Studies show that children with social deprivation have tragic effects on brain and cognitive function. Even though these children had food, clothing, and other material supplies; they had no opportunity to develop meaningful, stable relationship with a loving, committed adult.

Emotion plays a role in developing the neural substrate for learning by helping people attend to, evaluate, and react to stimuli, situations, and happenings. Before, It was believed that emotions interfered with critical things and that knowledge and emotions are separate. However, after extensive research, now it’s clear that brain works by supporting emotion, learning, and memory are intertwined.

Emotions help learners set goals during the process of learning. They tell the individual experiencing them when to keep working and when to stop, when she is on the right path to solve a problem and when she needs to change course, and what she should remember and what is not important.

People work harder when they can connect to the content and skills they are emotionally attached to and passionate about. Even anxiety can undermine and activate reactions in the brain that might not be positive but controlled by fear rather than a positive emotion.