The Social Neuroscience of Education Quotes

“Those who are nurtured best survive best. It turns out that our emotional resilience and our ability to learn are inextricably interwoven.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“Optimal sculpting of key neural networks through healthy early relationships allows us to think well of ourselves, trust others, regulate our emotions, maintain positive expectations, and utilize our intellectual and emotional intelligence in moment-to-moment”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“our ability to learn is regulated by how we are treated by our teachers, at home and in the classroom.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“Therefore, reading and reacting to other people’s behaviors, emotions, and attitudes have been hardwired into our brains. We are not only wired to connect, but we are also wired to attune to, resonate with, and learn from others.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“they found considerable plasticity from the onset of puberty into the early twenties. Once this was discovered, it became obvious that the upheavals of adolescence and early adulthood coincide with a previously unrecognized sensitive period of brain maturation in the prefrontal cortex”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“Sensitive periods are triggered via the interaction of genetic timing and experience. Sensitive periods are times of rapid learning when thousands of synaptic connections are made each second (Greenough, 1987; ten Cate, 1989). The timing of sensitive periods varies”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“are biased toward studying individual organisms. It is often difficult for scientists to grasp the idea that individual brains do not exist in nature. As much as one may adhere to the notion of the isolated self, humans have evolved as social creatures and are constantly regulating one another’s biology. Without mutually stimulating interactions, people (and neurons for that matter) wither and die. In neurons this process is called apoptosis (programmed cell death); in humans it is called failure to thrive, depression, or dying of a broken heart.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“discover that the quality of our relationships with our teachers, families, friends, and communities is as important to learning as the curriculum, testing, and technologies which usually occupy our attention.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“such as mating, childbearing, and establishing an occupation, lead to confusion, emptiness, and psychological distress.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“Perhaps the postponement in modern culture of the historically relevant challenges of adolescents,”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“Reward systems, such as those mediated by dopamine, also destabilize during adolescence in order to allow for the creation of new attachments, behaviors, and goals. This search for purpose and meaning makes adolescents more vulnerable to good and bad social influences,”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“Despite the fact that childbearing has been delayed into the 20s and 30s, the brain still expects this to happen at 12 or 13 years of age.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“The extent of neural growth and learning during sensitive periods results in early experience having a disproportionate impact on the shaping of our brains.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“Conversely, we humans are born premature and highly dependent newborns whose brains are shaped through years of interactions with our caretakers and the environment.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“contact—emotional networks integrate with sensory and motor systems to connect social and emotional meaning with behaviors.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“Keep in mind that teaching in tribal societies is generally performed by biologically related, caring, and deeply invested elders, one on one or in small groups. In these naturally occurring, attachment-based apprenticeships, learning is interwoven with the behaviors and biochemistry of bonding.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“consistent caretakers and allowed to interact with one another, that their survival rates improved (Blum, 2002). What better evidence is there that the brain is a social organ requiring positive human connection as much as food and water? Educational experts are guilty of a similar myopathy when they focus on curricular content and test performance rather than the social world of students and teachers.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“Take, for example, the way in which physicians responded to the high mortality rates of children in orphanages early in the last century. Assuming that microorganisms were to blame, doctors separated children from one another and kept handling by adults to a minimum in order to reduce the risk of infection. Despite these mandates, children continued to die at such alarming rates that both intake forms and death certificates were completed at admission for the sake of efficiency.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“Education is cumulative, and it affects the breed. —Plato”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“Emotional attunement between teachers and learners is highlighted, as well as the central role of storytelling in traditional and contemporary learning. Research has also found that exploration and play, usually consigned to less important after-school activities, are central”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“demonstrated that, in general, students seem to learn better when information is presented in particular ways and at a certain pace. Proper nutrition does have a measurable impact on memory and learning, and physical activity does enhance learning.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom

“Like the shaman, a teacher has to have a clear vision so that a student can come to believe that he or she sees something real that can be shared. The teacher’s message must be “I know something you don’t know, something you don’t have, but I am committed to sharing it with you and bringing you on this journey.”
― Louis Cozolino, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom