Welcome to the Centre for Neuroscience in Education

Established in 2005, the CNE was the first such centre of its kind in the UK. The Centre is based in the School of Biological Sciences (Department of Experimental Psychology on the Downing Site) but also has strong links with the Faculty of Education. Its aims are to apply the substantial advances in understanding the brain to education.

The main research goal of the Centre is to establish the basic parameters of brain development in the cognitive skills critical for education. For example, we aim to understand how the brain functions and changes during the development of reading and maths, exploring the development of related skills such as language, memory, numerosity and attention.

Scientists in the Centre use a variety of non-invasive techniques, including event related potentials (ERPs) to measure changes in children's brain activity. ERPs are tiny variations in electricity measurable from the scalp when someone is thinking or processing information. The researchers also study the variations from typical developmental trajectories that characterise learning disorders such as dyslexia and dyscalculia.

Funding organisations for the Centre's research include the Medical Research Council, The Nuffield Foundation, The Leverhulme Trust, the European Union (STREP 6) and the ESRC.