Strictly speaking, the term neuroscience has always referred to the investigation of the structure and functioning of the nervous system from a physiological perspective and, therefore, would be equivalent to the branch of neurobiology. For this reason, in its beginnings, the concept of educational neuroscience only appealed to neurological studies on the functioning of the brain that were related to learning and memory. However, in recent years, we have found that the scientific evidence on how the brain learns that is most relevant to educational practice, comes especially from cognitive psychology and related disciplines. That is why the term educational neuroscience has been increasingly used in a broader sense than the original, grouping these disciplines under the same umbrella (Howard-Jones, 2010). In other words, the term has become synonymous with any discipline that uses the scientific method to analyze how we learn and specifically, in the field at hand, the sciences that study educational phenomena: pedagogy (neuropedagogy).
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For example, neurobiology investigates how learning occurs at the molecular, cellular, and organ and system levels, studying how the nervous subsystem acts as a physical support for learning-related phenomena. In recent decades, this discipline has benefited greatly from the possibility of “seeing” the brain of a healthy person in functioning while performing mental or motor actions, being able to appreciate which regions of the brain are activated above the usual.
La Psicología cognitiva se sitúa a otro nivel de estudio, que investiga cómo el cerebro obtiene, manipula y almacena la información. Esta disciplina no estudia la fisiología del cerebro, sino que modela su funcionamiento a partir de la evaluación de los cambios que determinadas experiencias sensoriales o motoras provocan en el comportamiento y las habilidades de las personas, por lo que es mucho más fácil de orientarnos en la práctica educativa que la neurobiología. La Psicología cognitiva se apoya en los avances de la Neurobiología para fundamentar sus modelos y teorías. Actúa como enlace entre los avances científicos sobre el funcionamiento del cerebro y la educación.
The main objective of neuropedagogy is, taking into account the individual characteristics of students and teachers, to analyze what are the optimal and most creative strategies for solving educational problems, using knowledge about the individual characteristics of brain organization and higher mental functions. For example, the different strategies between boys and girls, left-handed and right-handed and how these change in the various educational stages are analyzed.
In this way, neuropedagogy advances through some basic principles of the educational process such as:
Tienen factores internos (experiencia previa, estado emocional, nivel de motivación, características individuales del alumno, etc.) y externos o percepción periférica del entorno de aprendizaje (ambiente general en el aula, sonido, luz, etc.).
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There are many terms associated with neuropedagogy, which, although they have slight differences, all could be used as synonyms at one time or another. The most common are Neuroaprendizaje, Neurodidáctica y Neuroeducación.
In summary, we could say that Neuroeducation would be the most generic term that would encompass Neurolearning, closely linked to psychology (evolutionary and cognitive) and Neurodidactics or Neuropedagogy, which is the specific area that concerns us.