UW–Madison’s EdNeuroLab tackling math learning through brain imaging

In 2012, Edward Hubbard, a cognitive neuroscientist and assistant professor with UW‒Madison’s Department of Educational Psychology, created the Educational Neuroscience Lab to understand — through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) — how the physical changes that occur in children’s brains as they learn may help improve education practices.

Edward Michael Hubbard, PhD – Slide of the Week

Adults and children alike struggle with fractions, but it also turns out that learning fractions is vitally important for later math skills.  Our lab has suggested that children’s ability to learn fractions might build on a more basic perceptual ability to see and understand non-symbolic ratios, which has been demonstrated even in non-human primates.