We Knew It! Study Shows That Maths Can Really Make Your Brain Hurt

Rewind back to your leaving cert year. You’re in a classroom, pencil in hand, desperately punching numbers into a calculator, sweat dripping down your forehead as a cross teacher taps her foot at the top of the room.

The Her.ie girls were never that great at maths, always preferring to immerse ourselves in books, novels and Shakespeare’s best, but we always knew that all those numbers were never great for our noggins.

As it turns out, we were right and new research suggests that a fear of maths can actually cause physical pain.

Researchers found that if a person feels anxious about mathematics, the part of the brain associated with visceral threat detection experiences increased activity, causing pain.

Was there any greater horror than being called up to the blackboard?

The study, conducted at The University of Chicago, revealed that maths is not a pain-inducing activity in itself, but more so the dread and anxiety it causes prior to completing the sums.

"Math can be difficult, and for those with high levels of mathematics-anxiety (HMAs), math is associated with tension, apprehension and fear,” the authors said in their paper titled, When Math Hurts.

"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.”

Her.ie is tempted to zip into town and show this to that teacher who was a bit too handy with her red pen back in the day.