Brain Activity Related with Mathematics Anxiety

Abstract

For the purpose of determining neurophysiological mechanism of math anxiety, we conducted an EEG measurement for 22 sixth grade elementary students including 11 students with high math anxiety (HMA group), and 11 students with low math anxiety (LMA group). We found that in HMA group, delta wave was significantly generated from the right frontal lobe, and in LMA group, four paths are clearly connected while they perform math tasks (right inferior occipital gyrus ↔ left superior parietal lobule /left middle frontal gyrus ↔ left inferior parietal lobule /left middle frontal gyrus ↔ right inferior parietal lobule /right middle frontal gyrus ↔ right inferior parietal lobule). According to the above results we suggest that math anxiety is related to emotions associated with pain, reduces working memory and has a negative effect on math performance