Education and the social brain

The study of the social brain offers a number of opportunities for enhancing classroom education. This review focuses on the mentalizing network, a set of brain regions that support thinking about the thoughts, feelings, and goals of others. This network typically competes with brain regions supporting analytical thought and memorization. Rather than treating classroom learning and socializing as antithetical to one another, this paper suggests our natural social tendencies can be leveraged to improve learning, by making the content and process of education more social. Recommendations are made for history and English classes, as well as for STEM fields. Finally, it is proposed that educating adolescents about the social brain itself will reap educational rewards.