Imaging study reveals differences in brain function for children with math anxiety
March 21, 2012 in Psychology & Psychiatry
Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown for the first time how brain function differs in people who have math anxiety from those who don't.
A series of scans conducted while second- and third-grade students did addition and subtraction revealed that those who feel panicky about doing math had increased activity in brain regions associated with fear, which caused decreased activity in parts of the brain involved in problem-solving.
"The same part of the brain that responds to fearful situations, such as seeing a spider or snake, also shows a heightened response in children with high math anxiety," said Vinod Menon, PhD, the Stanford professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences who led the research.
In their new study, which published online March 20 in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Menon's team performed functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans on 46 second- and third-grade students with low and high math anxiety. Outside the fMRI scanner, the children were assessed for math anxiety with a modified version of a standardized questionnaire for adults, and also received standard intelligence and cognitive tests.
Math anxiety is an under-studied phenomenon, Menon said, which still lacks formally established diagnostic criteria. Tests for math anxiety ask people about their emotional responses to situations and problems involving math. Those with high levels of math anxiety respond to numerical problems with fear and worry, and also say they are anxious about situations such as being asked to solve a math problem in front of a class. Menon noted that it is possible for someone to be good at math, but still suffer from math anxiety. However, over time, people with math anxiety tend to avoid advanced classes, leaving them with deficient math skills and limiting their career options.
While prior research focused on the behavioral aspects of math anxiety, Menon and his team wanted to find biological evidence of its existence.
"It's remarkable that, although the phenomena was first identified over 50 years back, nobody had bothered to ask how math anxiety manifests itself in terms of neural activity," Menon said. His team's observations show that math anxiety is neurobiologically similar to other kinds of anxiety or phobias, he said. "You cannot just wish it away as something that's unreal. Our findings validate math anxiety as a genuine type of stimulus- and situation-specific anxiety."
Identifying the neurologic basis for math anxiety may help to develop new strategies for addressing the problem, such as treatments used for generalized anxiety or phobias.
"The results are a significant step toward our understanding of brain function during math anxiety and will influence development of new academic interventions," said Victor Carrion, MD, a pediatric psychiatrist at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and an expert on the effects of anxiety in children. Carrion, who was not involved in Menon's research, is also an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford.
Menon's team decided to study young children with math anxiety to gain perspective on the developmental origins of the problem. (Prior behavioral studies had been limited to older children and adults.) First, the researchers modified a questionnaire that measures math anxiety to make it suitable for 7- to 9-year-olds. The study subjects were ranked by their scores and divided into high and low math anxiety groups for comparison. Children in the high and low math anxiety groups had similar IQ scores, working memory, reading and math abilities, and generalized anxiety levels.
The kids performed addition and subtraction problems while their brains were scanned using fMRI. In the children with high math anxiety, the scans showed heightened activity in the amygdala, the brain's main fear center, and also in a section of the hippocampus, a brain structure that helps form new memories. They also had decreased activity in several brain regions associated with working memory and numerical reasoning. Interestingly, analysis of brain connections showed that, in children with high math anxiety, the increased activity in the fear center was driving the reduced function in numerical information-processing regions of the brain. Further, children with high math anxiety also showed greater connections between the amygdala and emotion-regulating regions of the brain.
The two groups also showed differences in performance: Children with high math anxiety were less accurate and significantly slower at solving math problems than children with low math anxiety.
The results suggest that, in math anxiety, math-specific fear interferes with the brain's information-processing capacity and its ability to reason through a math problem.
In addition to examining possible treatments and following the trajectory of math anxiety from early childhood throughout schooling, future research could provide insight into how the brain's information-processing capacity is affected by performance anxiety in general, Menon said.
Menon's collaborators at Stanford were research assistants Christina Young and Sarah Wu.
The study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. More information about the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, which also supported this research, is available at psychiatry.stanford.edu/.
Future studies of math and brain function:
Menon's lab is now looking for children ages 7 to 12 in the San Francisco Bay Area for several brain studies, including studies of math anxiety, math cognition and memory formation. The researchers are especially seeking second- and third-graders who have difficulty with math for a study in which a month of free math tutoring will be provided.
They are also seeking children with high-functioning autism as well as typically developing children to serve as control subjects for ongoing studies of math, language and social abilities.
Studies involve cognitive assessments and MRI scans. Eligible children will receive pictures of their brain and $50-200 for participation. An MRI scan is a safe, non-invasive procedure that does not use radiation or any injections.
Provided by
Stanford University Medical Center
-
How early math lessons change children's brains
Jun 07, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Brain study reveals how successful students overcome math anxiety
Oct 20, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
When 2 + 2 = major anxiety: Math performance in stressful situations
Dec 09, 2008 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Elementary school women teachers transfer their fear of doing math to girls
Jan 25, 2010 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Researchers probe causes of math anxiety
May 19, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Motion perception revisited: High Phi effect challenges established motion perception assumptions
Apr 23, 2013 |
3 / 5 (2) |
2
-
Anything you can do I can do better: Neuromolecular foundations of the superiority illusion (Update)
Apr 02, 2013 |
4.5 / 5 (11) |
5
-
The visual system as economist: Neural resource allocation in visual adaptation
Mar 30, 2013 |
5 / 5 (2) |
9
-
Separate lives: Neuronal and organismal lifespans decoupled
Mar 27, 2013 |
4.9 / 5 (8) |
0
-
Sizing things up: The evolutionary neurobiology of scale invariance
Feb 28, 2013 |
4.8 / 5 (10) |
14
-
Pressure-volume curve: Elastic Recoil Pressure don't make sense
1 hour ago
-
If you became brain-dead, would you want them to pull the plug?
17 hours ago
-
MRI bill question
May 15, 2013
-
Ratio of Hydrogen of Oxygen in Dessicated Animal Protein
May 13, 2013
-
Alcohol and acetaminophen
May 13, 2013
-
Marie Curie's leukemia
May 13, 2013
- More from Physics Forums - Medical Sciences
More news stories
Study reviews readmissions in inpatient psychiatric facilities
(HealthDay)—Most Medicare beneficiaries treated in inpatient psychiatric facilities (IPFs) exhibit characteristics associated with hospital readmission, according to a report prepared for the National Association ...
Psychology & Psychiatry
13 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Skydiving is never plane sailing
Skydivers show the same level of physical stress before every jump whether a first-timer or experienced jumper, say Northumbria researchers.
Psychology & Psychiatry
14 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
|
Kids, especially boys, perceive sadness of depressed parents
Children of depressed parents pick up on their parents' sadness—whether mom or dad realizes their mood or not.
Psychology & Psychiatry
19 hours ago |
4.5 / 5 (2) |
1
|
One in five U.S. kids has a mental health disorder, CDC reports
(HealthDay)—As many as one in five American children under the age of 17 has a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year, according to a new federal report.
Psychology & Psychiatry
May 16, 2013 |
2 / 5 (4) |
0
|
Bach to the blues, our emotions match music to colors
(Medical Xpress)—Whether we're listening to Bach or the blues, our brains are wired to make music-color connections depending on how the melodies make us feel, according to new research from the University ...
Psychology & Psychiatry
May 16, 2013 |
not rated yet |
0
|
AIDS science at 30: 'Cure' now part of lexicon
Big names in medicine are set to give an upbeat assessment of the war on AIDS on Tuesday, 30 years after French researchers identified the virus that causes the disease.
For combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, 'fear circuitry' in the brain never rests
Chronic trauma can inflict lasting damage to brain regions associated with fear and anxiety. Previous imaging studies of people with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, have shown that these brain regions can over-or ...
Temporal processing in the olfactory system
The neural machinery underlying our olfactory sense continues to be an enigma for neuroscience. A recent review in Neuron seeks to expand traditional ideas about how neurons in the olfactory bulb might encode information about ...
Melon focus headband turns to Kickstarter for rollout plans
(Medical Xpress)—What if the quality of your work depends more on your focus on the piano keys or canvas or laptop than your musical or painting or computing skills? If target users can be convinced, they ...
Now we know why old scizophrenia medicine works on antibiotics-resistant bacteria
In 2008 researchers from the University of Southern Denmark showed that the drug thioridazine, which has previously been used to treat schizophrenia, is also a powerful weapon against antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as ...
Study identifies new approach to improving treatment for MS and other conditions
(Medical Xpress)—Working with lab mice models of multiple sclerosis (MS), UC Davis scientists have detected a novel molecular target for the design of drugs that could be safer and more effective than current FDA-approved ...