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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
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Society & Social Sciences

EMOTIONS, LEARNING, AND THE BRAIN

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience

Making its way into classrooms around the country is a revolution in neuroscience, changing the way we understand how emotions influence thinking and learning.This book makes available the most pertinent scientific information in a way classroom teachers can understand and apply.

In this ground-breaking collection, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang?an affective neuroscientist, human development psychologist, and former public school teacher?presents a decade of work with the potential to revolutionize educational theory and practice by deeply enriching our understanding of the complex connection between emotion and learning. With her signature talent for explaining and interpreting neuroscientific findings in practical, teacher-relevant terms, Immordino-Yang offers two simple but profound ideas: first, that emotions are such powerful motivators of learning because they activate brain mechanisms that originally evolved to manage our basic survival; and second, that meaningful thinking and learning are inherently emotional, because we only think deeply about things we care about. Together, these insights suggest that in order to motivate students for academic learning, produce deep understanding, and ensure the transfer of educational experiences into real-world skills and careers, educators must find ways to leverage the emotional aspects of learning. Immordino-Yang has both the gift for captivating readers with her research and the ability to connect this research to everyday learning and teaching. She examines true stories of learning success with relentless curiosity and an illuminating mixture of the scientific and the human. What are feelings, and how does the brain support them? What role do feelings play in the brain's learning process? This book unpacks these crucial questions and many more, including the neurobiological, developmental, and evolutionary origins of creativity, facts and myths about mirror neurons, and how the perspective of social and affective neuroscience can inform the design of learning technologies. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, EdD, is associate professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience at the Brain and Creativity Institute and Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles.

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Book Published 2015-11-16 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

Emotions, Learning, and the Brain provides a comprehensive review of the latest research in neuroscience, which demonstrates the power of emotions in learning in every setting, from the classroom to digital environments. For decades, experimentation by psychologists has shown that emotions matter in the classroom?and matter a great deal. Immordino-Yang strengthens that evidence base with a deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind it, helping explain the critical links between emotions and learning.

This book is like the planning document for the revolution of affective neuroscience, which has transformed our understanding of what makes humans tick: our drives, frailties, loves, and?through Immordino-Yang's brilliant work?how we learn. Emotion and reason are not separate, as we've figured since antiquity; they are deeply intertwined, as are the mind and body. Here, Immordino-Yang and her colleagues, including the discipline's godfather, Antonio Damasio, explain it all, with reason and passion.

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang is not only a brilliant and original researcher; she also has a gift for coming up with exceptionally creative ways of looking at child and adolescent development for teachers and the general public. From winning the Cozzarelli Prize to her latest achievement in this remarkable book on affective neuroscience for educators, Immordino-Yang provides us with new lenses for understanding how emotion shapes learning

Fasten your seatbelts and step into the fast lane of twenty-first century cognitive neuroscience, emotions, and learning. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang gets straight to the heart of the matter: how and why emotions matter in teaching and learning. Emotions, Learning, and the Brain is the book we have all been waiting for: relevant, rigorous and, yes, revolutionary. It is the book every teacher and parent, every policy maker and researcher, and every citizen concerned with the future of American education should read.