New research on migraines, depression and childhood anxiety.

New research from the University of Arizona Health Sciences in Tucson has found that people who suffer from migraines may benefit from green light therapy, which has been shown to reduce the frequency and intensity of headaches and improve patient quality of life. “This is the first clinical study to evaluate green light exposure as a potential preventive therapy for patients with migraines,“says Dr Mohab Ibrahim, an associate professor in the University of Arizona College of Medicine and lead author of the study. In the small study of 29 migraine patients, green light exposure reduced the number of headache days per month by an average of about 60 per cent. A majority of study participants – 86 per cent of episodic migraine patients and 63 per cent of chronic migraine patients – reported a more than 50 per cent reduction in headache days per month. Episodic migraine is characterised by up to 14 headache days per month, while chronic migraine is 15 or more headache days per month. “In this trial, we treated green light as a drug,” says Ibrahim. “It’s not any green light. It has to be the right intensity, the right frequency, the right exposure time and the right exposure methods.”

Mathematics has been in the news lately as more high school students are dropping the subject than ever before. While maths is compulsory until Year 10, the NSW Government is working to make maths compulsory to Year 12, to ensure students have the numeracy skills required to succeed in today’s society. So, why do so many kids want to drop maths, despite its usefulness in everyday life? Maths anxiety, or ‘mathemaphobia’, is one explanation – the sense of fear, worry and nervousness that students may experience when participating in mathematical tasks. In a new study by the University of South Australia in collaboration with the Australian Council for Educational Research, researchers have been exploring the impact of anxiety on learning maths, finding that boosting student confidence is pivotal to greater engagement with the subject. In Australia, a quarter to a third of secondary students report feeling tense, nervous or helpless when doing maths, and it’s this reaction that’s influencing their decisions to study maths. Lead researcher, Dr Florence Gabriel, says maths anxiety is one of the biggest barriers to students choosing to study it, especially at senior school and tertiary levels.

“Maths anxiety is essentially an emotional reaction, but it’s just like stress in other situations,” Gabriel says. ”When students experience maths anxiety, they’ll tend to hurry through maths questions, lose focus, or simply give up when it all seems too hard. Not surprisingly, these reactions compound and lead to poor maths achievement – and a later reluctance to engage with the subject at all. To break this cycle, our research shows that we need to build and grow student confidence in maths, especially before starting a new maths concept. This draws on the notion of self-regulated learning where students have the ability to understand, track and control their own learning.”