Maths can hurt the brain

Not everyone enjoys solving maths problems. Picture Tim Hunter

 

STUDENTS have long argued it, teachers have long denied it. But at last science has confirmed what anyone who has ever attempted differential calculus suspected: maths problems can genuinely be physical torture. 
 
Researchers at the University of Chicago scanned the brains of 28 individuals as they were told they were about to be presented with a maths problem. Fourteen of them had been assessed as especially fearful of maths, having answered a questionnaire in which they were asked to rate their anxiety about different maths-related scenarios.

The questions ranged from the relatively benign “Receiving a math textbook” to the comparatively harrowing “Opening a math or statistics book and seeing a page full of problems”.

When those 14 were told that they were going to have to do some maths, their brain responded, the scientists said, in places also associated with “visceral threat detection, and often the experience of pain itself”.

While much of the public would be familiar with the idea of quadratic equations as visceral threats, the scientific acceptance of this result has been somewhat hampered until now by the fact that scientists are one of those rare groups that rather like quadratic equations.

But this paper, published in the journal PLoS One, could change all that. “Math can be difficult,” the authors say. “For some, even the mere prospect of doing math is harrowing. Those with high levels of mathematics anxiety report feelings of tension, apprehension, and fear of math.”

Interestingly though, it seems that calculus’ bark is worse than its bite. Once people begin to solve a problem, the unpleasant brain activity disappears.

The authors hypothesise that this could be because while people may be scared of maths as an abstract concept, simultaneous equations and, say, hyperdimensional geometry, were not themselves sufficiently common on the African savannah to have affected our evolution.

“Mathematics is a recent cultural invention, so it seems unlikely that pain responses specific to math have been evolutionarily selected for,” the authors said.

“This means that any observed relation between math anxiety and pain would likely be more dependent upon one’s feelings and worries about math (ie, their psychological interpretation or anticipation of the event) than something inherent in the math task itself.”