The Simple Neuroscience of Emotion and Learning
By: Natalie Wilcox and Brandon Slade - Founder of Untapped Learning
As you may have guessed, I think neuroscience is pretty fascinating. You know what I don’t find so interesting? History. I know I know it’s stories, and it’s cool to know what has happened in the past, but honestly, it has never been my favorite course. However, I have had some history classes that I loved, and it wasn’t because I took a sudden interest in civil war battle formations. Nope, it was because I had some amazing, engaging teachers that made me love their classes. Here at Untapped, we hear it over and over again that students are really bright but are only doing well in the classes with the topics or teachers that they like — so why is this?
When particular content is discussed, it activates varying brain areas, and different weights are applied to different types of information. If we are in a more heightened emotional state, such as fear, this can code a pattern more strongly, but similarly, if we admire or like someone and they introduce a topic, your brain codes it with more weight and it has more of a reward association. One of the main reward areas is the orbitofrontal cortex which is directly connected to the cingulate cortex. The cingulate cortex is often thought of as the bridge between the emotion centers and memory areas of the brain, so the signal is passed along this structure to the memory area of the hippocampus.
The more positive emotion is added to a piece of information, the stronger it is weighted. The information will be coded into your memory easier, making that topic or course easier to understand simply because you think it’s cool or the teacher is fun.
For more information, visit untappedlearning.com.
