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

What about trivia nuts?

[khasim]

Does memorizing the names and stats of baseball players make your brain grow?

What about people who memorize every little detail of Star Trek?

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

Does this mean...

[Kiba Ruby]

Does this mean that programmers are more logical than people?

Re:How do they know?

[niconorsk]

From TFA:

In the study, researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL's Institute of Neurology carried out scans on the brains of 35 cabbies and bus drivers, all men. Various psychological tests were also carried out. Using bus drivers meant that any brain differences found could not be explained by driving stress, or dealing with passengers and traffic in London. The one big difference between the two is that bus drivers stick to routes, while cabbies have to learn the layout of streets and the locations of thousands of places of interest to get an operating licence. So clearly they had thought of that particular possibility. What concerns me though, is how they know that their brain matter has grown rather than just having large memory centers from the start. They should probably do the same experiment with cabbies preparing for their exam and take the measure before and after.

Plato/Socrates said that about writing too...

[KarmaRundi]

"Soc. At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality." Translation nabbed from here

Bet he would have hated Google. All we have to remember now is how to use it and a few key words.

Re:Cause or Effect?

[slamb]

EmbeddedJanitor asked

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.

A good question, but RTFA:

Dr Maguire said: "We are now looking at the brains of taxi-drivers before they start training, and at those of retired cabbies to see whether that area of the brain gets smaller when it is not used."

Hopefully they'll actually follow the pre-training drivers through all the way through training so they don't compare future wash-outs with present successful cabbies rather than future successful cabbies with present successful cabbies. If so, it should go a long way toward answering your question.

The ultimate would be to compare the same population of cabbies vs. bus drivers (control group) through their entire careers. Obviously that'd be a long-term study, and it will become impossible when "the Knowledge" is obsoleted by GPS mapping software. (I say "when" rather than "if". It will happen sooner or later.)

It's not jingoism when it's true...

[Space cowboy]

I lived in London for 15 years (I now live in the USA). I've got into a cab in London and asked for a road 30 miles away, the guy not only gets me there without asking me for directions, he takes me down tiny narrow streets that avoid the traffic.

Compare this to my experiences in the USA:

- Wanting to get back to my hotel in Sausalito from San Francisco. I'm standing on Lombard (which turns into the Golden gate bridge, the best way to go) and hail a cab. He turns (right) onto a side-street, turns left, turns left, crosses Lombard again, turns right, turns right, crosses Lombard again, etc. He's being told how to get to Sausalito by his controller (I can *hear* his controller saying "turn onto Lombard" at which point he says "I've just crossed Lombard"). This goes on until I lean over and tell him I can direct him.

- Getting off a plane at Newark, having the rest of the day free before a plane home to the UK the next day. Ask cabbie to take me to the Empire State building - hell why not. He doesn't know where it is. I direct him to roughly the right area, and he says "this is as close as I can get". WTF ? Walking about 8 blocks (diagonally) I get to the ESB...

I could go on. In my experience, cabbies in London are top-notch. The only place I've found that has vaguely-similar cabbies is Las Vegas, and I've travelled a fair amount in the US.

Simon.

Re:Cause or Effect?

[slamb]

There seems to be an assumption that people won't learn what they don't "have to" learn (I've heard this argument against PDAs too). But maybe people just learn what they're repeatedly exposed to, or things with emotional connections. Technology may or may not interfere with that. It's not a question I would guess at the answer without some evidence either way.

I generalized from similar observations:

• Now that I have a cell phone with a good phonebook, I no longer memorize phone numbers. (I remember phone numbers I called 10 years ago, but I don't remember phone numbers I now call all the time. There's no need.)
• Now that cashiers have cash registers, they no longer do basic arithmetic. (Sadly, most don't even remember how to do the arithmetic. They were all instructed in elementary school, but it didn't stick...)
• Now that cashiers have bar code scanners, they no longer remember prices. (But they do remember the typed codes for fruit and vegetables.)
• Now that I have Eclipse toolhints, I no longer remember Java library functions' argument orders.
• ...

In general, it seems that when it's more convenient and about as effective to use a machine as to do something by hand, people will no longer take the effort to do it themselves. And memorization (of prices, phone numbers, street names, anything) is way harder for people than for computers.

If the software works well enough that cabbies can reliably enter an address and find the street, why should cabbies be made to remember all the street names? And if it works so well that it can reliably pick an optimal route (including traffic, construction, etc.) why should they even remember how to get anywhere?

In fact, I predict they'll start depending on it before it's reliable. The test will go away, and for better or for worse, there will be a lot more cabbies out there, and they won't be able to get around very well when the computer acts up, just like a lot of businesses now can barely sell anything when their cash registers act up. It will be a pain to get to certain streets because the database is wrong, and cabbies will unknowingly avoid certain more optimal turns/intersections because the software can't navigate through them.

Re:Cause or Effect?

[dirgotronix]

I'm a cabbie.

I was in a motorcycle accident in 2001 which caused serious short-term memory issues in my brain. I started driving a cab in february of 2006, and I have noticed an increase in my short term memory.

When I first started, I would have to ask my passengers to give me directions one turn at a time (and in my mind, I was repeating that single direction) in order to get to the destination. Now, I can generally get anywhere on address alone, or, at a minimum, remember the address all the way through the trip, despite having various conversations, remembering turn by turn directions, avoiding accidents, etc.

I'd say I agree with the studies, from personal experience.