Children's ability to solve maths is being affected by excessive heat, it has a serious effect on the brain:

News Topical, Digital Desk : A study has shown that prolonged exposure to heat can have a negative impact on the cognitive abilities of children. This assumption was made by researchers from Australia's Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the University of New South Wales after a study.

During this time, the researchers reviewed data from seven previously published studies involving about 14.5 million students from a total of 61 countries, including India. According to the findings published in the journal PLOS Climate, long-term exposure to heat affects the learning ability of students, which can lead to poorer performance in complex subjects such as mathematics compared to simpler tasks.

As the planet warms, young people's ability to learn could be affected, they said. The team also pointed out that equality and quality of life of vulnerable, low-income populations unable to protect themselves from climate change would be affected. They said social inequalities would increase and economic progress would be hampered in less developed countries that are more exposed to heat.

The effect of temperature above 29 degrees Celsius was seen in India

Two of the seven studies reviewed by the researchers involved primary school students in India. It was found that days with an average daily temperature of more than 29 degrees Celsius affected reading and maths abilities compared to those with temperatures of 15-17 degrees Celsius in the previous year. The analysis also used data from the Young Lives Survey.

How does temperature affect it?

According to experts, heat exhaustion occurs when our body is no longer able to cool itself enough to maintain a healthy temperature. Recently, Lav Varshney, neuroscientist and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, says that this reduces our brain's ability to perform cognitive tasks.

Due to exposure to extreme heat, the blood flow to our brain as well as the supply of oxygen is affected, which leads to fainting. According to them, high temperature breaks the barrier between the brain and blood and unwanted proteins and ions start accumulating in the brain.

Therefore, the brain starts swelling and its normal functions get disrupted and brain cells start dying. Not only this, the part of the brain that controls the body is also affected, which controls the body temperature through sweating.