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UK-Sweden Trial Finds Tetris Reduces Trauma Flashbacks by Tenfold
The imagery competing task intervention (ICTI) reduced flashbacks tenfold within four weeks and led to 70% of NHS staff reporting no intrusive memories after six months.
- Researchers in the UK and Sweden ran a trial that found 99 NHS staff exposed to trauma had 10 times fewer flashbacks within four weeks after receiving ICTI, as reported in The Lancet Psychiatry.
- Using the Imagery Competing Task Intervention , participants briefly recalled a traumatic memory then played a slow version of Tetris while imagining the grid and blocks, occupying visuospatial brain areas to reduce intrusive images.
- About 40 treated participants received ICTI while control-group patients listened to Mozart or had standard treatment, and PTSD symptoms dropped with some 70% reporting no intrusive memories at six-month follow-up.
- Researchers now plan to test ICTI on larger, diverse groups and develop a non-guided version, while Wellcome and Tayla McCloud called the results impressive with enormous impact potential.
- For overstretched health systems, the study's use of Tetris, created by Alexey Pajitnov, evokes the 'Tetris Effect' phenomenon and could widen treatment tools for trauma‑exposed health‑care workers.
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Tetris gameplay treatment helps reduce traumatic flashbacks for frontline health care workers
A simple, digital intervention that includes mentally playing Tetris can dramatically reduce intrusive memories of trauma in a month, even to the point of being symptom-free after six months, new research has found.
kreiszeitung.deReposted by 
tz.de
tz.deAfter six months, 70 percent of the participants had no more intrusive memories.
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Leaning Left5Leaning Right2Center9Last UpdatedBias Distribution56% Center
Bias Distribution
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56% Center
L 31%
C 56%
13%
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