Proof that knowledge is good for the brain

They have The Knowledge by name, and the knowledge by nature. London taxi drivers - that rare breed who can scoot down an obscure sideroad, perform a three-point turn on a postage stamp and recite the complete works of Richard Littlejohn all at the same time - are today revealed by scientists to hav...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Guardian (London)
Main Author Tim Radford and Will Woodward
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London (UK) Guardian News & Media Limited 14.03.2000
Subjects
Brain
Navigation
Taxicabs
London England
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Summary:They have The Knowledge by name, and the knowledge by nature. London taxi drivers - that rare breed who can scoot down an obscure sideroad, perform a three-point turn on a postage stamp and recite the complete works of Richard Littlejohn all at the same time - are today revealed by scientists to have bigger brains. London researchers report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a prestigious US journal, that they scanned the brains of 16 right-handed London cabbies and found that in all cases, the size of a region of the brain called the hippocampus was millimetres larger than in a comparable group of 50 ordinary right- handed men who did not drive taxis.
ISSN:0261-3077