Levels of neurotransmitters GABA and brain glutamate can predict math skills. This is supported by the results of a study published today in Plos Biology, conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford, led by King Cohen Kadosh e George Zacharopoulos. The study also found that the relationships between the two neurotransmitters and arithmetic fluency changed as children became adults.
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by VIOLA RITA
These two neurotransmitters have complementary roles in the body: glutamate is the most common excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain, while GABA is the most common inhibitory transmitter.
Brain levels of arousal and inhibition are known to be related to learning, however, little is known about how and when. To address this problem, the researchers measured GABA and glutamate levels in 255 people, from 6-year-olds to college students. Participants also took two math performance tests and their arithmetic performance correlated with GABA and glutamate levels.
The researchers found that among young people, higher levels of GABA in the left intraparietal sulcus of the brain were associated with greater fluency in mathematics, while the opposite was true for glutamate. In adults, the results were almost exactly the opposite; low concentrations of GABA correlated with greater fluency in mathematics and, again, the opposite was true for glutamate.
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Because the participants were tested twice about 1.5 years apart, the researchers were also able to show that neurotransmitter levels at the time of the first test could predict math outcomes in the future. Much of what we know about GABA, glutamate, and learning comes from experiments on mice in the lab, which can’t say anything directly about school skills like math. This longitudinal study in humans will help researchers better understand the relationship between learning and brain elasticity.
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“Our discovery of the link between GABA and glutamate and academic success highlights a general and unknown principle of brain plasticity. In contrast to previous studies in humans or animals that have focused on more restricted developmental stages, our longitudinal study suggests that the link between plasticity and brain arousal and inhibition at different stages is unlikely to be immutable. Our findings also have important implications for the development of brain-based interventional programs, which we hope to explore in the future, “the authors conclude. article.
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