---
title: "Training the Emotional Brain: Improving Affective Control through Emotional Working Memory Training - Limitless Mindset"
description: Affective cognitive control capacity (e.g., the ability to regulate emotions or manipulate emotional material in the service of task goals) is associated with professional and interpersonal success.
author: Jonathan Roseland
url: https://www.limitlessmindset.com/scientific-studies/953-training-the-emotional-brain
---

# Training the Emotional Brain: Improving Affective Control through Emotional Working Memory Training

[![Training the Emotional Brain: Improving Affective Control through Emotional Working Memory Training](https://www.limitlessmindset.com/data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==)](https://www.limitlessmindset.com/media/reviews/photos/original/3f/43/af/training-the-emotional-brain-improving-affective-control-through-emotional-working-memory-training-78-1406417894.webp "Training the Emotional Brain: Improving Affective Control through Emotional Working Memory Training")

**Abstract**
Affective cognitive control capacity (e.g., the ability to regulate emotions or manipulate emotional material in the service of task goals) is associated with professional and interpersonal success. Impoverished affective control, by contrast, characterizes many neuropsychiatric disorders. Insights from neuroscience indicate that affective cognitive control relies on the same frontoparietal neural circuitry as working memory (WM) tasks, which suggests that systematic WM training, performed in an emotional context, has the potential to augment affective control. Here we show, using behavioral and fMRI measures, that 20 d of training on a novel emotional WM protocol successfully enhanced the efficiency of this frontoparietal demand network. Critically, compared with placebo training, emotional WM training also accrued transfer benefits to a "gold standard" measure of affective cognitive control–emotion regulation. These emotion regulation gains were associated with greater activity in the targeted frontoparietal demand network along with other brain regions implicated in affective control, notably the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex. The results have important implications for the utility of WM training in clinical, prevention, and occupational settings.

### Scientific Studies & Papers

Author of Study or Paper

Susanne Schweizer, Jessica Grahn, Adam Hampshire, Dean Mobbs, and Tim Dalgleish

Date Published

2013 in The Journal of Neuroscience

Scientific Link

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/12/5301.abstract

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