Welcome to the Attention Deficit Disorder Expert Podcast Series by Attitude Magazine.

Hello everyone, my name is Wayne Callan and on behalf of the Attitude Team, I'm pleased

to welcome you to today's ADHD Experts Presentation, titled Optimizing Executive Functions

in Children and Adults with ADHD. To succeed in school, at work, and in life itself,

your executive functions need to be sharp and working well. But what are executive functions

exactly? They refer to the abilities that allow us to reason and creatively problem solve,

to exercise self-control and resist temptations, to think before we speak or act,

to stay focused and concentrate, and to exercise the flexibility to see things from different

perspectives and to adapt to change. In this webinar, we'll learn more about executive functions,

how they can be improved at any age, and the importance of reducing stress in particular

to improve these functions. Leading today's presentation is Dr. Adele Diamond,

a leader in two fields, psychology and neuroscience. Dr. Diamond helped pioneer the

now flourishing, interdisciplinary field, called Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience,

and is one of the foremost experts on executive functions. Dr. Diamond studies how executive

functions are affected by biological factors, such as genes in neurochemistry, and by environmental

ones. For example, impaired by stress, or improved by effective programs and interventions.

Her work has helped change medical practice for the treatment of PQ, and for the inattentive

type of ADHD, and has impacted early education worldwide. Professor Diamond was named one of the

2000 outstanding women of the 20th century, and was recently listed as one of the 15 most

influential neuroscientists alive today. She was educated at Swarthmore, where she received her

BA, Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard for her PhD, and Yale, where she was a postdoc. Before I hand over

the microphone to Dr. Diamond, I have just a few housekeeping items. Those of you who've tuned

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