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TED Talks Daily

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

TED Talks Daily

TED

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4.111.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2020

⏱️ 8 minutes

🧾️ 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.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh. If you've ever missed a meeting because you were too busy scrolling social media or you drove to the store only to forget what you went there for in the first place. By the time you got there, we've all been there. Those are lapses in our brain's executive function. Lucky for us, today we have cognitive

0:22.8

scientists Sabine Dobel who figured out how to improve it. And it's not with brain training

0:28.7

apps. Her archive talk from TEDx Mile High 2018 explains how. So I have a confession to make.

0:39.1

I only recently learned how to drive, and it was really hard.

0:44.8

Now, this wasn't an older brain thing.

0:47.9

Do you remember what it was like when you first learned how to drive?

0:50.7

When every decision you made was so conscious and deliberate,

0:56.1

I'd come home from my lessons completely wiped out mentally. Now, as a cognitive scientist, I know that this is because

1:02.0

I was using a lot of something called executive function. Executive function is our amazing

1:09.0

ability to consciously control our thoughts, emotions, and actions

1:13.6

in order to achieve goals, like learning how to drive.

1:17.6

It's what we use when we need to break away from habit, inhibit our impulses, and plan ahead.

1:24.6

But we can see it most clearly when things go wrong.

1:28.3

Like, have you ever accidentally poured orange juice on your cereal?

1:34.3

Or ever start scrolling on Facebook and suddenly realize you've missed a meeting?

1:39.3

Or maybe this one's more familiar.

1:41.3

Ever plan to stop at the store on the way home from work and then drive all the way home instead on autopilot?

1:49.0

These things happen to everyone.

1:51.7

And we usually call it absent-mindedness,

1:53.7

but what's really happening is we're experiencing a lapse in executive function.

1:59.0

So we use executive function every day in all aspects of our lives,

2:03.7

and over the past 30 years, researchers have found

...

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