Making a Brain Map That We Can Use

The human brain is a remarkable organ. It has the power to reason, create, analyze, and process tons of data each twenty-four hours. The brain also gives humans the power to move effectually in an environment using an innate sense of direction. This skill is called spatial orientation, and it is peculiarly useful for finding routes in an unfamiliar identify, following directions to some other person'southward house, or making a midnight raid of the fridge in the dark.

Spatial orientation is crucial for adapting to new environments and getting from i point to another. Without it, people will walk around in endless circles, never being able find which way they want to go.

The brain has a specialized region but for navigating the spatial surroundings. This structure is called the hippocampus, besides known as the map reader of the brain. The hippocampus helps individuals determine where they are, how they got to that particular place, and how to navigate to the next destination. Reading maps and developing navigational skills can affect the encephalon in beneficial ways. In fact, using orientation and navigational skills oft tin actually crusade the hippocampus and the brain to grow, forming more neural pathways every bit the number of mental maps increase.

A study by scientists at University College in London establish that grey affair in the brains of taxi drivers grew and adapted to assistance them shop detailed mental maps of the urban center. The drivers underwent MRI scans, and those scans showed that the taxi drivers have larger hippocampi when compared to other people. In addition, the scientists found that the more than time the drivers spent on the job, the more than the hippocampus changes structurally to adapt the large amount of navigational experience. Drivers who spent more than than xl years in a taxi had more adult hippocampi than those only starting out. The study shows that experience with the spatial environment and navigation tin can have a direct influence on the brain itself.

However, the utilise of modern navigational engineering science and smartphone apps has the potential to harm the encephalon depending on how it is used in today's world. Map reading and orienteering are becoming lost arts in the world of global positioning systems and other geospatial technologies. As a upshot, more and more people are losing the power to navigate and find their manner in unfamiliar terrain. According to the BBC, police in northern Scotland issued an appeal for hikers to larn orienteering skills rather than relying solely on smartphones for navigation. This came later on repeated rescues of lost hikers by police in Grampian, ane of which included finding xiv people using mount rescue teams and a helicopter. The police stated that the growing use of smartphone apps for navigation can lead to problem because people become besides dependent on technology without understanding the tangible world around them.

At McGill University, researchers did a series of three studies on the effects of using GPS devices on the brain. The scientists wanted to measure the brain activity of people while using two methods that humans use when navigating. The commencement method is called spatial navigation, and this is where landmarks are used to build those cognitive maps that help us decide where we are in a detail environment. The second is called stimulus-response. In this situation, humans run on auto-pilot mode and retrace their steps according to repetition. For example, taking the aforementioned route home from work becomes 2d nature after a while, and sooner or later you lot detect yourself retracing the route out of addiction, not thinking about how yous got dwelling house. Researchers claimed that this way is more closely related to the manner a GPS is used to navigate.

What researchers found was significant in terms of how spatial orientation affects the brain. After performing fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans on people using both of those strategies, the individuals that used a spatial navigation strategy had an increased activeness in the hippocampus. Conversely, they plant that using a GPS excessively might to lead to atrophy in the hippocampus equally a person ages, and this could put them at higher run a risk for cerebral diseases later in life. One of these diseases might be Alzheimer's which impairs the hippocampus and leads to problems with spatial orientation and memory. Researchers also institute a greater volume of grey matter in those who used spatial navigation, and this group scored higher on standardized cognition tests than those who used the other strategy. The results of this written report demonstrate that using orienteering and building cerebral maps might be meliorate for the brain than using a GPS.

From the periodical commodity; "Correlation of book change with time as a taxi driver." This figure takes a look at the changes in the volume of gray matter in taxi drivers over time.  The report institute that "the volume of gray matter in the right hippocampus was establish to correlate significantly with the amount of time spent learning to be and practicing as a licensed London taxi driver, positively in the right posterior hippocampus (b) and negatively in the inductive hippocampus (c)."

Researchers are now questioning whether modern global positioning systems and advanced maps are doing humans any skilful. Studies washed past the British Cartographic Society accept determined that high-tech maps can get users from Indicate A to Point B but are falling short compared to traditional paper maps. Old-fashioned printed maps non but evidence users how to navigate just too requite other important data about an surface area such as historical landmarks, government buildings and cultural institutions. The fear of using a GPS exclusively is a loss of cultural and geographic literacy. The more humans employ GPS, the more cut off from the real world they might become.

Dr. Toru Ishikawa, a researcher and specialist in human spatial behavior, has done numerous studies on how using a GPS device affects the ability of humans to navigate the surrounding environment. Ishikawa and colleagues at the University of Tokyo asked three groups of people to find their way through an urban environment on foot using various means of navigation. One group used a mobile phone with a built-in GPS and another group used a newspaper map. Researchers actually showed the last group the route they needed to take before navigating on their own. The report plant that the grouping that used the GPS walked slower, made more stops, and walked farther than the others. They fabricated more errors and took longer to achieve their destination. After their walks, the GPS users also exhibited a poorer noesis of the terrain, topography, and the routes they took when asked to draw a map. The group shown the route beforehand by researchers did the best in the study.

Researchers who bespeak out the benefits of paper maps claim that using a GPS actually makes it harder for people to navigate. A GPS device encourages people to stare down at a screen instead of looking around at their surround. The size of GPS screen too means that users cannot view both their location and their destination at the same time. However, paper maps practise not rely on getting a signal, and using a map in conjunction with a compass gives people a better feel for the natural world. Anyone tin can learn orienteering with a map and compass, no matter what navigational skills they are built-in with. Those in favor of paper maps too betoken on that in that location is a large deviation between precision and accurateness when using a GPS. A device can be precise without being accurate. Anyone who has found themselves in the wrong place simply exactly where the GPS told them to go knows what that ways.

A GPS tin can just go then far in aiding people with navigation. Barry Brown, co-manager of the Mobile Life Heart and co-writer of a research report called, "The Normal Natural Troubles of Driving with GPS" tells the story of a human from San Diego who flew to the E Coast. When he arrived, he picked up a rental car outfitted with a GPS but, later twenty minutes of driving, the man sensed he had been headed in the wrong direction. He so realized that he had entered his own California address and that the GPS was leading him three,000 miles away. Similarly, according to More Intelligent Life, a magazine from the Economist, Princess Diana'southward niece in one case told a taxi driver to take her Stamford Bridge, a football (soccer) stadium in London. Instead, she concluded up 150 miles in the wrong direction in the village of Stamford Bridge. A GPS cannot always save united states from our own human being errors.

Those in favor of GPS devices argue that in-auto navigation systems are most helpful when driving. These digital maps are helpful because they can tell the driver the location of the nearest restaurant or gas station. Some GSP devices can also aid people brand contact with friends though location-based social networking. In fact, a Taiwanese study suggested that GPS devices outdid newspaper maps when it came to driving efficiency. However, a study by Barry Brown and the University of California, San Diego institute another style in which GSP navigation could be harmful to the human brain. Drivers who use GPS often find that their navigation skills accept atrophied. Like whatsoever other cognitive skill, map reading and navigation demand to be practiced in order to non diminish.

The concern over GPS devices and its effects on the human brain just highlights a greater unease of what engineering science is doing to disquisitional thinking and memorization. With data merely a click abroad, people are losing their common sense. Each new innovation of Google Maps simply brings about a decrease in basic geographical knowledge. Moreover, there are even apps for people to discover what flooring they are on in a building every bit if looking for floor numbers is too difficult. Researchers, academics, and even hike leaders are becoming concerned that engineering science is decreasing our mental capacity and ascertainment skills. Then, if technology fails, people will be incapable of determining where they are.

Gender also has an important effect on navigation and spatial orientation skills. Several studies accept demonstrated that men and women use different strategies when trying to navigate. A study from the Netherlands asked men and women to detect their way back to their cars in a crowded parking lot. As a result, men tended to utilise more mileage terms when describing the road while women mentioned landmarks more than often. A professor at Utrecht University, Albert Postma, claims that a man's brain is better suited to precise distances while women focus more on the human relationship between objects. These differences in spatial orientation, although rather small, are the results of biological differences in the brains between genders but also unlike learning experiences.

Several studies have analyzed the difference between men and women when it comes to map reading and navigation.

Some other study asked a group of men and women in a Mexican village to get together mushrooms. The researchers fitted them with satellite positioning devices and heart rate monitors. The written report found that the women expended less free energy and seemed to know where to go. The women were also more likely to recall their routes using landmarks and retraced their paths to the nigh productive areas. Although men are usually better at reading and using maps, women usually get to their destination quicker because they are meliorate at remembering landmarks. Consequently, women are less likely to get lost.

Other studies demonstrate that men and women develop different methods of navigating and orienting themselves to the spatial environment because of differences in roles as hunters and gatherers. This could explain the reason why men get lost in supermarkets while women tin can observe their way effectually in minutes. Inquiry done at Queen Mary, University of London demonstrated that men are ameliorate at finding hidden objects while women are better at remembering where objects are at. In addition, Frank Furedi, a sociology professor at Kent University, states that women are better at making judgment calls while men tend to overcomplicate the most bones navigational tasks.

The use of map reading and navigating skills to explore the spatial environs can do good the brain and cause certain areas to grow while the utilize of modern technology for navigation seems to just hinder the brain. No thing which strategy men and women utilize for navigation, it is important to practice those skills and tune into the environment. While engineering is a useful tool, in the end the human brain remains the well-nigh sophisticated map reader.

References

BBC News.  "Hillwalking Alert over Smartphones afterward Cairngorms Rescue."BBC News. BBC, xiv Aug. 2012. Accessed: 08 Mar. 2013.

Cox, Lauren . "Study Shows People Walk in Circles in the Woods."ABC News. N.p., 20 Aug. 2009. Accessed 08 Mar. 2013.

Eleanor A. Maguire, David G. Gadian, Ingrid Southward. Johnsrude, Catriona D. Good, John Ashburner, Richard Southward. J. Frackowiak, and Christopher D. Frith.  "Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers".PNAS 2000 97 (8) 4398-4403; published alee of impress March 14, 2000, doi:ten.1073/pnas.070039597

Faulkner, Katherine. "Men are meliorate at map reading, but women are superior at remembering routes, study finds."Mail Online. North.p., 2 May 2010. Accessed 8 Mar. 2013.

Madrigal, Alexis C. "How Google Builds Its Maps – €"and What It Means for the Future of Everything."The Atlantic. N.p., 6 Sept. 2012. Accessed 08 Mar. 2013.

McKinney, John . "Paper Maps Not Prepare to Fold Yet."Pacific Standard. N.p., 22 Mar. 2010. Accessed 08 Mar. 2013.

Miller, Rebecca. "Google Maps illustrates how people depend likewise much on technology."Arizona Daily Wildcat. North.p., 11 Apr. 2012. Accessed 08 Mar. 2013.

Nierenberg, Cari. "Where's the auto? Men are (a little) better at remembering"NBC News. Due north.p., 26 November. 2012. Accessed 08 Mar. 2013.

Stross, Randall. "GPS and Human Error Can Lead Drivers Astray"The New York Times. N.p., 1 Sept. 2012. Accessed 08 Mar. 2013.

Related

• Create Your Ain Mental Maps with MindRider Helmets
• Your Brain on Maps
• Creating a Spatial View of the Brain

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