Educational neuroscience (or neuroeducation, a component of Mind Brain and Education) is a controversial field that brings together researchers in cognitive neuroscience, developmental cognitive neuroscience, educational psychology, educational technology, education theory and other related disciplines to explore the interactions between biological processes and education. Researchers in this area may link basic findings in cognitive neuroscience with educational technology to help in curriculum implementation for mathematics education and reading education.

Researchers in educational neuroscience investigate the neural mechanisms of reading, numerical cognition, attention and their attendant difficulties including dyslexia, dyscalculia and ADHD as they relate to education.

The aim of educational neuroscience is to generate basic and applied research that will provide a new transdisciplinary account of learning and teaching, which is capable of informing education. A major goal of educational neuroscience is to bridge the gap between the two fields through a direct dialogue between researchers and educators, avoiding the "middlemen of the brain-based learning industry". These middlemen have a vested commercial interest in the selling of "neuromyths" and their supposed remedies.

Scholars, such as Herbert Walberg and Geneva Haertel, trace the beginning of Educational neuroscience to the era between 1800 and 1850 when the scientific study of sense organs began to make advancements. It was during this time that Galen's dictum, which held that the mind was located in the brain, gained acceptance. The study of reflex action during this era triggered a debate over conscious and unconscious states. Mental chronometry that studied the processing speed or reaction time of the brain also began during this period, and was used to infer questions about temporal sequencing of mental operations. By the late 1800s all these developments were categorized as the "new psychology."

An early milestone for the development of Educational neuroscience was the offering of a course in Educational Psychology in 1839 at the University of Nebraska. By 1886 similar courses were offered at the State University of New York at Oswego, the Normal School Department of University of Iowa and the Department of Pedagogy at Indiana University. In 1895 the University of Nebraska went on to found a professorship of educational psychology. By the 1900s disputes among schools of education grew over the content of undergraduate educational psychology courses. (Disagreement between professionals about the definition of Educational neuroscience, has always been part of the field and continues to this day.) Despite arguments about how the field should be defined, there is widespread agreement that American psychologists William James, Edward Thorndike, and James McKeen Cattell are important figures in its advancement in the early decades of the 1900s. Another milestone for the field of Educational neuroscience was the publication in 1910 of the first issue of the Journal of Educational Psychology. Since then, philosophical and scientific movements (such as cognitive theory) have influenced the development of the field. As the field has matured it has played a part in shaping policy during periods of educational reform.

The emergence of educational neuroscience has been born out of the need for a new discipline that makes scientific research practically applicable in an educational context. Addressing the broader field of "mind, brain and education", Kurt Fischer states, "The traditional model will not work. It is not enough for researchers to collect data in schools and make those data and the resulting research papers available to educators", as this method excludes teachers and learners from contributing to the formation of appropriate research methods and questions.

Learning in cognitive psychology and neuroscience has focused on how individual humans and other species have evolved to extract useful information from the natural and social worlds around them. By contrast, education, and especially modern formal education, focuses on descriptions and explanations of the world that learners cannot be expected to acquire by themselves. In this way, learning in the scientific sense, and learning in the educational sense can be seen as complementary concepts. This creates a new challenge for cognitive neuroscience to adapt to the real world practical requirements of educational learning. Conversely, neuroscience creates a new challenge for education, because it provides new characterizations of the current state of the learner—including brain state, genetic state, and hormonal state—that could be relevant to learning and teaching. By providing new measures of the effects of learning and teaching, including brain structure and activity, it is possible to discriminate different types of learning method and attainment. For example, neuroscience research can already distinguish learning by rote from learning through conceptual understanding in mathematics.

The United States National Academy of Sciences published an important report, stressing that, "Neuroscience has advanced to the point where it is time to think critically about the form in which research information is made available to educators so that it is interpreted appropriately for practice—identifying which research findings are ready for implementation and which are not."