Full PreFrontal: Exposing the Mysteries of Executive Function

Send us Fan Mail In 2015, at the White House Correspondents' Dinner something hilarious transpired. President Obama invited Luther, his anger translator, on the stage with him and the Comedian Keegan-Michael Key obliged. The tongue in cheek display of Obama’s true frustrations expressed through “Luther” was not only ironic but brilliant reminding us how we all need an anger handler. On this e...

Send us Fan Mail The schooling of American children is marred by our notions that hard and long hours of classroom learning is a defining feature of K-12 school success even though such environments lack a playful approach to learning or room for imaginative interactions with the world. In their book Out of My Skull, Neuroscientists James Danckert & John D. Eastwood write, “When we have a sens...

Send us Fan Mail Poet and philosopher Rumi once wrote, “Love is the bridge between you and everything.” As much as a loving bond between people may be the starting point for close relationships, the future of it however, is shaped by stress, communication, coping, mental health, and interpersonal support; which are the defining factors that allow those relationships to last or crumble. Bicker, squ...

Send us Fan Mail On February 18, 1981, Mr. Rogers asked Jeffrey Erlinger a 10-year old quadriplegic with multiple challenges to show the television viewers how his wheelchair worked and by celebrating Jeffrey with warmth and amazement, Mr. Rogers helped crystalized the modern neurodiversity movement. For a long time, normal and abnormal have been the only two concrete buckets cultures have used to...

Send us Fan Mail In his 1890 seminal book, The Principles of Psychology, William James wrote, “There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.” One such key form of indecision is procrastination; and research shows that procrastinators act as if there’s no future. There is a way however, to rein in the reckless disregard for the future-self by evoking th...

Send us Fan Mail Not now, later! These are three words we have come to value. The Marshmallow experiment from the 1960s popularized the idea of self-control and brought it into cultural consciousness; however, sometimes it has mislead us to think that kids who don’t wait for two marshmallows at the age of 4 might be destined to lead less fruitful lives. Instead of focusing on self-control through...

Send us Fan Mail In his short story, The Girl Next Door , essayist and comedian, David Sedaris writes, “In the coming days, I ran the conversation over and over in my mind, thinking of all the fierce and sensible things I should have said.” To some extent, each of us are trapped in our own mind’s echo chamber like David Sedaris describes and if kept unchecked, listening to the unfiltered stream of...

Send us Fan Mail “You stupid idiot!” Most of us in the civilized world would refrain from using such hurtful and aggressive language when addressing others. However, if someone were to be a fly on our mind’s wall and hear the things we say to ourselves, they might be horrified. When individuals face challenges, encounter failures, and make fools of themselves, the harsh and judgmental critic withi...

Send us Fan Mail Kofi Annan once said, "Education is a human right with an immense power to transform. On its foundation rests the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development." The question is, how do we help developing minds gain the knowledge of the self-evident or the invisible structural oppression that creates and sustains inequity so that their learning exp...

Send us Fan Mail What is common between a middle school teacher during the pandemic, a three-generation family living together with a terminally-ill child, and an employee who just lost their job? They all are stretched to the max and stressed to the limit. These individuals and the rest of America is stressed! Studies shows that when asked, close to 80% of doctor visits for health problems are as...

Send us Fan Mail A ticking bomb, an empty room with a hanger from the dry-cleaners, a radiator, two in captivity with their hands tied behind their backs, and that’s it. With less than 60 seconds left on the clock, only MacGyver can stay focused and optimistic, get himself untied, get his companion freed and flip the trick back on the assailant at the speed of lightening. That takes incredible pro...

Send us Fan Mail In the 1830s, Rev. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet’s method of teaching reading to deaf children was evolutionary and became inviting enough that  the then secretary of education, Horace Munn, adopted to teaching it to neurotypical children; the logic being, if the teaching strategy works for the deaf it must work wonders for all. It wasn’t until much later that that it was discovered ho...

Send us Fan Mail America’s struggle with equity was unveiled in a  2011 Department of Education study which showed that 45% of high-poverty schools received less state and local funding than what was typical for other schools in their district. The  funding disparities were further brought to light through a 2019 Ed Build report that showed that majority-white districts received $23 billion more i...

Send us Fan Mail Keeping up with the pace, load, and challenge of learning requires emotional and self-management skills – best described as Executive Function. However, when these skills are either delayed, under-developed, or absent it is easy to question the child’s motivations and intentions. The truth of the matter is that some kids simply need more support, scaffolding, and a greater appreci...

Send us Fan Mail Even though studies after studies show that more than 75% of job success is determined by soft skills ,which in business refers to effective communication, professionalism and work ethics, critical thinking, teamwork, and leadership, the word soft often undermines its nuanced nature and diminishes it potency. In the neuroscience and science of effective communication however,  sof...

Send us Fan Mail A difficult to teach child slows down the learning for others and accentuates the burden of teaching a group of diverse learners that often looms heavily on the teacher. What if  disruptive children are actually facing challenges that result from the lack of critical “to not be challenging” skills such as adaptive flexibility, frustration tolerance, and problem solving? On this ep...

Send us Fan Mail What do wigs, cookie jars, pizza dough, supermarket flyers, unpaid invoices, airplane menus, and a mummified human foot have in common? Those are some of the Andy Stuff found amongst 641 boxes left behind by the Pop Art legend Andy Warhol, which is now on display at the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburg. Truman Capote was once said to refer to Warhol as 'a sphinx without a ridd...

Send us Fan Mail The true meaning of empowering children is to help them claim the rights to their own life so that they can lead with a sense of confidence, clarity, and courage. The key is to trust  children to make their own mistakes while trusting yourself to resist the temptation of wanting to do everything for them.  On this episode, leading American educator, author of the book How to Raise...

Send us Fan Mail In the increasingly complex world, raising children to become adaptable, communicative, open, creative, and self-reliant thinkers is a tall order. As the raging pandemic is taking its toll on the American psyche, some groups are proving to be more vulnerable than others. The American Psychological Association’s 2021 survey reports that the parents of children under 18 years of age...

Send us Fan Mail What is limited, valuable, and scarce? Attention. As society as a whole tries to navigate the new terrain where attention is the commodity supporting a large part of the economy, it is imperative that humans understand that attention is the gateway to information processing and “knowing what to pay attention to” is probably far more important than simply paying attention. Since th...

Send us Fan Mail Its no joke, adulting is hard. To adult is to do all the things that grown-ups regularly do because they have to including finding a job, keeping it, living independently, paying bills, keeping a thriving social circle and handle the unexpected curve balls that life throws. High school to college and then college to life are transitions marked by the need for a substantial upgrade...

Send us Fan Mail The most basic human experience is to be able to communicate; express thoughts and ideas clearly and meaningfully while being fully understood. Most of us are unaware of the nature of these true gifts that allows humans to construct and build relationships from the ground up by launching nuanced skills such as reading faces, reading the room, and reading between the lines. Hence,...

Send us Fan Mail Yogi Berra once said, “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.” High achievers often bring perfection in their work; however, perfectionism can impede ongoing high achievement. The diligence in being perfect is time-consuming and exhausting and since humans can’t give up on the ideas of perfection, it’s prudent to remember that if left unchecked, perfectionistic tendencies can c...

Send us Fan Mail “The only thing that could impede me was me“ are the words spoken by Amada Gorman, the first ever Youth Poet Laureate.  Amanda for many years suffered from a speech impediment and an auditory processing disorder that made it difficult to communicate intelligibly what her beautiful mind was so eloquently able to construct. Amanda’s personal discovery that I am more than my garbled...

Send us Fan Mail Randomly scattered stars light up the night sky, but it is human inventiveness and imagination that has connected these cosmic dots into the constellations we know so well. As the podcast Full PreFrontal: Exposing the Mysteries of Executive Function celebrates its 100th episode, we have the same pleasure of connecting the scattered ideas that experts have shared with us over the p...