Enlarged hippocampus london taxi drivers

 · The researchers found that London cab drivers have uniquely bigger hippocampi than almost anyone else. We asked a few London cabbies about this in hopes they could help us understood how their. ) showed that the right posterior hippocampus was enlarged in taxi drivers from London, who memorize an enormous catalog of spatial information and navigate easily around the complex layout of London. Further work showed that elderly taxi drivers who were still driving.  · In her earliest studies, Maguire discovered that London taxi drivers had more gray matter in their posterior hippocampi than people who were similar in age, education and intelligence, but who did Author: Ferris Jabr.

The researchers then looked at retired taxi drivers (Maguire said it was a difficult task because they never seem to retire.). They wanted to see if the hippocampus of the retired drivers would shrink back to normal levels once they stopped using the driving skills to navigate the 25, streets of London. Licensed London taxi drivers show that humans have a remarkable capacity to acquire and use knowledge of a large complex city to navigate within it. Gray matter volume differences in the hippocampus relative to controls have been reported to accompany this expertise. The posterior hippocampi of taxi drivers were significantly larger relative to those of control subjects. A more anterior hippocampal region was larger in control subjects than in taxi drivers. Hippocampal volume correlated with the amount of time spent as a taxi driver (positively in the posterior and negatively in the anterior hippocampus).

Using licensed London taxi drivers as a model for learning and memory, the Migratory birds exhibit larger hippocampus volumes compared. The researchers found that the taxi-drivers had a larger right posterior hippocampus than in the left. Exactly the part of the brain that is. For more on London taxi drivers and why London (UK) is particularly useful for A larger hippocampus is associated with longer-lasting spatial memory.