Speaker 1: Welcome to Spotlight Advanced. I'm Alice Irrazari.
Speaker 2: And I'm Colin Lowva. Spotlight uses a special English method
Speaker 2: of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no
Speaker 2: matter where in the world they live.
Speaker 1: The car crash changed the girl's life. Her body did
Speaker 1: not have many injuries, but the memories from the accident
Speaker 1: still terrify her. They come at times she does not expect.
Speaker 1: She tries to think about something else when they happen,
Speaker 1: but these memories stop her other thoughts. It is as
Speaker 1: if she is living through the accident all over again.
Speaker 2: The girl is developing post trauma to extress disorder, or PTSD.
Speaker 2: This is a condition where memories of life threatening events
Speaker 2: take over long after they happened. These memories, called flashbacks,
Speaker 2: seem very real. People with PTSD experience many flashbacks in
Speaker 2: their lifetime. They relive their accidents over and over again.
Speaker 1: Whenever she has these memories, they have her play a
Speaker 1: video game called Tetris. Tetris seems to be the one
Speaker 1: thing that she is now thinking about. The game helps
Speaker 1: her think about something other than her flashbacks. It makes
Speaker 1: them seem less frightening. But experts believe that Tetris may
Speaker 1: have an even greater effect. It may stop her from
Speaker 1: getting post traumatic stress disorder at all. Today, a spotlight
Speaker 1: is on Tetris, the healing game.
Speaker 2: Tetris is a simple game created in nineteen eighty five
Speaker 2: by Alix Pagetknoth. The game was designed so that almost
Speaker 2: anyone could play. A player turns different shaped blocks. As
Speaker 2: the blocks fall down the screen, the goal is to
Speaker 2: fit these blocks together in perfectly level lines. When a
Speaker 2: player forms these level lines, the blocks flash and disappear.
Speaker 1: This is called clearing a line. Clearing lines gains a
Speaker 1: player points. It also provides more room on screen to
Speaker 1: line up blocks. The game ends when the blocks reach
Speaker 1: the top of the screen. The blocks fall faster as
Speaker 1: the game goes on, making it more difficult.
Speaker 2: These simple rules made Tetris a success. Today, the series
Speaker 2: has sold over five hundred and twenty million copies of
Speaker 2: the game. It is the second highest selling video game
Speaker 2: in history. Pajetnov spoke about the success of Tetris with
Speaker 2: the gaming website Polygon.
Speaker 3: In lots of games you go in and destroy things.
Speaker 3: In Tetris, you have the feeling that you are building
Speaker 3: something all the time. It is useful and positive. It
Speaker 3: makes you feel smart.
Speaker 1: But Tetris is more than just fun and good feelings.
Speaker 1: Emily Holmes is a teacher at the Karolinska Institute, a
Speaker 1: university in Sweden. She believed that Tetris's simple rules could
Speaker 1: be useful for treating PTSD. In twenty seventeen, she carried
Speaker 1: out a test on people who had been in car accidents.
Speaker 1: She asked them to reach remember the accident, then she
Speaker 1: asked them to play Tetris for fifteen minutes. The people
Speaker 1: who played Tetris were less likely to get PTSD, their
Speaker 1: flashbacks were less intense.
Speaker 2: Experts are not yet sure why Tetris has this effect,
Speaker 2: but much of it may have to do with how
Speaker 2: image based Tetris is. Tetris occupies most of the image
Speaker 2: centers of a person's mind when playing the game. Flashbacks
Speaker 2: are also very image based. Picturing a painful memory involves
Speaker 2: the same area of the brain. A person cannot concentrate
Speaker 2: on both the game and the memories at the same time.
Speaker 2: Playing Tetris stops or blocks the memories from happening.
Speaker 1: This block is important, and for people who have gone
Speaker 1: through intense mental injury. The more people reexperience the events
Speaker 1: that hurt them. The more those memories stay with them,
Speaker 1: their flashbacks become more difficult to get rid of. They
Speaker 1: may even fear the flashbacks themselves. This leaves sufferers in
Speaker 1: continuous states of worry. They might push away help for
Speaker 1: fear it will hurt them. Doctor Lali Eyadurai is a
Speaker 1: teacher at the University of Oxford. She wrote in the
Speaker 1: journal Molecular Psychiatry.
Speaker 4: This first week after injury can be important for our patients.
Speaker 4: They have to go home, recover and look after themselves.
Speaker 4: These can be hard to do if you are getting
Speaker 4: memories of the injury, often several times a day.
Speaker 2: Tetris, the studies suggests, is a good way to prevent
Speaker 2: those memories from forming at all, or it can at
Speaker 2: least limit the difficulty that these memories cause.
Speaker 1: The game may also help with other issues. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: scientists from the University of Queensland carried a study on
Speaker 1: some of its students. The study worked to see if
Speaker 1: Tetris could affect desires for drugs or alcohol. Students were
Speaker 1: asked to play Tetris for three minutes whenever they experienced
Speaker 1: these desires. They reported their levels of desire before and
Speaker 1: after playing.
Speaker 2: The results were similar to the study on post traumatic
Speaker 2: stress disorder. Playing Tetris lessened the desire for things like drugs, alcohol, sex,
Speaker 2: and food. The effect was the same for each desire.
Speaker 2: Tetris reduced desire no matter how how many times a
Speaker 2: student played. Professor Jackie Onrawday is a teacher at Plymouth
Speaker 2: University in the United Kingdom who helps run the study.
Speaker 2: She spoke about it on her university's website.
Speaker 5: We think the Tetris effect happens because desire involves imagining.
Speaker 5: You picture, eating a particular substance, or being satisfied by
Speaker 5: a particular action. Tetris is graphically interesting. It takes over
Speaker 5: the mental processes that support imagery. It is hard to
Speaker 5: imagine something else vividly and play Tetris at the same time.
Speaker 1: Playing Tetris may even help cure lazy eye. This condition
Speaker 1: takes place when a person's brain cannot take in information
Speaker 1: from one eye. Eventually, the brain stops trusting that eye.
Speaker 1: It closes the eye off, causing sight loss. That eye
Speaker 1: is said to be lazy. It does not work as
Speaker 1: much as the other eye.
Speaker 2: Sometimes an operation is the only way to correct lazy eye,
Speaker 2: but often the eye can be trained. The more patients
Speaker 2: use the weak eye, the more effective it becomes. A
Speaker 2: study released in twenty nineteen suggested that playing Tetris is
Speaker 2: an effective eye training method. The strong images of the
Speaker 2: game forced the eyes to work together. Eyesight improved in
Speaker 2: patients for thirty minutes after playing the game. Playing the
Speaker 2: game for fifteen minutes a day saw permanent improvement after
Speaker 2: just two weeks.
Speaker 1: Tetris may not be the only game to have these advantages.
Speaker 1: Other games like it may have similar effects. Research into
Speaker 1: the therapeutic possibilities for video games is just beginning, but
Speaker 1: these studies suggest that Tetris is more than just a
Speaker 1: game one day Tetus may be a part in certain
Speaker 1: therapies for helping and healing many people.
Speaker 2: Have you ever played Tetris? What do you think about it?
Speaker 2: You can leave a comment on our website or emailers
Speaker 2: at radio at Radio English dot net. You can also
Speaker 2: comment on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash Spotlight Radio.
Speaker 1: The writer of this program was Dan Christman. The producer
Speaker 1: was Michyo Osaki. The voices you heard were from the
Speaker 1: United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted
Speaker 1: for this program and voiced by Spotlight. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this pro program again and read it on the
Speaker 1: internet at www dot Radio English dot net. This program
Speaker 1: is called Tetris the Healing Game.
Speaker 2: You can also get our programs delivered directly to your
Speaker 2: Android or Apple device through our free official Spotlight English app.
Speaker 2: We hope you can join us again for the next
Speaker 2: Spotlight program. Goodbye,