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.

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.

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.

Does this apply only to "brain" mass ?

[Joebert]

"GPS [Global Positioning System] may have a big effect," says Dr Eleanor Maguire, who led the research at University College London. "We very much hope they don't start using it. We believe this area of the brain increased in grey matter volume because of the huge amount or data they have to memorise.If they all start using GPS, that knowledge base will be less and possibly effect the brain changes we are seeing."

So, Construction Workers shouldn't use heavy equipment because it could effect their muscle tone ?

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:Wrong brain cell, doofus!

[FyRE666]

In defence of London cabbies, it's hard to fault them on their ability to drive or navigate between two points. I've no idea how they manage to stand 8 hours a day of London traffic without becoming raging psychopaths though...

Re:london streets

[Anonymous Coward]

It's discriminatory to require that people whose job it is to transport people from place to place in an efficient fashion actually know the places they're transporting to and from and their relationship to one another?

That's mind-bogglingly stupid, and that's even taking into account the forum in which you said it.

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.

Re:Cause or Effect?

[peragrin]

while i agree with you it's more like drivers who get lost easily don't tend to last long as a cab driver.

Also while there are some cab drivers who should be doing something else, There are those whose only real talent is directions and locations.

Re:What is it with...

[Anonymous Coward]

I (British (English)) now live in the USA.
I have not taken many cab rides over here (too damn expensive).
Without exception, during the few rides tha tI have taken, I have had to tell the driver how to get there. Fortunately I was warned about this phenomenon.
I haven't taken a cab in Cairo.
I have taken a cab in Sweden. It was well equiped with credit card readers, GPS and internet connection! (Probably included a few things I didn't recognize)
I have taken cab rides in other countries too. Nothing stands out in my memory about them though (apart from getting ripped off in Italy)

His dick probably feels bigger because it is larger.
He probably made the comment about the USA (I am guessing rather than America) because that is where most /. readers originate from.
Maybe you are feeling sensitive? Please tell us more

Re:What is it with...

[CmdrGravy]

Oooo, touchy !

No doubt British Taxis are better than French & Egyptian taxis as well but since most people who read this are American it makes more sense to point out how much better they are than Americans rather than some other random country.

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.

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. :)

Sounds like a good reason *for* GPS

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

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.

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."

Re:+1 Funny

[cp.tar]

from a Military perspective it has been a very successful and reasonably casualty free war.

if you say that it has been anything except for successful for the American Military (or that there are a lot of civilian casulaties in this war) you're demonstrating a lack of objectivity in the discussion.

Well then, from a military perspective, the terrorists who brought down the Twins were also very successful and did a reasonably casualty-free job.

If you're saying that it has been anything except for successful for the terrorists (or that there were a lot of civilian casualties), you're demonstrating a lack of objectivity in the discussion.

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:What about trivia nuts?

[gad_zuki!]

Depends on the television shows of course. I dont like this general dismissal of an entire medium. When peope say it about the web, the geeks get all up in arms, but the geeks do the same thing to tv.

TV is mostly entertainment. So its really not that different than me driving my ass to the comedy clubs downtown. I'm "engaged" in the same way, yet we dont see so much PC hysteria about this or other forms of entertainment. Well, we do with videogames, but again its a double standard depending on who is complaining. I am much more concerned about the pacing than the content myself. Arguably, too much tv or videogames given to too young of a person can lead to mild attention problems.

Also I think a lot of this "brain strength" and what may or may not come up on some EEG somewhere is a lot of hair-spliting. If one part of the brain lights up more than another that doesnt mean anything if we don't see a correlated human behavior. What if I found a dozen musicians who don't light up the EEG like someone in your example? Are they lesser musicians?

The brain isnt like a muscle. Nor is it like a computer. Its complex enough and not well understood enough to the point where our analogies are more trouble than they are worth. The Mark I brain is surprisingly resilient and the various fearmongering about damaging one's brain through culturally dis-approved activities borders on silliness.

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: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")

Re:london streets

[James Youngman]

Many of the smaller UK cities (Birmingham, Manchetser and Leeds, for example) have licensed hansom cabs, too. But the key thing is that they also regulate their minicabs too. It's possible to do both.

So the problem is not that London regulates its black cabs. The problem is that it doesn't regulate the minicabs.

Re:So how does this explain George Bush ?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Dumb compared to the average American? Of course not. Dumb compared to other presidents? You bet.

Re:Cause or Effect?

[aussie_a]

Sadly, most don't even remember how to do the arithmetic. They were all instructed in elementary school, but it didn't stick...

I'm sure people said the same thing about morse code.

Re:Cause or Effect?

[General Wesc]

You're missing the best example. Remember Phaedrus? Socrates quoting the god Theus on the invention of writing: '...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.' Writing is evil! ;-)