Playing Tetris is good for you
A new scientific study suggests that all that time you may have spent in front of all those gaming machines playing Tetris was actually good for your brain.
I’m not making this up.
According to today’s press release using your brain can give you positive results:
“Researchers at the Mind Research Network today announced the findings of a scientific study that used brain imaging and Tetris to investigate whether practice makes the brain efficient because it increases gray matter.
Over a three-month period, adolescent girls practiced Tetris, a computer game requiring a combination of cognitive skills. The girls who practiced showed greater brain efficiency, consistent with earlier studies. Compared to controls, the girls that practiced also had a thicker cortex, but not in the same brain areas where efficiency occurred.”
Notice that they say they used girls in this study. I’m guessing that results might have been significantly different if they had used adolescent boys. Maybe not.
This is not the first study to use Tetris. According to scientists, playing these kinds of games (Tetris, juggling, etc.) improves many functions:
“It requires many cognitive processes like attention, hand/eye co-ordination, memory and visual spatial problem solving all working together very quickly. It’s not surprising that we see changes throughout the brain.
Neuro-imaging studies demonstrate plasticity of cortical gray matter before and after practice for some motor and cognitive tasks in adults.”
Dr. Sherif Karama, a co-investigator at the Montreal Neurological Institute believes this is a good thing:
“We showed that practice on a challenging visuospatial task has an impact on the structure of the cortex, which is in keeping with a growing body of scientific evidence showing that the brain can change with stimulation and is in striking contrast with the pervasive and only-recently outmoded belief that our brain’s structure is fixed.”
So now, when someone tells you to stop playing games you can refer them to the actual scientific study. Remind them you enjoy “challenging visuospatial tasks.”
You can begin sharpening your brain power by playing at Tetris.com and freetetris.com. You can also join the Tetris group on Facebook.