NAVIGATION BRAIN SITE LARGER IN TAXI DRIVERS

Exercise your brain muscle and it grows stronger and larger. That's the implication of a recent study involving brain scans of London cabbies. These drivers are famous for their encyclopedic knowledge of London's streets and airways, which they must study thoroughly for two years to memorize by heart in order to pass the test to get a license. Researchers at University College, London University compared the brains of 16 male taxi drivers with those of 5 other men of a similar age. According to the results they published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they found that among the cabbies, the back of the hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with spatial memory, was larger for the cabbies than for the other men. The longer the men had worked driving a cab, the larger that portion of the brain.

The implication for degenerative brain disease, the researchers noted, may be that if you don't use it, you may lose it.