How your brain’s executive function works — and how to improve it | Sabine Doebel

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.

Get TED Talks recommended just for you! Learn more at .

The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. You're welcome to link to or embed these videos, forward them to others and share these ideas with people you know. For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request here:

Follow TED on Twitter:
Like TED on Facebook:

Subscribe to our channel:

34 Comments on How your brain’s executive function works — and how to improve it | Sabine Doebel

    • Are you trying? If so, that’s your mistake. The degree to which you try to let go of something is representative of how tightly you are gripping it. Letting go is important and it seems that almost nobody knows how to do it. Almost every guru or teacher out there will coach you into fighting fire with fire, or into addiction transference or repression. You can’t fight your own limbic system and your ego, including your sense of self has a primary function of making that system happy. The thing is, bad habits are things that make it happy yet they make your body and mind suffer. Don’t fight your problems, accept yourself, find a quiet and comfortable place, close your eyes and explore the universe behind your eyes. You’ll find that letting go is very simple and that the opportunity to do so will present itself naturally to you.

    • +couch pup Wrong, it only says what doesn’t work. Did YOU even watch it? Oh.. and “how to improve it” does not exist in this video so yes, it’s a click bait title.

    • TheNew Pav this argument is already tedious. after the three minute mark, the talk continues & elaborates on how context matters & showed experiments to support the findings, then finally examples are given on how you may use knowledge of self & the context to improve your strategies to have “better” executive function in various situations. must you be spoon fed?

    • +couch pup Please learn to use logic, reason and evidence. Clearly, you’re just a condescending arrogant pseudo intellectual who likes to grand stand and start fights. Don’t talk about tiring when you started an argument.

  1. There’s a breakdown when those “symbols of waiting” in society can be faked: neck deep in car/home loans and credit, doctored social media photos, liposuction, plastic surgery all to fake a brand/image to everyone. We see it it my city all the time and people open up in certain support groups (to keep it private) about their debt or relational problems because of the pressure to fabricate an image of high social status. I have 2 cars: a new car and a 2006 car that looks fair but it is fully paid off and runs great. I see a huge difference in how people behave around me when I drive the older one so the pressure by peers to fake it is there.

  2. The little girl at 4:27 received v. good verbal instructions, but during execution she was mislead – already in process when she received the card, should have been reminded & second card handed over the wrong box with no pause

  3. I know a kid, around 18 or 19 years old, who works with an Executive Function Coach. Apparently, he has some issues with his executive function, and his coach is with an organization that works with people with these issues. I felt bad for the kid because even with the help of his coach, he was unable to pass a college course he enrolled in. He didn’t show up to class 50% of the time and rarely did his homework. He’s a bright kid, too.

  4. I waited about the half of the speech so she can get to the point, and then she sad something that everyone already knows. I think that they(scientists) barely know anything about executive functions just the obvious.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*


Shares
Share This