Relational Neuroscience Framework™
A New Way of Understanding How Brains Develop
For decades, neuroscience has focused on the individual brain — how it regulates, learns and adapts. But human brains do not develop in isolation. They develop in relationships. I developed the Relational Neuroscience Framework™ is a framework to explain how interaction, safety and social environments shape neural activity across the lifespan — from infancy to adulthood, and from families to institutions (Azhari, 2026; in preparation).
Core principles
Neural regulation, learning and resilience are not purely individual capacities. They are organised within relational systems that operate across three interconnected layers:
Interactional Processes – how people regulate and align with one another in real time
Relational Conditions – whether environments feel safe, supportive or destabilising
Developmental & Systemic Patterns – how repeated relational experiences accumulate and shape long-term outcomes
Together, these layers explain how moment-to-moment interactions scale into developmental trajectories and institutional cultures.
“By reframing capacities typically treated as individual skills—such as self-regulation, resilience, and performance—as relationally scaffolded outcomes, the framework shifts explanatory focus from individual deficits to relational and systemic conditions.”
— Assoc Prof Atiqah Azhari
