Growing Our Brains Through Learning


 

Tips and Tricks for Back to School
Growing Our Brains Through Learning

...Neuroplasticity and What London Taxi Drivers Can Teach Us About Our Brains

In the last 25 years there has been an explosion in our understanding about how our brains work. A ground-breaking study, published in 2000, used MRI technology to compare the brains of experienced taxi cab drivers and bus drivers who drive the city streets of London every day.

In contrast to bus drivers, whose driving routes are well-established and unchanging, London taxi drivers undergo extensive training to learn how to navigate to thousands of places within the city. Called The Knowledge, it is unique to London taxi licensing and involves a series of gruelling exams, based on memorisation of the complicated and extensive network of London streets.  

Neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire of University College London first got the idea to study London cab drivers from research on memory champions of the animal world. Some birds and mammals, such as western scrub jays and squirrels, cache food and dig it up later, which means they must memorize the locations of all their hiding spots. Researchers noticed that a part of the brain called the hippocampus was much larger in these animals than in similar species that did not secret away their snacks. 

Maguire’s study revealed that in London taxi drivers, the posterior hippocampi were much larger than that of the bus drivers (who served as the control subjects). Even more exciting was that the size of the hippocampus directly correlated with the length of time that someone was a taxi driver–the longer someone drove a taxi, the larger their hippocampus.

The London Taxi Cab Study provides a compelling example of the brain’s neuroplasticity, or ability to reorganize and transform itself as it is exposed to learning and new experiences. Having to constantly learn new routes in the city forced the taxi cab drivers’ brains to create new neural pathways “in response to the need to store an increasingly detailed spatial representation.” These pathways permanently changed the structure and size of the brain, an amazing example of the living brain at work.

 

Neurobiologist Howard Eichenbaum of Boston University commended the study for answering the "chicken-and-egg question" posed by Maguire's earlier research. He sees it as confirmation of the idea that cognitive exercise produces physical changes in the brain.

"The initial findings could have been explained by a correlation, that people with big hippocampi become taxi drivers," he says. "But it turns out it really was the training process that caused the growth in the brain. It shows you can produce profound changes in the brain with training. That's a big deal."

Fortunately, we don’t need a commercial drivers’ license to stretch our brain in new ways. All we have to do is continue to challenge ourselves throughout our lifetime by learning new things, trying out different hobbies and interests, and engaging in mentally stimulating activities that keep our brain growing strong.

 

Check out our Academic Learning page to see how we have been encouraging our students to expand their knowledge.

 

Helen Brocklesby
Director
hbrocklesby@isps.edu.tt

 

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