If you feel permanently disoriented, the maps do not help guide you and you get lost even walking around your neighborhood all your life, you may suffer a topographic disorder, according to a study published in the magazineNeuropsychologia.
Its authors, two Canadian neuroscientists, claim to have identified the first case of a patient suffering fromorientation problemsin all environments without there being any brain damage to justify it. And they suspect that more people around the world have similar congenital symptoms without being diagnosed. “Imagine what your life would be like if you weren’t able to find your way back home after shopping,” says study co-author Giuseppe Iaria. . “Navigating and orienting yourself in a specific environment arecomplex cognitive skillsthat involve different parts of the brain related tomemory, theattention, theperceptionand the taking ofdecisions“, Add.
In addition, to get your bearings you need to handle two types of memory: theprocedure memory, which allows us to manage distances and choose the movements we make, and thespatial memory, which creates a “mental representation” of the place where we are (the cognitive map) and allows us to “navigate” through it to find the route to follow without getting lost.
To help potential victims of thetopographic disorientation, Iaria and his partner Jason J Barton have created the webGetting Lostwith information, tips and tests, which will soon be available in Spanish.
