It's been a rough week, and I've been beaten down with stress lately. During a bout of said stress last night, I dove right into the
WiiWare remake of Dr. Mario while checking out some relatively new
stuff. The intent was to check it out for a couple minutes and move
onto something else after clearing it out of my fridge and getting back
some precious blocks. However, as so often happens with me and these
games, a couple minutes became a couple hours, and after I re-emerged,
I noticed that my stress was completely gone. In fact, the feeling of relaxation that I'd gotten was oddly reminiscient of the feeling I used to get from another stimulus: nicotine.
I've only taken up smoking once in my life, that was during my
sophomore year of college, where juggling a couple majors and several
other commitments I needed to come up with some sort of stress relief.
Something about sitting out on a quiet quad puffing away was quite
calming, but then again, it was probably the nicotine. It was a
lifesaver for that year of college, but it was certainly not
sustainable and I dropped the cloves soon after, though obviously the
memory of that feeling remains, and that's definitely what my Dr. Mario pill popping felt like.
This fascinates me, as
I've always had a proclivity for puzzle games. I believe quite
confidently that Tetris is the best game ever made, though a detailed
analysis of that is a topic for another day, but once I really started
thinking about it, my experience with Dr. Mario was not alone. I can't
count the times I've kicked back and relaxed for an extended Tetris
session, or even a session with one of the better knockoffs. I never
really noticed how easily I'd fall into such a relaxed state, and the feeling was almost therapeutic.
The thought that Tetris could be therapeutic is hardly a new one. However, when looking into why Tetris is such a strong antidote for stress I came up empty. This is a question that deserved a deeper look. The closest starting point actually came from our friends at the PopCap empire, as earlier this year they underwrote a study at East Carolina University after a disproportionately large number of people said in surveys that playing Bejeweled and Peggle improved their mood. The goal of the study was to determine if there was any measurable basis behind said claims. The study was fairly limited in scope, but it observed changes in neural activity from short sessions with the aforementioned games as opposed to simply surfing the web. While the study itself is not completely relevant to the question at hand, one particular entry did stand out:
It has been shown that left hemisphere frontal alpha brain waves can be correlated with mood and associated behaviors. Increases in alpha power in the left hemisphere is associated with negative affect, depression and avoidance/withdrawal behaviors. Conversely, decreases in left alpha power improves mood and decreases avoidance/withdrawal behaviors. Decreases in right hemisphere alpha power has been also been associated with negative mood. Conversely increases in right alpha power improves mood and increases Approach/Engage behaviors. The ratio between right and left brain alpha has been used to measure emotional stability/mental relaxation (Davidson,1988 and Marshall & Fox, 2000)
I'm no neuroscientist, far from it, but my layman's nutshell interpretation is that increased activity in the right hemisphere and decreased activity in the left hemisphere of the brain correlate to stress relief and improved mood. The conclusions from the study itself supported improved mood, as the ECU team found that there was a definite pattern there, but for all we know, that could have been from the simple pattern recognition that defines Bejeweled or the amazing positive reinforcement that something like Peggle has to offer. In addition, the skills at play in Peggle and Bejeweled don't really line up with something like Tetris or Lumines, so we've got to look elsewhere for something more definitive. However, the quoted block above gives us something more specific to look for.
Once I had an idea of what to look for and I started delving into
the research that's been done in this space, the answers became clear.
Seeing as I'm no scientist, I'll try to keep this as simple as I
possibly can. Tetris is commonly and correctly classified as a complex
spatial task. Spatial cognition is specific to the right hemisphere of
the brain, and, you guessed it...the frontal lobe. The obvious
conclusion here is that what you're doing when you're playing Tetris is
stimulating the exact part of the brain that controls relaxation and
stress relief and taking attention away from the left hemisphere, which
controls anxiety and depression.
Obviously, this is simply a hypothesis from some game blogger, but I think the reasoning behind it is sound, and thus, there's a verifiable neurobiological reason for those feelings of relaxation that Tetris has to offer. The mere act of playing Tetris is emotional therapy for your brain. This hypothesis can lead to other conclusions, such as the theory that you're more predisposed to using the left side of your body while playing Tetris, but that's certainly not relevant to the subject at hand.
It might not be as sexy as lighting one up, but there's no question that the relief brought on by a little block stacking is every bit as real as the rush from nicotine, and almost certainly healthier in the long run. However, now that I think about it, perhaps this feeds right into Tetris' well-documented addictive qualities. Who's up for a War on Tetris?
