A UCSD study found that 2-3 hours weekly of cognitive training over eight weeks reduced repetitive negative thinking in people with PTSD, anxiety, OCD, and depression. The training also increased cortical connectivity, suggesting targeted exercises can rewire brain circuits tied to rumination.
Obviously, as a therapist, you see lots of people with repetitive negative thinking. And so it's common in PTSD. It's common in anxiety disorders, OCD, depression. So some people I know out at UCSD, they did working memory training for people who had repetitive negative thinking. And what they discovered was that the working memory training delivered a basically, you know, 2, 3 hours a week for 8 weeks was associated with reductions in repetitive negative thinking. But it increased people's cortical connectivity, suggesting that by strengthening cortical circuits with cognitive training, you can get to this distal end-state phenomena that doesn't seem like it should be connected to, you know, frontolimbic activity, but it is.
