Brains with “The Knowledge” are Bigger

This past year, researchers at the University College of London tested a hypothesis and ended up with results that were startling. It was hypothesized that in fact, the hippocampus in the brain may become larger as a result of being stimulated and tested, and as a result, become physically larger.The test subjects were London cabdrivers who had all passed the famous tests given by the Black Cab companies to test the knowledge of their drivers over the names, locations, and addresses of everything within the six-mile circular radius encompassing Kings Cross.The Knowledge is the term used by the drivers to describe the massive amount of information they must possess and be able to recall at an instant when a request is given to describe a driven route from any one point within the radius to another destination point within that radius. Originally, The Knowledge tested drivers on a set of 400 cab runs within the test area, but recently that number has been reduced to 320. Remembering all of them is no small feat, and nearly 40% of the people who take the classes with the goal of passing the test, in fact, fail.So when the researchers hooked up their test subjects to the MRI machines and administered a set of basic test questions, they found there was a definite correlation between the daily tasks of navigation and the structural brain changes. Drivers from competing non-commissioned cab companies found a size difference between the hippocampus of each group. IT was theorized that the constant stimulation of the area responsible for mapping in the human brain would indeed become larger and more responsive over time, as long as this area was consistently stimulated.They are sometimes given a list of hotels in Islington, and they must provide an accurate run map from the hotel to the requested location. Islington hotels are sometimes listed out of order, or with slight misspellings in order to test the degree of the driver’s mastery of the routes.