Control pattern recognition like a Tetris master
[Music]
so i’m in this relationship
and a few months ago my girlfriend and i
were fighting a lot
we just couldn’t seem to find any ways
to agree with each other
on many things and after each fight just
like any responsible boyfriend
i chose to play video games to forget
about everything
but surprisingly enough
uh but surprisingly enough a puzzle game
called tetris
actually had the answer for our
relationship playing the game
i realized that i was thinking was just
following a very destructive pattern for
us
as a couple and we had to do something
about it
so today i would like to share about how
teachers can save a relationship
and
and our teachers can help us improve
pattern recognition control
in life so what is tetris
the rule is very simple there are seven
random pieces that are just like my
academic scores
falling constantly from the top to the
other
anyway you can move you can rotate to
fit these pieces together and when you
complete a straight line
that light disappears so since it first
came out not only has tetris became the
best-selling game but also one of the
most researched
video games of all time many scientific
words have shown the positive effects
that tetris may have on the brain
for example 1994 study by okabegi in
french
and 2009 research published on bmc
research notes
found that blank touches may lead to
higher brain efficiency
and better cognitive flexibility
for me personally the benefit i got from
the game was a better
mental health back in high school i was
having trouble
sleeping stress and worries always
followed me to bed bringing with them
the nasty insomnia
and time at the time lying in bed with
eyes wide open
i decided to screw it and play tetris
all night instead
but i failed that mission because just
after 15 minutes of playing
i started to dose up to forget about my
life problem
and started to dream about tetris
so so turned out the game was like the
ocd version of carting ships
that i need and i was able to sleep
again
anyway i got very interested in this
dreaming phenomenon
and wanted to know why it happened that
was when i stumbled upon a
research 1999 research conducted by
professor robert stigle
in harvard medical school participants
were asked
to play touches for three days and after
that just like me
they reported dreaming about falling
shapes that were similar to tetris
pieces
this phenomenon was called the tetris
effect and this happened
because the brain still retains the
upper image of tetris during sleep
to continue forming new neuron pathways
and
new patterns to improve at the game you
can experience the same effect when
playing sport
or solving rubik’s cube for long enough
time
and when you started to form new muscle
memory
but not just limited to sleep status
syndrome can also happen when we are
awake
people who play tattoos for long hours
may involuntarily try to
reorganize real life items geometrically
i know this first hand because during my
first month of intensive playing
my ocd got the better of me and i
started to reorganize
socks clothes and books in my room and
that was also for the first time in my
life
my mother liked the idea of me playing a
video game
so just like how it can help us improve
attention
or cleaning up the room saturation
syndrome can also be applied to
improve button recognition in other
situations
as well why does this matter because
pattern recognition matters
when there’s too much information for us
to process what our brains usually do is
they
filter information in patterns and in
many cases we couldn’t decide for
ourselves
what information to keep and what to
filter out because
the patent recognition process can
happen unconsciously
but we can still give good patents the
best
chance to shine by consciously
replicating the tattoo syndrome
let’s take a look at the tetras game for
better visualization
so uh because seven pieces appear
randomly and are constantly falling
we need to consciously try our best to
build an environment a playfield
that are accommoda accommodable for all
seven pieces
similarly in real life so for the
pattern recognition process to be
effective
we need suitable stimuli so what we can
do is we can consciously
construct an environment that promotes
and accommodates
this suitable stimuli let’s take a look
at a real life example
artists travel to beautiful landscapes
to find new inspirations
what they’re actually doing is they
consciously
construct an environment that promotes
creativity
and artistic patterns for them so on
another key takeaway here is we are
consciously
doing something with consciously
creating an environment
to influence the unconscious process of
pattern recognition
so let’s get back to my relationship
problem it’s
obvious what needed to be done here
whenever talking with my partner
i needed to create an atmosphere that
promotes positivity
and good conversations right
well turned out it was not that simple
if our conversations
was like a tertiary scheme it could look
something like this
we couldn’t agree on many things just
like how these pieces don’t really fit
together
and wrong pieces kept on piling up
preventing necessary and right pieces
to fit into holes and gaps beneath them
so
just like how people can unintentionally
become good
at tetris what my girlfriend and i
were doing for those past few weeks was
that
we are playing an emotionally negative
tetris game for so long
that our brains unintentionally become
so good
at recognizing negative patterns so oops
because there are finite things we can
think
at once there’s just simply no room for
positivity anymore
and i need to dig up this hose first to
find room for positivity
so to solve this problem we first need
to understand
about the characteristic of good and bad
patterns
it’s not the button itself but actually
the context
that decides whether a pattern is good
or not
for example a pessimistic thinking
pattern is definitely
bad for people who suffer from
depression
but it’s sometimes good for a business
owner when managing business risk
similarly in our relationship negativity
is
bad because it’s cost fighting but it’s
sometimes good
because it’s helped detect problems and
improve the relationship
so on another bigger problem here is not
the pattern
but the lack of control the lack of
flexibility in the pattern recognition
process
so uh now we know that we need to
be able to change button when the
context requires to do so
here is also where we can learn another
things from tetris
after playing the game for some time
what the game actually do is the game
will level up and speed up
by that time if you use the same
patterns and the same strategy
pieces will pine up very quickly and
boom game over
so but luckily for us right after
leveling up
tetris will keep zero q by changing its
color
and playing a short tune so maybe that
is what we
need in real life because changing from
changing to patterns that has the
complete opposite effect of what your
brain
is currently stuck on is very difficult
we need to take a little detour first
basically we need a cognitive
instruction
a destruction can be anything a shower
after work
a good meal a good book but the more
rewarding the better because the more
rewarding
the more dopamine you get and the more
dopamine you get
the more attention you pay on the task
and eventually
you should be able to distract yourself
from the old audited pattern
and started to build new patterns again
using the conscious environment strategy
as previously stated
so i have of the pieces now it’s time to
form a strategy whenever we are stuck
on a pattern we should distract
ourselves with something more rewarding
and when bad patterns wear off we can
then
build an environment to promote new
better good
patterns so i shared this strategy with
my girlfriend
at first it was awkward like we are
about to give a ted talk presentation
and it was like a
ted speech guy but luckily for me my
girlfriend was very understanding and we
decided to give this a try here’s how we
implemented it
whenever we were fighting or were about
to start a fight
we would stop talking and then do
something else
more rewarding and less stressful like
thinking of happy things that
happened during the day or listening to
some good music
and when the hit between us had gone
down
we will start talking again and this
time we will try to
remind ourselves of good characteristics
in each other
and remind ourselves of the reason why
we fall in love in the first place
and
[Applause]
and this strategy was surprisingly
effective
turn out our brains refer love and
positivity to
negativity and fighting so
i’m happy to say that we are still going
strong to this day
[Music]
so after this speech i would like to
invite you to try a game of tetris
you may not find a way to control the
pattern of life right away
but i think it will still be a 15 minute
sessions
of very simple and entertaining blocks
stacking
maybe live pattern recognition and
textures
are not so different after all thank you
for listening