Train your brain not to be upset or anxious

Brains can be trained to improve their ability to ignore irrelevant information, resulting in reduced neurological reactions to emotional events, according to an Israeli neuropsychologist whose collaborative PhD research is the first study to demonstrate that this effect is possible to achieve through non-emotional training.

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Noga Cohen’s study also showed that the same simple computer-training task can change the brain’s wiring, strengthening neural connections between brain regions involved in inhibiting emotional reactions. In the study, the brains of 26 healthy volunteers were monitored before and after multiple computerized training sessions using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The training involved a non-emotional “executive control task” of identifying whether a target arrow points to the right or to the left, while ignoring the direction of arrows on either side of it. A resting-state fMRI scan assessed connections between brain regions during no specific task and later during an emotional reactivity task in which participants were asked to ignore negative pictures. More...

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