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When Math Hurts: Math Anxiety Predicts Pain Network Activation in Anticipation of Doing Math

Math can be difficult, and for those with high levels of mathematics-anxiety (HMAs), math is associated with tension, apprehension, and fear. But what underlies the feelings of dread effected by math anxiety? Are HMAs’ feelings about math merely psychological epiphenomena, or is their anxiety ground...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lyons, Ian M., Beilock, Sian L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3485285/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23118929
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048076
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author Lyons, Ian M.
Beilock, Sian L.
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Beilock, Sian L.
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description Math can be difficult, and for those with high levels of mathematics-anxiety (HMAs), math is associated with tension, apprehension, and fear. But what underlies the feelings of dread effected by math anxiety? Are HMAs’ feelings about math merely psychological epiphenomena, or is their anxiety grounded in simulation of a concrete, visceral sensation – such as pain – about which they have every right to feel anxious? We show that, when anticipating an upcoming math-task, the higher one’s math anxiety, the more one increases activity in regions associated with visceral threat detection, and often the experience of pain itself (bilateral dorso-posterior insula). Interestingly, this relation was not seen during math performance, suggesting that it is not that math itself hurts; rather, the anticipation of math is painful. Our data suggest that pain network activation underlies the intuition that simply anticipating a dreaded event can feel painful. These results may also provide a potential neural mechanism to explain why HMAs tend to avoid math and math-related situations, which in turn can bias HMAs away from taking math classes or even entire math-related career paths.
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spelling pubmed-34852852012-11-01 When Math Hurts: Math Anxiety Predicts Pain Network Activation in Anticipation of Doing Math Lyons, Ian M. Beilock, Sian L. PLoS One Research Article Math can be difficult, and for those with high levels of mathematics-anxiety (HMAs), math is associated with tension, apprehension, and fear. But what underlies the feelings of dread effected by math anxiety? Are HMAs’ feelings about math merely psychological epiphenomena, or is their anxiety grounded in simulation of a concrete, visceral sensation – such as pain – about which they have every right to feel anxious? We show that, when anticipating an upcoming math-task, the higher one’s math anxiety, the more one increases activity in regions associated with visceral threat detection, and often the experience of pain itself (bilateral dorso-posterior insula). Interestingly, this relation was not seen during math performance, suggesting that it is not that math itself hurts; rather, the anticipation of math is painful. Our data suggest that pain network activation underlies the intuition that simply anticipating a dreaded event can feel painful. These results may also provide a potential neural mechanism to explain why HMAs tend to avoid math and math-related situations, which in turn can bias HMAs away from taking math classes or even entire math-related career paths. Public Library of Science 2012-10-31 /pmc/articles/PMC3485285/ /pubmed/23118929 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048076 Text en © 2012 Lyons, Beilock http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Lyons, Ian M.
Beilock, Sian L.
When Math Hurts: Math Anxiety Predicts Pain Network Activation in Anticipation of Doing Math
title When Math Hurts: Math Anxiety Predicts Pain Network Activation in Anticipation of Doing Math
title_full When Math Hurts: Math Anxiety Predicts Pain Network Activation in Anticipation of Doing Math
title_fullStr When Math Hurts: Math Anxiety Predicts Pain Network Activation in Anticipation of Doing Math
title_full_unstemmed When Math Hurts: Math Anxiety Predicts Pain Network Activation in Anticipation of Doing Math
title_short When Math Hurts: Math Anxiety Predicts Pain Network Activation in Anticipation of Doing Math
title_sort when math hurts: math anxiety predicts pain network activation in anticipation of doing math
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3485285/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23118929
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048076
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