To the math-minded among us, tackling something like the Pythagorean theorem is easy, even fun. To others, anything with numbers and letter causes sweating, teeth gnashing, broken pencils, and a general feeling of dread. Now, a new study shows when number-phobic people anticipate math, their brains believe they are feeling physical pain.

“People often walk around talking about how awful math is,” says Sian Beilock, psychology professor at the University of Chicago and author of the book, “Choke: What The Secrets Of The Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To.”  

“In our society it is common to hate math," Beilock says. "You don’t hear people walking around bragging about how they can’t read.”

Beilock and doctoral student Ian Lyons asked 14 adults with math anxiety to verify the results of an equation such as  (a*b) −c = d or work on word puzzles -- where subjects discerned whether a string of letters makes an English word if the spelling is reversed --while in a fMRI. Beilock and Lyons found when people with high levels of math anxiety anticipated equations, their brain reacted much like they would if they were in physical pain. The higher the person's anxiety, the more the posterior insula flashed with activity. (The posterior insula is what springs into action when one burns her hand or stubs her toe.) The researchers also found activation in the cingulate cortex, which also serves in the brain’s pain center.

 “We have this evolutionary ancient, pain system that responds when we burn our hands on the stove and are in physical pain … when people are anxious and anticipating the math test, (our brains) activate the same system,” Beilock explains.

Beilock, who views math positively as a challenge and puzzle, was surprised to learn that people reacted as if they were in pain only when they anticipated math, not while working on the equations.

“We weren’t necessarily expecting to see the activation in the anticipation and thought that was interesting,” Beilock says. She believes that when people actually started the math problems, the pain and anxiety subsided because they focused on the task at hand.

While people don’t actually feel pain—there aren’t any mysterious burning or pricking sensations while thinking about numbers—the brain reacts as if the hand is being burned. 

“The brain isn’t making a clear distinction (between physical and mental pain),” she says. “People talk about math as if it is actually painful.” And it is. Because of this, people anticipating math might also feel the same physiological symptoms that a person who stubbed her toe, such as sweaty palms and increased heart rates.

Some of these unpleasant math side effects can be reduced. Beilock has evidence that if math anxious people spend 10 minutes writing about their fears, they purge their anxiety and perform better—and reduce any physical reactions.

The paper appears in the online journal PLOS ONE.

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If the prospect of calculating a tip on a dinner bill with family or friends looking on makes you panic, listen up: Your subpar knack for numbers might not always be the problem, suggests a new study. It may well be that your mind gets in the way of your true ability. Your fears of doing math in a pressure-filled situation cause you to worry and perform poorly.

The new report, published in the journal Emotion, looked at the reasons why some students succeed on a math test while others flounder. Scientists measured working memory capacity, a mental scratch pad that temporarily stores and processes information, in 73 college students with low and high levels of math anxiety. They also tested saliva for cortisol, a hormone produced in response to stress, before and after participants solved a tough series of math problems.

Researchers wanted to find out whether there was a link between math anxiety, cortisol levels and working memory.

The performance of students with a low working memory was not affected by stress hormone levels or by math anxiety. It appeared to make the most difference in participants with high working memory -- the most talented individuals. 

Students who had higher working memory and were more anxious about math had higher levels of stress hormones after the test and tended to do worse on it. In contrast, those with low levels of math-anxiety and had higher memory capacity also churned out increasing amounts of cortisol during the exam but they did better on it.

"We found that mindset really matters," says Sian Beilock, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago and the study's lead author. If someone is anxious about math and approaches it with dread, that person is likely to interpret the body's physiological reaction to stress -- the racing heart, sweaty palms, and butterflies in the stomach -- as a sign of failure and performs poorly, she suggests.

When worries eat up working memory and when we don't have its full capacity at our disposal, performance suffers, Beilock explains. For highly math-anxious folks, physiological signs of stress send them into a more worrisome state, which deprives people of the brain power they need to excel.

"We were surprised, however, that the same physiological response could lead to excelling on a math test for those who were not anxious about math and looked at the situation in a positive way -- as a challenge," says Beilock, the author of "Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To."

If people who are math-anxious want to succeed under pressure, Beilock suggests students take 10 minutes to write down their worries on paper before a math test to download them from their minds so they don't pop into their heads during the exam and distract them.

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• Don't choke! Why we buckle under pressure
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Described as the mathematical equivalent of dyslexia, dyscalculia is a little-known disorder that makes it extremely difficult to learn math. While dyslexics struggle with reading and interpreting words and letters, dyscalculics have a hard time with basic arithmetic and understanding the meaning and concepts of numbers.

Although often a forgotten stepchild to its well-known relative dyslexia, dyscalculia affects the same number of people -- an estimated 5 to 7 percent of the population, suggests new research in the May 27 issue of Science.

Often first discovered by low scores on math achievement tests, both children and adults who suffer from dyscalculia have trouble grasping the size of a number and its relative value. 

Unlike dyslexics, however, they don't reverse the order of numbers when reading them.  "Typically, dyscalculics don't have problems with the order of symbols, but anything with numbers could cause anxiety or even panic," says Brian Butterworth, an emeritus professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London, and lead author of the Science review article.

While many people think they're bad at math or don't have a head for numbers, dyscalculics are slower and less accurate at estimating the number of sets of objects and selecting the larger of two numbers, explains Butterworth.

For example, if dyscalculics were shown two playing cards -- a 5 and an 8 -- and asked to say which card was larger, they would count all the symbols on each card. If asked to count down from 10, they would count up from 1 to 10, then 1 to 9, then 1 to 8, etc.

They might use their fingers to count and do simple addition, far beyond the age when it's normally done. And they are challenged by making change and handling money, and estimating the height of a room (they may say 200 feet). They also have trouble with concepts of time, like approximating how long a car trip will take.

Dyscalculia appears to be inherited, and scientists have begun to identify abnormalities in the brain that make learning math such a grind.

Even so, it's important for those affected to realize that "having a serious problem learning arithmetic does not mean you are stupid," says Butterworth.

In fact, the disability can affect people with normal intelligence and normal working memory, or be seen in those with other developmental difficulties, such as dyslexia and ADHD. Some adults with severe dyscalculia can even be very good at geometry and using statistical packages, and capable of doing college-level computer programming. So it doesn't affect all mathematical abilities or skills.

But it can be a lifelong liability if it's misdiagnosed, unrecognized by teachers or not properly treated.

The paper calls for greater attention and funding for the problem, and specialized teaching that strengthens the processing of numbers using concrete materials, such as beads and counters, supported by game-like software for learners. 

The important thing is to not go on to more advanced concepts until the basics have been mastered, says Butterworth.  

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