Neuroscientific Contributions to Understanding and Measuring Emotions in Educational Contexts

With the advent of increasingly sophisticated neuroimaging technologies since the late 20th century, the fields of social and affective neuroscience have expanded exponentially. In parallel with the expansion of knowledge about affective and social processing in the brain (Adolphs, 1999; Adolphs & Damasio, 2000), there has been a growing emphasis in the field of education on the important roles of emotions in learning (Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, & Perry, 2002). In this chapter, we discuss how neuroscientific advances may contribute to the effort to understand and measure emotional functioning in academic contexts.