goes pretty deep

3:21

into just how we think and how we process

3:24

the world. Absolutely, So, if you haven't listened

3:26

to part one, go back listen to part one, uh

3:29

first, and then come and join

3:31

us again here where we will

3:33

continue the cosmic journey of Tetris

3:36

and clear those lines again and

3:38

again and again. Alright,

3:42

So why do we love Tetris.

3:44

Why don't we play it so much? Why did it have

3:46

such an impact to begin with? Well, we should

3:48

back up and ask why we play any game

3:50

so much? Why do we love any game? I mean, as

3:53

we observed in the last episode, there there's a

3:55

difference between a really

3:57

good game and a non

4:00

so good game. And it's not just I mean,

4:02

these days a lot of people might refer to things

4:04

because of the complexity of games on newer

4:06

generations and things like graphics

4:08

and story and you know, because

4:11

you have these action adventure games that are

4:13

that are so complex and all that. There's more

4:15

so that you're immersing yourself in an

4:18

unreal world. Yeah yeah, yeah, So ignoring

4:21

all that and just getting back to the basics of

4:23

simple types of games and gameplay.

4:26

Puzzle games, uh, playing

4:29

Tetris versus playing I

4:31

don't know what's another early puzzle game, the

4:34

Texas Chainsaw Massacre video game

4:36

on the which

4:39

did really exist. Don't don't bother looking

4:41

at it, You'll just get sad. Yeah,

4:44

wanted, wanted? Why are these games? So? Why

4:46

don't we immerse ourselves? And the how does this work?

4:48

One idea that seems pretty strongly

4:50

supported is that very

4:53

rewarding and enjoyable game

4:55

play and game mechanics come from

4:57

this psychological process that's been described

5:00

under the term cognitive flow

5:03

flow. Yeah. Yeah,

5:05

at at heart, any good

5:07

game is tapping into cognitive flow.

5:10

As Sean Baron broke down in

5:12

a two thousand twelve Gama Sutra

5:15

article, it breaks down as follows and

5:17

Tetris boils this down perfectly to

5:20

a highly concentrated mental gaming

5:22

experience. You have concrete

5:24

goals and manageable rules, plus

5:26

goals that fit player capabilities, plus

5:29

clear and timely feedback, plus

5:32

an elimination of distractions, and this equals

5:35

cognitive flow. Yeah. So it's

5:37

a game essentially where you

5:39

understand how to play, you

5:42

can play, you have the skill. It's

5:44

yet it's challenging enough that it's not boring.

5:47

You're constantly getting feedback on how

5:49

well you're doing, and there's not extraneous

5:52

stuff going on. It's just perfect

5:55

focus, zeroing in on

5:57

a perfect brain consuming

5:59

to ask that is just challenging

6:02

enough to always keep you engaged.

6:04

Yeah. Now, that's not to say that cognitive flow

6:06

is just a result of

6:08

gaming. It in

6:11

our daily lives, be it in your work. If

6:13

you're lucky or you know, in your hobbies

6:15

or even in just random chores that you have

6:19

down, you know, skill wise.

6:21

Um in the term itself comes from psychologist

6:24

Mihi. Chick sent me high, the Hungarian psychology

6:27

professor who pioneered the study

6:29

of cognitive flow. I like this

6:31

guy's research. I've read about it before, and

6:33

it's interesting to me because this is what

6:36

people would, I think often call positive psychology.

6:39

So much of what is studied in psychology

6:42

or psychiatry deals with people

6:44

who are having less

6:47

than optimal experiences. And

6:50

this is an attempt to study, well, what's going

6:52

on when humans are just really

6:54

at their peak mental experience,

6:56

when they're feeling great, when

6:58

things are going well inside their heads,

7:01

what's happening there? And and the thing he identified

7:03

is that a key to a sort of happy

7:06

existence or a happy experience is

7:08

this process of flow. Yeah,

7:11

indeed, and uh, you know, it's interesting

7:13

looking back to the previous episode where

7:16

the stick gold study started

7:18

off and ended up getting into the tetris area by

7:20

considering people who engaged in

7:23

um in rock climbing, and then they would

7:26

perceive rock climbing later. Uh

7:29

And and overall his study was about

7:31

looking at people who engage in novel physical

7:33

or mental activities for extended periods of time and

7:36

how they often experienced on the hallucinatory

7:38

replay of the activities. And with the

7:40

check semi hi, we see rock climbing

7:42

come up again because as an avid

7:44

rock climber, that's where he first took

7:47

note of this special feeling in his

7:49

own experience that he got while

7:51

inching his way up a challenging rock face.

7:54

He began thinking about it in terms of

7:56

his psychology studies, and

7:58

he laid it out pretty much as we've been to discussing that

8:00

flow is about having set goals,

8:02

having uh a self

8:04

contained universe. So you especially see

8:07

this in gaming right where they're something

8:09

like Tetris. The rules, the space, it's

8:11

all pretty well defined. There's there's

8:13

less ambiguity, you get immediate

8:16

feedback if you're doing it right. Contains a manageable

8:18

challenge. It's hard, but you can do it,

8:20

a sense of control over the situation, at least

8:22

until you reach the upper levels UH,

8:25

and you're completely involved in what you're doing,

8:29

and so this results in a sense of ecstasy

8:32

UM, great interclarity, a

8:35

confidence that what you're doing is

8:37

doable, and then you have the skills to tackle it, a

8:39

sense of serenity, a sense of timelessness,

8:42

and intrinsic motivation to keep

8:44

going. It becomes fun in itself.

8:46

I mean, there's no reason you have to play

8:49

a tetris. You know, nobody,

8:51

nobody's giving you tangible

8:54

rewards or punishments based on how many

8:56

lines you clear. But it becomes

8:58

intrinsically motivating. There's something about

9:00

the activity itself that's pleasing

9:02

enough that you have to go on. And it shuts

9:04

down the chatter and your brain. It shuts down that default

9:07

mode network, all those little voices

9:09

and the that are worrying about the past

9:12

or the future. It all goes dull as

9:15

your brain, uh tackles

9:17

the problem at hand, be it climbing a rock,

9:20

working on an article, mowing the yard,

9:22

or playing tetris. Yeah, totally. So. If

9:25

you look at all of the conditions that

9:27

must be present to create the optimal

9:29

sense of flow, I think Tetris is

9:31

almost perfectly designed

9:33

to satisfy them. Like it's hard

9:36

to think of a cleaner

9:38

distillation of exactly what those

9:40

conditions are. The clear goals,

9:43

stack them, clear lines, manageable

9:45

rules, it's absolutely

9:47

clear what's going on in Tetris. Uh.

9:49

Tetris adjusts itself to your capabilities.

9:52

So at the beginning it's easy. Uh.

9:54

If you are a very good player, you can move

9:57

up to higher difficulties pretty quickly.

9:59

Uh. Gives you an adjustment period. But the

10:02

difficulty changes and tracks with you as

10:04

you play. You know, as you go up higher, you

10:07

get farther, it gets harder and more challenging.

10:09

There's feedback and that you can like.

10:12

The music is an interesting feedback

10:14

thing. In Texas, Texas, I

10:16

say Texas again in Tetris. As

10:18

you keep stacking higher, I don't know if you remember

10:21

that, the music gets faster. It's letting

10:23

you know, okay. And of

10:25

course there's very obvious visual feedback.

10:27

You know, you you can clearly see as you're

10:29

getting towards the ceiling of the screen, this

10:32

is not what you want. And

10:36

what is there that's extraneous? I mean nothing,

10:39

it's it's all there. And uh, and

10:42

of course it works even better if you can just

10:44

uh sort of like put a black blanket

10:47

over your head and tape your

10:49

eyes directly to the Tetris

10:51

screen so that nobody can walk in

10:54

and say like, hey, there's a fire, you need to

10:56

evacuate the building. I mean, you just

10:58

you're there, You're in the zone. But

11:01

there's some other theories we've come across

11:03

that that help explain exactly

11:05

why Tetris feels like such a perfect

11:08

game for our brains. And one

11:10

of the ones I wanted to mention was

11:13

actually something I saw alluded

11:15

to in a brain Craft video

11:18

some of our periscope followers. We were talking to

11:20

him last Friday, and we mentioned

11:22

that we were going to do this episode, and they

11:24

said, oh, you should watch the Braincraft videos. So

11:26

there, I think they're PBS. Yeah,

11:28

PBS is behind it. I watched this as

11:30

well. I was entertaining. Yeah, and so they but they

11:32

mentioned something called the Zigarnic

11:35

effect in reference to Tetris. So what

11:37

is the deal with this? Okay, so the Zigarnic

11:40

effect comes to us again. We looked

11:42

to uh to Soviet thinking. Here comes

11:44

from Soviet to psychologist and psychiatrist

11:47

Blooma Wolfovna Zagernick.

11:50

She lived from nineteen hundred to nine, and

11:53

she first observed this in the nineteen twenties.

11:56

Um and it basically

11:58

boils down to this. It's the it's the ecological

12:00

tendency for us to remember

12:02

incomplete or interrupted tasks

12:05

better than complete ones. Um

12:08

and Tetris. Of course, to tie

12:10

that in is a continuous stream of incomplete

12:13

tasks, a constant sense of achievement,

12:15

but also a constantly unachieved

12:17

finish. As we mentioned in the previous episode,

12:20

there's no hey, you won screen and Tetris.

12:22

It just keeps getting harder and harder and harder

12:25

until you perish. And of course it's made

12:27

up of lots of little individual incomplete

12:29

tasks, right because every time there's a gap

12:31

in a row in Tetris, that's

12:34

a little thing that there's a little flag

12:36

in your brain that says I need to go back and fix

12:38

that, and I'll get there eventually.

12:40

So it's a one huge incomplete

12:43

task forever being incomplete,

12:46

made up of an infinite number

12:48

of incomplete tasks. Uh.

12:51

It's almost as if this was in mind when

12:53

it was designed. So there's

12:55

a gronic effect of course, plays into the typical

12:58

human drive to finish. What we started to see

13:00

things through to the finish, and the associative

13:03

associated negative psychological

13:05

univocations of doing the opposite. You know, where

13:07

you're you're haunted by that model airplane

13:09

you never finished, or that novel that you have

13:11

have completed, or you know, or whatever

13:13

chores around the house are, and

13:16

god knows, when you have a house, there's always

13:18

some something that's not quite finished

13:21

about everything, and how those just continue

13:24

to stick in your mind? Um,

13:27

there's a one explanation

13:29

of the Zigarnic effect that I found that I thought

13:31

was pretty, uh, pretty nice comes

13:33

from Roy Baumbinster and

13:35

Brad Bushman in their two thousand eight

13:37

textbooks Social Psychology and Human Nature.

13:40

They said, the Zigaronic effect is a tendency

13:42

to experience automatic, intrusive

13:44

thoughts about a goal that one has pursued,

13:47

but the pursuit of which has been interrupted.

13:49

That is, if you start working toward

13:51

a goal and fail to get their, thoughts

13:53

about that goal will keep popping into your

13:55

mind while you're doing other things,

13:58

as if to remind you to get

14:00

back on track and finish reaching that

14:02

goal. So not only is this something

14:05

that uh is related to the

14:07

motivation we have to keep playing Tetris,

14:09

but it also might sort of explain what we talked

14:11

about in the previous episode. Because

14:13

this mentions intrusive thoughts. I'll see

14:16

incomplete task. So in

14:18

the last episode we talked about the Tetris effect,

14:20

where people experience dreams and hallucinations

14:22

about Tetris. If Tetris is never

14:24

finished yet, it's always this intrinsically

14:27

motivating task that remains incomplete

14:30

in the mind. It kind of makes sense through

14:32

this method that it would keep jumping

14:34

up into into your thoughts. Yeah.

14:37

Yeah, I think it plays nicely into

14:39

into just trying to figure out Tetris

14:42

syndrome, the Tetris effect in general.

14:44

And then there's a broader lesson here though,

14:46

that applies well beyond games, and that is

14:49

that students, be

14:51

it a you, be you an official student, or just somebody

14:54

studying up on something in your life, Uh,

14:56

it pays to suspend your studies, to take

14:58

a break, to come back to it and not

15:00

try to wipe it all out in one massive

15:03

cramming session. Absolutely. I

15:05

find this to be extremely useful

15:07

in my own work. So if I'm trying

15:09

to uh to think clearly

15:12

about maybe an episode

15:14

I'm researching or something like that, I

15:16

find it's way more useful to

15:19

uh to start on it

15:21

before I end work for

15:23

one day. So if it's you know, five thirty and

15:26

I'm trying to quit work for the day. Um,

15:30

and I'm at the end of one task, it's

15:32

better to do ten percent of the next

15:34

task and then come back to it the next day.

15:37

My thoughts about it are going to be a lot clearer

15:39

than to break from work in

15:41

between when tasks are concluded

15:44

and when the next one starts. Yeah, and generally,

15:46

also if you have some sleep in between, then

15:48

you're you're geting to consolidate those memories.

15:51

All that working is working in your favor as well.

15:53

But also it's pointed out a lot that

15:56

if if the task is intimidating, just

15:59

start it, because if you just started, then

16:01

you get to benefit from the Zigarnic

16:04

effect, because that's effect is going to be

16:06

in play to encourage you to come back

16:08

and work more on it. So beginnings

16:10

are difficult, but begin and then take

16:12

a break and then come back. Yeah, this

16:15

isn't gonna become the self help show, but but

16:17

try that one at least. Yeah,

16:19

I highly advocate that strategy.

16:22

Get it started, it'll be

16:24

easier. Another thing

16:26

that is, Um, I

16:28

can't remember exactly where I came across this,

16:30

but I feel like it was in Uh,

16:33

it was in something that was linked

16:35

to from that Braincraft video. But but

16:37

anyway, however, I came across this. Another

16:40

thing that I saw referenced UH

16:43

with regard to Tetris is the

16:45

idea of epistemic action.

16:47

And I had actually never heard about this

16:49

phenomena before, but I it turned

16:52

out to be pretty interesting. So

16:54

in David

16:56

Kirsch and Paul Maglio published

16:58

a paper in Cognitive Science. It's called on

17:01

Distinguishing Epistemic and Pragmatic

17:03

Action, and Kirshi and Maglio make

17:05

the distinction between two different kinds of

17:08

actions that a person can perform.

17:11

So you've got pragmatic action, and

17:13

this is one. It's an external

17:16

action that changes something in the external

17:18

world in furtherance of you achieving

17:20

a goal. So if you are

17:23

stranded on a tiny island and

17:25

starving, throwing a rock at a

17:27

seagull would be a pragmatic action

17:29

to unlock that seagull's delicious

17:31

meat. Or you could make

17:33

a much smaller action. You could say, press

17:35

a button while playing Tetris

17:38

to move a Tetris piece with the goal of

17:40

actually moving it to the spot where you want to place

17:42

it. You're just doing an action

17:44

to reach a goal. But then they distinguish

17:47

this from a different kind of action, a different

17:49

kind of external action, which is

17:51

what they call epistemic action, and this

17:53

is making

17:56

a change to the world in order to simplify

17:59

a problem solving task. So

18:01

imagine you remember those Spot

18:04

the Difference puzzles and children's books,

18:06

you know what I'm talking about. They'll show you two pictures

18:08

of a scene. One's Mickey Mouse,

18:10

you know, roller skating, and the next

18:12

one's Mickey Mouse roller skating, but the clock

18:15

hands are pointing to a different time and

18:17

something like that. And let's say you've got a

18:20

children's workbook with with two of these

18:22

on different pages. Um, and

18:24

what you do is you tear out one of the pages

18:26

and then hold the pictures right next

18:28

to each other. That would be

18:31

an epistemic action, because

18:33

they're what you're doing is an action

18:35

that is really designed to change the

18:37

nature of a problem inside your

18:39

head, to simplify the task.

18:42

So when you see them next to each other, or maybe

18:44

you um lay them on top of

18:46

each other and hold it up to a light to see

18:48

what's different in the two pages, you're

18:51

using external action to reduce

18:53

the mental complexity of a task. And

18:56

they looked at Tetris in this paper

18:58

actually and pointed out how experience

19:02

Tetris players use epistemic

19:04

action in Tetris, and

19:07

this is the way it works. You've got a block

19:09

falling down and you want to fit it in, and

19:12

instead of doing all the work

19:14

of flipping the block around in

19:17

your head to see where it would fit, the

19:19

players flip it. They physically

19:22

flip it, plus press the button to flip it

19:24

to offload some of the cognitive

19:27

work required to see where it would fit. So by

19:29

visually seeing exactly

19:32

what the block looks like in all its orientations,

19:36

you can see, okay, here's

19:38

exactly where it would fit without having to flip

19:40

it in your mind, thus freeing up some mental

19:43

resources to look at what's the next

19:45

block in the in the preview

19:48

bar. So so essentially it is using

19:51

physical action to make mental work

19:53

easier. They say, epistemic action

19:56

can be used to reduce the memory involved

19:58

in a mental computation UH,

20:00

it can be used to reduce the number of steps

20:02

involved in completing a mental computation,

20:05

or it can be used to reduce the probability

20:08

of error in a mental computation.

20:11

UM. And so if you follow

20:13

this idea, you can conclude that when you play

20:15

Tetris, it's again

20:18

kind of a perfect back and forth

20:20

between body and mind. It creates a constant,

20:23

flowing, rapid feedback

20:25

cooperation between mental problem

20:28

solving and then this external

20:30

epistemic action. You use the body

20:32

to simple simplify a problem, You press the

20:34

button, flip the block, see where it would fit.

20:37

Then you use your mind to solve the problem.

20:40

Then you use the body again to execute

20:42

the solution, and you just keep

20:44

going back and forth on repeat. Alright,

20:47

so once again we see a manner

20:49

in which Tetris illuminates how

20:51

our brain works. And we've discussed

20:54

they just almost

20:56

perfect way that Tetris captures

20:59

our mind. So we're gonna take

21:01

a quick break, and when we come back, we're gonna explore

21:04

some some of the applications

21:06

that that scientists have have explored,

21:09

have actually looked into, and some

21:11

some very real possibilities for

21:13

Tetris as a as a treatment

21:15

option for a few different

21:18

ailments. All

21:27

Right, we're back. Okay, So Robert,

21:30

we've talked about the Tetris cure. What

21:33

can you cure with tetris? Potentially

21:36

at least because I was

21:38

quite surprised to see some

21:40

of this research, but once I read into

21:43

it, it started to make a lot of sense

21:45

to me that you could potentially use

21:47

tetris in maybe in

21:49

place of drugs or other types

21:51

of therapies and lots of scenarios. Yeah,

21:54

because we've again just think back to all

21:56

the ways we've discussed in which

21:58

tetris cat is your mind, how

22:00

it plays into two different modes

22:03

of memory. Um, how

22:05

it Uh, it's got the

22:07

skeleton key to a deep part of your brain.

22:09

Yeah, it's it's involved in flow state. It

22:12

really reminds me of a lot of what one is

22:14

setting to do a set out to do with meditation

22:16

and yoga to to a certain extent, except

22:20

you kind of have a leg up on it by it being this fun,

22:23

engaging game as opposed to, uh,

22:25

to something that takes a little more deliberate

22:27

mental or physical force. Okay, so

22:29

let's imagine that I am

22:32

two packs a day kind of guy and I'm

22:34

trying to quit smoking. Can

22:36

tetris help me? Potentially?

22:39

Yes? And which sounds crazy,

22:41

especially anyone who has firsthand experience

22:44

with just how um, how powerful

22:46

um that addiction can be. But

22:49

we do have some evidence to back it up. This

22:51

is a new study. This came out August two thousand

22:53

fifteen, and it's from a team of psychologists

22:56

from from Plymouth University and Queensland

22:58

University of Technology in Australia.

23:01

So this is how it how it went down.

23:03

Uh, they got together thirty

23:06

one participants ages eighteen

23:08

through seven, and they

23:10

were monitored for levels of craving

23:13

and also prompted seven times a

23:15

day to report their cravings. Fifteen

23:18

of these individuals, so roughly half,

23:20

were required to play three minutes of

23:22

Tetris before reporting their

23:24

craving levels. So it's kind of like

23:26

you you have problems with different cravings for different

23:28

things, and somebody's gonna call you

23:31

and ask how you're doing with those cravings, but half

23:33

of the group get to play Tetris first before

23:35

they're quiz. Done it. So, cravings were recorded

23:38

in thirty percent of occasions, most

23:40

commonly for food and non alcoholic drinks,

23:43

which were reported on nearly two thirds of those occasions.

23:45

So of the cravings were

23:47

for drug related

23:50

instances, and these included coffee, cigarettes,

23:52

wine and beer and spice, Yeah and spice.

23:55

Sixteen percent were for miscellaneous

23:57

activities such as sleeping, playing

24:00

video games to which I found

24:02

interesting, socializing with friends,

24:05

and sexual intercourse. Food

24:07

cravings tended to be slightly weaker than those

24:10

in other categories, But they claimed

24:12

this is the first demonstration that

24:14

cognitive interference. Again, that's Tetris

24:16

coming into your life, captivating

24:18

your brain, shutting out everything else. Cognitive

24:21

interference can be used outside

24:23

the lab to reduce cravings for substances

24:26

and activities other than eating. So

24:29

in this we can see how Tetris or some

24:31

variation of Tetris, some variation

24:34

of a you know, of a puzzle

24:36

solving game, could be used as a support

24:39

tool for curving addictions, not not the

24:41

again, not the primary tool, but

24:43

but an additional tool. So I'm sure that

24:45

they didn't find that that it

24:48

would completely eliminate cravings,

24:50

But did they have an estimate for by how

24:52

much the cravings were reduced? Yeah,

24:56

by approximately one fifth. So

24:59

I mean that that's you

25:01

could look at that as small, or you could look at that as

25:03

big. I mean, if if all it takes is Tetris

25:06

and you don't have to you know, uh,

25:08

this is without some other kind of

25:10

like drug interference or major behavioral

25:13

therapy or anything. Yeah, I mean, you're trying to

25:15

curb this addiction, so any tool at

25:17

your disposal that that put

25:19

gives you an advantage is certainly worth taking up.

25:21

So yeah, I could see this being again a

25:24

part of one's treatment. Certainly

25:26

not the only part of one's treatment, but it

25:28

could help. It could certainly help. Yeah, I wonder

25:30

the extent to which Tetris is special here,

25:32

like, how would this compare to other video games?

25:37

I feel like Tetris is kind of special because

25:40

we haven't feel the same way, Robert, because

25:43

we haven't really touched on this as much. This is something I

25:45

find in gaming in general these days, especially

25:48

um with a three and a half year

25:50

old running around in my life, is that blessed

25:53

is the game that can be enjoyed in

25:56

very small allotments

25:58

of time. Yes, true, which Tetrisses

26:01

is perfect for that. It is one of them.

26:03

I just the other day, when we were

26:05

preparing for this episode, we was doing some research.

26:07

I decided to play a little bit of Tetris, and I several

26:10

different times, I played for maybe three to five

26:13

minutes, and oh man, that was a session.

26:15

You can't have a three to five minute session

26:18

of I don't know what do people

26:20

play these days of Fallout

26:22

four? Yeah, these are games

26:24

that require vast periods of time,

26:26

vast immersive periods of time where there's

26:29

always time for Tetris, and and

26:31

it's never a situation where I can't play

26:33

Tetris now this environment is too distracting. No, you

26:35

can play Tetris in a

26:37

war zone, which is

26:39

kind of insightful given the next thing we're

26:41

going to discuss. Yeah, because I think it

26:44

is time to talk about tetris and traumatic

26:46

memory formation. So

26:49

a lot of people probably know this, but it's worth

26:51

explaining a little bit. Sometimes when

26:53

people have a traumatic experience, they

26:56

can form a kind of recurrent

26:58

toxic memory pattern that

27:01

can cause serious trouble for them after

27:03

the traumatic incident is over

27:06

and done with. So you mentioned

27:08

a combat zone. Yeah, imagine you're in

27:10

a combat zone, whether you are a soldier

27:13

or just a bystand or whatever. You're

27:15

at a place where people are fighting and there's a sudden

27:17

eruption of gunfire and that

27:19

leads to intense fear maybe maybe

27:22

two personal injury, to the threat on

27:24

your life, to witnessing the

27:27

death or injury of others. And this

27:29

can lead to post traumatic stress disorder

27:31

or PTSD. One of

27:33

the main symptoms of PTSD is

27:36

the presence of what are known as flashbacks,

27:38

or these distressing, intrusive

27:40

memories of the traumatic experience that

27:43

come rushing into your mind like an

27:45

irresistible torrent and can have debilitating

27:48

effects. I mean, obviously you

27:50

don't want to be, you know, driving the kids

27:52

to school and suddenly just utterly

27:55

possessed by memories of the time

27:57

when somebody shot you in the shoulder. I

28:00

mean, it's the one of the worst moments of your life

28:02

is suddenly just popping up in

28:05

your day and in the course of your daily life during

28:07

what should be the best moments of

28:09

your life at times. Right, So, there

28:11

has been a lot of research into ways of treating PTSD

28:14

and people who already have it. So

28:16

some treatment courses involve cognitive

28:19

therapy, you know that's gonna be talk therapy,

28:21

or exposure therapy exposing yourself

28:23

to the problem. Some include drugs

28:26

like anti anxiety medications or

28:28

antidepressants, and there are even some kind

28:30

of weird and controversial therapies that

28:32

have been suggested, like have you ever read anything

28:34

about eye a movement, desensitization

28:37

and reprocessing or e M D R.

28:39

No. I don't think I've run across this one yet. This

28:42

is where you expose yourself to

28:44

the traumatic memory, and while you're doing

28:46

that, you practice specific

28:48

patterns of eye a movement in

28:50

conjunction with the anxiety inducing thoughts.

28:53

This is a side note. I find this last one really

28:55

fascinating, and I would love to hear from

28:57

listeners who are psychiatrists or

29:00

or from people who have practiced this method

29:02

personally. I don't know, do y'all think there's

29:05

validity to it. I've read what seemed

29:07

to be credible scientists saying that there is empirical

29:10

research to show that this works, but

29:12

I've also read that it's controversial. It

29:14

sounds like one of those weird scientific discoveries

29:16

that might be too good to be true, like you can really

29:19

have an effect just by moving your eyeballs around.

29:21

Remind there are some yogurt

29:24

meditation techniques that involved the

29:27

movement of your eyes and uh,

29:30

I haven't played around with them a lot, but it's

29:32

it's certainly present there, So I

29:34

wonder if there's some connective tissue between the

29:36

two. Yeah. Well, anyway, that's interesting

29:38

by itself, and i'd love to hear from listeners about it.

29:40

But anyway back to the to the tetris um,

29:44

what if there were a way to all those

29:46

things I mentioned before were if

29:48

you already have PTSD, you've already got

29:50

this traumatic flashback problem. But what

29:52

if there were a way to inoculate

29:54

yourself against PTSD before

29:57

the symptoms begin to take hold. So

30:00

this the idea here is that something traumatic

30:02

has occurred, what can I do to

30:04

keep from to keep that trauma

30:07

from taking root in my brain? Yeah? I'd be

30:09

like if you get bit by a dog with rabies

30:11

and you immediately go to the hospital for rabies

30:13

vaccine. You get bit by a zombie and you

30:15

get somebody to cut your arm off. Yeah, So this

30:18

would be a cognitive

30:20

vaccine against traumatic

30:22

memories. So in January

30:24

two thou nine researchers led by Dr Emily

30:27

A. Holmes of Oxford University,

30:29

they published a study on the effects

30:31

of Tetris on the formation of

30:33

traumatic or intrusive memories and

30:36

it's called ken. Playing the computer game

30:38

Tetris reduced the build up of flashbacks

30:41

for trauma, a proposal from cognitive

30:43

science. So they had two

30:45

pieces of knowledge that they were starting with. One

30:47

of them was cognitive science

30:50

suggests that the brain has selective resources

30:52

with limited capacity, so your brain

30:55

can't do everything that you can only devote

30:57

so much energy resource to

30:59

to a limited number

31:01

of things at a time. And the second fact

31:03

is the neurobiology of memory suggests

31:06

a six hour window to disrupt

31:08

memory consolidation. So

31:10

that you know that there's this idea that

31:12

about six hours after a memory takes

31:15

places, when the window for

31:17

consolidating that memory in the brain is,

31:19

you know, forming that strong recurrent

31:22

pattern memory. So

31:24

if you deny the brain the resources it

31:26

needs to form visuospatial memories

31:29

during that crucial few hours after

31:31

the event takes place, could

31:33

you stop bad memories from consolidating

31:36

with such great emphasis in the mind. And

31:40

they tested it. They tested it out by getting

31:42

forty volunteers and making them

31:44

watch Faces of Death. Act.

31:49

Well, I don't know. Actually they didn't say the name

31:51

of the tape because

31:54

I remember covering this study

31:57

like way back in the early like the

31:59

initial version of this podcast episode

32:01

with Alison Lowdermilk, and I don't

32:03

remember Faces of Death, but then maybe I overlooked

32:05

it. No, no, no, it was it was something

32:07

like that they were they were showed a film.

32:10

Uh shown a film full of horrible

32:12

images designed to simulate

32:15

a traumatic experience. Quote. All

32:17

participants viewed a traumatic film consisting

32:19

of scenes of real injury and death, followed

32:21

by a thirty minute structured break. They

32:25

described the film as a twelve

32:27

minute film that contained eleven clips of traumatic

32:30

content, including graphic real scenes

32:32

of human surgery, fatal road traffic

32:34

accidents, and drowning. So

32:37

that was disturbing student

32:39

film, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, they were all

32:41

made to watch that tape from the ring. So

32:45

after viewing the film and taking a real nice

32:47

thirty minute break, half of the participants

32:49

half of these forty people were given nothing

32:52

to do except sit quietly for ten minutes.

32:54

This was a control group, and the other

32:56

half played Tetris for ten minutes. Pretty

32:59

simple experiment. Um. Then they

33:01

checked to see how often members

33:03

of each group experience flashbacks during

33:05

the ten minutes. No surprise, the people

33:07

playing Tetris experience fewer flashbacks.

33:09

But that's not really surprising they were

33:12

playing Tetris. Then, here's

33:14

where it gets interesting. The researchers

33:16

sent the volunteers away

33:18

with instructions to keep a diary on

33:21

how many times they had flashbacks

33:23

to to to the Faces of Death basically

33:25

over the next week, and

33:27

the different groups had different

33:30

rates. They found that the people who played

33:32

Tetris for ten minutes after watching

33:34

the film had significantly fewer

33:37

flashbacks to the Faces

33:39

of Death type video and less

33:42

symptomology consistent with PTSD

33:44

when they checked back seven days later.

33:47

Crucially, both groups had

33:50

equivalently strong voluntary

33:52

recall of the film. And this is

33:54

an interesting aspect too, because they could both

33:56

remember the film fine, they could remember what

33:58

they saw. Uh, it's just that the group

34:00

that played Tetris had less trouble with

34:03

the unbidden recurrence of

34:05

these memories throughout their day to day lives.

34:08

So so again,

34:10

it's not it's not just a matter of

34:12

hey, Tetris distracted them from initially

34:15

thinking about it, but Tetris interfered

34:18

with the brains codifying

34:21

of the experience as a traumatic. Yeah,

34:23

And they concluded from this that it's not

34:25

just distraction like you say, it's something

34:27

about the visuospatial nature

34:30

of Tetris. This is something that they call out specifically

34:32

that Tetris is of visual and

34:34

spatial or visuospatial task

34:37

because verbal and other distracting

34:39

tasks have been demonstrated ineffective

34:42

before against trauma flashbacks. In some cases

34:44

they even intensify them.

34:54

So in this first study, one of the

34:56

things they wanted to point out that they were not saying

34:59

people who already of PTSD can

35:01

get better by playing Tetris, though

35:03

they speculate this could be a possibility, and

35:05

this gets revisited in a later study.

35:07

And they were also not suggesting that playing

35:09

any video game would have the same effect,

35:12

and they get into that in another experiment

35:14

in a bit, but just a

35:16

couple of comments. One of the things is it's

35:18

hard to test something like the formation

35:21

of traumatic memories leading

35:23

to PTSD because for obvious ethical

35:25

reasons, you can't expose somebody

35:27

to life shattering trauma for the sake of

35:29

the experiment. So the best they

35:31

could do was show somebody a really disturbing

35:34

movie. And even that seems kind

35:36

of weird. I mean when you read the like, yes, they

35:38

were showed the graphic images of death, and

35:40

then we asked them how troubled they were. Now

35:42

you could imagine a scenario where they are trauma metic

35:45

rushes out begins

35:47

treating the individual who is

35:49

is down on the ground with that and is wounded,

35:52

and then passing out game boys exactly

35:55

those soldiers in their nets. Yeah,

35:57

that's the other half. It seems impractical to seek

35:59

out people who have just been shot

36:01

or hit by a car or something and then give

36:03

them Tetris.

36:07

But these findings have been followed up on in subsequent

36:11

studies. So the same group did

36:13

another study in two thousand ten where

36:16

they they attempted to answer the

36:18

questions would all games have

36:20

this effect via distraction or enjoyment

36:23

or might some games even be harmful? And

36:25

then second, would the effects be found

36:27

if administered several hours post

36:29

trauma? Because this first one it was just Tetris,

36:32

and they played thirty minutes after they saw the movie,

36:34

so they essentially repeated the experiment,

36:38

but instead of just Tetris, they tried

36:40

Tetris and then this game called pub Quiz

36:42

Machine two thousand eight. Um,

36:46

And yeah, I

36:48

looked at a video of somebody merely playing

36:50

pub Quiz two thousand eight pub

36:53

Quiz Machine two thousand eight on YouTube, and I think

36:55

that alone could cause traumatic memories.

36:58

But but anyway, they had those too,

37:00

and they concluded that

37:03

no, the pub Quiz did not do

37:05

as well as Tetris. In fact, they found that the

37:07

pub quiz made the traumatic experience

37:10

flashbacks more intense. So

37:12

if you if you have a traumatic experience and

37:15

then play pub quiz, it's going to be

37:17

even worse for you. Don't do that. But

37:19

Tetris still performed better. And they also found

37:22

that even four hours after watching

37:24

the film, Tetris had significant reduction

37:26

in flashback because window.

37:29

Yeah, so you can wait four hours after

37:31

the event play some Tetris and supposedly

37:34

this discourages flashbacks.

37:36

Just another reason to make sure Tetris

37:38

is on your phone just in case. Now,

37:40

again, I wonder about Tetris versus

37:43

non verbal visual games. So

37:45

if you're playing Metroid or Shack Foo or

37:47

something like it, does does

37:49

the game have to provide a certain level of challenge?

37:52

Is there a difference between the effects on experience

37:54

Tetris players and on novices. So there

37:56

are a lot of questions that haven't been answered yet.

37:59

Um. But then there was another study from this

38:01

year and this is the last one in psychological

38:03

science, in a group of

38:06

researchers, again including Dr

38:08

Emily A. Holmes, who was on the other studies,

38:11

published findings that visual spatial

38:13

game tasks can block traumatic memories

38:16

even after the memories are already formed.

38:18

So remember earlier, I was like, well, they

38:20

weren't saying that you can cure PTSD

38:23

or not cure, but but help or alleviate

38:26

some aspects of PTSD just by playing

38:28

tetris after it's already formed. Here

38:30

they found maybe you can do that.

38:33

And because what they did is they

38:36

had people after the

38:38

memory formation had already taken place,

38:40

recall the memories, so bring

38:43

up voluntarily in the mind the traumatic

38:45

memories and then play Tetris, and

38:47

they found that this also reduced

38:50

flashbacks. Well that that makes sense

38:52

given the nature of memories. The

38:55

example I always bring up when we discussed

38:58

this is that that every memory in your

39:00

head is not a little stone

39:02

statue of the event, but a clay statue

39:05

of the event. And it's it's it's something

39:07

that it can be, it's valuable, it can be changed,

39:09

it can be altered every time you draw it out

39:11

there. And also when you draw it out it is

39:13

susceptible, uh, to positive

39:16

change if it's traumatic. Um,

39:19

So that would make sense. Yeah, So

39:21

in all of these studies they chalk this up to competition

39:24

for resources in in visual visuospatial

39:28

uh conception in the brain. Essentially

39:30

that they're saying that the disturbing

39:33

images that come in your flashbacks when you're you

39:35

know, remembering that you got shot or hit by a

39:37

car, you know, threatened by a guy with a chainsaw

39:40

or something whatever that is,

39:42

that's terrifying you. It's essentially a

39:44

visual spatial problem

39:46

in your brain. And if you can

39:49

if you can dampen that, if you can just

39:51

kind of uh smudge

39:53

that memory with competition

39:56

by the part of your brain that you used to solve Tetris

39:58

puzzles, you signal effiicantly weakened

40:01

the hold it has over you. So

40:04

anyway, I would love to see more research

40:06

in that area, and it seems very

40:08

interesting and hopefully promising. I mean,

40:11

if people can get relief from this, I

40:13

I think that's a wonderful thing. Yeah, totally.

40:16

So we have one more area of

40:19

potential tetris treatment to

40:21

discuss here, and it concerns uh

40:23

something that's commonly referred to as lazy

40:25

I. We're talking about amblyopia

40:28

here. It's a disorder of sight and

40:30

it results in decreased vision

40:32

in an eye that otherwise appears normal.

40:35

Or out of proportion to associated

40:37

structural problems with the eye. So up

40:39

to three percent of the population suffers

40:42

from amblyopia and it's a It's

40:44

ultimately caused by poor processing

40:46

in the brain, which results in the

40:49

suppression of the weaker eye

40:51

by the stronger eye. Huh. Now

40:53

that the common method of treating

40:56

this has always been patching,

40:58

So you wear an eye patch over the a I

41:00

um and uh and and eventually

41:03

brings things back back

41:05

to order. But um,

41:08

this is this is generally more helpful with younger

41:10

cases and not with older individuals

41:13

who are suffering from lazy eye. So two

41:16

thousand thirteen, a research team led

41:18

by Dr Robert Hess from mcgel University

41:21

and the Research Institute of the mcgel University

41:23

Health Center looked in

41:25

to possible use of tetris

41:28

as a means of treating uh

41:31

individuals are suffering from the

41:34

yeah once more so, they

41:36

they found that by distributing

41:38

information between the two eyes in

41:40

a complimentary fashion, catris

41:43

trains both eyes to work together, which

41:45

is which again is countered to previous treatments

41:48

such as patching, So you're forcing

41:51

both eyes to cooperate, which

41:53

increases the level of plasticity in the brain

41:55

and allows UH the the

41:58

the individual's brain to

42:00

relearn, essentially relearn how to

42:02

look at something and take individual data.

42:05

So they did this by using a head mounted

42:08

video goggles. They displayed the game dicoptically,

42:10

so one I was allowed to see only the following

42:13

objects and the other eye was allowed to see only

42:15

ground plane objects. So

42:18

this forced the two eyes to work together,

42:20

so you have to be they have two eyes have

42:22

to be working together to get the full image. Wait,

42:24

which I could see the preview box where

42:27

they're playing without the preview box. Maybe they were

42:29

playing without the preview box. See this

42:31

is this is really crazy because in

42:34

that documentary about Tetris I mentioned

42:36

in the UH in the other episode,

42:39

it's called the Ecstasy of Order. Again, I really

42:41

liked it, so I recommended. There's

42:44

a Tetris champion in their name, Jonas

42:46

Newbauer, And at one point he jokes around

42:49

by demonstrating his secret weapon,

42:51

and it's pointing his eyeballs separately in

42:53

different directions. Presumably

42:56

I think the joke is so that one can watch

42:58

the falling block while the other watches

43:00

the preview box to tell you which block is

43:03

coming next. I think he's

43:05

joking, but I'm not positive

43:07

whether he's he actually uses this while

43:10

playing or not. Huh yeah, because he would be he

43:12

would be doing the direct opposite of the

43:15

very thing about the tatris experience that is being

43:17

uh utilized potentially treat

43:19

lazy in this case. So

43:22

uh as as far as this particular research goes, clinical

43:25

trials worse at least initially scheduled

43:27

for and the company

43:29

Ambliotech, purchased the research findings

43:31

and licensed it to to you be Soft

43:34

for the creation of lazy eye treatment games,

43:37

specific like therapy games. Yeah.

43:40

So Ambliotech is currently seeking permission

43:42

from the U S. Food and Drug Administration

43:44

to market the therapy, such

43:47

as their game dig Rush, which is not

43:49

tetris um. And it

43:52

looks uh, it looks like it's basically

43:54

like a little digger character that's moving around

43:56

on a If it ain't tetris I don't care. It's

43:59

certainly less abstract.

44:01

Yeah. But the thing is that it utilizes

44:04

a tablet and three D glasses,

44:06

so you get that red and blue,

44:08

um you know, disconnect and you have to use both

44:11

eyes and concert to see the full picture.

44:13

Um. So anyway, they're they're seeking

44:16

FDA approval for this, according

44:18

to the most recent report, which was the March

44:21

BBC report. And if you want to learn

44:23

more about that company and see some screenshots from their

44:25

game, you can find them at www

44:27

dot ambliotech dot com. That's a

44:30

m b L y O T e c H.

44:33

You know, Tetris has been such an interesting

44:35

subject to do on this show because

44:38

I I still have

44:40

the intuition I had at the very beginning. I

44:43

still feel like there's an ancient secret

44:45

inside Tetris, or maybe Tetris

44:48

is the ancient secret, And after

44:50

doing all this research, I don't feel any closer

44:52

to articulating what that that ancient

44:55

mystery or that secret is. What's because

44:57

the Holy Tetromino stands

44:59

out side of our human world,

45:02

and in playing Tetris were able to dip into

45:04

the deep currents

45:07

of energy that underlie our reality.

45:09

Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to come

45:11

up with some kind of astronomical metaphor

45:14

or or the stars Tetris blocks,

45:16

but they're not really unless

45:19

you start thinking about it. Yeah, and

45:21

then there's no Indian thinking about it.

45:25

Wait a second, Yeah they are, Yeah,

45:28

they are. Do

45:31

you ever notice how the Maria on the moon, the

45:33

lunar oceans, that it's

45:35

all Tetris blocks. Yeah, yeah,

45:39

I'll buy into it. It sounds good to me. It's a big

45:41

storm on Jupiter. Yeah, just another Tetris

45:44

block. That's what two by two I

45:46

think. Ultimately, it is a very

45:48

fast, swirling Z shaped

45:50

block. So it's it's a storm because it's

45:52

the troubling Z shaped block. Those blocks

45:55

are the devil. All

45:58

right. Well, we know that this is a topic

46:00

that resonates with a lot of people

46:03

out there because Tetris is just something

46:05

that's unavoidable in our culture. At

46:07

this point, everybody's seen it or played it. You

46:09

have varying levels of experience with it, but chances

46:12

are you had at least a little bit of time that you're

46:14

addicted to it. Yeah. So if

46:16

you know the ancient secret of Tetris

46:18

and you understand why it is the strongest

46:21

potion in the in the Digital

46:23

Sorcerer's potion bag, you

46:26

should let us know. That's right. You can find is that stuff

46:28

to blow your mind? Dot com that is our mothership.

46:31

That's what we'll find all the podcast episodes.

46:33

You'll find videos, you'll find blog posts, you'll

46:35

find a link out to our social media accounts such

46:37

as Twitter and Facebook. We're

46:39

blow the Mind on both of those, and we are stuff to blow

46:41

your mind on Tumbler. And if you want to get

46:44

to us with your personal Tetris stories

46:46

or any feedback on the show or your thoughts

46:48

about the cognitive science of gaming

46:50

and Tetris, you can email us and blow

46:52

the Mind and how Stuff Works

47:04

for more on this and thousands of other topics.

47:06

Is it how stuff Works? Dot com,

47:13

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47:19

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