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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.
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.
liqbase
it seems his brain has decreased in capacity
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?
I prefer squats with my grey matter.
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.
May be those brain cells grow because of the working environment these taxi drivers find themselves in. In this case, they see so much traffic in their particular work day - maybe.
See The Knowledge and the references from there. I think it is only required for taxicab drivers (ie "Black cabs"), not minicab drivers.
I had some nightmares awhile back. I work in Manhattan and noticed that the majority of Taxi drivers can be "racial profiled" as terrorists if they happened to step into an airport. What if, it's true, all the Taxi drivers are heavily armed one day and decide to attack NYC.
According to this article they would know the area much better than the people who live and work there. Scary!
And yes! I have used LSD, frightening visions like this have haunted me since I was 17 years old. And I was there during the terrorist attacks.
Call me Nostradamus!
"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 licence."
I fell pretty lucky when I can find a cabbie in the US that speaks the language so I can tell them directions to where I want to go.
Slashdot editors don't get the same benefit from firehosing all day eh? ;)
This research has been around and mainstream a long time - check this out on BBC News. March 2000...
I never get used to these constant resurrections
With Nicole Brazzle's beautiful tits!
London is also harder to get around, due to the way street names in London work.
Studies were published in the year 2000. Why is this now getting attention? Actually, come to think of it, I think it got attention back then too.
What's changed since this?: Taxi drivers' brains 'grow' on the job
American cabbies are usually fine, but then again ....
:-)
I once had this cab driver who picked me up from Fairbanks International and didn't know the way to Ester.* He was actually angry at me for "wasting his time" and wanted me to call 911 for directions and eventually dropped me back off the airport and wanted $25 for his trouble. (!)
*Ester is a little village a few miles from Fairbanks on a major road that anyone of speaking age who's lived in town for more than a month can give you directions to. I know where it is now.
Well that's good news because now I can say that playing MTG and Guild Wars and reading comic books has been simply to increase my brain size. Nothing to do with being a huge nerd. Oh, wait.
I like basketball!!1!
People have no idea what the phone numbers are for their friends/family as they've all been programmed into speed dial.
I wonder if these crazy trigonometry identities that I'm struggling to memorize are doing me more harm than good...
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Does this mean that programmers are more logical than people?
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-RMS
Since I've got one, I've totally lost my ability to tell my altitude, longitude, and latitude. I get real dizzy all the time.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3417045.stm
:)
It's interesting, but it ain't news
A huge problem with any of these correlation studies is determining, accurately, which way the cause->effect relationship runs.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"She warns against the use of GPS and says it will possibly affect the brain changes seen in this study."
So we shouldn't use technology because it interferes with their study? Or maybe they just think that somehow humanity will become smarter and more efficient as adults make new brain cells specific to a task? Darwinian natural selection issues aside, it sounds like something straight out of Frank Herbert's series.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
So, Construction Workers shouldn't use heavy equipment because it could effect their muscle tone ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Damn. I wish taxi drivers would grow more brain cells in the region of driving ability, or in the "direction finding and map reading" area.
... and then they built the supercollider.
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 licence.
In the US customers ain't worth such effort.
As a matter of fact you have to watch out they don't infect you with AIDS or crap like that through needles they drop on your driver seat because they also have a serious mental illness.
Ossama Bin Laden dies, and is standing at the Pearly Gates. St Peter comes up on the other side, looks at Ossama and says "No , don't tell me, let me guess".
St Peter studies him a while, then turns his head and yells out:
" Hey Jesus, did you order a cab? "
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
"If you train it and work with it it will grow and remain strong."
And for everyone else, there's Viagra.
The Chief Examiner turned his attention on Carl and Antonë. He pushed his mirror away from his face and confronted them with his sweaty and distorted sneer. Judgement was nigh:
-- Az 2 U 2 -- the harsh Mokni consonents cut like knives through the thickening atmosphere of the forecourt -- U lì, U cheet, U R trayters, U R Fliars. U raze up ve toyist an drag dahn ve dävyn! He drew a scrap of black cloth from a fold of his robe and slapped it on to his bald wig. He parted his robe so that the sign of the Wheel was clearly visible on the sweaty breast of his T-shirt. he drew himself up to his full height and pronounced terrifying anathema on them:
-- U wil B takun bakk 2 ve Towa an brökun on ve Weel. Yaw tungs wil B cú aht. U wil B brandid an ung aht 2 dye inna box! Tayk em dahn! Ware2, guv? he bellowed.
-- 2 Nú Lundun, the forecourt responded in a subdued fashion.
-- Will Self, The Book of Dave (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006), 430.
I'd rather stuff the dollars down my own pants.
...all the jingoism on the internet? Why the hell was this comment even made:
"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 licence."
Does your dick feel bigger now that you've besmirched Americans? Why the comparison to American cabbies? Why not French or Egyptian cabbies? Have you ever been to Cairo? The fact that cabbies can get anyone anywhere in that city amazes me. Perhaps American cabbies just know where the hell they're going, test or no test. I have yet to see a cab GPS in it yet I've always been able to get to my destination with no problems. The aforementioned comment could have been just as insightful, if nor more so, had it simply been "London cabbies have to learn the layout of streets and the locations of thousands of places of interest in order to get a licence."
Studies were published in the year 2000 [pnas.org]. Why is this now getting attention?
You must be new here.
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 licence.
Way to compare a single city's regulations to an entire country's very diverse regulations.
I've found my Bullshit Lobe doubling in size since I entered the corporate world.
Table-ized A.I.
"... NO ONE who manages to become president is dumb."
Agreed. But George W. Bush did not do the managing, Karl Rove did. GWB merely followed Karl Rove's script.
I wrote a summary of the corruption of the Rove/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration: George W. Bush comedy and tragedy.
Bet he would have hated Google. All we have to remember now is how to use it and a few key words.
I'm not clear if Dr. Maguire (and whoever the "we" is she refers to), don't want taxi drivers to use GPS because she wants to require the cabbies to have a huge knowledge base or because she wants to see the brain changes. She doesn't indicate any value to the cabbies over GPS.
Perhaps she (and her "we") just likes the aesthetic of large brain sections?
Ed Barbar, President and General Manager, Furnit USA
Human brains have been found to shrink after days of watching Taxi reruns.
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.
Video Game cheats, hints a
And grid cities can still be confusing when you throw in one way streets, diagonal streets (all the state named avenues in DC), streets that don't exist for one or more blocks then start up again, traffic circles, traffic sqares, etc. But don't blame us, DC was laid out by a Frenchman.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
Sounds to me like using a GPS means there is more space in your skull for your brain to expand to deal with interesting tasks rather than mundane crap like how to get from A to B. I think I'll get one today.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Seriously WTF?
...
...
... I'm always amazed at how close minded people can be
The parent is nether factually incorrect, trolling, off-topic (being that he is responding to a troll) or particularly offensive yet you mod the post down
Just because you disagree with something does not mean that you have to mod it down
Wow
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 licence.
Because all American cities are laid out in square grids of exact size and cabbies drive from one end to the other in a continuous loop like little yellow trains.
Yes, yes, I know London is complicated, but come on now.
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."
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Psychologists have known this for years. it's called spatial cognition.
Oh Crap, I'm an optimist.....
I think we won't need a study that those nuts... ...will have missed to train and develop the brin cells needed to learn to use a shower.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Well, the reason they looked at London cab drivers is because of the massive amount of spatial information they have to know. The hippocampus was first shown to be involved in spatial memory in rats in the '70s (if memory serves), though it is also known to be involved in episodic memory.
The original idea was that the hippocampus holds a map of spatial environments, and so if someone has a very large amount of spatial knowledge, maybe their hippocampal anatomy will reflect that. This hypothesis is supported by this evidence (that lab has been doing these studies for years, not sure why this is claimed to be so new, except perhaps the control subjects who were bus drivers in London, reducing one potential confound). It should be noted that lately it has been shown that there is a very robust spatial code outside of the hippocampus (and feeding into it) so it appears to not be quite as simple as the hippocampus just holding a map.
Now to your questions. Names, stats, and details are semantic memory, not episodic memory, and are therefore not directly related to the hippocampus (except that all semantic memory appears to start off as episodic memorys, which are slowly re-coded, if you like, into just memory of the facts and not the specific episode where you learned the facts). So if you were constantly learning large amounts of new such data, perhaps you'd see such growth in the hippocampus, but merely having it all memorized would be relying on storage out in neocortex, not the hippocampus.
As the hippocampus (specifically the dentate gyrus, one part of it) is one of the few regions known to constantly be producing new cells, it is expected that experience might cause changes in size there. In other parts of cortex it would be more surprising (to me, at least) if there was a significant change in number of neurons. There the changes are more likely to be structural: neurons making new connections with other, existing neurons.
In summary:
hippocampus = spatial information and acquisition of new memories
neocortex = use and storage of existing knowledge
This research was reported 6 years ago - why is it surfacing again?
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
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.
Unlike their counterparts in cities like Los Angeles, where knowing the area is a disadvantage and the real talent comes from keeping the passenger in the cab longer than necessary and taking them entirely away from their destination for an increased fare.
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.
Physicists get Hadrons!
TFA mentions only that taxi drivers have bigger brain(area)s (hippocampus?), not that they actually grow.
An alternative explanation is that taxi drivers have some genetic predisposion for a bigger brain size, which allows them to pass the taxi test more easily.
Only with the new studies mentioned at the end of TFA, about testing brains of drivers also before they become taxi drivers and about testing those who have left their jobs, it will be possible to decide that the brain actually grows...
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.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
"Is this bad? Not unless you value the ability to remember phone numbers.
I completely agree with you except that I think the ability to remember phone numbers might actually have some other uses (like recalling the combination to a safe, the numerical part of a LC classification number, or an identification number you're looking for in a printed list). Not a lot of use for most people, but potentially useful to some.
I read an article 5 or 6 years ago that predicted this change of thinking, that the smartest/brightest individuals wouldn't be the ones that knew everything, but the ones that could figure out information the fastest. Google, wikipedia, gps are all articles that allow you quick access to information. The authors argument that this will hinder our mental thought process ignores the fact that google, wikipedia, gps are all pretty useless unless we know what we are looking for in the first place.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Licensed New York cab drivers have to memorize such information too. Though the exam always tends to heavily favor Manhattan knowledge.
This does not necessarily mean that there are more brain cells. Increased volume of gray matter can result from the growth of more interconnections between existing cells. Recent studies of mammalian brains suggests that new brain cells may form in adults, but there is a lot of uncertainty about this.
I read the original article. The article didn't mention that another finding of the study was a _decrease_ in size of another area of the hippocampus. The 'growth' was probably just a rearrangement of the cells already present.
Disuse atrophy and Use hypertrophy.
My first full-time job (the kind where you support yourself and pay your own bills) was as a data entry guy. I would sit and read names and addresses and other information off paper (printouts usually, and sometimes business cards) and type the addresses into a computer, along with some information about which product literature they had requested. I did this task, and nothing else, all day long for 40 hours a week. And I did it for a total of around 9 months.
During that time, I had very little occasion to do much math, but I noticed a strange thing after I had quit that job: I went to do some arithmetic in my head, and I found that suddenly and without any effort on my part, I could remember and work with much larger numbers than I had ever been able to before. I was better at doing arithmetic in my head than I had ever been, despite the fact that I hadn't been doing any arithmetic at that time. The only explanation I could come up with is that having to hold small bits of information (including numbers) in my head all day had improved my ability to hold numbers in my head, and thus improved my ability to do arithmetic in my head.
I won't go so far as to say that this brain-growing thing is the explanation. It might just be that I grew more comfortable with the idea of manipulating more data in my head without the need for pencil and paper, in the sense that I didn't have increased innate ability but merely a greater willingness to try it and a better understanding of the ability I did have. Or maybe my brain really did grow. Either way, it was interesting to me that I could improve my ability to do something by doing a lot of something completely different.
Shimon Peres gave a talk at leweb3 in paris the other day and said something like "why waste our intellectual capacity remembering things when we can just google it" - this from a guy who speaks (at least) three languages (answered questions in english and french at that event) and talked for nearly an hour without any notes - at the grand old age of 83! Maybe he used to be a cabbie..
He suggested we should use our minds to be creative rather than remembering things, which is perhaps not such a bad idea.
Because we all know that the opposite of "London" is "American". How about, "London cabbies, unlike their Liverpool equivalents..."
The only real answer to all of your real questions is, welcome to tomorrow.
The article and the slashdot post fail to mention that most of the Cabbies in UK are from Eastern Europe now.
The job of a taxi driver isn't regarded highly, even despite the high wages + even more through tips.
Plus you can simply earn more by driving more, the job is very flexible and has some more perks.
Anyway, the funny thing about those foreing drivers is they all have to learn the streets and routes of a given city, before even going there.
I did IT for one recruitment company and they would train all the wannabe cabbies just by giving them a street list, a map and few others items. The the prospective employer would interview them about few routes and if they passed they flew to UK.
It all works out pretty well for quite a few years now.
Med-I-Cal, Inc. has filed a patent on a revolutionary new method of improving muslce tone. From an interview with company CEO Mr. Smith:
"After long and expensive testing, we have found that repeatedly lifting heavy objects for as little as 15 minutes each day causes muscle mass in adults to increase and the amount of body fat to decrease without any of the side effects our current line of hormonal products may, under extremely rare circumstances and with no liability to us, show. We are seeking to bring such objects with an easy to grip handle into the market within the next 10 years."
Mr. Smith also stated that the makers of many piratical weightlifting products currently flooding the market would face "heavy consequences" and proceeded to pick up and throw a car towards a 3rd-story window in a fit of hormone-induced rage. Luckily a passing taxi driver was able to stop the car in midflight and bring it down safely with his amazing psychokinetic powers, the result of strenuously exercising his brain for years beyond human limits.
Mr. Smith and the taxi driver then engaged in a superpowered fight that reduced most of downtown into smoking rubble. The fight ended in a draw when the smoke caused the combatants to lose sight of each other and wander off. The taxi drivers union settled out of court to use their mind powers to restore the city, heal the injured and raise the dead, a task that took them approximately 15 minutes. Mr. Smith, being the head of a large corporation, was not accused despite having started the fight.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
They would reduce the increase in the size, and deliciousness, of the brain..
Oops.. did I say deliciousness? Ignore that, there's no way that this study could have been funded by hungry zombies hoping to fatten the calves before the slaught.. er.... never mind that too.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Yeah, old news. A London cabbie even won the TV 'Mastermind' competition many years back...
Did anyone else read that as "adult brains grown by specialists". I got this image of brains in vats - evil science experiment - for a second there.
There was a time when movies had plots. So you knew who's ass it was, and why it was farting.
-Not Sure
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.
Don't get hung up on cause->effect, which implies a one-way relationship. Some things fall into that category, but many things, particularly those involving the brain, are feedback loops where the factors involved are both cause and effect at the same time. Our brain is loaded with feedback loops, as that is how we learn. We know that learning affects the brain in a physical way (children who were never exposed to language have grossly underdeveloped language centers), and we know that the brain's physical parameters affect learning (a child with damaged/underdeveloped language centers may be unable to learn language).
So the taxi-drivers probably self-select for memory because that's what the job takes -- e.g. I'd never take a job as a driver unless desperate, since I'm terrible at remembering street names and names in general. Yet it only makes sense that the task of having to constantly remember directions and street names would enhance the portions of the brain responsible for remembering them.
The enemies of Democracy are
Seattle at least, and some older cities on the same coast such as San Francisco, completely break the mould here. While downtown Seattle has, sometimes, a sort of grid (because part of what was there first was gutted), driving around the immediate environs such as Fremont, Ballard and Queen Anne is an interesting exercise in navigation. One way streets, name changes, irregular intersections and best of all completely irregular matching of the older residential streets to the bigger grid make it really tricky to get even a few blocks without your route coiling like a drunken cobra. The topography on which the cities are built makes it worse yet.