How your brain's executive function works -- and how to improve it | Sabine Doebel

TED Health

TED

Health & Fitness, Fitness, Shoshana Ungerleider, Medicine, How To Be Healthier, Ted Shoshana, Ted Talks Health

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2021

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

You use your brain's executive function every day -- it's how you do things like pay attention, plan ahead and control impulses. Can you improve it to change for the better? With highlights from her research on child development, cognitive scientist Sabine Doebel explores the factors that affect executive function -- and how you can use it to break bad habits and achieve your goals.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective.
0:02.0	Audio Collective.
0:04.0	Welcome to Ted Health.
0:10.0	I'm Elise Hugh.
0:13.0	If you've ever missed a meeting because you were too busy scrolling social media,
0:17.0	or you drove to the store only to forget what you went there for,
0:20.0	well, we've all been there.
0:22.0	Those are lapses in your brain's executive function.
0:26.0	Lucky for us, today we have cognitive scientists Sabine Dobel, who figured out how to improve it,
0:32.0	and it's not with brain training apps. Her archive
0:35.0	talk from TEDx Mile High 2018 explains.
0:40.3	Hey listener a quick favor we are conducting an audience survey and we'd be really
0:45.4	grateful if you could take just a few minutes to respond. Please visit survey
0:49.9	dot PRX.org slash health to take the survey today.
0:54.8	That's survey dot PRX.org
0:57.0	slash health.
0:58.4	Thanks.
1:00.4	So I have a confession to make. I only recently learned how to drive and it was really hard.
1:08.0	Now this wasn't an older brain thing.
1:11.0	Do you remember what it was like when you first learned how to drive?
1:14.8	When every decision you made was so conscious and deliberate, I'd come home for my lessons completely
1:20.8	wiped out mentally.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of TED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.