A new study suggests that playing Tetris can actually thicken your cerebral cortex.

There may actually be some positive mental benefits to playing Tetris, other than having your dreams haunted by ethereal Tetriminos at night.

The Mind Research Network (MRN), a US-based brain research organisation, have carried out an experiment on 26 teenage girls by having them play Tetris for 30 minutes a day over three months. When their brain scans were compared with those of a similar group who had not played Tetris at all, a noticeable change in the brain was discovered. Here's a statement from Dr. Richard Haier, a neurologist at MRN who was the project leader.

"What we found was a change in the brain after playing Tetris. The thickness of the cerebral cortex actually increased, by less than half a millimetre. It used to be thought that the number of neurones [brain cells] in the brain was fixed after a certain age. This appears not to be true."

The cerebral cortex plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language and consciousness.

We didn't really need an excuse to play Tetris anyway, but knowing that we're developing our brains by playing it is welcome news indeed.