How Playing Tetris Tames The Trauma Of A Car Crash

I spent an alarmingly large chunk of 1989 trying to align a falling shower of digital building blocks into perfect rows of 10.

The Russian video game Tetris had just caught on in the States. Like many American children, I was rapt.

Plenty of video games are all-immersive, yet there was a particular 8-bit entrancement to Tetris — something about the simplicity and repetition of rotating descending blocks so they snugly fit together that allowed a complete dissociation from self, and from parental provocations ("Maybe, uh, go do something outside?").

I eventually emerged from our den, thumbs sore, eyes bleary, and found running around our Buffalo suburb with friends ultimately more fulfilling.

But it turns out the particular brand of disconnection provided by Tetris may reflect a mental state long sought by healers to treat patients who have lived