Skip to main content

Did You Know You Have An Inner Executive? Show It Some Love

Your brain has an Executive Function.
Executive function is the scientific term for our ability to organize activity, learn from past experiences, make plans, solve problems and work puzzles.

Some Science

Among the areas in the brain involved in executive function are the medial frontal cortex and the lateral prefrontal cortex. Robert M.G. Reinhart PhD and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Boston University notes that those two areas control most of the executive function. He calls these areas “the alarm bell of the brain”. Reinhart is the Director of the Visual Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston University and, among other area of brain research, has been studying ways to employ electrical stimulation to improve performance in learning and self-control.

“If you make an error, this brain area fires. If I tell you that you make an error, it also fires. If something surprises you, it fires,” says Reinhart.

More Science


Kimberly Luu, currently doing graduate studies at the University of Waterloo School of Public Health, and Peter A. Hall, PhD Clinical Psychology and Director of the Prevention Neuroscience Lab, also at Waterloo, assessed the effect of yoga and mindfulness on both mood and executive function. Their research indicated that sessions of yoga and mindfulness meditation resulted in more positive moods and in improved executive function.


The scientific research supporting the beneficial effect of exercise- in this case yoga-and meditation- on a healthy brain continues to mount.

Build a Better Executive Function

If you haven’t practiced meditation but are curious about it, we offer two excellent books on the topic. While completely appropriate for the beginner, there are plenty of topics of interest for the experienced practitioner. As always, before we recommend anything here, we try it ourselves. I refer to these books regularly myself. Oh, and we have some very cool puzzles.

Show your inner Executive some love; let’s get it promoted to a Senior Executive.

www.BigBrain.Place offers fun stuff that is good for your brain

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: What Matters Now by Gary Hamel

Interview of Eric Schmidt by Gary Hamel at the MLab dinner tonight. Google's Marissa Mayer and Hal Varian also joined the open dialog about Google's culture and management style, from chaos to arrogance. The video just went up on YouTube. It's quite entertaining. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Cover of The Future of Management My list of must-read business writers continues to expand.   Gary Hamel , however, author of What Matters Now , with the very long subtitle of How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation , has been on the list for quite some time.   Continuing his thesis on the need for a new approach to management introduced in his prior book The Future of Management , Hamel calls for a complete rethinking of how enterprises are run. Fundamental to his recommendation is that the practice of management is ossified in a command and control system that is now generations old and needs to be replaced with somethi

Manage Your Blood Pressure While Young to Have a Big Healthy Brain Later

Anatomy Refresher The brain accounts for around 2 percent of body weight but gets as much as twenty percent of blood pumped by the heart. There are about 370 miles of tiny “microvessels” in the brain. Those vessels deliver oxygen and nutrients throughout the brain. Blood Pressure and Brain Health Two recently-released studies reveal the importance of blood pressure management to brain health. More importantly, the researchers discovered the importance of managing blood pressure in one’s forties, or even younger. Dr. Matthew Pase, PhD, and Research Fellow in Neurology at the University of Boston School of Medicine, and Dr. Charles DeCarli, Professor of Neurology at the University of California Davis, presented a paper at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in July. (We’ve mentioned Pase in previous newsletters and posts. He used the highly-regarded Framingham Heart Study to produce the now famous, and famously disconcerting, study on the deleterious affe

Researchers Say Do This to Make Your Brain 10 Years Younger

Do your parents or grandparents keep a pot of coffee brewing all day? Do they spend the morning sipping a cup of coffee while working Jumble and the crossword puzzle in the newspaper? “Just because there is no evidence that it works doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. It just means that no one has paid for research to determine whether or not it works.” That was my response to one of the earliest subscribers to our newsletter. He is fond of crossword puzzles and was hopeful that solving them would help build cognitive reserve. At that point we hadn’t seen any research that indicated that word puzzles were useful. Guess what: our subscriber and your family members are on to something. There now is research to support that individuals regularly working puzzles are building some serious brain strength. Crossword Puzzles and Fast Brains Here’s a quote from Professor Keith Wesnes at the University of Exeter Medical School: “We found direct relationships between the frequency