Blog

People who breeze through multiplication often chalk it up to good teachers or hard study. New evidence shows that some brains start the race to learn math with stronger internal wiring.

Researchers also found that a tiny dose of brain stimulation, an electrical buzz, can narrow the gap for those born with weaker brain wiring.

For the study, a five‑day experiment was led by Roi Cohen Kadosh at the University of Surrey, working with colleagues in Oxford, Toronto, and Stanford.

The research centered on 72 right‑handed adults who trained on calculation or memorization tasks while researchers watched activity in the frontoparietal network and applied gentle current to specific sites.

Brain stimulation may boost math skills

Long before electrodes enter the picture, studies show that robust traffic between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC) predicts sharper arithmetic gains in school‑age children and adults.

These front and back hubs share data with the hippocampus to shift a learner to quick fact retrieval.

People whose signals are faint across this route often stall at the procedural stage, echoing the classic Matthew effect in education, where early advantages snowball over time.

Testing brain stimulation for math education

Participants sat for baseline scans that gauged connectivity strength and local levels of the messenger chemicals GABA and glutamate, a well‑known marker pair for plasticity.

They then solved novel two‑operand problems either by learning an algorithm or by rote rehearsal. During practice, half received sham stimulation, a third received current over the left and right dlPFC, and the remainder over the PPC.

The team used transcranial random noise stimulation, a method introduced in 2008 that sprinkles high‑frequency currents over the scalp and temporarily boosts cortical excitability.

Random noise is thought to raise the signal‑to‑noise ratio for neurons that hover just below firing threshold, giving sluggish circuits a clearer pulse without overshooting in healthy tissue.

The device delivered less than a milliamp, about the tingle you feel from a nine‑volt battery on your tongue, and participants were blind to the condition.

Stimulation aids weak brain connections

Learners who started with feeble dlPFC‑PPC links but received frontal stimulation shaved reaction times on calculation problems by roughly six percent over five sessions, an edge the sham group never matched.

Those with naturally strong links showed no extra benefit and, in rare cases, slight interference when current was added.

The boost also hinged on neurochemistry. Improvement tracked with a drop in local GABA, hinting that the brain shifted into a plastic phase where change beats stability, but only when connectivity stayed modest rather than surging.

Efforts to improve math education

Drill trials, where answers were simply rehearsed, showed little or no gain from stimulation.

The authors suggest that memorization leans less on executive control and more on localized storage, so frontoparietal tuning adds limited value once the answer is locked in.

“So far, most efforts to improve education have focused on changing the environment, training teachers, redesigning curricula, while largely overlooking the learner’s neurobiology,” said Cohen Kadosh.

He added that addressing brain constraints directly could broaden access to diverse career pathways and reduce long‑term inequalities in income, health and well-being.

Brain stimulation may help math struggles

The results revive the idea that brief, well‑timed stimulation could pair with instruction to help stragglers close arithmetic gaps rather than languish under cumulative deficits.

Importantly, the benefit was selective, underscoring the need for screening tools that flag students with weak network strength before any device is applied.

Safety remains favourable at these intensities, but researchers warn against DIY use; stimulating the wrong region or at the wrong time could impair other skills or harden circuits prematurely.

Regulators are still drafting guidelines for non‑medical cognitive devices, and large‑scale school trials have yet to clear ethics boards. 

Broader implications of the research

Past work links higher math fluency in children to elevated parietal GABA, but the relation flips in adulthood, showing that the plasticity window moves with age.

This developmental switch reminds educators that interventions may need age‑specific dosing and targeting.

Animal studies and computational models further suggest that random noise can stabilize synapses once learning consolidates, offering a route to lock in gains without chronic stimulation.

Future projects will watch how long the boost lasts and whether repeated cycles can replace expensive tutoring for some learners.

The future of math education

While electrodes will never replace good teaching, they may act as scaffolds, lifting under‑connected brains so that practice sticks.

If larger trials replicate these findings and prove durable benefits, policy makers could consider targeted neuro-support alongside curriculum reform to help close the widening achievement gap that still defines math education.

The study is published in the journal PLOS Biology.

—–

Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates. 

Check us out on EarthSnap, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

—–

• A new study linked daily coffee consumption to a potentially longer life.
• We asked experts to explain how the morning delicacy can have such an impact.
• There are a few catches.

---

The ritual of brewing and sipping fresh coffee each morning is one many of us look forward to, and a new study’s findings may give you the push to pour another cup. Researchers connected coffee consumption to mortality among a large population of participants and found that coffee may actually help you live longer, with a few caveats.

Meet the Experts: David Perlmutter, M.D., a neurologist and fellow of the American College of Nutrition and Michelle Routhenstein, M.S., R.D., a cardiology dietitian at Entirely Nourished.

Keep reading to learn more about how your daily cup of joe may offer you more than a jolt of energy and happiness.

What did the study find?

Researchers tracked the self-reported coffee drinking habits of over 46,000 U.S. adults for nearly a decade. Participants disclosed how they drank their java. Regular or decaf? With sugar and milk or without? If with, how much? They then compared that information to National Death Index data to deduce how coffee consumption could have impacted mortality from all causes, including cancer and heart disease.

After examining the data, researchers found that drinking one to three cups of coffee per day was linked to a reduced risk of death from all causes, “especially when the coffee is black or has minimal added sugar and saturated fat,” explains David Perlmutter, M.D., a neurologist and fellow of the American College of Nutrition. Specifically, they found that drinking black coffee or coffee with less than 2.5 grams (or a little more than a half-teaspoon) of sugar and less than a gram of saturated fat from milk or cream per 8-ounce cup was associated with a 14% lower risk of dying from any cause compared to not drinking coffee at all, Dr. Perlmutter adds.

The catch here is, the study also found that most Americans add around 3.2 grams of sugar and a half-gram of saturated fat to each mug, which means the majority of coffee drinkers are less likely to get its life-extending benefits. “This is the problem with so many coffee specialty drinks that seem to be so popular,” Dr. Perlmutter says.

Benefits of coffee

There is plenty of existing research that purports coffee’s health boost. Without added sugar or fat, it’s a naturally good source of antioxidants like polyphenols and chlorogenic acid, explains Dr. Purlmutter. “These components and others help fight inflammation and oxidative stress,” he adds, both of which are contributors to chronic disease. That’s how coffee may help reduce risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and congnitive decline, “all of which influence lifespan,” he concludes.

Side effects of coffee

Coffee’s caffeine content can even exhibit perks by improving alertness, metabolism, and brain health, Dr. Pelrmutter says. However, there is such a thing as overdoing it and reaping negative side-effects such as anxiety, increased blood pressure, heart palpitations, digestive issues, and insomnia, says Michelle Routhenstein, M.S., R.D., a cardiology dietitian at Entirely Nourished.

She adds that a “very high coffee intake may also slightly reduce calcium absorption, potentially affecting bone health.”

How to drink coffee for good health

The study supports drinking one to three cups of black or minimally altered coffee per day. Dr. Perlmutter recommends keeping sugars below 2.5 grams and saturated fats below 1 gram per cup by using low-fat milk or plant-based creamer alternatives. Routhenstein adds that if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or have otherwise been prescribed a specific caffeine intake, follow your doctor’s recommendations.

Lastly, to avoid over-caffeination, Dr. Perlmutter suggests enforcing a “coffee curfew” that marks the time of day after which you turn off the pot. “I generally recommend 2 p.m. to minimize coffee’s impact on sleep,” he concludes.