Cabbie Brains Fine Tuned for Navigation
Cabbie Brains Fine Tuned for Navigation
Research May Explain Why Taxi Drivers Have Bigger Brains
Sept. 10, 2003 -- On the surface, it seems that most maneuvering done by cab drivers is around potholes and through gridlock -- often while your heart is in your throat. But inside, brain cells are full of jam-packed activity as well.
A new study finds that the type of navigational skills used by taxi hacks, along with the rest of us, triggers an internal traffic jam in the brain -- releasing a flurry of cell activity in different parts of the brain. Specifically, researchers have discovered a new way in which specific cells encode different types of information relating to how we get from place-to-place.
This new finding, reported in this week's issue of Nature, may also help explain why previous research has found that the brains of cabbies actually grow to a larger-than-average size after years on the job.
"We now know a lot more about the cellular mechanisms -- the way in which cells encode information as people learn to navigate a new environment, such as a town," researcher Michael Kahana, PhD, of Brandeis University, tells WebMD.
Working with UCLA scientists, he found that some cells react in one part of the brain to location -- where we are. Some, in another brain area respond to landmarks -- what we see there. Some cells specifically respond to what we're looking for, while others still respond to combinations of place, view, and goal.
The study entailed observing the activity of specific brains cells of seven epileptic patients as they played a virtual "taxi driver" video game after having hundreds of electrodes surgically implanted in their brains. Still, the brain activity noted in those patients is probably the same to what occurs in those without epilepsy, says Kahana.
"Our patients had the electrodes implanted to find out where their seizures were coming from -- recordings that were needed for treatment of their medical condition," he says.
"We made use of this opportunity to study how cells in the brains of these patients responded as they played a taxi driver game; learning their way around a new computer-generated city. It was a simple question: What is the brain doing as we learn our way around a new environment?"
Cabbie Brains Fine Tuned for Navigation
Research May Explain Why Taxi Drivers Have Bigger Brains
Sept. 10, 2003 -- On the surface, it seems that most maneuvering done by cab drivers is around potholes and through gridlock -- often while your heart is in your throat. But inside, brain cells are full of jam-packed activity as well.
A new study finds that the type of navigational skills used by taxi hacks, along with the rest of us, triggers an internal traffic jam in the brain -- releasing a flurry of cell activity in different parts of the brain. Specifically, researchers have discovered a new way in which specific cells encode different types of information relating to how we get from place-to-place.
This new finding, reported in this week's issue of Nature, may also help explain why previous research has found that the brains of cabbies actually grow to a larger-than-average size after years on the job.
"We now know a lot more about the cellular mechanisms -- the way in which cells encode information as people learn to navigate a new environment, such as a town," researcher Michael Kahana, PhD, of Brandeis University, tells WebMD.
Working with UCLA scientists, he found that some cells react in one part of the brain to location -- where we are. Some, in another brain area respond to landmarks -- what we see there. Some cells specifically respond to what we're looking for, while others still respond to combinations of place, view, and goal.
The study entailed observing the activity of specific brains cells of seven epileptic patients as they played a virtual "taxi driver" video game after having hundreds of electrodes surgically implanted in their brains. Still, the brain activity noted in those patients is probably the same to what occurs in those without epilepsy, says Kahana.
"Our patients had the electrodes implanted to find out where their seizures were coming from -- recordings that were needed for treatment of their medical condition," he says.
"We made use of this opportunity to study how cells in the brains of these patients responded as they played a taxi driver game; learning their way around a new computer-generated city. It was a simple question: What is the brain doing as we learn our way around a new environment?"
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