A new open-access study has introduced Tetrix, a flexible, neuroscience-compatible version of Tetris designed to help researchers investigate how the brain coordinates attention, visuospatial working memory, mental imagery, planning, and movement. The paradigm, described by Julius Grote and colleagues in Behavior Research Methods, adapts the familiar block-stacking game for behavioral experiments, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and potentially clinical research. Unlike many earlier Tetris studies, which used different game versions and experimental controls, Tetrix offers a standardized framework that researchers can configure for specific scientific questions. The complete stimulus and analysis materials are publicly available, giving laboratories a ready-made platform for studying one of the world’s most recognizable video games.
Tetris may look simple, but successful play requires the brain to perform several operations at once. Players must monitor a falling shape, rotate it mentally, predict where it will fit, remember the current board configuration, track upcoming pieces, and rapidly transform those decisions into finger movements. As the game becomes faster, these processes must operate under intense time pressure. This combination makes Tetris very different from traditional laboratory tasks that isolate a single ability, such as the Stroop task for cognitive control or the n-back task for working memory. Tetrix preserves the game’s integrated demands while allowing researchers to separate its visual, motor, and cognitive components experimentally.
The project was developed by modifying an open-source Python implementation of Tetris using the Pygame library and then integrating the game into PsychoPy, a widely used platform for behavioral and neuroimaging experiments. Its architecture separates the game mechanics from the broader experimental design, allowing investigators to alter settings through configuration files rather than rewriting the entire program. Researchers can define the starting level, control the rate at which blocks fall, determine how many completed lines are needed to advance, adjust scoring rules, and prevent level progression when a constant difficulty is required. They can also select whether the next one, two, or three blocks appear on screen, or remove the preview entirely to reduce visuospatial planning during control conditions.
The program also includes several components that can run in parallel through Python’s multiprocessing framework. A pretrial version measures individual performance and can be used as a standalone behavioral task. A main gameplay process is intended for neuroimaging experiments, while a visually simplified “watching” process displays falling blocks without allowing participants to control them. The paradigm records scanner trigger signals, keypresses, timing information, game events, and performance variables in log files. Researchers can pseudorandomize block sequences and experimental conditions using fixed random seeds, ensuring that the same stimuli can be reproduced across participants or testing sessions. This reproducibility is particularly important in fMRI, where small differences in timing or stimulus content can affect the measured blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal.
Tetrix is built around a set of control conditions designed to identify which parts of Tetris gameplay drive brain activity. In the default design, participants first complete practice rounds so that the game can estimate an appropriate difficulty level. During the main experiment, they play Tetris for 30 seconds, followed by one of three conditions: watching an automated version of the game, making button presses without playing, or viewing a fixation cross as a baseline. The visual control presents blocks that move independently of the participant’s actions and do not stack, while the motor control displays symbols indicating when participants should alternate button presses. Comparing gameplay with these conditions helps researchers distinguish activity related to complex visuospatial operations from activity caused simply by seeing moving shapes, pressing buttons, or maintaining a resting baseline.
To demonstrate that the system could work inside an MRI scanner, the researchers conducted a pilot study involving seven participants. One participant was excluded because strong head motion caused a field-of-view shift, leaving six datasets for the main neuroimaging analysis. Participants completed 21 gameplay trials, each lasting 30 seconds, with variable intervals of six to eight seconds between blocks. Scanning was performed on a 3-Tesla MRI system using a multiband echo-planar imaging sequence with a repetition time of 1.2 seconds. The functional images covered the whole brain at a resolution of approximately 3 millimeters in-plane and 3.3 millimeters through-plane, while a high-resolution T1-weighted anatomical scan was collected for each participant.
The researchers processed the data with SPM12, a standard software package for statistical parametric mapping. Their preprocessing pipeline included motion estimation, correction of outlier volumes, slice-timing correction, anatomical-functional co-registration, tissue segmentation, normalization to the MNI template, and spatial smoothing with an 8-millimeter Gaussian kernel. Motion parameters were included in the statistical model, and an interpolation procedure called SPIKECOR was used to replace unusually affected volumes. The critical analysis tested whether gameplay produced greater activity than watching Tetris, button pressing, and baseline fixation simultaneously. This conjunction contrast was intended to isolate neural responses associated with the distinctive cognitive demands of playing rather than with basic vision or hand movements.
The resulting activation pattern centered on a distributed frontoparietal network. Bilateral regions in the middle and superior frontal gyri, including areas associated with the frontal eye fields, became active during gameplay. Strong responses also appeared in the posterior parietal cortex, including the superior parietal lobule and intraparietal sulcus, as well as the left middle occipital cortex and parts of the right cerebellum. The frontal eye fields and posterior parietal cortex are major components of the dorsal attention network, which helps direct attention toward relevant locations and coordinate goal-driven visual exploration. In Tetris, these regions may support the rapid selection of important board elements, the monitoring of falling pieces, and the shifting of attention between the current block, the playfield, and the preview window.
The authors argue that the same frontoparietal system may also support visuospatial working memory and mental imagery. Players must retain the shape and orientation of Tetrominoes, imagine possible rotations, and compare those imagined configurations with available spaces on the board. The occipital activation that remained after comparison with the visual control condition may reflect top-down modulation of visual processing, although the researchers caution that eye movements could also contribute. Without eye tracking, it is impossible to determine whether the frontal eye-field response reflects cognitive control, differences in saccade frequency, or both. Cerebellar activity may likewise reflect more than simple finger movement, potentially involving movement coordination and predictions about the sensory consequences of rapid actions.
The study also reports voxel-wise Hedges’ g effect-size maps that may help future laboratories estimate sample sizes, although the authors emphasize that the pilot sample is too small for definitive conclusions. Some estimated effects were exceptionally large, exceeding g = 5, a result that can occur when a small sample produces strong but unstable group statistics. An additional group of ten participants showed broadly similar activation clusters, offering preliminary replication, but the study was not designed to establish precise causal roles for the identified regions. Head-motion spikes occurred across participants, underscoring a major challenge for MRI research using physically demanding games. Even with correction and interpolation, frequent hand movements may produce subtle body and head displacement that can contaminate neural measurements.
Tetrix is also connected to a growing clinical interest in Tetris-based interventions. Previous studies have suggested that playing a visuospatial game after trauma may reduce later intrusive memories, possibly by competing with the mental imagery and visuospatial working-memory resources involved in forming or reconsolidating traumatic memories. Tetris-based interventions have been examined in emergency departments, experimental trauma studies, and clinical populations with post-traumatic stress disorder. The new pilot findings raise the possibility that the game’s effects depend not only on working-memory load but also on rapid visuospatial reorientation and sustained engagement of the dorsal attention network. That interpretation remains hypothetical, however, and the present study did not test treatment outcomes or patients with PTSD.
The authors describe Tetrix as an ongoing project rather than a finished clinical instrument. Later versions added adjustable trial lengths, optional experimental blocks, detailed gameplay recording, motor-condition logging, and replay-based controls that can reproduce the timing of earlier gameplay. Such features could allow future studies to manipulate one variable at a time, including game speed, preview-window size, level progression, or motor demands. These experiments may clarify whether Tetris-related brain activity reflects working-memory capacity, mental rotation, attention shifting, motor planning, reward processing, or the interaction of all these functions. For now, Tetrix offers researchers an unusually accessible bridge between a popular game and rigorous cognitive neuroscience: a reproducible, configurable task that can be downloaded, modified, and tested across laboratories and clinical settings.
Subject of Research: A standardized Tetris-based behavioral and fMRI paradigm for studying attention, visuospatial working memory, mental imagery, motor planning, and related neural networks.
Article Title: Tetrix: A novel Tetris-based paradigm for neuroimaging research and clinical applications
Article References: Grote, J., Stocker, J. E., Sommer, J., Hamm, A.-M., Kessler, H., & Jansen, A. (2026). Tetrix: A novel Tetris-based paradigm for neuroimaging research and clinical applications. Behavior Research Methods, 58, Article 279. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-026-03150-6
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.3758/s13428-026-03150-6
Keywords: Tetris, Tetrix, fMRI, PsychoPy, visuospatial working memory, mental imagery, dorsal attention network, cognitive control, motor planning, neuroimaging, PTSD research
