Numerical cognition
How Genetics and Dopamine Affect Math Skills in Children
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Children with a gene variant that leads to higher dopamine levels in the prefrontal cortex performed better on both symbolic and non-symbolic math tasks.
Key findings
Children with higher dopamine levels (the met+ group) performed significantly better on all math and number tasks compared to the lower-dopamine group. However, the groups did not show any significant differences in their working memory capacity. Controlling for non-symbolic number skills eliminated the group differences on simple math word problems, suggesting that basic number sense directly drives these differences.
Methodology
The researchers evaluated a final sample of 155 children between 8 and 12 years old. They grouped participants by their COMT gene variant into a lower-dopamine group of 61 children and a higher-dopamine group of 94 children. The children completed tests assessing working memory, arithmetic word problems, number reading and writing, and dot magnitude estimation and comparison.
Limitations
The study's design cannot prove a causal relationship between dopamine levels and the development of math skills over time. Additionally, because only 18 children in the sample were homozygous for the methionine allele, they had to be combined with heterozygous children, preventing analysis of each distinct genotype. Finally, because most of the children were under 10 years old, the study could not fully evaluate how age-dependent changes influence the relationship between genetics and working memory.
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