Friday, December 9, 2011

Cache Cab: Taxi Driver's Brain Grow to Navigate London's Streets

BY DAVID DUNCAN


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=london-taxi-memory

STREET SMARTS: Navigating labyrinthine London to earn a taxi license plumps up the hippocampus. 
Image: Wikimedia Commons 

2 comments:

Luca said...

This is a very odd article. It is amazing how the brain of people can expand with practice.

David said...

It’s interesting that London taxi drivers develop a larger-than-average hippocampi from driving around complicated streets. It shows that the brain can change with training. But it’s also interesting that excelling at one form of memory may inhibit another. The successful trainees did not perform better on a test of visual memory. It’s also interesting that the neuroscientist got the idea of studying London cab drivers from research on animals that had to remember where they had buried their food. These animals had a larger hippocampus than other animals that did not bury their food.