Does having math anxiety cause parts of your brain to shrink?
Written by Cindy Hovington, Ph.D. Founder of Curious Neuron and Host of the Curious Neuron Podcast
Montreal, Canada
What are math anxiety and “working memory”?
It is estimated that almost 25% of students have some level of math anxiety. The causes of math anxiety are unknown. It remains unclear to what extent math anxiety interferes with math performance or vice versa. However, we know that having math anxiety impacts students’ performance in math. When one has intrusive thoughts during math exams, the fear part of the brain, the amygdala, consumes most of the energy, leaving very little for the thinking and working memory part of the brain in the frontal lobe (behind your forehead). Working memory plays a huge part in math. This is when you hold something in your memory for a short period of time (for instance when you have to add 2+4+5+3...you need to visualize it and remember the numbers).
What did this study teach us? Math anxiety can result in a smaller amygdala.
It is known that stress can alter certain parts of the brain, but these researchers wanted to know if this was true in students with math anxiety. 43 students between the ages of 7 and 13 had their IQ evaluated, working memory testes, arithmetic and math performance was assessed and thy had MRI’s taken of their brain to look at the volume of grey matter (tissue of the brain that consists of the brain cells known as neurons). Results found that students with high levels of math anxiety had smaller amygdala, a part of the brain involved in emotions, including fear, stress and anxiety. This result can possibly help with the diagnosis and treatment of math anxiety! No association between math anxiety and general factors, like age, intelligence, or working memory were found. There were no differences between boys and girls. Researchers also mentioned that “However, regarding the relationship between math anxiety and structural brain changes, the question of causation is difficult to pinpoint: Does math anxiety lead to a volume decrease of the amygdala, or does a preexisting smaller amygdala volume makes one more anxious? Although it is impossible to draw clear conclusions about causality from the present findings, directionality between negative experiences and amygdala structure and function has been confirmed with animal models of stress, which have consistently described changes in the amygdala following stress exposure.”
What can we apply with our children?
Researchers state that “specific interventions might have the potential to reverse the detrimental effects of mathematical anxiety. Remarkably, studies that have examined the effects of math interventions on the emotional experience of performing math or math-related situations could demonstrate that even relatively short tutoring of approximately 2 months induces a reduction in mathematical anxiety. Moreover, math tutoring normalized hyperactivity and functional connectivity of the amygdala in children with high math anxiety to the level of their low math anxious peers. These positive effects give rise to the hope that interventions based on exposure to mathematical material would also be able to induce a normalization of amygdala volumes in math anxious individuals.