Neuro-Informed Applications in Counseling

Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary science concerned with the study of the structure and function of the nervous system (Nature, 2019). There are many subfields within neuroscience, including cognitive, behavioral, affective, developmental, social, computational, and molecular and cellular. Depending on their area of specialty, neuroscientists study ways the brain affects thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and how individual factors (e.g., social connection, cognition, stress levels, nutrition) affect the brain (Polania, Nitsche, & Ruff, 2018). Rapid growth in technologies is allowing neuroscientists to study the brain and nervous system in increasingly novel and complex ways, resulting in tremendous amounts of basic science research available through scholarly sources.