Adult Brains Grow From Specialist Use

Xemu writes "Researchers at University College of London's Institute of Neurology have discovered that taxi drivers grow more brain cells in the area associated with memory. Dr Eleanor Maguire says, 'We believe the brain increased in gray matter volume because of the huge amount of data memorized.' She warns against the use of GPS and says it will possibly affect the brain changes seen in this study. This research is the first to show that the brains of adults can grow in response to specialist use." London cabbies, unlike their American counterparts, have to learn the layout of streets and the locations of thousands of places of interest in order to get a license.

Comments

Like every other muscle

[LiquidCoooled]

If you train it and work with it it will grow and remain strong.

My bulging typing fingers and keen google-foo are testament to that.

Re:Like every other muscle

[rolfwind]

Interesting you mention typing. I touch-typed with a regular QWERTY keyboard for at least 10 years, and two years back, I switched to the DVORAK layout. These days, people look at me in disbelief if they know I can program computers, but I start fumble with a regular keyboard. My muscle memory has completely changed over to dvorak and I can't type QWERTY worth a damn. I am a relatively quick learner (learned fluent dvorak by forcing it on myself in 8 hours of concentration) too.

My mother used to be fluent in French, being a translator. She hasn't used the language in 20 years. She has almost forgotten it completely as she can't make sentences so easily. (Though I am sure she can get back into it 100x faster than a newcomer).

It is almost like the brain is a muscle. After Terry Shiavo died, the autopsy found that her brain shrunk to the size of grapefruit.

I wonder if there is a correlation of speed of learning and speed of forgetting and the brains that "erase" (or shove aside) old info faster take in new information easier.

Cause or Effect?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Do taxi drivers' brains expand to provide more memory, or do people with poor memory just forget to become taxi drivers?

A huge problem with any of these correlation studies is determining, accurately, which way the cause->effect relationship runs.

Re:Cause or Effect?

[timeOday]

I'm surprised they even bothered if it's not a longitudinal study. "This just in, basketball makes you taller. Those who give up on basketball don't develop legs as long as those who stay with it throughout professional basketball careers."

Re:How do they know?

[zCyl]

Did these scientists have a "control experiment" done? The very usage of the word "believe" scares me. That means that there could be another scientist who might *not* believe.

Welcome to the real world of science, where conclusions are not solid, facts are not certain, and evidence is only an indication. :)

Re:What about trivia nuts?

[HappySqurriel]

Or is it that only people with the additional brain mass CAN memorize all those items?

Trust me, memorization has very little to do with intelligence and more to do with exposure and motivation to memorize a subject ...

I honestly don't think it should be a surprise that working with an area of your brain would increase its "strength." This is (effectively) what practice is ...

Take any person who has never learned a musical instrument before and examine the impact of musical stimulus on their brain. Spend 8 hours a day for the next year teaching them musical theory and composition as well as several instruments and then examine the impact of musical stimulus on their brain. Being that they've practiced and learned a lot about music, one would expect that their brain would suddenly become far more involved in the musical experience.

At the same time, one of the questions of a study like this would be what would the consequence of television be on a person's brain? For the most part television would be training the brain in a way which would not be particularly useful in any pursuit and yet many/most people have a ton of exposure to this influence.

Re:london streets

[gilgongo]

One side effect of London cabbies having to do "The Knowledge" to get a license is that it creates a market for cheap, illegal cab drivers to fill the supply gap brough about by having such an exclusive system. With hoards of unlicensed cabbies around, women get raped, uninsured road accidents happen, tourists get ripped off and legitimate cab fares are sky high.

I am a Londoner, and I think the sooner the GPS makes The Knowledge a prerequisite of licenced cab driving irrelevant, the better. The times I've been to NYC and got a cab it's been paradise in comparison.

London cabbies vs American cabbies

[56ker]

London cab driver (visiting my mum's cousin):-

No map required, took us directly to the street - no problems - good tip

American cab driver (picked me up from Dallas Fort Worth airport)

Said he "used to live there", had a map - was only 6 miles from the airport but he managed to get lost, take about an hour or two to get there (had this insistence he must drop me off at the correct number) and ended up charging less than what was on his meter out of embarrassment.

So, yes I'll take a London cab driver (or walking/public transport if I'm in America) vs their American equivalent any day of the week. :)

Use a GPS. Save your brain for something better.

[cvd6262]

Recommending that GPS units shouldn't be used because it would cause a change in the person's brain is ridiculous unless the benefit of *not* changing the brain is good for anything other than the task the GPS does.

American Scientist had an episode where they taught a seeing girl braille, and tested her ability while doing an fMRI. The sections of her brain that fired during the test were associated with tactile processing. Then they blindfolded her for 100 hours, and retested. This time, her visual cortex was firing. The brain is dynamic and can repurpose unused neurons. This may be why people can no longer remember 7-digit telephone numbers: We all have PDA/cell phones to do it for us.

Is this bad? Not unless you value the ability to remember phone numbers.

Would it be bad if London taxi drivers no longer knew every little alleyway? Not so long as they could still accomplish their task.

BTW, I had a very different experience with a cabby in Paris. I told him where I wanted to go and he handed me a road atlas and said, "Trouvez-le."

Where the streets have TOO MANY names.

[The Monster]

Aren't American roads in the large cities laid out in grids anyway?

The older a city is, the less true this is. In a city like Boston, there are neighborhoods with local grids at roughly the same granularity as those in London, and the same tendency of a road passing through an intersection to change names and reset numbering back to 1. Even Manhattan Island, the stereotypical grid of numbered Streets and Avenues, has them laid out according to the general orientation of the island, rather than the points of a compass

By contrast, Washington, DC was carefully planned, with a Cartesian quadrant system of N/S and E/W 'Streets' numbered from the Capitol building, as well as 'Avenues' that run at odd angles to that grid. The Public Land Survey System, which was used for the territories gained/defined after the US became independent of Britain, imposes a compass grid that largely governs newer areas, such as Florida and Western states.

It is often said that St. Louis (built long before the survey system) is the westernmost 'eastern' city, and Kansas City the easternmost 'western' city. A comparison of the two shows that the former indeed has virtually no streets that align with the compass, while the latter has most major roads aligned with the survey grids, right down to the streets across the state line not being quite exactly aligned (due to accumulated errors over the distances from the 5th and 6th Principal Meridians, from which the surveys were conducted).

The reason why London cabbies have to learn so many different street names is because there's so damned many of them, and no particular scheme to tie them together.

Re:So how does this explain George Bush ?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Gerald Ford was inept, not stupid, and he inherited the job. He made at least decent one pun* during his tenure, which puts him above average; modern US presidential candidates generally display less wit than Jay Leno.

Sometimes vice-presidents are chosen for their intelligence, which I believe is a ploy to keep them from competing for the top spot.

*("I think you're guilty of putting Descartes before TerHorst")