Eli5 What is executive disfunction?
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Executive functions are several fancy things the brain can do to itself:
– suppressing emotions and impulses
– listening to and obeying internal instructions
– feeling good about abstract accomplishments (feeling good because you ate tasty food is instinctive, feeling good about finishing your taxes is an executive function)
– paying attention to things you want to pay attention to
and similar. Like a lot of cognitive psychology we’re not entirely sure what we’re talking about. You can’t really measure distraction directly so researchers have to invent proxy tests like the Wisconsin Card-Sorting Task.
You get a deck of cards and start sorting them into piles according to a rule. The examiner tells you whether your moves are correct or incorrect, but they don’t tell you the rule. During the test the rule *changes* and you have to adapt, which means you have to figure out rules by trial and error *and* stop following old rules. That “stop following old rules” part is especially hard for people with executive dysfunction.
These abilities are apparently pretty fragile and depend on connections in and from the prefrontal cortex. They’re easily disrupted by stroke or drugs, brain trauma, aging, strong emotion, or fatigue. And they take a long time to develop. A 9-year old can explain why hitting their friends is wrong and stupid and all that, but that doesn’t stop them if they get mad enough. Ten years later they’ll probably be a lot better at those things, and reach full maturity after another five years or so.
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