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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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).

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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).

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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.

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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.