bookbard Posted June 10, 2021 Share Posted June 10, 2021 This was an interesting read! Lack of math education negatively affects adolescent brain and cognitive development: A new study suggests that not having any math education after the age of 16 can be disadvantageous -- ScienceDaily 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Not_a_Number Posted June 10, 2021 Share Posted June 10, 2021 12 minutes ago, bookbard said: This was an interesting read! Lack of math education negatively affects adolescent brain and cognitive development: A new study suggests that not having any math education after the age of 16 can be disadvantageous -- ScienceDaily Hmmm, super interesting. I wonder if that's correlation or causation? I see they took some pains to distinguish but I'd want to know more. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ausmumof3 Posted June 12, 2021 Share Posted June 12, 2021 Wouldn’t the inverse statement be more correct? Math education into the early 20s for most people is a relatively new development in human history so it would be more accurate to say that continuing math education causes certain brain changes? Not that that’s a bad thing. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookbard Posted June 13, 2021 Author Share Posted June 13, 2021 6 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said: Wouldn’t the inverse statement be more correct? Math education into the early 20s for most people is a relatively new development in human history so it would be more accurate to say that continuing math education causes certain brain changes? Not that that’s a bad thing. Yeah, that occurred to me too. Also I wondered if it was doing 'hard and new' stuff, so like if you started a new language, whether that would have a similar effect. But I'd have to look at the study rather than just the summary, lol. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stripe Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 (edited) The study was of 14 to 18 year olds Anyway here it is to read https://www.pnas.org/content/118/24/e2013155118 Edited June 13, 2021 by stripe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clemsondana Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 It's cool that they've found a specific chemical, but I don't think this sort of thing is surprising. I'd expect that similar papers could be written for various neurotransmitters or 'activity in X part of the brain' associated with a lot of activities - pleasure reading, reading of dense material, foreign language, music, athletics, driving, etc. There have been interesting studies on people who do 'The Knowledge of London', a hugh memory test for taxi drivers in London that people spend a year or more studying for - that amount of study changes the brain. I think these studies are great for telling us what we are doing to our brains, but I am sometimes concerned that people will start to think that we need to force everybody to do all the things so that they have a 'properly developed' brain, when the reality is that most people can't do a ton of everything because being good at something takes a lot of time. There is an argument to be made that if people can set themselves up for future success by doing a little bit of something every day then schools should require it, but I'm guessing that it takes more than just putting a math lesson in front of a 17yo - doing the work is what causes the change, and time spent doing math is time that isn't spent doing something else that affects another part of the brain. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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