Navigation
IN 2000, a study found that taxi drivers who
acquire The Knowledge, which requires
memorising thousands of London streets – have
a greater volume of grey matter in the posterior
hippocampus but less in the anterior
hippocampus, making them better at memory
tasks involving landmarks but poorer at recalling
complex visual information. This provided
evidence for plasticity in the adult human brain.
Could our reliance on GPS also be changing
the way our brains work? Researchers from
McGill University in Canada used fMRI scans to
compare GPS users with non-GPS users.
Those who navigated without GPS had higher
activity and a greater volume of grey matter in
the hippocampus than those who relied on GPS.
In another study, people who drove a route
using sat-nav could not remember scenes from
the journey as well as those without sat-nav,
and were poorer at retracing their steps from
memory alone.
“It’s possible that reliance on technology
could cause some brain areas to grow and others
to shrink,” says University College London’s
Dr Sam Gilbert. “Something similar was shown
in the original taxi driver study. But occasional
use of sat-nav probably won’t have as strong an
effect as learning The Knowledge and relying on
it as part of your job.”Verdict: Yes, technology may change our brains
when it comes to navigationGhost phone calls
Have you ever imagined your phone is vibrating in your
pocket, only to pull it out and find you imagined it?
You’re not alone: it turns out ‘phantom vibration
syndrome’ is a common phenomenon. A study of
doctors at a hospital in Massachusetts found that
70 per cent of doctors reported experiencing such
‘ghost calls’, while a US study of college students found
up to 90 per cent were familiar with the phenomenon.
But fear not – psychologists say this is not a sign of
madness, but rather that we are so alert to phone calls
and messages that we misinterpret slight muscle
spasms as proof of a call. We are so anxious not to miss
a call that our brains overcompensate by biasing us
towards false alarms.Jo Carlowe is a freelance journalist with a degree
in psychology. Her work regularly appears in
UK broadsheet newspapers as well as in medical
and scientific publications.GETTY X2| THE BRAINSCIENCE| THE BRAINSCIENCE46 52 February 2017February 2017