Canny Minds Blog

Playing Tetris can boost brain power

Posted on 07. Oct, 2009 by Jenny in Articles, Brain Training

Tests suggest that, despite being relatively simple compared with today’s video games, regular practice can improve thinking.

Tetris involves arranging falling shapes into blocks on a computer screen and researchers asked teenage girls to play for half an hour a day for three months. Subsequent scans revealed “structural changes” in parts of their brains “associated with movement, critical thinking, language and processing,” said the researchers in a report to be published by the journal BMC Research Notes.

They found that there were differences in cortical thickness between the girls who practices Tetris and those who did not. The team from the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, New Mexico, also believed that practising the game boosted “mental efficiency”.

Rex Jung, a neuropsychologist, said the study was linked to recent research indicating that juggling practice increased grey matter in the motor areas of the brain.

“We did our Tetris study to see if mental practice increased cortical thickness, a sign of more grey matter,” he said. “If it did, it could be an explanation for why previous studies have shown that mental practice increases brain efficiency.”

More grey matter could mean that certain areas of the brain did not need to work as hard to complete tasks.

Tetris was developed by Alexey Pajitnov, a Russian, in 1984 and remains one of the world’s most popular computer games.

From The Daily Telegraph.

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Photo courtesy of mat.teo

Tags: 13-18, brain training, Exercise your brain, Female, Number Games, tetris