How early math lessons change children's brains

June 7, 2011 By Erin Digitale in Neuroscience

Brain

(Medical Xpress) -- Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine have demonstrated that a single year of math lessons is associated with unexpectedly big changes in the brain’s approach to problem solving and that these changes can be seen in the brain scans of second- and third-graders

The latest findings are part of the ongoing effort by Vinod Menon, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of neurology and neurological sciences, to understand how children develop problem-solving skills in order to find better methods of teaching those who struggle with numbers.

His latest study, published online May 18 in the journal Neuroimage, is the first to ask how one year of early lessons changes brain function. After third grade, tackling arithmetic problems engages striking new patterns of neural communication between brain regions involved in numerical thinking and those involved in working memory, the research showed.

“The surprise is that you would see significant changes within one year,” said Menon, senior author of the study. The findings were surprising in part because the study tracked changes over a one-year interval between second and third grades, rather than examining developmental changes between children and adolescents or adults, Menon said. “In spite of many individual differences, a year of schooling does have, on the average, a major impact on brain function and skill,” he said.

The study reveals that the way the brain is activated is different from one year to the next. “The brain regions haven’t changed — it’s the way they respond to simple and to complex arithmetic tasks that have changed,” Menon said. “Doing this type of developmental research allows us to examine the neural basis of skill acquisition much more precisely.”

Knowing that the brain changes so much — and understanding how it changes — provides a foundation for addressing children’s problems with math learning, Menon said. His lab is currently conducting studies of math anxiety, math abilities in children with autism, math learning disabilities and intensive math tutoring.

The new findings build on another recent study from the Menon lab, published April 25 in Developmental Science, that explored how children’s brains change as they adopt a more sophisticated strategy for solving arithmetic problems. That study divided second- and third-graders into groups according to the method they used to solve problems — counting on their fingers vs. retrieving facts from memory — and compared the brains of the children using the different approaches.

“We want to know how brain activity patterns change as children acquire more math proficiency and deeper knowledge,” Menon said. It is particularly important to look at small time intervals, such as the one-year interval of schooling his team examined, because prior research that compared children with adults inevitably missed many details of the developmental changes that take place as the brain matures.

The newest study examined 90 children recruited from a variety of schools. Half had just completed second grade; the other half had just completed third grade. All children had normal intelligence and had math reasoning scores between the 25th and 98th percentile. On average, the third-graders were one year older than the second-graders and had significantly better math-reasoning skills.

The children took standardized tests of their math abilities, reading abilities and working memory. They then had their brains scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they did four tasks: complex addition, simple addition and two control tests. Complex addition used problems where one number in the sum ranged from 2 to 9 and the other ranged from 2 to 5 (such as 7+2=9). Simple addition used problems where one number was 1 (e.g. 5+1=7). Children were asked to indicate whether the sums they saw in the scanner were correct or incorrect.

The scientists found that children in third grade showed much more differentiated brain responses between complex and simple problems. They found significant change in the responses of two key regions of the brain to the different types of addition problems.Greater responses to complex addition problems were seen in third-graders’ brains in both the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain area responsible for manipulating information in working memory, and in the intraparietal sulcus, a posterior region essential for representing numerical quantity.

The study also points to greater cross-talk along pathways that integrate information between these regions and facilitate more efficient numerical problem solving over that one-year period. “Our study informs us about the anatomical regions and functional pathways where the plasticity is greatest,” Menon said.

The findings could eventually be applied to help develop better methods of learning, and as a foundation for remediating skills in the brains of with math-related learning disabilities, such as dyscalculia. The ability to intervene with math difficulties early in a child’s school years could greatly help those who might otherwise not be able to pursue career paths that require math skills.

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hush1
Jun 07, 2011

Rank: 1 / 5 (3)
The findings could eventually be applied to help develop better methods of learning, and as a foundation for remediating skills in the brains of children with math-related learning disabilities, such as dyscalculia.


What is this? ..."to help develop better methods of learning,"...
What are you doing?
What are ..."better methods of learning"...?
What do you think you are replacing?
What do you think was the first "method" in place?
Where do you think that first "method" came from?

Why do you make me ask the right questions to your research?
Because I care?
I do.
You don't really want me to visit you, do you? And take away any sense of accomplishment you feel you have achieved.
No.
You don't.
frajo
Jun 13, 2011

Rank: not rated yet
Why do you make me ask the right questions to your research?
Do you assume that the article's author is one of the researchers?
Why don't you try to justify your claim to have the right questions?
Which questions do you consider to be the right questions?

You don't really want me to visit you, do you?
What's that supposed to mean? Some sandbox threat scenario?
hush1
Jun 14, 2011

Rank: not rated yet
Do you assume that the article's author is one of the researchers?

No.
Why don't you try to justify your claim to have the right questions?

I can do that. And I did. And it is too late to retract the word "right" and let the remaining words stand.
Which questions do you consider to be the right questions?

All questions I ask myself first. And all questions others ask. Your questions being cases in point.

What's that supposed to mean? Some sandbox threat scenario?

This is pure super ego. Not a single word of honesty or sincerity - which reflects the part of me most unqualified to utter a single word belonging to that question.

And no psychologist and psychiatrist will ever mistake this for anything else, other than the above evaluation just made.

Hot, empty and air.

To onlookers, this invokes empathy for the researchers. And the researchers need empathy, not just wrong or right or any questioning at all.
hush1
Jun 15, 2011

Rank: not rated yet
Clarification:

The analysis is not direct at your remark:
"What's that supposed to mean? Some sandbox threat scenario?"

The analysis is directed to answer your question to my remark.

"You don't really want me to visit you, do you?"
Analysis:

This is pure super ego. Not a single word of honesty or sincerity - which reflects the part of me most unqualified to utter a single word belonging to that question.

And no psychologist and psychiatrist will ever mistake this for anything else, other than the above evaluation just made.

Hot, empty and air.

Rank 5 /5 (10 votes)
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