Can neuroscience inform education?

Educational Neuroscience is an emerging scientific field that brings together researchers in cognitive neuroscience, developmental cognitive neuroscience, educational psychology, educational technology, education theory and other related disciplines to explore the interactions between biological processes and learning. Researchers in educational neuroscience investigate the neural mechanisms of reading, numerical cognition and attention, and their attendant difficulties including dyslexia and ADHD, as they relate to learning. Educational neuroscience research generates basic and applied research that will provide a new transdisciplinary account of learning and teaching, which is capable of informing education.

Although an increasing number of researchers are seeking to establish educational neuroscience as a productive field of research, debate still continues with regards to the potential for practical collaboration between the fields of neuroscience and education, and whether neuroscientific research really has anything to offer educators.

Rejection May Hurt More Than Feelings

By PAMELA PAUL (re-posted from NY Times)

NOBODY would deny that being ostracized on the playground, mocked in a sales meeting or broken up with over Twitter feels bad. But the sting of social rejection may be more like the ouch! of physical pain than previously understood.

“Social Rejection Shares Somatosensory Representations With Physical Pain,”  published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the same areas in the brain that signify physical pain are activated at moments of intense social loss. “When we sat around and thought about the most difficult emotional experiences, we all agreed that it doesn’t get any worse than social rejection,” said the study’s lead author, Ethan F. Kross, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.