The Top 10 Weird Children of Video Games and Neuroscience

[fuchikoma]

Erin Robinson posted this over at Gamasutra. I thought it was pretty interesting.

 

Here's the full article.

 

1. People with no memory can remember playing Tetris

 

You may be surprised to learn that scientists are not only studying the effects of video games on the brain -- they are using games to help unravel how the brain works.

 

Consider anterograde amnesiacs, the unfortunate lot who have lost the ability to form new memories due to brain damage. It's the kind of amnesia suffered by the main character in the movie Memento, who lives in an ever-updating present, unable to remember anything that happened after his traumatic accident.

 

And yet, people with this type of amnesia can learn to play Tetris just fine, and even get better with practice (although not as well as people without brain injury). And it gets weirder. Have you ever spent a lot of time doing something repetitive, particularly something new, and then tried to fall asleep? Have you noticed the intrusion of visual images related to what you were just doing? Those are called hypnagogic images, and you guessed it, the amnesiac patients still saw things that looked like Tetris blocks despite having no recollection of playing the game.