The Impact of Lack of Mathematics Education on Brain Development and Future Achievement

George Zaharopoulos, Francesco Serra, and Roy Cohen Kadosh

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, June 2021, 118 (24) e2013155118; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2013155118

Commentary

This is an interesting study that investigates the impact of abandoning mathematics education on the subsequent years of a person's life. Although there was insufficient information on how this hypothesized effect on lack would occur, we investigated this hypothesis by examining whether neurotransmitter concentrations in the adolescent brain could classify whether a student had no mathematics education or not.

As a result of our experiments, we were able to successfully classify whether a decrease in gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) concentration within the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) is negatively associated with adolescent students studying mathematics and with frontal lobe connectivity.

The results of the second experiment revealed that this was not due to pre-existing differences before the end of mathematical education. Furthermore, we showed that MFG GABA not only classifies whether an adolescent is studying mathematics, but also predicts changes in mathematical reasoning 19 months later.

The results 

reveal an interaction between brain development and education, and the negative consequences of a specific lack of education in adolescents on brain plasticity and cognitive function. This extends previous studies in animals that have emphasized the role of GABAergic neurotransmission in synaptic, network plasticity and the effects of a specific lack of education on MFG GABA concentration and learning-dependent plasticity.

In view of this, the author went through a period of abandoning mathematics during his school years, but perhaps the only thing that saved him was his exposure to numbers through music production and computer production.