A study published in the journal Current Biology suggests that the brain of London taxi drivers changes as they learn to navigate the 25,000 streets of the British city and identify the destinations most requested by tourists and businessmen.
Images of the brains of novice taxi drivers were used for the analysis, and they were also subjected to memory tests. The results were compared with a group of control drivers who did not drive a taxi. At the beginning of the study, there were hardly any differences when comparing the brain scans of both groups. But after four years of training, the licensed taxi apprentices showed an increase in gray matter in the back of the hippocampus , which is key to both memory and the development of spatial navigation skills. These changes did not occur neither in the taxi driver apprentices who did not obtain the license nor in the people in the control group.
Eleanor Maguire and her colleagues at the Center for Neuroimaging at University College London say the study confirms that the brain is plastic and that it can change with training and learning at any age. On the other hand, in his experiments Maguire found that taxi drivers had a worse ability to memorize other tasks in which visual information is involved, suggesting that "this is the price that must be paid for acquiring specialized knowledge".
