A study conducted by researchers at the MRC CBU, led by Susanne Schweizer, which was published in the Journal of Neuroscience (20 March) has investigated the possibility of improving individuals’ affective control capacity, which refers to  the ability to keep focusing on the current task despite emotional distraction. The study showed that emotional working memory training did indeed improve performance in both working memory and emotion regulation, which requires affective control. These training benefits were associated with changes in brain activation in the areas of the brain involved in affective control. These findings suggest that emotional working memory training may be helpful to individuals with low affective control, such as those suffering from affective disorders (e.g., depression).