Neurodidactics is the discipline concerned with how the human brain learns in teaching contexts and how, in light of that knowledge, classrooms, workshops, didactic sequences, school materials and learning experiences should be designed. This paper locates neurodidactics within a wider ecosystem —composed of neuroscience, neuroeducation, neuropedagogy and neurodidactics— and argues that without the first, the other three would lack a substrate; without the fourth, the previous three would not reach the classroom.

After reconstructing the origin of the field through Gerhard Preiß’s work at the Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg (1984-1996), the article defines neurodidactics, offers a comparative chart of the four fields of the neuro-educational ecosystem, presents its operative components (emotion, curiosity, attention, memory, plasticity, sleep, metacognition, embodied cognition and vigilance against neuromyths), engages with its classical and contemporary critics, and develops six concrete applications for early childhood education (ages 3 to 5) and for the five areas of primary education: natural sciences, social sciences, mathematics, Spanish language and arts education. Finally, each application is connected to the Four Pillars and Eight Knowings for 21st-Century Education (Understanding, Thinking, Innovating and Human Development) proposed by the author, which dialogue with Delors’s classical formulation (1996) and deepen it in a neurodidactic key.