The impact of a lack of mathematical education on brain development and future attainment

Abstract

Formal education has a long-term impact on an individual’s life. However, our knowledge of the effect of a specific lack of education, such as in mathematics, is currently poor but is highly relevant given the extant differences between countries in their educational curricula and the differences in opportunities to access education. Here we examined whether neurotransmitter concentrations in the adolescent brain could classify whether a student is lacking mathematical education. Decreased γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) concentration within the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) successfully classified whether an adolescent studies math and was negatively associated with frontoparietal connectivity. In a second experiment, we uncovered that our findings were not due to preexisting differences before a mathematical education ceased. Furthermore, we showed that MFG GABA not only classifies whether an adolescent is studying math or not, but it also predicts the changes in mathematical reasoning ∼19 mo later. The present results extend previous work in animals that has emphasized the role of GABA neurotransmission in synaptic and network plasticity and highlight the effect of a specific lack of education on MFG GABA concentration and learning-dependent plasticity. Our findings reveal the reciprocal effect between brain development and education and demonstrate the negative consequences of a specific lack of education during adolescence on brain plasticity and cognitive functions.

Predicting learning and achievement using GABA and glutamate concentrations in human development

“…However, our results do not exclude the role of the MFG in mathematical cognition. For example, in a recent study, we showed a reduction in MFG GABA due to the lack of mathematical education in adolescents [10]. However, such finding is orthogonal to the current results that show the link between MA and GABA and glutamate, and the ability of the latter to predict future MA.…”

“…These results provide a novel insight into the developmentally dependent manner in which educational achievement relates to glutamate and GABA levels, which have been previously associated with markers of cortical excitability and inhibition important for mechanisms of learning and sensitive periods in development [5,9,10,[12][13][14][15]56]. By using a large sample of participants ranging from primary school age to university students, we were able to show how variations in glutamate and GABA are associated with high-level cognition, namely MA, and that the connection between glutamate and GABA and cognition is altered as a function of development.…”

“…For example, reduced GABA was associated with learning improvement in the motor system [62][63][64] and the visual system [14,65], although some types of visual learning, and sensory learning in the tactile system, were associated with increased GABA [13,[65][66][67]. In the realm of cognition, several studies found increased GABA to be indicative of learning improvement [10,68,69], while others found the opposite pattern [70]. However, there are several reasons for these apparent discrepancies.…”

“…Several 1 H-magnetic resonance spectroscopy ( 1 H-MRS, henceforth MRS) studies in human adults have demonstrated the role of glutamate and GABA in plasticity and learning [7][8][9][10], in neural activity [11,12], and in sensory and cognitive functions [13][14][15][16][17] using basic lab experiments. However, it is unclear whether and how this knowledge on glutamate and GABA can be applied to more complex human abilities that are slow to emerge.…”

“…Both left and right frontoparietal regions were shown to underpin mathematical processing [30][31][32][33]. However, the left hemisphere has shown more consistent involvement in response to mathematical training and education [10,[34][35][36][37][38][39]. We, therefore, focused on the left frontoparietal regions to keep the duration of the study within an acceptable length.…”