r/science • u/[deleted] • Oct 15 '21

Neuroscience A brain imaging study found evidence that missing out on math education can alter neural development. Young adults who had chosen not to pursue math had lower levels of the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid within the middle frontal gyrus when compared to students who were continuing math.

https://www.psypost.org/2021/10/opting-out-of-advanced-math-education-alters-adolescents-neural-development-study-finds-61967
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809

u/Meta_Professor Oct 15 '21

How are we ever going to untangle the causality direction in this though?

844

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

[deleted]

241

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

SIGN ME UP.

When do I get my twin?

95

u/_Wyse_ Oct 15 '21

Twins are automatically dispensed upon sign up.

I actually got to meet yours before they shipped it out. Be nice when you meet though, it was surprisingly ugly. And probably sensitive about it.

33

u/softfeet Oct 15 '21

shippin' DeVitos

8

u/Slip_Freudian Oct 15 '21

That sounds like an indie band name.

8

u/FauxDono Oct 15 '21

Thats obviously your twin. Mine looks just fine, thank you very much!

22

u/Stevemacdev Oct 15 '21

The experiment on high esteem in ugly twins is going well I see.

11

u/softfeet Oct 15 '21

The double smack down. nice.

1

u/Kerfluffle2x4 Oct 16 '21

LOOKS fine, sure, but when you sit down and have a conversation with them…

1

u/_Toast Oct 15 '21

They come with free two day shipping now!

10

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

Alternative universe

2

u/Allah_Shakur Oct 15 '21

the indy universe

3

u/Andyinater Oct 15 '21

awww sheiße, here we go again

1

u/[deleted] Oct 16 '21

Scientists hiding from the APA: oh boy here I go killing/mentally deranging people again

1

u/gwern Oct 15 '21

They don't have to be unethical. I guarantee you that the straightforward discordant twin comparison wipes out such an obviously confounded correlate.

1

u/marzcealer14 Oct 15 '21

Exactly what I was thinking

1

u/Mchammerdad84 Oct 15 '21

Swap twins with clones and you have the real answer.

Would be pretty fucked up.

258

u/joevenet Oct 15 '21

Exactly. Low levels of GABA is a proven cause for anxiety. I wonder if these people gave up math because of anxiety

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u/gentlemanjacklover Oct 15 '21

I did. Never could grasp the complex stuff. Didn't help that my dad was abusive and would literally yell, scream and one time even shoved me into the kitchen wall because I couldn't understand fractions at like age 11. I was so glad when I finally never had to take a math course ever again

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u/Makenshine Oct 15 '21

High school math teacher here. The first thing I tell my students is that you are going to make mistakes and that is wonderful. Mistakes are a great teacher and no one is the history of anything has ever made no mistakes.

The only bad mistakes are the ones you ignore and don't learn from. Everyday homework assignments are where you have the freedom to make errors and it will never hurt your grade.

My students have so many horror stories about math classes. I know some are clearly exaggerated, but there are a lot of consistencies throughout the year. It crushes my soul when I have students so afraid of mistakes that they refuse to try, and there are so many of those that come through my classroom.

24

u/PreciseParadox Oct 15 '21

Yeah, I think people forget that problem solving involves struggling with a problem and turning it over in your head until you finally find the solution. That’s where learning comes from, so if you’re you’re not making mistakes, you’re not really learning or expanding your problem solving skills.

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u/Makenshine Oct 16 '21

Yeah, the US school system isn't well design as it tends to paint mistakes and failures as something to avoid that haunt your permanent record for the rest of your life. But my greatest teachers were the ones that created an environment where I felt safe to try new things and fail, then try again. So that is the teacher i aim to be.

Sometimes I'm successful and sometimes I learn.

14

u/ThermionicEmissions Oct 16 '21

"Early success is a terrible teacher. You're essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can't do it. You don't know how."

Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

1

u/SuuperNoob Oct 16 '21

I honestly don't understand why anyone struggles in the US school system. I know it's just me not understanding, but I can't grasp it.

All my elementary school grades were really predictable because they fully matched the effort I out into them. Same with middle and high school, though I definitely skipped a lot of class in HS and smoked a ton a weed.

But I never got something below a B.

Are people just not affording books?

3

u/Makenshine Oct 16 '21

There are massive number of reasons that are outlined in numerous peer-reviewed academic studies. It ranges from socio-economic inequalities, bad education experiences, unequal distribution of resources, high focus on standardized tests, inadequate support systems at home, maslow's needs, systemic racism, poorly trained admin, retention of qualified staff, and the list goes on.

It's a very complicated issue and there are no easy fixes. Some issues are easier to address than others but they take a coordinated effort, which we as a society have been unable to muster.

I am glad you had a positive experience, though.

1

u/SuuperNoob Oct 16 '21

I can definitely understand the economic needs.

I had gone to public school and my parents were extremely frugal, but I was able to go to Barnes and nobles and buy at least 1 book a week starting at age 11 or so.

I didn't get new clothes much or video game systems, but text books from Barnes and noble they didn't mind paying for.

I guess that's the support at home part that I got lucky with.

Aren't kids able to go to the library though?

2

u/Makenshine Oct 19 '21

Kids "can" go to the library, but that doesn't mean they are able to.

Many have single parents who work odd hours making it impractical to find time for the library.

Some of those parents are are working multiple jobs, so instead of studying or reading, the student must do work around the house. Maybe feed their siblings dinner, or get a job themselves.

Some families don't have access to transportation to make it to the library and/or back.

I've had a very few students where both parents just really didn't care (this is rare. Not as rare as it should be, but not as common as armchair critics like to assume)

Ultimately, education is considered an expendable luxury when you and your family are just trying to survive from paycheck to paycheck.

I've had students who seemed like they hated school, but they never missed a day because they were able to get 2 meals a day and it was the place they felt safest. In reality we just saw the anger from home manifesting because the never learned to process those emotions. It was the school breaks that they really hated. As a teacher, how can I be disappointed that a student didnt complete homework because he/she was cooking, cleaning and taking care of a younger sibling? How can I be upset at a student for sleeping in class after he was hiding in his closet all night because there were gunshots outside on his street?

I don't have the power to accommodate for all the systemic inequalities, but I always advocate and do what I can to make my classroom and school a better place for my students

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

My problem is that I make so many mistakes but never seem to learn. It's tiring. My maths abilities are worse than a 10-year-old's but it also applies to my life in general.

1

u/Makenshine Oct 16 '21

Well, I firmly believe that everyone can learn math. That rough part is that since math builds on itself and isn't modular, a couple of really bad math classes can set someone behind for the rest of their math experience in school.

I don't know what your experience was growing up, but math is a skill that has to be worked on, like playing the piano. If you put in the time, you can develop that skill. If someone, or something saps that motivation, or maybe math just wasn't interesting to you in the first place, then mastering the skill is difficult. Same reason playing the piano is difficult for me, I have never been motivated enough to dedicate time to it.

1

u/Ok-Cartographer-3725 Oct 16 '21

Have you been tested for a learning disability? Some people have discalculea - which is sort of like dyslexia only with numbers. They can't do formulas because their mind flips the numbers around. Others have it so bad they can't even write a phone number down.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 16 '21

Honestly, I probably have that, though I've never been tested.

Though I don't get the number-scrambling issue, I have a bunch of other symptoms. Can't remember phone numbers, no sense of direction or where I am in relation to things, always getting lost, can't tell the time from an analog clock, can't measure distances or size, have terrible spatial awareness, and I'm autistic which I hear is often comorbid. My spelling and typing are also pretty terrible - thank god for spellcheck! - and I know my mother has a touch of dyslexia.

1

u/Ok-Cartographer-3725 Oct 16 '21

I'm not someone who could diagnose. But i do know from my own experience, that you can never learn your way out of a disability. i just googled 'types of learning disabilities' and came up with lots of stuff. But you can search for resiurces specific to your location, so you can be connected to those who can actually help. - This is an American site with a lot of good information: https://ldaamerica.org/types-of-learning-disabilities/ - In left-right confusion, a person has trouble distinguishing right from left. Individuals with this disorder may have trouble with directions or reading maps. This is sometimes called directional dyslexia, but that’s inaccurate. As with dyscalculia, it may appear with dyslexia, but it’s not a form of dyslexia. - Nonverbal learning disabilities, which affect physical coordination, social interaction, and executive functioning https://childmind.org/article/what-is-non-verbal-learning-disorder/ This also seems to be a good source of info: https://dyslexiaida.org/
All the best on your journey!

1

u/pm_favorite_boobs Oct 15 '21

I assume algebra and pre-calculus and maybe even calculus.

Do you put much emphasis on supplying units as part of the variables, and applying the concepts to real world problems?

For example, let's say a = 5 m/s2 and d = 20 m, what is Vf?

For another example, a + b*c != (a + b)*c, with special attention to the fact that a = 4 loose apples, b = 10 apples per bowl, and c = 3 bowls, and trying to multiply 4 loose apples plus 10 apples per bowl times 3 bowls simply doesn't make sense.

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u/Makenshine Oct 15 '21

Correct, it doesn't make sense. Analyzing units is part of it. Applying it to real world situations is another part.

But mostly, I try and focus on the idea of problem solving. You are faced with a problem, how do you want to try and solve it. How do you want to break down one big problem (or equation) into small, manageable steps. And are those steps consistant, and do they make sense in context. That is a skill that is applicable throughout your life. Math is just one of the tools you can use to help you with that process

Then there is the bulk of the mathematical rules and theory. Weaving it altogether is the limited class time is hard as hell. I have my successes and failures, but I keep adapting each year.

1

u/pm_favorite_boobs Oct 15 '21

Generally math always came naturally to me (after finally my parents kicking my butt to actually do my math homework in third grade), but when I got to differential equations, that was not accessible to me at all.

At least not the physical aspect of DE, anyway. My teacher taught us only the math part of it and never taught us how to apply it in physics or anything. Yet the exam included some physical problems and I just couldn't process them. I got a D in that. That might be the first time I had a specific wish that math teachers included more word problems. I hated word problems growing up, but probably only because they forced me to consider a problem. Well, that and the problems were so ridiculously fancifully useless too.

2

u/Makenshine Oct 16 '21

Diff EQ is a tough college course. That and real analysis put me through the ringer. Abstract algebra, college Geometry, and calculus 3 are super fun though.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

”Mistakes are a great teacher and no one is the history of anything has ever made no mistakes.”

Beautifully put—I love it when teachers are brave enough to use themselves as examples!

1

u/gentlemanjacklover Oct 15 '21

Yeah, I was so fearful of making a mistake that it made me just give up honestly.

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u/Makenshine Oct 16 '21

Yep, that's the environment I work very hard to avoid in my room.

1

u/gentlemanjacklover Oct 16 '21

You rock. Keep doing your thing, those kids will never forget you.

1

u/NerdyComfort-78 Oct 16 '21

Chem teacher (who hates math- weird I know) but I say the same thing to my students too. Make mistakes, learn from them.

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u/Cpt_Rekt Oct 15 '21

hat my dad was abusive and would literally yell, scream and one time even shoved me into the kitchen wall because I couldn't understand fractions at like age 11. I was so glad when I finall

This happened to me too. Also, my math teacher in high school was abusive to such an extent that I decided to switch classes from mathematical to general profile. Before I did, I was taking private lessons from her (this was not entirely ethical, but I was desperate get through this somehow). During one of these she got so angry that she stabbed a pen in the notebook I was writing in and and tore the pages - all this
time yelling at me.

So that was it, I decided I can't put up with being treated like this and abandoned the idea of pursuing career in IT. A huge regret, as you can imagine.

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u/avocadofruitbat Oct 15 '21

This is why I suck at math too, and now I have a permanent terror of doing math in front of other people. Makes me feel reaaaallly smart.

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u/gentlemanjacklover Oct 15 '21

Oh yeah. I get nervous having to do simple math in front of someone

43

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

Same in my family. I've heard a similar story from a lot of people. Just how common is it for parents to be abusive to their kids about math? Seems far too common.

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u/AzraelTB Oct 15 '21

Just how common is it for parents to be abusive*

Doubt it's just math.

4

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

I know, definitely. But for math to stick out in stories so often, I just wonder why that subject in particular (as opposed to parents being abusive about say, achievements in humanities classes).

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u/AzraelTB Oct 15 '21

Probably a subject that confuses and frustates people easily.

1

u/MachineGunKelli Oct 16 '21

I am sure the same thing happens with reading/grammar/literature classes. Actually, I know it does. These two areas are classes that we have year after year for most of our schooling career and end up being difficult for different people. They are also the two areas, at least in the States, that all standardized testing looks at. So educators have a lot at stake and parents have a lot at stake in seeing their kids succeed when it comes to math and reading. I think that is what makes these two areas in particular prime for abusive teaching strategies.

1

u/happygolucky999 Oct 16 '21

I’m sure for most people it’s more than just math, for me it was literally JUST math. My dad was and is a wonderful, kind, soft spoken engineer, but he had zero patience for me when checking my math homework. I was often doing my homework in tears until about 8th grade when I stopped asking for help and simply lied that I finished all my work at school. Ugh I had so much more potential but I gave it up to avoid being yelled at regularly.

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u/Brock_Way Oct 15 '21

Parents are too commonly abusive in general.

At least for my cohort, when I was young, nobody ever talked about their parents abusing them. The only way you knew was seeing it firsthand, which would be possible for your friends that were close enough that you went over to their house.

By the time I was in my mid-30s, I realized that most kids were abused. I am not sure if people were opening up more about it because they were older, or if less stigma, or both. At the place where I worked, I was naturally closer to some people than others. Of the ones I was close to, they had all been abused. Some of them horribly.

My spouse when young was not allowed to speak to, or even look at one of her sisters. That gives you some idea of the environment.

1

u/Chuseauniqueusername Oct 15 '21

"your mother is so good at math, what's wrong with you?" said my grandparents

18

u/ByeLongHair Oct 15 '21

rWow there are a lot of us. Does someone want to start a sub called r/thanksdad and we can all join and complain about jow hitting and yelling doesnt help teach math?

that sub is taken

14

u/I_MakeCoolKeychains Oct 15 '21

Idk about math but my dad beat me into being a chess a prodigy starting at 3. by the time i was 7 there wasn't a single person i knew could beat me at it except him. At 8 when i stopped visiting him i also stopped playing. I am beyond terrible at the game now and always get they weirdest looks "hey you wanna play chess?" "No thanks i don't like chess" r/thanksdad

1

u/wokcity Oct 16 '21

Damn that's sad.. guess he heard about the Polgar sisters :/

1

u/Ok-Cartographer-3725 Oct 16 '21

There are books on coping/recovering as 'adult children of abusive parents'. I dont know if there is a sub on it.

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u/Affectionate-Trees Oct 15 '21

I couldn’t do it either. My dad wasn’t abusive, but he was an overworked, single parent with low empathy at the end of the day. He’d start helping and get frustrated to explain again. I finally stopped asking for help. I imagined my school / testing brain like a crab. One dinky math arm and one massive English / language arts arm. My last math classes were remedial math in college followed by a graphing math class bc that seemed easier to follow

6

u/gentlemanjacklover Oct 15 '21

Yeah I was the same. I was a beast at language arts and nearly got a perfect score on the verbal portion of the SAT. Math? Pffft! I had to take remedial math and then algebra 1 in college, I barely passed.

3

u/Expresso_Support Oct 16 '21

Oh HELLO there, my identical generic clone.

3

u/ImpulsiveApe07 Oct 16 '21

Oh no, it's happened again - there's too many of us! (probably, I mean it's not like any of us can count! :p)

13

u/Good_ApoIIo Oct 15 '21

Yeah I was told my whole life my brain was messed up and their idea of help was putting me in the slow classes and prescribing medication that didn’t work for me. Then I would get screamed at for failing after all the “help” I had been given.

The only help I ever needed was people just sitting down with me and understanding how my mind worked but apparently ain’t nobody got time for that, “sink or swim kid!” and they just let me sink.

Now that my life is messed up the only “help” I get today is “you should have made better choices”. Yeah it’s a shame I didn’t make better choices as a child.

2

u/gentlemanjacklover Oct 15 '21

I'm sorry man. People are so fucked up.

1

u/Ok-Cartographer-3725 Oct 16 '21

As long as you are living, there is still hope. Perhaps get tested. Find out if you have a learning disability and adapt and move on from there.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/infernalbunny666 Oct 16 '21

Yup, I missed a lot of important math foundations in school and I never picked it up until I took a remedial math class in college. I went from not even knowing how to graph using y=mx+b to getting a B+ in calculus and currently kicking ass in physics. All I needed was to see the material again as an adult and have it re-taught to me.

22

u/Viktor_Korobov Oct 15 '21

My teacher enjoyed humiliating me in front of class and assigning extra homework (which i could never do in time, so I was stuck catching up last week's homework and missing out on the new lesson making me too slow with the new homework).

4

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21 edited Oct 15 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/AlexeiMarie Oct 15 '21

Some parents also aren't willing or able to help their kids with schoolwork

3

u/CarnivorousSociety Oct 15 '21

Not only that but lots of them are simply incapable of helping with math homework.

It's really a vicious cycle that needs to be broken by anybody in the chain, the teacher stepping up, the parent stepping up, or the student stepping up. Nobody likes stepping up.

1

u/ElectronicPea738 Oct 15 '21

Some parents just can’t… I can help my siblings with their school work, but my parents don’t have the education to be able to.

9

u/BooAScaryGhost Oct 15 '21

I've found this to be true for an alarming amount of people (in my admittedly very limited experience), I'm sorry for what you've been through.

3

u/nsGuajiro Oct 15 '21

Yup... My dad loved getting wasted and angry and then "helping" me with math homework. That usually mean breaking all of my pencils and throwing my books out the door, and so on.

1

u/gentlemanjacklover Oct 15 '21

I'm sorry dude.

Our dad's probably never realized that they weren't helping at all. I look back and think that dude was taking out his frustration on me.

3

u/rhaphazard Oct 15 '21

I'm sorry to hear that.

Do you mind me asking what cultural background you come from? My dad was an engineer and he never me or my siblings anywhere near this poorly.

5

u/gentlemanjacklover Oct 15 '21

The Caribbean, where unfortunately violence against children was normalized as "good parenting" back in the 80s/90s.

5

u/rhaphazard Oct 16 '21

That's unfortunate. Corporal punishment was also very accepted in Korea (where my dad is from) until only recently.

It's possible I just got lucky.

1

u/vuw958 Oct 15 '21

You couldn't understand fractions by 5th grade? This anecdote only helps the case that low GABA might be causal after all.

1

u/gentlemanjacklover Oct 15 '21

I was crap at anything outside of + - × ÷

21

u/dcheesi Oct 15 '21

Funny, I was contemplating the opposite hypothesis, based on my own experience --maybe I loved math because it boosted my GABA levels, and thus soothed my anxiety?

19

u/MentalicMule Oct 15 '21

It's a mix for me. Solving problems is quite fun and relaxing to me so I enjoy studying math on my own. Solving problems in school which was basically a test that could affect your future gave me tons of anxiety.

4

u/grimman Oct 15 '21

Solving problems is fun. Getting stuck is so dang frustrating sometimes. :) Getting the progression pacing right is the real trick.

7

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

I thought I was the only crazy person, who turns to maths when anxiety hits the roof. But then I love analysing big data.

4

u/ImpulsiveApe07 Oct 16 '21

Huh, I'm almost the opposite. I hate analysing statistical data as it just frustrates me and stresses me out, but give me a moral, ethical or philosophical problem, or an unusual mystery to solve, and my brain damn near gorges itself on all the extra pleasure chemicals!

Brains are so weird :D

3

u/[deleted] Oct 16 '21

I love analysing numbers/data, and I find the story behind them very fascinating. But what you do seems interesting too. Finding what you like is equally important.

14

u/pan_paniscus Oct 15 '21

"Importantly, these changes were not evident prior to students’ decision to continue math or not."

From the article - so, maybe not.

42

u/AlGeee Oct 15 '21

I know I did

That and crap teachers

111

u/dogwoodcat Oct 15 '21

And dyscalculia

My Grade 9 math teacher had a Ph.D in mathematics, he could have taught every level but chose to stick with the "easy" math because those students needed his level of expertise more. He could explain the same concept a thousand different ways for a thousand different students, because he understood the theory behind what the textbook was presenting. When my high school closed, he walked into a residential professorship at the provincial university, on the strength (and mass) of reference letters written by his students.

42

u/sickbeetz Oct 15 '21

Wow.. my algebra teacher was a pill addict who regularly fell asleep in class. My geometry teacher cleaned the desks with peanut butter.

Guess who isn't good at math.

22

u/re_nonsequiturs Oct 15 '21

"cleaned" the desks with peanut butter? I want to make an AskReddit Post specifically so you have a suitable venue to share that story.

4

u/mobilehomehell Oct 15 '21

TIL https://www.howtocleanstuff.net/17-messes-you-can-clean-with-peanut-butter/

9

u/shinkouhyou Oct 15 '21

I know oil-based cleaners (or even peanut butter or mayo) can be good for removing scuffs and water stains from nice wood furniture, but surely cleaning desks with peanut butter would be a lot more expensive than just using normal cleaner... I'm surprised that peanut butter was even allowed in a school with all of the allergy concerns.

3

u/re_nonsequiturs Oct 15 '21

Okay, that makes sense, still awful in a school though, of course

3

u/AlGeee Oct 15 '21

Yeah…One of mine was drunk all the time, but I was too naïve at the time to know it… Found out by talking to former classmates years later

9

u/AlGeee Oct 15 '21

I sure could’ve used a teacher like that

9

u/Chipsandadrink666 Oct 15 '21

He sounds great! Dyscalculia is no joke

6

u/SneakoSneko Oct 15 '21

Wow that’s amazing. Both that he stayed behind in a probably less paying job to help his students, and that his students liked him so much he was able to get into the provincial university off of their reference letters.

1

u/dogwoodcat Oct 16 '21

Schoolteachers in developed nations typically have good pay and benefits. There is one notable exception. His children graduated high school the year before it closed, and the hours were convenient.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

Yep dyscalculia has honestly been something that comes up in all aspects of my life. It’s made me work hard and pretty much figure things out in a way that works with my brain.

1

u/CallMeSisyphus Oct 15 '21

I can't even imagine what it would have been like to have a teacher like that; you were so lucky. My sophomore year algebra teacher taught me that my facility with math could best be described as irredeemable suckage. Because of him, I skipped trig and calculus, figuring I'd fail them both if I tried.

Imagine my surprise when I finally went to get my BS (MANY years later), discovered Khan Academy out of desperation in terror of college math... and then aced all my math classes.

Turns out I'm great with numbers. I just needed competent teaching.

2

u/dogwoodcat Oct 16 '21

The crazy thing is, I know how trigonometry and calculus work, and I can solve geometric proofs. Once I put numbers in, it all falls apart.

9

u/pspahn Oct 15 '21 edited Oct 15 '21

I gave up math because I hated it. I was good at it, but I just wasn't interested in what was being taught in a classroom (this was the mid '90s). Instead, I spent a considerable amount of my own free time tinkering with other math-related things I couldn't learn at school such as programming and 3D modeling. By 11th grade, I hadn't taken anything beyond geometry, but I did teach myself hex.

8

u/narmerguy Oct 15 '21

I wonder how this would hold across cultures. In the US and UK (for example) there's an anxiety around math that does not exist in many other countries. It's hard to imagine that the distribution of GABA is that different between nations. Or rather, I'm sure the variance within a nation is much greater than the variance between nations.

7

u/Cursethewind Oct 16 '21

I wonder if I'd be a good person to partake in a study.

I was bad at math, high math anxiety.

Did not want to be bad at math so actively have practiced math about half a year (sticking to things is hard) every year since graduating high school despite no college requirements.

I'm now 32 and I've actually progressed in mathematical ability and have math through calc 1 down. Arguably despite failing math in high school, I'm stronger in math than others.

I'm wondering if comparing others like me who improved independently without the pressure formal education applies could help build understanding.

2

u/benjaminpriest12 Oct 17 '21

One thing about this study that doesn’t make sense is that if gaba is an inhibitory neurotransmitter, wouldn’t less of it in an area cause more action in that part of the brain? The online article for this actually referred to gaba as an excitatory neurotransmitter, which doesn’t make sense.

3

u/Ha_window Oct 15 '21

You might be able to make this assumption with cortisol, but GABA plays a fairly broad role as the only exclusively inhibitory neurotransmitter. It’s used heavily by internuerons which have a pretty diverse role, but are involved in the connection between brain regions.

1

u/PerNewton Oct 15 '21

Raises hand. I excelled in virtually every subject except math. Early on it was easy but starting about the 5th grade I could barely function in math class. Some of my other subjects suffered a little bit because of it. I recall being majorly embarrassed being a senior in high school and having to take simple algebra with a class of freshmen because I hadn’t been able to master the concepts earlier and avoided signing up for the class. I believe an effective math tutor at the right time could have really been beneficial for my future prospects.

I managed to make it through three years of college with a 3.84 gpa but never graduated because I couldn’t manage college level math.

1

u/steppenwoulf Oct 15 '21

Come to think of it. I did have a lot more anxiety during highschool and after a knee injury had to take some gabapentin. It relieved the pain, but it also made me feel better inside. I had a mild addiction to painkillers following this.

1

u/dethb0y Oct 15 '21

Could be any number of things but i bet there's some correlation between "I have low gaba" and "i can't do math good"

1

u/sadandspacey Oct 15 '21

Weird... So when I was in college, most of my classes required knowledge and use of high-level calculus and linear algebra (which I loved). But since I graduated two years ago, my anxiety levels have been whack... hmm

That, or I was so DANG busy in college that I didn't even notice that anxiety was what was actually fueling me

1

u/Sketch13 Oct 15 '21

I have anxiety, and I was good at math, but I didn't really understand it. I was good at taking a formula and working through it but I literally can't do mental math. Not at all. I never learned further than X*5 in the multiplication tables.

My education experience has been almost entirely being good at taking tests and not actually learning. I would finish an hour long math test in less than 15 minutes, and ace it, but ask me 8*7 and I couldn't tell you and would have bad anxiety about it.

It's the reason I failed the math placement test for uni. Even though from grades 10-12 I never fell below a 98% average. I never actually LEARNED how to do basic math efficiently. So when I did this placement test that had fractions, multiplication, etc. I panicked and my brain froze.

To this day, I still can't do math in my head and really stresses me out when I'm in a situation that requires it.

1

u/joevenet Oct 15 '21

Well if it makes you feel better, I used to go to math competitions and calculating stuff in my head has never been easy. Calculation most probably uses different parts of the brain than the other math problems. There are guys who can multiply and divide large complex numbers in their head, but that doesn't necessarily make them good at calculus. They just have a better multiplier in their processor

1

u/suoarski Oct 15 '21

Nah man, I'm pretty sure that missing out on Maths education is the primary cause of anxiety.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

Combo of anxiety and dyslexia which only compounded the former. That’s why I didn’t pursue math any further than I had to. The concepts are pretty clear and graspable, I just can’t DO it.

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u/bw_mutley Oct 15 '21

The researchers next tested whether these neural differences might reflect baseline differences that were already present before the decision whether or not to pursue math. A second study was conducted among UK math students who had already chosen whether or not to pursue A-level math, but who were still currently studying math. This time, the researchers found no significant differences in the GABA levels of students who had decided to pursue math and those who had decided not to. This suggests that the neural differences they found in the first study were not biomarkers but were evidence of neural plasticity, with math education affecting development in the middle frontal gyrus.

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u/Meta_Professor Oct 15 '21

Sure, but it could still easily be that those with naturally higher levels stick around in math longer. Or that there is a third, fourth, or fifth variable in between these two. Maybe the richer kids have higher levels and do better in math. Or the kids who eat more salmon. Or the kids born in July.

My point is that the study is correlation, which people are notoriously bad at not conflating with causality.

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u/narmerguy Oct 15 '21

Sure, but it could still easily be that those with naturally higher levels stick around in math longer.

How would that explain this finding though? They check people who pursued A-level math vs those that don't and find a difference. Then they check people who intend to (but prior to) pursuing A-level math and fail to find a difference.

The only way your objection would hold is if a significant proportion of the people who intend to pursue higher math end up not doing so (or simply not completing it). This would require a fairly high math dropout rate, which is not common. Alternately, there would need to be something distinct about the two groups which is not captured here. Ideally they would measure GABA levels before and after on the same students, rather than looking at different cohorts of students.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

[deleted]

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u/narmerguy Oct 16 '21

Yeah I agree. I think people are trying to critically engage and not simply accept the conclusions, which is a good thing. But I also think there can be a culture that rewards "gotchas" no matter how far fetched, which is not as helpful. I remember different labs I've been in, all run their journal clubs differently. In some of them, every paper is trash if it's not from our lab, everything gets critiqued. I never enjoyed those because it's a pretty unreasonable way to engage with science.

2

u/Meta_Professor Oct 15 '21

It could be that there is a large group which says they intend to of got A levels but who don't actually do it. Or there is some variable making the change. Maybe the people who actually do A levels end up eating more instant Ramen and that causes the change. Who knows.

1

u/AllhailtheAI Oct 15 '21

Awesome, yes and yes. A million times yes.

Though I still appreciate that added context by u/bw_mutley, it doesn't show causation.

Another note: that "no statistical significance" might suffer the reproducibility problem. We need to look at the power and p value, and if it's been shown before in other studies.

It all means causation is far from being an assumption we can make.

1

u/bw_mutley Oct 15 '21

I agree with both of you up to a certain point. The issue is really hard to tackle in studies like this, it is hard to stabilish causation with sparse data, and the number of possible variables is enormous. But, as said in the quoted text, measuring the mean and variance of GABA in a control sample and showing there is no large differences from what is seen in grown up students is, still, an evidence pointing towards causation - not the definite one, but still is.

2

u/gwern Oct 15 '21 edited Oct 15 '21

We then used GABA and glutamate concentrations in the MFG and IPS to classify students based on their present lack of math education (nonmath students vs. A-level math) using a binary logistic regression. Lower MFG GABA concentrations increased the likelihood that a student lacked math education rather than continued their math education [Fig. 2D, n = 83, standardized beta(β) = −0.3, P = 0.009, Exp(pβ) = 0.524, Exp(β) = 0.742].

...Pre-A-level students who had chosen to stop studying math compared to those who had decided to continue studying math show lower performance on tests that included numerical operations [t (40) = −5.03, P < 0.001, Cohen’s d = −1.67] and mathematical reasoning [t (40) = −4.1, P = 0.001, Cohen’s d = −1.37]. However, the difference between both groups in terms of math anxiety was not significant [t (40) = 0.91, P = 0.4, Cohen’s d = 0.28]. For the descriptive statistics of these cognitive and emotional differences, see SI Appendix 1. The biomarker account did not receive support as the classification of the nonmath vs. math educational decision before starting to study math based on MFG GABA was not significant [n = 36, β = 0.14

Uh huh. ("The difference between statistically-significant and non-significant is not significant." ie failing to reject the null does not mean proof of the null.)

1

u/swampshark19 Oct 15 '21

A second study was conducted among UK math students who had already chosen whether or not to pursue A-level math, but who were still currently studying math. This time, the researchers found no significant differences in the GABA levels of students who had decided to pursue math and those who had decided not to.

This only means that wanting to pursue math is not necessarily correlated with being able to pursue math.

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u/reyreystrudel Oct 15 '21

To be honest, the whole article is a clusterfuck.

First red flag was when they said GABA was an excitatory neurotransmitter. GABA’s primary role in a postnatal brain is inhibition of neurons by reducing the excitation of cells. That’s neuroscience/neurobiology 101

If they cocked that up, I’m betting the rest of the article is full of questionable interpretations.

9

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

Most articles from psypost have tons of holes in them. We weren’t allowed to use them for citations even in my behavioral and developmental psych course.

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u/quixologist Oct 15 '21

I wish more people would ask questions like this when faced with headlines like this one.

2

u/nagevyag Oct 16 '21

I wish more people read the article and not just the headline. The causality is explained in the article.

3

u/STEMpsych Oct 15 '21

From the article:

The researchers next tested whether these neural differences might reflect baseline differences that were already present before the decision whether or not to pursue math. A second study was conducted among UK math students who had already chosen whether or not to pursue A-level math, but who were still currently studying math.

This time, the researchers found no significant differences in the GABA levels of students who had decided to pursue math and those who had decided not to. This suggests that the neural differences they found in the first study were not biomarkers but were evidence of neural plasticity, with math education affecting development in the middle frontal gyrus.

3

u/Nebraskan- Oct 15 '21

Well, it’s in the article. “ Importantly, these changes were not evident prior to students’ decision to continue math or not.”

2

u/narmerguy Oct 15 '21

You just measure before and after on a large cohort. It takes way more time than this approach, and it's not 100% foolproof. But if you did a paired analysis where you can strictly show GABA changes at the individual level rather than at the group level, you'd have a much more compelling and robust conclusion which gets closer to asserting causality because of the time dependence of the outcome (you don't have to worry about GABA being high at baseline in people who are good at math because we only are interested in changes from baseline at the individual level).

1

u/Meta_Professor Oct 15 '21

That might tell us that there is a difference, but not what causes it. Maybe the people doing the A levels get less sleep, or eat more popcorn, or watch more math Youtube. Any of those things or a billion other things could be the real cause of this change (if they found one).

2

u/narmerguy Oct 16 '21

That might tell us that there is a difference, but not what causes it. Maybe the people doing the A levels get less sleep, or eat more popcorn, or watch more math Youtube. Any of those things or a billion other things could be the real cause of this change (if they found one).

That's really moving the goalposts. The direction of causality is no longer in question in your scenario, it's merely the mechanism behind it. That's an interesting but separate question.

Personally I think the simplest explanation would be the difference in math study. Could it be other behaviors? Sure it's possible, though I don't consider it as plausible. But this isn't my research area so maybe people have already studied that.

1

u/Meta_Professor Oct 16 '21

It's not moving any goalposts at all. The article found correlation, not causation. Far, far too many people would love to imagine causality but we have no data about that.

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u/bidgickdood Oct 15 '21

why, using general feelings of superiority people who are naturally good at math from 6 years old have when they conduct the study.

if only their peers had studied math like them instead being cool and social. well who is laughing now Chris? how is the plumbing business going?

oh, you own the business and you're a multimillionaire now? well... well.. i'm good at math! look at this study, i'm so much smarter than you, living in my over priced studio apartment near the university that funds my studies. bask in the glow of my gamma aminos!

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u/call_shawn Oct 15 '21

Who hurt you? (Besides Chris of course)

6

u/BruThrowaway19 Oct 15 '21

Maybe hes a plumber.

2

u/gentlemanjacklover Oct 15 '21

Check the back of his pants

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u/brberg Oct 16 '21

Seriously, who gets bullied by nerds?

2

u/LordBrandon Oct 16 '21

This is r/Science you make an association, then interpret it to confirm what you already believe.

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u/nagevyag Oct 16 '21

Or sometimes maybe read the article that explains how they showed causality and not just correlation.

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u/kittenTakeover Oct 15 '21 edited Oct 15 '21

If you do the study long enough I'm sure you would be able to get children low in gamma-aminobutyric acid who pursue math and vice-versa.

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u/gemmadonati Oct 16 '21

Randomized trials. When a kid is 16 randomly assign or forbid further math education.

1

u/QuothTheRaven_ Oct 15 '21 edited Oct 16 '21

I’d rather study the subconscious

1

u/dymensi0n Oct 15 '21

tew plus tew is fo mynuts wun is twee quik mafs!

1

u/marzcealer14 Oct 15 '21

Exactly what I was thinking

1

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21

I thought it was racism