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London Cabbies Have Bigger Hippocampi |
| Posted on Mar 09 2009 |
| Blog, News and Articles >> Brain |
Researchers credit complex daily tasks, such as navigating a labyrinth of 320 standard routes in a six-mile area, with increasing brain size. And functional MRI demonstrated that the longer on the job, the bigger the brain.
Still, there may be a price. As brain regions continually competed for space, the posterior hippocampus grew while the anterior hippocampus, which is associated with memory, decreased. “The brain has enormous plasticity,” says Edward Taub, PhD, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has studied neuroplasticity since the 1970s. “Every part of the brain is used. The more you use a function, it may be at the expense of another.”
As an outgrowth of the early taxi driver studies, U.S. scientists began exploring the effects of employing complicated navigational skills. At Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., scientists created the virtual taxicab video game to study the way brains work. As subjects play, they become increasingly proficient in navigating complex routes, which researchers believe is tied to building cognitive maps of the environment.
Additionally, German scientists reported in the June 2006 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience that the brains of German medical students, while studying for final exams, showed increases in the posterior hippocampus, similar to the London cabbie study. Three months later, according to MRI imaging, the hippocampus had returned to its former size.
Last changed: Dec 07 2009 at 10:21 AM
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