Article

Educational Neuroscience
Volume 1: 1-12
Where Is Educational Neuroscience? ª The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/2377616115618036
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John T. Bruer, PhD1

Abstract
Educational neuroscience is a relatively new field. Where is it in relation to other research domains, such as education research,
the psychology of learning, and the neuroscience of learning? Document co-citation analysis reveals that these research fields are
tenuously connected. Currently, educational neuroscience sits between subfields of neuroscientific and psychological research
but remains distant from issues and topics that are prominent in the education research literature. Part of the problem is that
the educational neuroscience literature is a meta-scientific literature, more about the promise and pitfalls of applying
neuroscience to education than it is about applications of neuroscience to education. The psychology literature retains a
fundamental role in linking educational neuroscience, education research, and neuroscience into an integrated learning
research enterprise.

Keywords
educational neuroscience, education research, psychology, neuroscience, bibliometric analysis

Received October 04, 2015. Revised October 04, 2015. Accepted for publication December 02, 2015.

Educational neuroscience is a relatively new and highly inter-
disciplinary research front. Its objective is to improve educa-
tional practice by applying findings from brain research.
Other research fields in education, psychology, and neu-
roscience are also attempting to improve teaching and learning
through applications of their work. Educational neuroscientists
are well aware of this. However, it would be useful to see how
different fields in the learning sciences might interrelate and
complement one another. Where is educational neuroscience?
Using document co-citation analysis, this article explores
how educational neuroscience relates to the fields of education
research, the psychology of learning, and the neuroscience of
learning. There are connections among the various research
communities with these four fields, although some of the
connections are tenuous. As of now, educational neuroscience
sits between subfields of neuroscientific and psychological
research. However, it remains distant from issues and topics
that are prominent in the education research literature. Part of
the problem is that the existing educational neuroscience liter-
ature is more of a meta-scientific literature than a scientific
literature. It is a literature more about the promise and pitfalls
of applying neuroscience to education than it is about applica-
tions of neuroscience to education. We will also see that the
psychology literature plays a fundamental role in linking edu-
cational neuroscience, education research, and neuroscience
into an integrated learning research enterprise. As educational
neuroscience matures and moves down from the meta-level, it
may become more highly integrated with education research,
psychology, and neuroscience. Based on the co-citation analy-
ses, likely points for future integration suggest themselves.
I will first identify sets of articles—literatures—representa-
tive of important work in educational neuroscience, education
research, the psychology of learning, and the neuroscience of
learning. A document co-citation analysis of each literature
will allow us to characterize each field and to identify research
subspecialties within them. I will call these subspecialties
research communities. Finally, document co-citation analyses
of the combined literatures will allow us to see how the com-
munities within each research field relate to one another. We
will be able to see, for example, how research communities
within educational neuroscience relate to communities in edu-
cation research, psychology, and neuroscience.
Data and Methods
The four research literatures considered here are educational
neuroscience, education research, psychology of learning, and
the neuroscience of learning. The Web of Science (WoS)
1
Independent scholar
Corresponding Author:
John T. Bruer, PhD, 5255 Collins Ave, Apt. 6E, Miami Beach, FL 33140, USA.
Email: bruer@jsmf.org

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2 Educational Neuroscience
assigns articles to a subject matter field (the ‘‘su ¼’’ field in its
advanced search option). Among the WoS fields are education
and education research, psychology, and neuroscience and neu-
rology. A subject field search on Education and Education
Research identified the education research literature. To iden-
tify the educational neuroscience literature, the topic words
(words occurring in titles, abstracts, or key words) ‘‘brain OR
neuro*’’ was conjoined to the Education and Educational
Research subject field search. (WoS uses the asterisk as a trun-
cation symbol.) For the psychology of learning, the topic words
‘‘learn* OR educ*’’ were conjoined to a search of the psychol-
ogy subject field. For the neuroscience of learning, ‘‘learn* OR
educ*’’ was conjoined to a subject fields search on neuros-
ciences and neurology. Searches were limited to the time
period 1997 through 2015. The starting year was chosen
because Bruer (1997) was one of the first articles to discuss
applications of then current neuroscientific findings to educa-
tion. Subsequently, Byrnes and Fox (1998) argued for the cen-
trality of cognitive neuroscience to educational research but not
without evoking some skeptical response (Mayer, 1998; Stano-
vich, 1998). These articles, still highly cited in the educational
neuroscience literature, could be considered the starting points
for what has become a substantial research program in educa-
tional neuroscience. Finally, for each of the four searches, the
top-cited 500 articles were retained and serve as the four article
sets analyzed here. (The exact WoS search strategies and the
four article sets are available from the author.) Global citation
counts, that is, the number of times articles are cited by others
within the WoS, are used only to identify the top-cited articles.
Citation counts of individual articles play no further role in the
subsequent document co-citation analyses.
Document co-citation analysis is often used to delineate the
specialty structure of research fields (Small, 1980). If Docu-
ment A cites Documents B and C, then B and C are co-cited.
Co-citations are counted by comparing the cited references that
appear in the bibliographies of documents. The articles a doc-
ument cites situate that document in the space consisting of all
published documents. The higher the co-citation count between
two articles, the more likely those articles are to be concep-
tually or thematically related. Note that although Document
A is in the original article set, Documents B and C need not
be, although Document A can also appear among the list of
co-cited documents. Thus, co-citation networks situate Docu-
ment A, directly or indirectly, within a wider network of rele-
vant documents. For example, the 500-article neuroscience
article set cites nearly 40,000 unique articles.
The co-citation data are represented in co-citation networks,
where the nodes are cited references, and weighted edges rep-
resent co-citation counts. Co-citation networks are weighted,
undirected networks and often consist of numerous, uncon-
nected subnetworks. These subnetworks are called weak com-
ponents. Each of the four literature networks contains dozens of
weak components, ranging in size from hundreds to pairs of
cited references. Here, the weak components of each literature
will be interpreted as representing research communities within
that literature.
Table 1. Data Summary.
Neuroscience of Learning 500 38,810
Psychology of learning 90 500 39,578
10,443
Education research 0 41 500 27,653
246 4,471
Educational neuroscience 0 0 3 500 17,062
954 1,649 990
Note. In each nondiagonal cell, the bold number is the number of articles com-
mon to the two article sets. The italic number is the number of cited references
common to two article sets. The column at the right is the total number of
unique cited references found in each article set.
To facilitate interpretation and visualization of these net-
works, some simplifications are helpful. First, in all the docu-
ment co-citation networks, a threshold of five co-citations is
required for two articles to be included in the network. This
is a relatively low threshold. Second, for each literature, the
focus will be on the largest three to four research communities,
with one exception. Third, to facilitate visualization of the net-
works, pathfinder network analysis is used to remove redun-
dant edges from the network. In the visualizations, only the
strongest link between two cited references, the edge with the
highest citation weight, appears. In graph–theoretic terms,
these pathfinder networks are minimum spanning trees of the
entire network. Thus, the visualizations show the strongest
co-citation link between two cited references, not necessarily
the only link. Where edge strengths in the pathfinder networks
are high, one would also expect other weaker links to connect
the two nodes. Where edge strengths are low or at threshold,
one can infer that additional paths are less likely and that if they
do exist, they are at or below the threshold. Finally, the pathfin-
der networks are further trimmed by eliminating all nodes that
are linked to only one other node. This has the effect of trim-
ming ends off branches in the networks. There are no instances
where this trimming affects the interpretations. The Sci2 tool
(Sci2Team, 2009) was used to generate the networks and Gephi
to provide visualizations of the networks.
Overview of the Four Article Sets
Before turning to the co-citation networks, an overview of the
four article sets yields insights about the possible relations
among the literatures. Table 1 shows how many articles (bold)
and cited references (italic) appear in the intersections of the
article sets. Once would expect the educational neuroscience
literature to be a subset of the education research literature
because the educational neuroscience literature was identified
by conjoining topic words to a search of the Education and
Education Research subject domain. This does not occur
because the global citation counts for the top 500 education
research articles (range, 113–790) are considerably higher than
those for the top 500 in educational neuroscience (range,
1–300). The two article sets have only 3 items in common:
Drake, McBride, Lachman, and Pawlina (2009); Klingberg
(2010); and Micheloyannis et al. (2006). One should always
Bruer 3

Table 2. Top Five Key words, Authors, Cited References, and Source Journals for the Four Article Sets.
Key words Authors (local citation count) Cited Refs. Journals

Educ. Neuro.
Brain Immordingo-Yang, MH Bruer, J. T., 1997, Ed. Res. Mind Brain Educ.
Children Fischer, K. W. Ansari, D., 2006, Trends Cogn. Sci. Educ. Leadership
Education Ansari, D Goswami, U., 2006, Nat. Rev. Neuro. Educ. Philos. Theory
Neuroscience Coch, D Stern, E., 2005, Science Teach. Psych.
Students Stern, E Fischer, K. W., 2007, Mind Brain Educ. (7). Phi Delta Kappa
Fischer, K. W., 2006, Hdb Child Psych.
Educ. Res.
Students Lederman, N. G. National Research Council, 1996, Nat. Sci. Ed. Stand. Rev. Educ. Res.
Knowledge Abd-el-khalick, F. Driver, R., 1996, Young Peoples Images J. Res. Sci. Teach.
Education Osborne, J Lederman, N. G., 1992, J. Res. Sci. Teach. Am. Educ. Res. J.
Performance Marx, R. W. Brown Ann L., 1992, J. Learn. Sci. Educ. Psych.
Children Soloway, E Shulman, L. S., 1987, Harvard Educ. Rev. Sci. Educ.
Psych.
Performance Elliot, A. J. Ames, C., 1992, J. Educ. Psych. J. Educ. Psych
Individual differences Mayer, R. E. Dweck, C. S., 1988, Psych. Rev. Learn. Memory
Children Ledoux, J. E. Baddeley, A. D., 1986, Working Mem. Annu. Rev. Psych.
Memory Barron, K. E. Baddeley, A. D., 1992, Science Child. Dev.
Working memory Harackiewicz, J. M. Geary, D. C., Psych. Bull. Elliot, A. J., 1997, Psych. Rev.
J. Pers. Soc. Psych.
Neuro.
Long-term potentiation Ledoux, J. E. Bliss, T. V. P., 1993, Nature J. Neuro.
Synaptic plasticity Martin, S. I. Schultz, W., 1997, Science Neuron
Alzheimer’s disease Grimswood, P. Kim, JJ, 1992, Science Nat. Neuro.
Prefrontal cortex Morris, R. G. M. Ledous, JE, 2000, Annu. Rev. Neuro. Neurology
Memory Gould, E.; Bayelin, A.; Tanaptat, P.; Phillips, RG, Behav. Neuro. Nat. Rev. Neuro.
Reeves, A.; Shors, T. J.
Note. Educ. Neuro. ¼ educational neuroscience; Educ. Res. ¼ educational research; Psych. ¼ psychology; Neuro. ¼ neuroscience; Refs.¼ references.

keep in mind that educational neuroscience is a relatively small
research fields compared to the other three. Furthermore, the
educational neuroscience article set has no articles in common
with either the psychology or the neuroscience article sets. Psy-
chology has a substantial intersection with education research
(41 articles) and neuroscience (90 articles).
However, what matters for document co-citation is not the
number of articles common to two article sets but the number
of shared cited references. The cited reference counts for these
literatures range from around 17,000 to nearly 40,000. The
number of commonly cited references between the article sets
is the italicized number shown in the cells of Table 1. Although
the educational neuroscience article set contains no articles
found in the neuroscience of learning article set, there are still
954 unique cited references common to these two literatures.
This is a relatively small number compared to the nearly
39,000 cited references in the neuroscience of learning litera-
ture, but it is not zero. Notice that the largest cited reference
intersections occur between psychology and the three other lit-
eratures. This suggests that psychology might play an integra-
tive role in connecting the research communities within each of
these four literatures.
Table 2 presents the five most prominent key words,
authors (by times cited within each article set), cited refer-
ences, and source journals for the four literatures. Among the
keywords, there are no surprises. It is apparent, however, that
the neuroscience of learning is unique in its emphasis on cel-
lular mechanisms involved in learning and memory. The only
author that appears among the top-cited five in more than one
literature is Joseph Ledoux in psychology and neuroscience. The
highly occurring cited references point to primary research foci
are in each of the fields. The educational neuroscience literature
cites articles that provide rationales for and against a research
program linking neuroscience to education. This provides the
first hint about the meta-status of the educational neuroscience
literature. Educational research starting with the heavy citation
of the 1996 National Research Council’s report on National
Science Education Standards (Standards, 1996) and including
Brown (1992), Driver (1996), and Lederman (1992) appears
to have a primary focus on science education. The psychology
of learning features research on motivation with Ames (1992),
Dweck and Leggett (1988), and Elliot and Church (1997) and
on working memory with Baddeley (1992) and Baddeley
(1986). Judging from the cited references in the neuroscience
of learning literature, the primary focus is on the neural under-
pinnings of memory and learning as studied using animal
models. The leading source journals are also unique to each
field. Around 17% of the 500 neuroscience articles were pub-
lished in the Journal of Neuroscience. Mind Brain and Educa-
tion published 13% of the educational neuroscience articles.
This contrasts with the Journal of Educational Psychology
publishing around 5% of the psychology articles and the
4 Educational Neuroscience
Figure 1. The education research co-citation network (trimmed). Node size is scaled to the number of other articles to which the reference is
linked at threshold five (range 2–16). Edges are scaled to co-citation weights (range 5–13).
Review of Educational Research around 8% of the education
research articles. The highly cited neuroscience and educa-
tional neuroscience articles are less dispersed among source
journals than are the education research and psychology
articles.
The Co-Citation Networks and
Research Community Structure
of the Four Literatures
Document co-citation analysis allows us to examine the struc-
ture of each literature, to identify research communities within
them and eventually to investigate the relationships that obtain
among these research communities across the literatures.
Education Research
Let us begin with the education research literature, the litera-
ture that might be closest to issues of concern in classroom
teaching and learning. The simplified and trimmed co-citation
network generated from the over 27,000 cited references found
in the 500 top-cited education research articles contains 189
cited references that were co-cited 5 or more times (Figure 1).
These articles are distributed among 17 weak components, or
research communities, containing from 3 to around 55 articles.
The three largest research communities are science education/
cognition, motivation, and cognitive load theory as described
subsequently.
Among the cited references appearing in the science edu-
cation/cognition community is the highly cited and highly
influential 1996 U.S. National Research Council’s National
Science Education Standards (Standards, 1996). Developing,
implementing, and improving these educational standards
have been a major focus within educational research over the
past 2 decades. One can also discern some structure within
this community. Linked to the Standards report are Blumen-
feld et al. (1991); Driver, Newton, and Osborne (2000); and
Lederman (1992). The Blumenfeld article is on project-based
learning and how it can affect student’s motivation and
thought. The Lederman article is a review of student and
teachers’ conceptions of science and how those conceptions
influence science learning. The Driver et al. (2000) article
is on the use of scientific argumentation in the classroom.
These are articles written by science educators. The work
of cognitive psychologists and situated learning theorists also
appear here. Kuhn (1993) also argues that attention to scien-
tific argumentation improve classroom teaching and learning.
White and Frederiksen (1998) and Schauble, Glaser, Duschl,
Schulze, and John (1995) are on applications of cognitive
psychology to classroom science instruction. Vygotsky
(1978) and Lave (1991) present research in the tradition of
situated cognition. The articles in this community are pub-
lished primarily in science education journals and educational
psychology journals. The focus within this community is on
improving classroom science instruction by applying insights
from the study of human cognition.
Bruer
Figure 2. The psychology co-citation network (trimmed). Node size is scaled to the number of other articles to which the reference is linked at
threshold five (range 2–22). Edges are scaled to co-citation weights (range 5–14).
The second prominent education research community cen-
ters on Ames (1992) and Pintrich and Degroot (1990). This
community addresses issues of student motivation, achieve-
ment goals, and naive theories of intelligence. Research in this
tradition has established that the students’ learning goals as
well as their beliefs about the nature of intelligence influences
student achievement. Bandura (1977, 1997) on social learning
theory and self-efficacy also form part of this research cluster. I
will call this community the education motivation community.
Sweller (1991) and Sweller, van Merrienboer, and Paas
(1998) are among the most prominent papers in the third
cluster. This community does research on cognitive load the-
ory. Cognitive load theory, a theory developed by Sweller,
addresses how well-designed classroom instruction can reduce
demands on student working memory capacity and thereby
enhance learning. Two papers by R. E. Mayer (Mayer, 2001;
Mayer & Anderson, 1992) present research in the tradition
of cognitive load theory, on how well-designed multimedia
instruction can improve learning. Miller (1956) suggests an
eventual link between cognitive load theory and psychological
research on working memory. This will be called the cognitive
load community.
Based on papers the educational research community has
co-cited over the last two decades, one can infer that improving
science instruction in schools has been a major research focus,
with an emphasis on how to impart science content or subject
matter knowledge to students. In addition, research on moti-
vation and cognitive load theory are prominent. Cognitive
psychology contributes to this research, although we might
5
characterize it as applied cognitive psychology in contrast to
what we will encounter within the psychology of learning.
There is no hint of neuroscience or educational neuroscience
anywhere within the education research co-citation network.
Psychology of Learning
Unlike education research, neuroscience has a major presence
in the psychology of learning. Figure 2 shows the three largest
research communities within this literature. It also shows a
smaller community of two (four in the untrimmed network)
cited references because this community will eventually link
two research communities found in the neuroscience literature.
Two of the psychology communities have authors in common
with communities in education research.
The largest psychology research community contains,
almost exclusively, publications by neuroscientists and cogni-
tive neuroscientists. Miserendino, Sananes, and Melia (1990)
is central to this network and is co-cited with numerous articles
in this literature. This article on cellular mechanisms in the
amygdala underlying fear-potentiated startle captures the
essence of this community with its focus on synaptic mechan-
isms. Many of the cited references in this community, and
in particular those along the long spine of the community
network, are authored or coauthored by Ledoux and his colla-
borators, Quirk and Rogan (LeDoux, 2000; Ledoux, Iwata,
Cicchetti, & Reis, 1988; Quirk, Armony, & LeDoux, 1997;
Quirk, Repa, & Ledoux, 1995; Rogan & Ledoux, 1995; Rogan,
Staubli, & LeDoux, 1997). This basic neuroscience research
6 Educational Neuroscience
investigates long-term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampus,
making the case that LPT is the synaptic mechanism underly-
ing learning and memory. Ledoux and colleagues employ fear
conditioning in rodents to investigate this mechanism as well as
to study emotion circuits in the brain. Toward the top of the
community structure, beginning with LaBar, Gatenby, Gore,
LeDoux, and Phelps (1998) and including Bechara et al.
(1995), studies on the human amygdala and hippocampus
appear. On the right branch, the Bliss citations (Bliss, 1973;
Bliss & Collingridge, 1993) report work on LTP in animals
(McClelland, McNaughton, & Oreilly, 1995), on connectionist
models of learning and memory, and (Scoville & Milner, 1957)
on amnesia also appear in this area of the network. Thus, it
appears that animal work predominates in this community, but
human studies appear on the edges of the community network.
Research at the level of synapses and circuits conducted on ani-
mal models would appear to be at a substantial remove from
educational practice. For brevity, I will call this the synaptic
mechanisms community.
A second research community again contains articles on
motivation, with Ames (1992), Dweck and Leggett (1988), and
Elliot and Church (1997) being most prominent. This is the
motivation community in psychology. Here one sees motiva-
tion research embedded in a psychological context, rather than
limited to applications in education. The motivation commu-
nity in the psychology literature (12 cited references) is much
smaller than the motivation community within education
research (54 cited references). All authors of cited references
in the psychology motivation community appear in the educa-
tion research community as do 10 of the 12 cited references.
In the third component, Baddeley (1986) and Miller (1956)
are highly cocited. The upper portion of the community net-
work contains cognitive psychological research on numerical
cognition (Geary, 1993) and reading (Daneman & Carpenter,
1980; Siegel & Ryan, 1989; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). The
lower portion of the network, connected to Miller (1956), con-
tains cited references familiar from the cognitive load commu-
nity in education research. I will call this the working memory
community. When we look at the combined analysis, it is this
psychology community that links the cognitive load theory
community within the education literature to the other learning
science research communities. Also, the motivation commu-
nity within psychology coalesces with the motivation commu-
nity in education.
The fourth, small research community in psychology con-
tains two cited references in the trimmed network but four
references in the untrimmed version: Gallagher, Graham, and
Holland (1990); Baxter, Parker, Lindner, Izquierdo, and Mur-
ray (2000); Schoenbaum, Chiba, and Gallagher (1999); and
Schoenbaum, Chiba, and Gallagher (1998). The research in this
community is on the role of orbitofrontal cortex in learning.
Document co-citation analysis indicates that there are three
major research communities within the psychology of learning
(synaptic mechanisms of learning and memory, motivation,
and working memory) and smaller one of eventual interest
(orbitofrontal cortex in learning). Motivation and working
memory share cited references with comparable communities
in education research. Neuroscience is prominent with psychol-
ogy, but the neuroscience tends to favor basic research on cel-
lular mechanisms using animal models.
Neuroscience of Learning
The two largest research communities in the neuroscience of
learning include nearly 90% of all the cited references appear-
ing in the co-citation network (Figure 3). Schultz, Dayan, and
Montague, (1997) is the central node among a cluster of articles
that report work on reward conditioning. Most of the 41 papers
in the cluster are unique to the neuroscience literature but four
also appear as cited references in the psychology community
on synaptic mechanisms: Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, and
Anderson (1994); Schultz et al. (1997); Knowlton, Mangels,
and Squire (1996); and Rolls and Baylis (1994).
The trimmed version of largest neuroscience community
contains 82 cited references, 27 of which also appear in the
synaptic mechanisms community in psychology. The similari-
ties are sufficient to consider this the neuroscience network on
synaptic mechanisms. If one looks at the upper right branch of
this network starting from Bourtchuladze et al. (1994), one first
sees cited work by Ledoux and colleagues that appeared in
the psychology literature and toward the end of the branch
(Bechara et al., 1995; Labar, Ledoux, Spencer, & Phelps,
1995) on studies of human amygdala and hippocampus that
also appeared in psychology literature. A paper by Bliss also
appear within this community (Bliss & Collingridge, 1993)
on LTP in the hippocampus as a synaptic model of memory.
Starting form Bliss, the lower right branch includes O’Keefe
(1978) and Scoville and Milner (1957), also present in the psy-
chology co-citation network.
The majority of work found in the neuroscience of learning
co-citation network consists of animal studies on the cellular
and synaptic mechanisms underlying learning and memory.
Again as in psychology, human work appears at the periphery
of the cluster. This community on mechanisms is very similar
to the comparable synaptic mechanisms community within
psychology. The other major research focus is on reward
conditioning.
Educational Neuroscience
The educational neuroscience co-citation network literature
contains 54 cited references. Of these, 46 appear in one major
research community: the educational neuroscience community.
The trimmed pathfinder network as shown in Figure 4 contains
12 cited references.
This network is centered on Bruer (1997). The cited refer-
ences appearing in this network have an odd feature, which
differentiates the educational neuroscience research commu-
nity from other communities we have discussed. In the other
literatures, the communities could be readily identified as
research subfields within the larger research area. In educa-
tion research, there was a community on science instruction;
Bruer
Figure 3. The neuroscience co-citation network (trimmed). Node size is scaled to the number of other articles to which the reference is linked
at threshold five (range 2–32). Edges are scaled to co-citation weights (range 5–18).
Figure 4. The educational neuroscience co-citation network
(trimmed). Node size is scaled to the number of other articles to
which the reference is linked at threshold five (range 2–20). Edges are
scaled to co-citation weights (range 5–16).
in the psychology literature, a community on working memory;
and in the neuroscience literature, a community on reward con-
ditioning. The educational neuroscience community is different.
7
Rather than a research community, it is a meta-community
about educational neuroscience.
If one examines the cited references in Figure 4, one finds
that they fall into two categories. Eleven of the articles discuss
the merits and demerits, promise, and pitfalls of attempting to
apply neuroscientific research to education. Most of the articles
make a positive case for the importance and future develop-
ment of educational neuroscience: Byrnes and Fox (1998);
Fischer et al. (2007); Goswami (2004, 2006); Hinton and
Fischer (2008); and Willingham and Lloyd (2007). Many of
these articles provide arguments and counterexamples to Bruer
(1997). Stern (2005) is an editorial critical of aspects of the
educational neuroscience effort. Weisberg, Keil, and Goodstein
(2008) present data on how neuroscientific evidence affects
appraisal of psychological explanations.
Fischer and Bidell (2006) is a review of work on the
dynamic development of thought and action for which the
authors have suggested there is neuroscientific support.
Dehaene, Piazza, Pinel, and Cohen (2003); Temple et al.
(2003); and B. A. Shaywitz et al. (2002) are instances of the sec-
ond type of article one finds in this community. These articles
8 Educational Neuroscience
present cognitive neuroscientific research in the areas of numer-
ical cognition (Dehaene) and more commonly on reading and
dyslexia (Temple and Shaywitz). Within the educational neu-
roscience literature, articles like these serve as ‘‘exemplar’’ arti-
cles, articles that are cited because they provide examples of the
kind of cognitive neuroscience that does or might have educa-
tional relevance. In the untrimmed version of this network, B.
A. Shaywitz et al. (2002) is linked to 11 other exemplar articles,
not including Temple, all of which are studies of word recogni-
tion or dyslexia and 10 of which are brain imaging studies.
Thus, the educational neuroscience literature, as identified
here, tends to cite articles that are not about research in
educational neuroscience but about the field of educational
neuroscience itself. Currently, at the foundation of the edu-
cational neuroscience literature is a meta-literature, not a
research literature. (Alas, the article you are now reading is
another contribution to the meta-literature.) It is not clear
how this meta-literature will connect to education research
and the psychology and neuroscience of learning.
Integrating Education, Psychology,
Neuroscience, and Educational Neuroscience
Examining the four literatures individually has revealed 10
research communities within the literatures. For educational
neuroscience, there is a single educational neuroscience com-
munity. Within educational research, there are three major
communities: science education/cognition, motivation, and
cognitive load theory. There are three large research commu-
nities within psychology: synaptic mechanisms, motivation,
and working memory as well as the small community on the
orbitofrontal cortex and learning. Two major research com-
munities emerged from the neuroscience of learning litera-
ture, synaptic mechanisms, and reward conditioning.
A document co-citation analysis of the four combined
literatures, using a co-citation threshold of five, shows the
connections and relations among the 10 identified research com-
munities. From hereon, our primary interest will be the co-citation
linkages that obtain among the research communities. For this
reason, the nodes in the following co-citation networks, rather
than being the individual cited references, will be the 10 research
communities. The internal structure of the communities changes
very little as the various literatures are combined. The edges con-
necting the communities will be made explicit, showing the pairs
of cited references across communities responsible for the link-
age. The most interesting finding that emerges from these com-
bined analyses is that the psychology literature and its research
communities account for all the connections among research
communities that arise in the combined analysis. No combina-
tions of the other three literatures generate any co-citation links
between their six original research communities.
Figure 5 shows the results of the combined co-citation anal-
ysis. First, note that although the motivation communities within
education research and psychology merge into a single commu-
nity in the combined analysis, motivation still remains a separate
research community. None of the co-citation linkages between
Reward Condi oning
Watanabe M, 1996
Schoenbaum G, 1998
Orbitofrontal cortex
Gallagher M, 1990
Killcross S, 1997
Synap c Mechanisms
Damasio AR, 1994
Immordino-yang MH 2007
Mo va on
Educa onal Neuroscience
Bradley L, 1983
Wagner RK. 1987
WM & Cogni om
& Cogni ve Load
(Via Baddeley A, 1986
and Miller GA, 1956)
Sweller J, 1998
Renkl A, 1997
Sci Educ & Cogni on
Figure 5. Co-citation linkages between research communities. The
co-citation linkages between research communities never exceed
weight six.
the communities shown in Figure 5 exceed weight six. The
synaptic mechanism communities in neuroscience and psychol-
ogy are essentially the same community in both literatures. They
coalesce in the combined network. However, in the combined
network reward conditioning, a separate community within neu-
roscience becomes linked to the coalesced synaptic mechanism
community. The orbitofrontal cortex community identified
within the psychology community is responsible for this con-
nection. Gallagher et al. (1990) from the psychology orbitofron-
tal cortex community becomes linked with Killcross, Robbins,
and Everitt (1997) in the neuroscience synaptic mechanisms
community, and Schoenbaum et al. (1999) from the orbitofron-
tal community becomes linked with Watanabe (1996) from the
neuroscience reward-conditioning community.
Next, educational neuroscience becomes connected to the
neuroscience and psychology synaptic mechanisms commu-
nity. A connecting edge of weight five links (Immordino-Yang,
2007) the last node in the original educational neuroscience
community with (Damasio, 1994) the last node in the synaptic
mechanisms community. This link appears because the total
co-citation of Immordino-yang (2007) and Damasio (1994)
reach threshold in the combined literatures. Immordino-yang
(2007) discusses the implications of emotion and social cog-
nition for education. Damasio (1994) is a book written for a
general audience that presents his research, much of which is
Bruer
relevant to the study of emotion. The five articles that co-cite
Immordino-yang (2007) and Damasio (1994) are generally about
the benefits of the mind, brain, and education approach to educa-
tion and education research. Three of the five co-citing articles
were published in the journal Mind Brain and Education, and
three of the five articles were written by Immordino-yang.
Immordino-yang and Damasio have also coauthored an article
on emotion and learning (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007).
Bradley and Bryant (1983) occurs as a cited reference
in both the educational neuroscience and the psychology
literatures. It is the last node in educational neuroscience com-
munity, connected to B. A. Shaywitz et al. (2002) at weight
five. Within psychology’s working memory and cognition
community, Bradley and Bryant (1983) is connected to Wagner
and Torgesen (1987) at weight six. The articles wherein these
co-citations appear present research on reading abilities, pho-
nological awareness, and dyslexia (see e.g., Ehri, Nunes, Stahl,
& Willows, 2001; Ehri, Nunes, Willows, et al., 2001). These
co-citing articles tend to be published in education–psychology
journals, such as Reading Research Quarterly.
The working memory and cognition community are linked to
the cognitive load community via the co-citation of two classic,
cognitive psychology publications (Baddeley, 1986 and Miller,
1956) on working memory that occurs within the psychology lit-
erature. Toward the Baddeley end of the merged communities,
one finds cited references from the psychology community on
working memory that includes work on numerical cognition
(Geary, 1993) and reading (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980).
Toward the Miller end, one finds cited references to work in cog-
nitive load theory (e.g., Kalyuga, Ayres, Chandler, & Sweller,
2003). Articles co-citing Baddeley and Miller also include work
by psychologists on more general aspects of working memory
such as Burgess and Hitch (1999). The co-citing articles appear
in a mix of educational psychology and psychology journals.
Sweller et al. (1998) and Renkl (1997) provide the co-citation
link between cognitive load theory and the science education/cog-
nition community. Renkl is coauthor on three of the six co-citing
articles. All of the co-citing articles address how classroom learn-
ing is more efficient, when instructional design is sensitive to stu-
dents’ working memory limitations. Atkinson, Derry, Renkl, and
Wortham (2000) and Kalyuga, Ayres, Chandler, and Sweller
(2003). The co-citing articles are published in educational psy-
chology and education research journals.
Table 1 showed that the psychology literature shared the
largest number of cited references with the other three fields.
It is for this reason that all of the merging and linking of the
original 10, distinct research communities into a single giant
component, plus motivation, arises from co-citation linkages
attributable to the psychology literature. The psychology liter-
ature plays a significant role in connecting neuroscientific
research and educational neuroscience with education research.
Conclusion
Where is educational neuroscience? Based on the literatures
used here and document co-citation analysis, educational
9
neuroscience is near the middle of the 10 research communities
identified in the original co-citation analyses of the educational
neuroscience, education, psychology, and neuroscience litera-
tures. It is connected to neuroscientific–psychological research
on synaptic mechanisms by a common interest among neuros-
cientists and educational neuroscientists in the role of emotion
in effective learning. This is a new and fragile connection but
possibly one that will strengthen over time. It is not now clear
how this line of research will influence what we have seen to be
the major foci of education research, science education,
cognitive load, and motivation in classroom and instructional
settings. An eventual link with the, still isolated, motivation
research community would seem most likely. At its other end,
the educational neuroscience community, is linked to research
on working memory and cognition. This link arises via shared
interests in these two communities in reading and dyslexia.
This connection of educational neuroscience with cognitive
psychology arises through educational neuroscience’s ‘‘exem-
plar’’ literature, typified by B. A. Shaywitz et al. (2002). We
can be encouraged that educational neuroscience is connected
to other research communities within the learning sciences, but
we still must be concerned about its apparent distance from
education research and educational practice.
It is true that these co-citation linkages are at, or near,
threshold. Based on pathfinder network analysis, the minimal
spanning trees identify the strongest links between these litera-
tures and their respective research communities. On the other
hand, given the generality of the search strategies used to iden-
tify the relevant literatures, one might be surprised that a
co-citation network connecting most of the research commu-
nities in these four research fields exists. Maybe its like the
dancing bear. The communities may be only weakly connected,
but it is remarkable that they connected at all.
What about the ‘‘meta’’ problem within the educational
neuroscience literature? One might dismiss the tendency to reflect
on one’s own novel research program and to defend it from
detractors as part of the emergence and maturation of any new
field. Of course, one would like more evidence that the meta-
tendency is characteristic of new research fields. The ‘‘meta’’
problem will dissipate if and when educational neuroscience deli-
vers usable results, maybe when we begin to see the presence of
neuroscientific ideas within the education research literature with
greater frequency. Part of the problem may be that educational
neuroscience was born under a bad star. Educational neuroscience
emerged in the mid to late 1990s. Neuroscience was in the news as
the result of claims made by early childhood advocates about the
implications of neuroscience (primarily developmental neuro-
physiology) for learning and parenting. These claims were based
on overgeneralization and oversimplification of long-standing
findings about developmental synaptogenesis, critical periods,
and enriched environments. Bruer (1997, 1999) argued that these
claims were overblown. These claims became characterized in
the literature as ‘‘neuro-myths’’ (Goswami, 2004; Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2007).
Educational neuroscientists recognized the need to differentiate
their research program from the kind of pop-neuroscience found
10
within the policy community and the mass media. Educational
neuroscientists and its critics devoted energy and publications
to arguing about what kind of bridges, if any, could be made
between neuroscience and educational practice. This original
debate still casts a long shadow over the structure of the educa-
tional neuroscience co-citation network. If bridges are built, there
will be no need to argue about whether they can be built.
Bruer (1997) also suggested that as a practical research strat-
egy, it seemed reasonable to attempt to bridge from education
to cognitive neuroscience via cognitive psychology. The anal-
yses earlier give some support to that suggestion. The closet
connection of neuroscience or educational neuroscience to
education research is via cognitive neuroscientific studies of
dyslexia and cognitive psychological research on working
memory. All of the connections between the research commu-
nities shown in Figure 5 are due to co-citations that arise from
within the psychology literature. It would seem psychology
remains an important bridging discipline.
Where might educational neuroscience go in the future? One
place I would look is at the cited references that appear on the
edges of the synaptic mechanisms community. What I have
glibly dubbed synaptic mechanisms research is at a finer level
of analysis a network of varied, interrelated research programs.
At the ends of that community structure, cited references to arti-
cles that report work on human cognition, rather than on animal
models, begin to appear. This seems a likely place for future
merging of research interests within the learning sciences.
Already, the existing link between educational neuroscience and
neuroscience is via the path from Immordino-Yang (2007) to
Damasio (1994), which is an end node in the untrimmed synaptic
mechanism network. At this end of the network, the cited refer-
ences also include LaBar et al. (1998) and Bechara et al. (1995),
which are studies on the human amygdala and hippocampus.
Bechara’s work is also cited in Immordino-Yang and Damasio
(2007). On another end of this network, on a branch emanating
from Hebb (1949), one finds articles by McClelland, McNaugh-
ton, and Oreilly (1995) on connectionist models of learning and
memory and Knowlton et al. (1996) on human habit learning.
These seem likely areas where basic research and computational
modeling might eventually be linked more closely with educa-
tional psychology and education research.
One virtue of co-citations analysis is that is it forward look-
ing. Citation and co-citation patterns change as research
moves forward. This initial attempt to locate educational neu-
roscience within the learning sciences is exactly that, an ini-
tial attempt. Let’s see where educational neuroscience is 10
years from now.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
Educational Neuroscience
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