Tetris players are not block heads
Playing the computer game boosted brain’s gray matter
Sinking blocks and clearing lines in Tetris may pay off with more than just a high score. Playing the classic shape-fitting computer game, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, for just three months may boost the size and efficiency of parts of the brain, a study published September 1 in BMC Research Notes finds.
“This is a fascinating result,” comments Pascale Michelon of Washington University in St. Louis. “It confirms how plastic the brain is.”
Brain scans revealed that certain regions of gray matter — an information-processing mix of brain cells and capillaries — grew thicker in 15 adolescent girls who had played Tetris for three months. On average, these participants played for just 1.5 hours per week. “Brain structure is much more dynamic than had been appreciated,” says Richard Haier of the University of California, Irvine, who coauthored the report with collaborators from McGill University in Montreal and the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque.