Impact of emotions on learning and memory-related brain processes across development: an application to climate-related educational issues

2026-07-22

Providing large-scale sustainability education programs, in particular regarding climate issues, is critical to quickly implement the profound socio-ecological transformations expected by the mid-21st century. Although climate awareness is growing, current education policies -which mainly warn the risks of climate change, therefore focusing on negative contents- struggle to reach their objectives, as misinformation and poor knowledge assimilation persist. Yet, recent advances in neurosciences suggest that while negative emotion strengthen the memory of the emotional element, it disrupts associative memory, which is essential for the development of complex multivariate representations. Leveraging cutting-edge neurophysiological techniques (magnetoencephalography, electroencephalography), Emotiv4climate hypothesizes that positive emotions will enhance associative memory due to the selective integration of the newly learned information within hippocampus-dependent networks that promote their binding. And that positive memories will benefit more from sleep-dependent consolidation processes than negative ones, favouring their integration within pre-existing knowledge. Using ecology-themed material and questionnaires, Emotiv4climate will elucidate the differential impact of emotions (positive vs negative) on the behavioural and functional brain connectivity processes associated with learning and memory processes with an applied dimension to climate-related educational issues. Our understanding will benefit from a developmental approach comparing young adults and school-aged children with different maturational levels in terms of sleep-dependent memory consolidation processes. Emotiv4climate will hence not only uncover the cognitive and neurophysiological mechanisms through which emotions impact learning and memory consolidation throughout development but also help designing optimized communication and education strategies likely to catalyse sustainable behaviour.

Belgium

2026-01-01