YEARS of driving around city streets increases the size of a key navigation
centre in taxi drivers’ brains, say researchers in London. But cabbies’
geographical know-how may come at a price: another brain region shrinks to
compensate.
Three years ago, Eleanor Maguire of University College London and her
colleagues found that the hippocampi of London taxi drivers became active when
they described routes through the city, suggesting that this brain region is
involved in navigation
(Â鶹´«Ã½, 13 September 1997, p 16).
Now, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the team has found that 16 taxi
drivers have a bigger…
