Emotional Working Memory Training and Executive Function: A Review of Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms

Emotional working memory training (eWMT) has emerged as a promising intervention to enhance executive functions, particularly in contexts involving emotional regulation. This systematic review, guided by the PRISMA protocol, synthesizes evidence from ۱۶ randomized controlled trials and related studies on the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying eWMT's effects on executive functions such as attention control, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility. Drawing from diverse populations including healthy adults, individuals with anxiety, depression, and ADHD, the review highlights moderate improvements in emotion regulation and working memory capacity, with standardized mean differences (SMD) ranging from ۰.۳۱ to ۰.۳۸ for key outcomes. Neural mechanisms involve enhanced efficiency in frontoparietal networks, reduced activation in affective regions like the insula and amygdala during emotional tasks, and increased recruitment of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) for better affective control. While findings suggest eWMT may reduce symptoms of anxiety (SMD = -۰.۴۴) and depression (SMD = -۲.۰۴), heterogeneity and methodological limitations call for caution. Implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed, emphasizing the need for larger, long-term studies to clarify transfer effects to broader executive functions.

کلیدواژه ها:

Emotional working memory training ، executive functions ، emotion regulation ، neural mechanisms ، cognitive control