Emotion and Learning
One final area in which neuroscience may contribute to education in the future is in the understanding of the link between emotion and learning.
At present ‘information in this domain is sparse and incomplete. Lack of measurement and theoretical foundation limits progress of the study of emotional regulation in educational practice’ (OECD, 2002). Although psychologists have known for some time that excess stress and fear can inhibit cognitive performance, the links between the ‘emotional brain’ (the amygdala and hippocampus) and the reasoning part of the brain (particularly the frontal cortex) are only just beginning to be understood.
It is known that the amygdala and the hippocampus Neuroscience and Education are linked to the frontal cortex, and that ‘when these connections are impaired either due to stress or fear, social judgement suffers, as well as cognitive performance, because the emotional aspects of learning, including responses to reward and risk, are compromised’ (OECD, 2002).
This has clear implications for classroom (and school) ethos. Some recent work has suggested that ‘emotional arousal’, whether pleasant or unpleasant, improves recall (McGaugh, 2004). The amygdala has been associated with the acquisition and retention of memories of emotional experiences. Human imaging studies and animal studies agree in suggesting that: activation of the amygdala influences the consolidation of long-term memory; the degree of activation of the amygdala by emotional arousal during encoding of emotionally arousing material (either pleasant or unpleasant) correlates highly with subsequent recall. The activation of neuromodulatory systems affecting the BLA [basolateral complex of the amygdala] and its projections to other brain regions involved in processing different kinds of information plays a key role in enabling emotionally significant experiences to be well remembered. (McGaugh, 2004)
In other words learners are likely to remember things better when they are emotionallyinvolved in their learning. Boring classrooms are likely to be inefficient classrooms.
From : www.scre.ac.uk
