There are various brain-based issues that can affect learning in students. Brain-based research emphasis these different issues as well as window view of what may be affecting the brain and various ideas of how to remedy these affects. Through neurological research, educators have been able to determine affect ways to teach, and many ways that students learn. This applies to both general education students, as well as special education students. In terms of abnormal brain development, brain-based research has been able to elaborate on such learning disorders such as dysgraphia, dyscalculia, nonverbal learning disabilities, and cognitive disorders.

Disorders such as dyscalculia, which is a math disorder affecting grapho-motor transcription, visual perception, and coding. Math is a bilateral task, using both hemispheres of the brain. The brain uses many codes to determine math problems, such as, quantitative codes, numeric codes, motor codes, verbal codes, mental imagery codes. When the brain is unable to use visual-spatial reasoning, verbal and nonverbal processing, or fine motor skills for physical writing, one or many of these codes may not be able to be decoded, leading to a difficult in the subject matter. In terms of structures of the brain that are needed for solving math problems and equations, both hemispheres of the brain are activated. Attention needed to focus on the equation at hand, and begin to understand what is needed to solve the problem occurs in the right orbital frontal lobe, number comparison occurs in the right superior temporal gyrus. Retrieval of math facts and applications of addition occur in the left parietal frontal lobe, and multiplication occurs in the left parietal lobe. The left hemisphere enables fine detailed orientation of materials needed to perform math, whereas the right hemisphere enables processing novel global information.

Due to all of the structures involved in math, it can be noted that if there is a deficit, the individual at hand many not be able to preform. Math disorders, as well as many other learning disabilities also rely heavily on memory and prior experiences, this is important to be noted, as educators can take this bit of information and apply it to all learning that takes place in their classrooms. Brain-based research has indicated that is it important to provide experiences in which the students can remember, as well as, relating learning to prior experiences so the student has something to draw from. Educators can continue to learn about various learning styles and teaching styles through brain-based research. Educators can encourage learning that is effective in terms of the knowledge that has been gained through brain-based research by making learning a mix of work and play, using inductive and deductive reasoning, using the construction of new material and prior knowledge for students to draw from, and explicit instruction. The more explicit and specific a teach is, the easier it is for the students to comprehend the information needed, as well as eliminating issues that can arise from student not being able to understand what is expected of them.