Does math make you anxious? The latest research shows that even the thought of arithmetic can trigger a physical reaction that looks a lot like pain in the brain. If you consider yourself mathematically challenged — meaning you break a sweat every time you have to solve a math problem or calculate the tip at dinner — then what you are feeling may be more than just embarrassment. According to a study conducted by Ian M. Lyons and Sian L. Beilock, psychology professors at the University of Chicago, math anxiety may be much more than a psychological aversion to numbers. Many math-phobics go out of their way to avoid math-related tasks or thinking about math problems, and this reaction led the scientists to wonder whether something more than dislike was involved. And math phobia made a useful study target since people who find math challenging have no shame in talking about their fears. “You often don’t hear people walking around bragging about how they can’t read,” says Beilock. (MORE: Study: Children Born Too Early Have Lower Reading and Math Scores) Beilock and Lyons tracked 14 people with high math anxiety and 14 people with low math anxiety and asked them to rate how anxious they get in math-related situations such as “walking to math class” or “opening a math or statistics book and seeing a page full of problems.” Then the researchers used an fMRI to peek inside their brains when they alerted the volunteers, with a yellow-circle cue card, that they would have to solve a math problem. (For comparison, the participants also performed word tasks, which were preceded by blue-square cue cards.) That’s when they noticed increased activity in the dorso-posterior insula (INSp), the fold of tissue in the brain that is activated when a person experiences physical pain like burning his hand, but only in the math-anxious subjects, and not in those who did not have math anxiety. It’s also the area that lights up in response to severe social rejection such as a bad romantic breakup, … Continue reading High Anxiety: How Worrying About Math Hurts Your Brain