The Emotion Pathway

Like other information processed by the body, emotions follow the same trajectory. All of the regions of the brain that are associated with emotions include: thalamus, hypothalamus, cingulate gyrus, amygdala, hippocampus, and basal ganglia. The frontal lobe is involved, but it only controls the emotion and evaluates potential threats made to the person. As educators, it is our job to make sure students have a healthy emotional standing because it heavily affects their learning. Emotion can affect memory and attention, two things heavily relied upon in education. Zadina's Multiple Pathways to the Student Brain has a chapter that evaluates the effects on emotion on learning. Zadina (2014) states, "Emotion can have positive or negative effects on learning. The effect we most often think about in regard to learning is that strong negative emotions impair thinking and, therefore, learning in general." (pp. 66) Educators need to remind themselves to model positive emotion and interactions so that the students mimic that, and maintain a positive learning environment.

Resources:
Zadina, J. N. (2014). The emotion pathway. In Multiple pathways to the student brain (pp. 63-87). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.