The "top hat of self-regulation"

Human beings have the wonderful and nurtured capacity to interact thoughtfully and empathically attune to the emotional needs of others: while remaining capable of contemplating hypothetical future end states and identifying the intermediate nested sets of goal directed behaviors that must be linked together in sequence to achieve the attainment of future desires over current needs.

Developmentally, along a continuum, the neurophysiological development of the prefrontal cortices and the specific neural networks that allow for the higher order cognitive capacities to develop occur, within a thirty year time frame. The phenotypic expression of maturation occurring within the pre-frontal cortex allows for externalized emotional and behavioral shift of actions, previously impulsive in nature, to self-regulated effortfully controlled actions that occur within social contexts.

The significance of the executive functions, aside from the ability they afford in self-regulation of emotion, behavior and thought, is the internalization and privatization of language once public to all. The transition a child makes from playing and narrating his heroic tale for all to hear, to one day barely audibly speaking to himself, is a wonderful example of the internalization of language and the development of non-verbal and verbal working memory development.

For all children and adults alike; exercise, glucose enriched fluids, and learning are tasks we can and must do to refuel our executive function resource tanks on a regular basis.

I welcome any questions, comments, or thoughts and will be providing a weekly follow up on current theories, practical interventions for executive function impairments, and natural as well as psychotropic models that can help those with pathologies directly impairing the executive functions.

Look forward to hearing from you soon!