Unlike cabbies in many other cities, London cab drivers are notorious for being able to find their way around in a VERY complex city! Researches think that they have developed the equivalent of a G.P.S. system in their brains.
They used magnetic scanners to measure the brain activity of these cabbies as they navigated through the city. BBC News reports that “different brain regions were activated as they considered route options, spotted familiar landmarks or thought about their customers.” Researchers have already discovered that taxi drivers have a larger-than-normal hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that navigates.In BBC News, Elizabeth Mitchell quotes researcher Hugo Spiers as saying, “We were keen to go beyond brain structure?and see what activity is going on inside the brains of taxi drivers while they are doing their job.” He found out that cabbies’ brains actually GROW on the job.
Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
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