Doing Maths can be a real pain, but…
“Mathematics can be difficult, and a new study shows even thinking about doing it can physically hurt.
Researchers Ian Lyons and Sian Beilock at the University of Chicago have shown how increases in brain activity appear in regions associated with pain and threat detection, when people with “high levels of mathematics-anxiety” are presented with mathematic problems.
“Given our findings were specific to cue-activity, it is not that math itself hurts; rather, merely the anticipation of math is painful,” the pair wrote in an article published in journal PLoS One.
Strangely however, when doing the problems themselves, pain-related brain activity went away.
“Any observed relation between math anxiety and pain would likely be more dependent upon one’s feelings and worries about math (i.e. their psychological interpretation or anticipation of the event) than something inherent in the math task itself.”
People afraid of doing mathematics don’t do as well at solving problems and are less likely to go into career paths related to the field. The authors say now they know the pain associated with mathematics anxiety is real, they can work on ways to fix it.” (Article from 3 News)
