The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex and Emotional Maturity Development in the Profession
By Christina Testa and James Stellar
Now that Christina has experienced the professional setting and has seen how her strengths as a student have helped her to become a working professional in Public Health, she has learned more than ever that contextual learning experiences can play a key role in personal/emotional learning development. Does this new experience lead to further developing one’s emotional maturity? We know the frontal cortex is an area of the brain that develops over one’s lifetime, and experiences can impact its development. How does contextual learning impact the development of emotional maturity in relation to frontal cortex development?
According to a 2022 research paper, cognitive control stems from the active maintenance of neural patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) that represent goals and the means to achieve them. Another 2022 paper suggests that cognitive abilities are shaped by experiences over time and are in synchrony with PFC structural changes. The dynamic PFC rearranges incoming and outgoing wiring depending on usage and need. The developing cognitive and executive capabilities occur parallel to the neurophysiological changes within the PFC and its pathways as our group discussed in a recent blog. This process plateaus after adolescent years. Adolescent years can be first characterized as changes in social interactions and cognitive abilities to gain independence as an adult. These papers both explain the important role the PFC plays in development. The PFC is a dynamic part of the brain that is constantly changing due to one’s personal experiences in their lifetime. What about the development of emotional maturity through important experiences and what effect does it have on the PFC?
Emotional maturity or otherwise known as emotional intelligence (EI) is key to professional wisdom. EI is defined as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action” according to a 2011 research paper. This same paper also mentions that the PFC plays a role in the interpretation, expression, and regulation of emotion. Emotional regulation is a building block for developing EI and is crucial to help with optimal learning and educational success. According to a 2016 study, the research argues that the slow maturation of the PFC relative to structures related to emotional responding such as the amygdala and ventral striatum is a likely reason children and adolescents have a harder time regulating their emotions. This means that more organized structural connectivity may contribute to increased success with emotional regulation.
“Intelligence is an important aspect of the mind that includes a lot of cognitive abilities such as one’s abilities in logic, planning, problem-solving, adaptation, abstract thinking, understanding of ideas, language use, and learning”, according to another research 2018 paper. This paper goes over a characterization of EI as a pyramid that categorizes the required layers and cognitive processes in adult development needed to achieve the highest level of EI. This scheme is shown in the diagram below.
In this scheme, the pyramid places emotional regulation (layers 4 and 5 from the bottom in the diagram above) in the middle as a key step of achieving EI. Achieving self regulation allows one to be more flexible, extroverted, and receptive and less reactionary and withdrawn. One understands one’s emotions and has the ability to manage them better leading to your individual and the group’s success and resilience, which we discussed in our previous blog. Understanding one’s own emotion through self regulation allows you to then achieve the proceeding steps in the diagram and grow. Each level of the pyramid above is an improvement to one’s personal growth, emotional regulation, awareness, and motivation.
Cognitive processes from the PFC are necessary in achieving EI and are important for one’s personal life, professional life, interpersonal relationships, and academic success. Researchers believe the emotional mind is in a way just as if not more important than the intelligent mind.
It is noted from an 2012 paper that the frontal executive function controls an expanding repertoire of behavioral strategies for acting in changing and open-ended environments. This function decides to create new strategies rather than simply adjusting and switching to the ones previously learned. This is a huge implication that experiences can alter one’s reaction to new information, and can influence the development of EI. This means their professional wisdom can be built through experiences that provide contextual learning, like for instance CT’s Internship in the Public Health field. Being in that lab and gaining hands-on experience performing the SARS-CoV-2 antibody neutralization assay allowed CT to experience contextual learning at the professional level. Learning while on the job forces the mind to create new strategies because of entirely new and unique professional experience. EI achievement through emotional regulation and resilience coincides with the cognitive functions of the PFC which then leads to the development of professionalism.
