Intro

Sarah McKay 0:03

Parents are much more likely to Google "is my son a genius" than "is my daughter a genius". Instead, they are Googling like, "is my daughter beautiful?" So people are defaulting to, I've got this little boy who's smart, well, he must be a genius. They're not Googling is my daughter a genius. stop talking about maths being a boy thing that girls can also do. "Girls can do maths too", is not the message that we want to give. We need to not even be using language like that whatsoever. Everyone has equal potential to learn to do maths.

Vanessa Vakharia 0:37

Okay, welcome to another episode of Math Therapy. So guys, I heard today's guest on the Mel Robbins podcast. That's right. The Mel Robbins podcast, and I was like, oh my God, I need this woman on the pod. So I actually asked her and she actually said, yes. Today's guest is Dr. Sarah McKay, and she is a neuroscientist who actually explains the brain in a way that will make you feel like, smarter, calmer, and slightly annoyed you weren't taught all this stuff sooner. For years, I've had so many questions about our brains, and I was so excited to have an expert on the brain to feel them all. Are boys really smarter at math than girls? Is anyone actually born with a math brain? Does puberty actually have an impact on math ability? Who knows? Well, actually, she knows. And she's gonna tell you. She also drops a very hot take about one thing we all need to stop saying right this second to help dismantle the myth that there are any biological differences between genders in math. And guess what guys? This thing I've been saying, and it was so helpful for me to hear that what I was saying was actually not helpful. If you've ever thought maybe my brain is just not wired for math, this episode is for you. And I just know you have other people in your life that have felt the same. So text them, your students, your teacher friends, your group chat, your kids, everyone do it. Now get ready to have your mind blown. Yes, that was a brain joke. Sort of, kind of. I cannot wait to hear what neuroscience facts shocks you most. So please let me know by texting the podcast or DMing me on Instagram at The Math Guru. First of all welcome to the podcast.

Sarah McKay 2:15

Thank you.

Vanessa Vakharia 2:16

I'm so excited to have you on today, all the way from Australia. The reason you're on here is because I initially heard you on the Mel Robbins podcast. One of the key things that stood out to me is you said that there was no such thing as a male brain or a female brain specifically. And I, I know I, I'm already like, I'm paraphrasing just to be click baity here, because I then started thinking to myself, is there such a thing as a math brain and is it wired differently for boys? And all of those questions percolated in my mind. So I guess the first question I'm just gonna start with is, I'm just gonna copy Male Robbins because obviously she knows what's up, and I'm gonna ask you, is there such a thing as a male brain or a female brain?

Sarah McKay 2:56

There are biological and social differences in the brains of males and females. So we could say there are sex differences across populations. And so you're into math. So, you know, if we had a thousand men and a thousand women who age in their sort of thirties or forties, if we were to explore and examine and measure every metric we could of their brains, we would see subtle differences between that group of thousand men and that group of thousand women. If we were to pluck any male or any female from that group and open up their skull and look inside their brain, we were not gonna see a pink brain, we're not gonna see a blue brain. The differences are much more subtle and so the thing is, if we've got a brain, there's a hundred different metrics that we could use to measure that brain, to quantify that brain. So we could look at size or shape or different kind of components, parts of cortex, different sub nuclei, the size or the shape. We could look at cognitive testing. We could look at risk factors for disease. We could look at perception, we could look at brain processing. Say we had a hundred measures and we've got a thousand males and a thousand females. There will be in some of those measures, but not all, some differences in those two populations. Right. And other times there'll be absolutely no differences whatsoever. The question then is if we see a subtle difference, is that due to biological sex only? Is it due to your genes? Is it due to your hormones? Is it due to kind of in utero and early postnatal development, or does it come about by the experiences that we have? So there are some subtle sex differences. But we don't always know exactly where those differences have arisen from.

Vanessa Vakharia 4:44

Oh my God. Okay. First of all, that makes so much sense. When it comes to math, is there a difference between the male brain and the female brain when it comes to math?

Sarah McKay 4:52

So there's lots of ways we can look at kind of potential or ability or we can just do standardized testing across populations at different ages. And what we tend to see, and this is say me speaking from the data that I would be familiar with here in Australia, um, we do standardized testing of kids in primary schools up and through high school every couple of years. And if we were to look at, say, grade, five, so kids are, well, eight, are they kind of 10, 11 ish there, and we looked at our distribution curves of math, of math scores across populations, we would see there would be this subtle, subtle difference in math scores between 10-year-old girls and 10-year-old boys. Now the, the actual difference between the peak of those distributions is, is very, very subtly different. Barely, barely different at all. But there is a subtle difference. And then we would tend to see the distribution curve of the males being slightly wider. So we'd have, some boys will be getting lower than average scores and some boys will be getting higher than average and the girls distribution curve will be slightly narrower. So that is a very, very subtle difference. But there's tons of overlap. There'll be heaps of girls that'll be better at the maths and the average boy and lots of boys not great at maths compared to the average girl, right? So we do tend to see subtle differences there. So one of those, which is kind of related to maths, and lots of people have heard about this, so where the trope women can't read maps has come from is this idea that males on average across the, you know, across the population, are better at rotating a 3D object in their mind's eye. So looking at a map and then kind of imagining the way they would walk through a route or looking at, you know, kinds of pieces of Lego and be able to say, what would that look like from the other side? But then if we looked across populations, we would see girls and women scoring slightly better on average in things like verbal reasoning or verbal memory, or perhaps even that might translate to kind of reading and writing in schools. All of this said there are some very subtle differences if they are there, where are they coming from? Is it due to biology or is it due to something else? And this is where I think brains are cool and interesting because, there's some studies that have kind of starting to come out that are looking at what, what are the origins of these differences? Do they matter? What can we do about them? How do we talk about them? How do we explain them? And I think that's where things sort of start to get interesting.

Vanessa Vakharia 7:25

Well, because this is making me think why? Like, can they do they were born with a greater ability or because somewhere along the way, like a lot of people will say, like for example, reason let's say boys may have better spatial awareness in some cases is because they play more video games, for example, right? Or they play with more Lego, let's just use that as an example, which is a nurture, that's not nature. What

Are boys better at math than girls?

Vanessa Vakharia 7:47

I'll hear is this argument so often from parents and there's just this deep rooted belief that, and I think this is my question, are, are boys born with brains that have more capacity for math ability than girls? I think that's the real question we're looking at here.

Sarah McKay 8:04

No. Yeah, the answer is no. So if we start looking at, and this is what we have to be, there is no, no, we ha and we have to be so careful with how we are talking about these ideas, and when we are talking about sex differences and when we're talking about stereotypes and being very clear and careful when we are talking about biological sex versus gender, we could say the word gender here to mean the experiences we have, not necessarily You know, your own gender identity. I use gender to mean sort of gendered experiences. And studies that have been done of like little babies and preschoolers before you kind of informal education or at school. We don't really see any sex differences in terms of we are not doing maths tests on like two year olds, but the ability to kind of sense and understand numbers and spatial awareness that, that type of thing. But there's this fascinating study that was published. It came out of France, June, 2025. It, study is fascinating because this stereotype that boys are better than maths, um, is very pervasive amongst kids, amongst teachers, amongst parents. Not, not, not you and not me, because we know our stuff, right? We know our shit. This study in France has done on millions of school kids across the country looking at all different socioeconomic kind of groups, looking at different types of schools. And what they did was they were looking to see if we start to see this slight trend whereby boys start getting a little bit better at maths as a group than girls, when does that emerge? And it was fascinating. So they were, they started looking at math schools, and this is an oversimplification of the study, but it helps us understand it. So essentially they started testing the kids at maths as the day they started arriving at school, and were testing them kind of over that first year. And what they started to see was when they, at, they first started in school, they were completely level pegging and within about four or five,

Vanessa Vakharia 10:02

Like how old were they when they

Sarah McKay 10:03

Five. Starting school at five. You turn five, you go to school. Um, we start at the beginning of the, the, the school year and they saw within the first kind of four or five months, they started to see that slight divergence emerging within about five, five months, half a year or so at school. And I was like, well, is this something to do with the kids getting older? Is this to do with their brains just developing and diverging at this age? And what is fascinating was they could look at kids who were just a couple of days apart in age, but in completely different school years. 'cause they've got a very sort of strict cutoff. So you could have a kid who was born on, August the first, um, and then a kid who was born on August the 15th. And so they might be in completely different academic years, but they're only about two weeks apart in age and they still saw the patterns. So the slight divergence in math scores between all girls and all boys started to emerge once they went to school and started being taught maths.

Vanessa Vakharia 11:00

What does that mean?

Sarah McKay 11:02

It is not some biological brain development thing. It is to do with this sort of water that they are swimming in. There's no lack of achievement on day one, but it emerges within that kind of first half year of school. So there is something going on when kids start learning maths. That boys start to kind of peel off sort of slightly. Now we might see the exact opposite. I'm not, I haven't seen the, the studies that have been done on what do we see in terms of reading ability and verbal ability. And we kind of might tend to see girls peeling away slightly there. I'm not sure whether they've done that, that same study. So we definitely see this slight sex, biological sex, we could call it gender gap emerging. But it appears that it is around how kids are learning in the classroom. Now, is that, is that the five year olds themselves going, well, I can't do maths. The boys do maths. The girls don't. I mean, we can't blame the five year olds, right? It must be something to do with how they are learning and absorbing what perhaps it means to be a maths learner.

Vanessa Vakharia 12:14

But what, hold on. This is really hot tea because The study is basically saying, sex differences emerge as soon as kids enter school. There's something about what's happening in school that is causing boys to quote unquote do a tiny bit better than the girls. Am I right?

Sarah McKay 12:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 12:35

So what are the theories, what could be happening?

Sarah McKay 12:37

Well, so the, one idea is that girls might tend to have more anxiety about learning something like maths than boys do, which could perhaps diminish their performance. So they may be completely able to. They've got the ability to do this, they've got the potential, but perhaps for some reason they've absorbed a stereotype that little girls aren't as good at maths as boys. And we would call this stereotype threat. And you may be familiar with this. We see this across ages. If we get kids to like, you're all 15, here's a classroom of kids, half boys, half girls. We go in and we say, girls, we want you to do really well in this because you know that there is this idea out there that girls don't do as well in maths as boys. And so then the girls start going, oh God, I better not prove that stereotype wrong. And the girls will actually perform worse if they have been primed to think this before they go and do the test. And we see this with other kinds of, um, you know, we could do this with racial minorities. We could go, Hey, you know, Asian kids are always gonna be better at maths, so everyone else, you better try hard to prove that the Asian kids aren't gonna be as good at maths as you, you are gonna be as good at maths as them. And, when you prime people with stereotypes, we call a stereotype threat, that somehow creates a little bit of anxiety, which means you don't perform as well. Okay. Maybe because you're so busy thinking about can I do this well, that you don't do well. 'Cause your attention is occupied with other matters. So that was one idea.

Vanessa Vakharia 14:02

I wanna throw in there too, for those listening, 'cause I, I am obsessed with stereotype threat. Sarah's talking about priming people, but priming doesn't mean, it doesn't even necessarily mean you have to explicitly say it because those stereotypes live in, what did you call it? The water we swim in.

Sarah McKay 14:16

The water we swim in. Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa Vakharia 14:19

If that's just a part of the culture that girls know that people believe that they're gonna be worse at mass, that is priming enough to create that math anxiety.

Sarah McKay 14:28

Yeah. And there is language that we can use where we inadvertently say instead of like, girls are good at maths too, or girls can also do maths. The, the implicit message there is that maths is a boy thing and girls, if we, you know, you can also do this boy thing. So there is a lot of implicit, perhaps well-intentioned messaging coming from Girls can do anything. Girls can also do maths. Maths is not just a boy thing. Girl maths, you know, Taylor Swift loves maths. Girls can now love maths too. The implicit messaging there is that it is innately a boy thing and girls are opting into something that's a boy thing. So we might be unwittingly and inadvertently creating stereotype threat, by trying to big the girls up. So we need to kind of not, we need to not even let this be a thing. There are a couple of other theories the researchers have got. Part of this is, is sort of semi-related, the idea that math's ability is this, and this is kind of a global sort of perception, that if boys are good at maths it is because they innately are good at maths. It is like this biological predisposition to have to be good at maths. It's just intrinsic to them. It is in their nature. And when girls are good at maths, it's because they work really, really hard and they're very diligent, hard workers. And so boys tend to get praised as being, you're a maths genius. Girls are like, well, didn't you work hard to learn the maths? So perhaps we are transmitting these stereotypes, attributing maths genius to boys and maths. Hardworking in diligence to, to girls. And little girls are very good and well behaved and look at how hard she's tried. That's how come she got the good score. So there's a bit of subtle messaging there as well, which the girls may be sort of starting to absorb. And whether that's coming from the teachers themselves, perhaps even unwittingly, whether that's coming, the parents, because of course kids are going to school and then maths is gonna be taught as a subject for the first time so parents may pay more attention to their children's education at that point. And so this will be the opportunity for them to start transmitting these stereotypes about boys being good at these things and girls having to work very hard to be just as good at these things.

Vanessa Vakharia 16:41

Is there anything in there about like the way math is taught or like, are all the theories about like basically the messages that girls are and boys are getting differently? I'm actually so curious.

Sarah McKay 16:51

I mean, we see this, whether it be adults or whether we see this with kids. People are far more likely to assign genius and innate brilliance to males than to females. Girls work hard to get there, boys are just innately good at this. There's this Google search analysis, and I can't quite think of the exact data or the numbers backing it up, but it was parents are much more likely to Google "is my son a genius" than "is my daughter a genius". Instead, they are Googling like, "is my daughter beautiful?" Which is just like, so incredible. Or "is my daughter fat" I think was another, was another one, which is kind of wild. So people are defaulting to, I've got this little boy who's smart, well, he must be a genius. They're not typically Googling is my daughter, a genius. And we see this across kind of cultures and we see this emerging all the way through and through adolescents up.

When do stereotypes start affecting kids?

Sarah McKay 17:43

There's this other study as well, which is kind of, which is a little bit older than the French study, but there's this amazing research group in New York that has been looking at these attitudes to gender stereotypes The Cimpian lab, Andre Cimpian, C-I-M-P-I-A-N. You may be familiar with their work. And they're really interested in this idea about how children acquire these gender stereotypes that, you know, who has to work hard at maths? Boys or girls? Well girls. 'Cause boys are brilliant. Where do they, how do they start absorbing this? And it definitely is within the coup, first couple of years of school. So kids' brains are like kind of growing and changing all the way through school. It's not like they get to age five and suddenly something happens in their brain development that the boys take off in maths and the girls take off in reading. Um, so they, they went and had a look at this idea of, first couple of days of school, go, who's gonna play the, the maths game? This is the one for clever kids. And they've kind of made words up like zwacky or quirky or whatever. Who wants to play zwacky? It's the, the smart kids game. And all the little girls go, me and all the little boys go me and they all play the game. You go and do that at age seven. Who wants to play? Zwacky, the game for smart children and all the boys go me and there will be some of the girls that will stop, that will start pulling back and going, oh, well the boys will be playing that game, 'Cause that's the smart kids game. So that's really interesting. Now, not all girls and, and not all boys, but there will be a proportion of girls, the boys just keep up that sort of self-confidence and belief in themselves. And we see this all the way through. I mean, even sort of Cheryl Sandberg was talking about this 10 years ago with Lean In, right? The men will be asking for the, you know, the, the promotions at work and, and the girls, so

Stereotype threat and social suicide

Sarah McKay 19:29

it starts within the first year or so of primary education. Boys develop confidence and belief in themselves and the girls sort of start to to waver. And I've got sons, teenage sons now, and it has been fascinating knowing some of these ideas in the back of my head to watch them kind of traverse their education. When they got to high school, and I would go to the prize giving every year and I love going to prize givings 'cause you just see so much. I remember primary school prize giving, they were giving out stem prizes, and I kid you not, I sat there and did a tally and this is primary school stem across every year. I think there was something like 20 prizes and about four went to girls. And I remember at the prize giving all these other moms and dads kept turning around and looking at me and I'm going, what, you all know what I think? And I swear there were more kids called Josh that got prizes for STEM than girls. It was crazy.

Vanessa Vakharia 20:24

Oh my God.

Sarah McKay 20:26

Go to high school, right, and you go to the school prize givings, and this is my anecdotal observation. First sort of in, in Australia, you go from years seven to 12, so you've got six years of high school, right? We don't have a middle school. You've got six years. So the kids are sort of 12, 13 when they start and sort of 17, 18, when they finish. First, few, 70, 80% even, maybe even more first in class. Who gets first in class for those first three or four years across every subject. Who do you think. The girls. History, geography, maths, science, music, every now and then there'll be a boy come up on stage. By the time you get to the final year of high school. It is so interesting 'cause then you sort of start to see boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy who gets the top, who gets ducks or valedictorian, I think you might call it in the US It's definitely the boys kind of come into play here. Now what is going on there is super interesting, is that girls have been socialized to work hard and be diligent and to study and to focus and to put their hands up and to try really, really hard. And they do that for those first few years. And the boys just piss, piss about, and this is what the boys say to me, what, why, what's the point in bother? It's no need to try until their final year. 'cause it doesn't matter until then. So they're just doing their thing. You know, fulfilling gender stereotypes. And then the boys suddenly decide last year or two of school that I should have better start trying now. And then they start trying harder and then the boys sort of start stepping up. And I said to my oldest son, I said, well, where are the, where are the girls who always getting first in class? He says, oh, they're too busy fighting with each other and arguing with each other. Um, 'cause you know, socially things start to change once you go through puberty as well. And he said, oh, well, all the boys are competing with each other. And the, and they're sort of teaming up and working together, but also they are quite happy to compete and you know, who gets first, who gets second, who gets third. There seems to be this kind of understanding amongst teenage boys that we can have hierarchy and we can have competition, and it's not social suicide or it's not gonna harm you socially in any way. Whereas the girls, perhaps at this point in time, aren't wanting to kind of outcompete each other. There will be be some that do, but, but this sort of the, the social life of teenagers starts to impact and integrate. And I've seen this pattern like play out year after year after year at the, the prize giving. So I'm looking forward to going to my son's high school prize giving this year to sort of see, see the pattern. It's, it's wild, right?

Vanessa Vakharia 23:01

Does the prize giving differ by subject? Like, let's say like in English? So much of the research shows, especially my research and what I see with my students, that social suicide not only to like that competition sphere, but to the fact that math isn't seen as the thing they want to be good at or should be good at anymore.

Sarah McKay 23:20

And I have actually looked to see when, because they always publish the grades, you know, who, who were the top 20 kids in every subject. And the bulk of the prizes for those subjects go to the boys. Now is that because they are better at maths or has that emerged from the age five? There was that little kind of difference there and then that differences been exacerbated. Now, is that because the boys innately are better at maths? Is there something that happens, and interestingly, I think we've got puberty in the mix as well. So this is where we do start to see some sex differences emerge around puberty. And it is hard again, because we are humans to tease out is it all to do with testosterone or is it to do with how we socialize? And it's always, it's gonna be a mix.

Vanessa Vakharia 24:08

It's gonna be a mix. I have to tell, ask about this, to tell you this story, where I was on this radio interview and this interview, the guy literally said, the host said he had me on, because a study had come out, this was probably three years ago. And the study had come out to be like, oh my God. We looked at brain scans of like, know, boys and girls, like children age six, and there are no gender differences in math. So we're having this nice conversation And then he goes, this is how he ends the in interview, he goes, yeah, but I do wonder what happens after puberty. Then that was the end of it and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. 'cause he's implying that their brain scans will literally change where, when it comes to math ability. So I have to ask, is that a thing? No, right?

Sarah McKay 24:53

I, I don't, no, it's not like suddenly boys go through puberty and testosterone creates a maths center in their brain and we're, 'cause we've just established that, we're starting to see that slight difference emerge in the first few years of primary school. And it's not about biological change, it's about how they're learning maths. But during puberty, we do start to see sex differences emerge because then we start to be exposed to sex hormones. So in utero, baby boys are exposed to testosterone from their own testes and that kind of, sort of patterns up and gets their brain ready to be activated by testosterone again at puberty. Girls aren't exposed to estrogen either from their own ovaries or from their mother. and they kind of develop and pattern we use this word by default, to be then their brain's ready to be activated by sex hormones at puberty, primarily by estrogen. Now that doesn't mean that the brains are completely different, rather, and when we say, you know, sort of patterned up and then activated, it's primarily around reproductive function. So of course, girls are gonna need a center in their brain that regulates the menstrual cycle and ovulation. Boys aren't gonna be doing that, right? So we are gonna see primarily parts of the brain that are involved with sex and reproduction, starting to diverge a puberty, 'cause that's what we, you know, it's important. We need that. And we see a lot of behaviors play out that way. I mean, that's a very heterosexual way to talk about it, but typically this is what we see, you know, happening at puberty. And what we see is when the sex, you know, your ovaries or your testes turn on, it kind of catapults the brain off through this sort of phase of pubertal brain development. So bodies go through puberty and so too do brains because brains have got receptors for sex hormones. And the trajectory of development is very, very similar in males and females. And we often, you might often hear, oh, well boys' brains are not as mature as girls' brains like girls are a few years ahead, that boys. And that's because what we see is that the brains going through puberty track more closely to pubertal stage than chronological age. And again, if we look at a thousand kids, half males, half females, on average girls start going through puberty slightly earlier than boys. But some boys go through puberty quite early, and some girls go through late. So you could have a boy, he's gone through puberty early, he's six foot tall by the time he's 12, and his brain is gonna be further along development than a girl who perhaps doesn't hit puberty until she's 15. So yeah, it's pubertal stage. But the trajectory that they're going to follow and, and a lot of the trajectory is around kind of the refinement and the streamlining and the kind of the pruning and tuning of, parts of the brain involved with what we might call like our, our very human higher order executive functions. So these are things that are gonna help us get, you know, focus at school, judgment, planning strategy, attention learning, lots of social interactions and emotional regulations. So we see the cortex of the brain going through puberty actually getting slightly thinner. And this doesn't mean it's degenerating, it doesn't mean it's undergoing renovation. It simply means that it's gone into the state of kind of plasticity. The window's been opened by sex hormones for then the experiences that we have all the way through puberty and adolescence, typically high school, to then guide the kind of patterning and wiring of those connections. And so everything that happens to us during high school is being absorbed and is kind of sculpting the brain. 'Cause the brain is very, very malleable going through puberty. And that's been kicked off by those pubertal hormones. So how much of that collision of the social world with these pubal brains is then creating that divergence even more perhaps in terms of math scores. But we're also seeing girls on average, perhaps tending more towards being better at the, the verbal, you know, kind of words versus numbers. That's a massive overgeneralization, and there are overlaps, but we do tend to see that persist, particularly the verbal ability in females being slightly more persist all the way through the lifespan.

Does a "math brain" exist?

Vanessa Vakharia 29:07

So gender aside, sex aside, is being a math person, a neurological type or is that, you know how people are like, oh, she has like, this person has a math brain, I've got a brain for math, I've got a brain for numbers. Is that a thing or is that And by, okay, let me, now you've taught me to reframe my question. Is that a thing we're born with? That's my actual question because I can understand how our brains can get shaped that way by environment. Are certain people born with a math brain?

Sarah McKay 29:36

I'm not necessarily sure whether it's a maths brain, but certainly some people are born with the cognitive capacity, the neurological ability to find learning easier and to find.

Vanessa Vakharia 29:50

Learning everything?

Sarah McKay 29:52

Learning everything. Yeah. And some people will perhaps tend towards, and my example is always, I don't wanna come back to my kids, but I've got one son who has said he loves a learning, he just loves learning something new. And he is very quickly able to master something new. And he actually loves maths, will probably study maths at university. And it's not 'cause he's a boy, he's, it's just the kind of the kid he is. 'Cause then I have a second son who just, he hates a learning curve. He just doesn't enjoy it. He finds it more difficult. Now is there something neurologically different in their brains? I don't know whether we know the answer to that. I do think that there are kids who innately find learning easier, it is like kind of part of their neurological wiring, because we know that there are also kids who really, really, really struggle with learning. And I don't like to use the words IQ or intelligence, but they find learning harder and they're slower and they don't pick things up as easily. And we do know that there are some neurological differences between these kids. But we couldn't scan their brain and go, that kid is gonna be good at maths. So some of it is around things like, almost like your ability to pay attention and then your working memory. So working memory is the ability to kind of hold ideas kind of in your mind. Like, do mental arithmetic, do mental maths. There are differences between people in terms of their working memory, and we know working memory improves all the way through childhood and into adolescence. And some kids are gonna have a very good working memory, so they can hold complex ideas in their mind and manipulate ideas, and they find learning easy and other kids don't. But we've got a layer on top of that then what those experiences feel like. How that may or may not make us feel motivated to do more. And we can neuroscience this as well, right? So people are often wanting to talk about dopamine. Say you like go to school, and you just find learning really easy and it's fun and it's engaging and it's enjoyable, and so you're getting lots of reward and feedback and it's just all going very well, you're having all of these great learning experiences, and dopamine is going to be part of that. 'Cause dopamine is a learning molecule, and it teaches you what's great, I love that, I'm gonna go and do that again. 'Cause the brain is just this learning machine, and dopamine is the signaling molecule that says, Hey, that was a really good experience, I'm going to do it again and again and again.

Vanessa Vakharia 32:06

Like a Pavlov thing.

Sarah McKay 32:07

Yeah. But dopamine, It's also like the molecule of disappointment. So if you have an experience, it's just hard, oh, that sucked, well then your brain, dopamine is signaling to your brain, well you want to avoid that 'cause that didn't feel great, so you don't wanna do it again. And then you've got a kid in a classroom that is just having these constant experiences of disappointment and failure and not enjoying it. And then you've got the social context of that as well, 'cause they're learning in a social environment. And kids are pretty good at knowing where they sit kind of in the learning rankings of a class. Maybe they shouldn't, but they, like I,

Vanessa Vakharia 32:45

They know

Sarah McKay 32:45

I see kids. They know. So, it's almost like a snowball effect, whereas kids have great experiences, so they're gonna want more experiences and so things become easier and they enjoy that process. And other kids it sucked, I don't wanna do it again, I don't wanna go.

Vanessa Vakharia 33:00

Well and if they don't do it again, they're not going to get better at it.

Sarah McKay 33:03

Yeah. And we, we must realize that the signaling in the brain is signaling disappointment and is signaling aversion. Like, I just don't want to do that. I don't wanna do that. And so if you don't have great experiences of say, learning maths early on, it doesn't feel great when you are learning maths. You don't want to go and learn it, and it almost becomes this kind of reinforcement. Um, so there's lots of kind of components that are coming into a little brain.

Vanessa Vakharia 33:27

I like this kind of angle that I haven't heard before, which is some brains, let's say, have a me make sure I'm paraphrasing right. Some brains have a predisposition to, you're saying, enjoy learning more, but I'm almost gonna take it to like, enjoy school learning more. who like are quote unquote bad in school are like phenomenally brilliant in all these other ways. So I feel like it's the structure of how we are taught in school. But then what I'm curious about is I have so many parents and students that will say, my kid is getting like an A in every single thing, but it's math, you know, they just don't have a math brain. They're getting like, A's across the board, but it's this math. But now you're making me think, well if the predisposition to learning, let's just call it that for now, has to do with working memory, for example, you would imagine that math and science are two areas in which working memory would be the most beneficial. And I will say most of my kids who are, uh, diagnosed with learning differences and have resources in math class, it will often be about working memory, where they'll be allowed access to a formula sheet, something like that. And perhaps you just don't need that as much when it comes to English or something. So like that's a lot to think about actually. it's not specifically a math brain

Sarah McKay 34:41

And working memory is almost like the engine of it all. And I mean, attention is related to this because attention is how much information we take in and how much we filter out. And kids with attentional problems, there's so much information coming in, their working memory just simply can't hold all of that. So we need to one, manage, help manage their attention, and then support their working memory. And I often say working memory, it's not like, especially during childhood, it's not as much of a muscle as it is like a, a kind of a bone. And that we can't necessarily work it, work it, work it, work it and easily improve it, like we strengthen it like a muscle. It's more like a bone and that we've gotta kind of support its growth and it will eventually kind of grow, but there will be kind of differences I suppose. And, there are biological differences in brains that are underpinning working memory.

Vanessa Vakharia 35:32

You're saying like working memory is about this idea of holding information. You know, math requires, has traditionally required, let me just make that clear, so much memorization and like mental this and that. So for educators to know is we're trying to move away from that in math education, right? And say, fuck it. Like, why do you need to memorize a formulary or memorize an algorithm? Would that be a strategy to help those kids if we were teaching math in this different way?

Sarah McKay 35:57

I think the point of memorizing things and knowing things by rote, like timestables, and I know, like I learned my timestables by rote and so did my husband, but they don't, my kids didn't learn timestables by rote. So me and my husband are actually quicker at that because we learn them just like by rote, which I think is useful. They learned a strategy to cal to work the, the, the number out instead of just learning it by rote. And I think that there is a benefit to learning things by rote because essentially it becomes what we would call a habit or it's automated. Because that's freeing up your working memory. It's, it's automated within you. It's like riding a bike. It's like typing on a computer. You don't have to hold it in your mind. It just, you've learned that. So it is, it's like learning to read, right? So I do think that there is a benefit for some things being taught so you've learned it and memorized it by rote. Because when your brain masters a skill, it puts it in a different part of the brain. It puts it in a part of the brain called the striation, which is involved with sort of storing automated learned behaviors, learning learned habits, learning to ride a bike, you know, playing, playing music, typing on a keyboard. Also things like your times tables. And that means you can free up your working memory to problem solve and to deal with what's right in front of you.

Vanessa Vakharia 37:14

And I think that's, that's also like, I don't know if you know how hot a topic this is that you've just touched on. Like there are

Sarah McKay 37:20

No, I have no idea.

Vanessa Vakharia 37:21

Okay, well you're, you're wading, I'm gonna take you out of here gently because you're waiting into literal what is called the math wars in the United States and it's

Sarah McKay 37:29

Right.

Vanessa Vakharia 37:29

And it's not a place you wanna be.

Sarah McKay 37:30

Is someone gonna come after me on Ins, on my Instagram?

Vanessa Vakharia 37:32

Probably, like they're coming after me already, so like, don't worry we're in this together. What's interesting is I think we're kind of in the same place of what you're wanting, what we're all wanting is fact fluency. It's like to be able to access that without any effort, any cognitive load, like

Sarah McKay 37:46

3 times

Vanessa Vakharia 37:46

3 you're

Sarah McKay 37:46

not working

Vanessa Vakharia 37:47

out, you know, it's nine. But I love what you're saying. 'cause this is exactly what I'm saying. It's how it gets there might need to differ by kid

Sarah McKay 37:55

A hundred percent. Yep. Yep. Yeah, I mean, we were just, back in the day, back in the eighties, we just said our times tables, we just said them over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Vanessa Vakharia 38:05

Well it's just it caused so much math trauma, this method for so many people, that now we need it in there. But so many people, that was the point where they got turned off of math. Like the public shame, the embarassment, not being fast enough, maybe what you're talking about too, some kids that are not predisposed to actually get those facts in there that way. I mean we could do another whole episode, but we have to wrap up, I'm so sorry. But I

Is there a left brain and right brain?

Vanessa Vakharia 38:28

you something first, I need to know if there is a left brain or right brain when people are like, I need to know.

Sarah McKay 38:34

Yeah. I mean, there is literally like a left side of the brain and a right side, a right side of the brain. So there are some tasks that the brain does and processes are, are what we would call lateralized or perhaps, you know, the back half of the brain absolutely processes vision, and the left back half of the brain, the left occipital lobe processes vision from the right eye and vice versa. So the, movements in your left side of the body are processed by the right hand side of your brain. So there is, so it crosses over.

Vanessa Vakharia 39:05

Stop. You can't just say that casually. Why? Oh my God. We don't have time for this, but I need to know, how

Sarah McKay 39:10

That's what ha it just all crosses over, kind of near, near the top of the spinal cord, that everything sort of crosses over to the other side. I dunno, I'm not sure whether anyone's figured out why that has happened or why, why brains have evolved that way.

Vanessa Vakharia 39:23

Is this common knowledge?

Sarah McKay 39:24

It's kind of like neuroscience 101, but like if anyone's ever had a stroke, say, um, or brain damage, they would know that like perhaps they have a stroke in like the motor cortex or the sensory cortex on the right hand side of the brain, it's gonna affect the left hand side of their body.

Vanessa Vakharia 39:40

What the fuck are you saying? This is the craziest thing I've learned today.

Sarah McKay 39:45

Does that mean that there, that one, one type of thinking is done on one side of the brain and another type of thinking is, and we do see lateralization of perhaps language centers of the brain are more likely to be on the left hand side of your brain in a right-handed person. And if you're left-handed, often in the right hand side of the brain, but not on everyone, it's not like a hundred percent complete separation. Sometimes it's on opposite sides. And so say someone was having brain surgery, they might have to map that out for that individual person to figure out, this part of the brain here, what's its kind of main job. But does that mean that we are born with a brain whereby everything on the right hand side is around creative thinking and everything on the left hand side, there, there may be some lateralization of function there, but that doesn't mean that you are that kind of person and you can't access the other side of your brain and that determines who you are and, and how things come about. Creativity requires the whole brain. And, you know, someone could be a creative mathematician, right? You could come up with loads of creative ways to problem solve using maths.

Vanessa Vakharia 40:50

Math is creative by nature,

Sarah McKay 40:52

Yeah it is. So, and how do we even define creativity, right? It's kind of coming up with ideas that no one else has. People often think about this, like, you've got this kind of artist who, you know, who's painting pictures or a Taylor Swift, you know, she's so creative that the left side of her brain is not functioning, and you could never possibly do maths with that. That's not what we are seeing.

Vanessa Vakharia 41:14

But is the more mathy stuff on the left side of the brain? Like is that even true?

Sarah McKay 41:17

So we've got different, I mean, if you're thinking about what's, what's required to do maths, there's not a maths node in the brain in the same way that we've got kind of language processing. There's lots of different brain areas which are involved here because perhaps it's gonna require you to be visualizing things kind of in your mind's eye, which is gonna require your visual cortex. 'Cause you're literally actually having to see things, it's gonna require prefrontal cortical functions like working memory or problem solving or decision making or strategizing. And also parts of the brain, which are halfway between the back and the front, parietal cortex and parts of that are involved with integrating different sort of sensory modalities to kind of form a single percept or a single idea. So a maths concept might be a combination of, of something visual and something language, and perhaps something, you know, sort of spatial. So we've got lots of brain networks, which are involved in maths problems. How efficient those brain networks are, and how well organized is partly biological, but it's also partly how you've learned to use those parts of the brain. And we see that vary across people.

Vanessa Vakharia 42:33

Okay. This has been so amazing. I can't even, I like, I don't even know what I'm more, most blown away from, but this whole like doing things from different sides of the, like the left to the right. Okay. I'm gonna ask you the final two questions we ask everyone, and then sadly we have to close off because I have a million more questions that are now getting quite personal. Um, okay. like, oh my God. Now I need to know this. Okay.

Q1

Vanessa Vakharia 42:54

First question is, if you could pick one thing you'd like to see change around the way math is taught in schools, what would it be?

Sarah McKay 43:01

It would be that we stop unintentionally talking about maths being a boy thing that girls can also do. That we change the water that kids are swimming in and we say girls and boys have equal potential to do maths. We're not using language that makes it sound like maths is something girls opt into.

Vanessa Vakharia 43:22

I love this. I love this. It's also something we can all do right now.

Sarah McKay 43:26

Girls can do maths too", is not the message that we want to give. That sounds good. It sounds, you know well-meaning, but girls can do maths too, sounds like it's a boy thing that girls can do too. So we're opting the girls in. We need to not even be using language like that whatsoever. Everyone has equal potential to learn to do maths. Biological sex doesn't matter.

Vanessa Vakharia 43:48

Done.

Q2

Vanessa Vakharia 43:49

And the final question is, what would you say to someone who just says, Sarah, great podcast, this was so fascinating, however, I'm just not a math person.

Sarah McKay 43:58

I mean, I suppose if that's the language that you want to define yourself by, that there are some things that you can do and some things that you can't do, and you are an adult well, like, carry on, right. I, I just,

Vanessa Vakharia 44:10

Best answer. I love

Sarah McKay 44:11

you, you, you do you sounds like a you problem. What I would do, can, what I would say is let's try our damnedest to not fuck the kids up by presenting those ideas to them.

Vanessa Vakharia 44:29

I love that.

Sarah McKay 44:30

Because we've gotta intervene. We've gotta intervene as soon as they start school. The French have shown us that.

Vanessa Vakharia 44:37

The French do so much better, including apparently this. So bread, cigarettes, wine, and now math studies. Way to go.

Sarah McKay 44:45

All my favorite things.

Vanessa Vakharia 44:47

All my favorite things.

Outro

Vanessa Vakharia 44:48

Okay. Um, this has been so incredible. Is there anything you want us, like anything you're like, you know what, if you like this, here's where to find me, here's what to get. Like plug your stuff at this point.

Sarah McKay 44:56

Oh yeah. Like if, you know this, so I teach courses in applied neuroscience and brain health across the lifespan. I've got a basic kind of training on neuroscience, kind of like neuroscience 1 0 1, but let's make it meaningful and useful. sarahmckay.com. I've got a few different books on women's brain health and brain health in general. And follow me on Instagram.

Vanessa Vakharia 45:17

Follow her on Insta. That's amazing. From Mel Robbins to Math Therapy. It's, you're, you're only going up

Sarah McKay 45:25

going up and up and up.

Vanessa Vakharia 45:27

Thank you so much for being on the podcast. It has been so amazing. I've learned so much thank you for joining me. Bye.

Sarah McKay 45:32

Bye.

Vanessa Vakharia 45:36

I am so glad I finally had a full on neuroscientist on the podcast to put the myth of the math person to rest. We're done. It's over. And I never want to hear about it again. Wishful thinking, I know. But if you're anything like me, as you were listening to the episode, you were like. Oh my God. I need to send this to like cousin Larry who keeps claiming that boys just have more natural ability or Yes, I finally have proof to send to like so-and-so's parents so they can stop claiming they pass the math gene onto their kid. My advice guys, send them this episode. Do it now before you forget. It might be the thing they need to hear to finally let go of the math myths holding them and the people around them back. Now, did Dr. Sarah McKay say anything that like shocked you? Because if she did, I wanna know. Text the podcast by hitting the link in your podcast app. DM me on Instagram at the Math Guru, or email me at vanessa@themathguru.ca. Math Therapy is produced by David Kochberg. The music you're hearing right now is by our band, Goodnight Sunrise. I'm your host, Vanessa Vakharia, and thank you so much for being here and being open-minded. Yes, that is another bad brain joke. But for real. The more we learn, the more we learn how much more we have left to learn. I made that up and that's a beautiful thing. The world could use a little more of that right now, so thank you for being a part of the change we all wish and need to see. Until next week. Xo. Xo.