How Early Math Learning Effects Life Long Brain Development.

It is well known that if a child is not on grade level by the end of third grade, they will struggle with reading, writing, and math and they are at increased risk of never graduating.

One of the elementary teachers stated that third grade is when students move beyond the foundation math to more complex things.  This, in his opinion, is why they struggle as they get older.

One study discovered it is not your over all ability, but your childhood memory which effects your ability to do well later in life.

They study claims that children who learned their facts solidly did better later on because more of the  memory is utilized rather than the counting part of the brain as they age.  In other words, if children do no memorize their facts, they may never get past counting on fingers and toes.

Stanford university ran an experiment where they used MRI to determine which part of the brain was used as they did mathematical problems.  They began doing this with children aged 7 to 9 to see whether they used the memory or counting part of the brain.  They noticed that as children aged, the brain moved from counting to fact retrieval and adult brains relied on fact retrieval rather than counting.

In fact, the brains between second and third grades showed major changes in problem solving.  After third grade, the brain acquires new patterns of neural communications among regions involved in numerical thinking and working memory.  Furthermore, the way the brain is activated changes over the year.  It is not the regions that change but the way the brain responds to simple and complex problems.

In addition, the brains actually change as it adopts more sophisticated strategies for solving problems.    The study discovered the brains of third graders showed more differentiated responses between the simple and complex problems.  The brains of the third graders also showed more interaction between the two areas as students learned new math skills.

Another study discovered that the posterior parietal cortex,  the ventrotemperal occipital cortex, and the prefrontal cortex are the three parts of the brain that can be used to predict improvement in math.  It was found the more grey matter, the more likely the person would perform better in math.  Furthermore, they found even the simplest mathematical task uses all three parts of the brain and its the way they work together that's important. In other words, they work together, speak to each other, the better your brain is able to do math.

Scientists are hoping to learn more about brain development in regard to math understanding so they can develop better ways to teach math to students.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.