Your GPS is Rotting Your Brain

[PaulG]

Read this before you use it next time.  Your brain might thank you.    I copied the article as the link would not connect to the specific story.




Navigating our brains
What happens when technology puts our brain on autopilot

    Toronto Sun29 Nov 2016 MAURA R. O'CONNOR

A few years ago on a visit to the high desert of northern New Mexico I punched the name of a local hot spring into my phone's navigation app and set off in my car, following the directions down a twisty dirt track that ended 10 metres from the edge of a cliff. Some thirty metres below was the Rio Grande and, I assumed, the hot spring. The directions would have been perfect if cars could fly.

Stories of being led astray by satellite navigation systems such as GPS — Global Positioning System — are increasingly common as digital devices become ubiquitous in our daily lives. Some tales are simply ridiculous, others have ended in death.

While many of the reports we hear about tragedy on the roads involving technology have to do with drivers distracted by using their devices while at the wheel, research has found our reliance on technology for tasks like navigation may have far wider consequences, in effect causing some of the same problems in the brain that those diagnosed with dementia experience. Not only are many distracted at the wheel, their brains may be less resilient as well.

"If people stop using their brains and totally devote themselves to their handheld devices to find their way around the world, that could have a negative effect on getting around, and spillover effects on other things like memory," Lynn Nadel, a neuroscientist at the University of Arizona, said.

GPS solves a problem unique to the human species: we lack a biological compass that can orient us in space. Nearly all other organisms known to science can navigate long distances with astonishing precision, while we're prone to becoming lost. Humans have adapted by using observation, memory and invention to get around this problem and navigate.

Nadel and fellow researcher John O'Keefe published a landmark book in 1978 exploring the role of the hippocampus, a simple sea-horse-shaped structure of grey matter deep in the brain. They argued that cells in the hippocampus build blocks of cognitive maps, the internal representation of space that allows both rats and humans to recall routes and relationships between landmarks and orient in space.

Building on their research, scientists have learned more about the hippocampus and its role in helping us map complex spaces in our minds. They've also learned the hippocampus is the basis of our episodic memory, giving us the ability to recall events about our lives. When you remember something from your past, that's your hippocampus in action.

In the early 1990s, one of the scientists studying this relationship between memory and space was Véronique Bohbot, a student of Nadel's in Arizona. Bohbot, now a neuroscientist at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and associate professor at Montreal's McGill University, became interested in the possibility that people use different structures in the brain for different strategies of navigation and began to design studies focused on one called the caudate nucleus.

The caudate nucleus operates differently than the hippocampus. Whereas the latter is involved in creating cognitive maps, the caudate nucleus is responsible for a "stimulus-response strategy." According to Bohbot, this allows the brain to learn a series of directional cues such as "turn right" and "turn left" and create a habit of them. Effectively, we go on autopilot.

The more we use autopilot, Bohbot found, the less we rely on our hippocampus, which can shrink its grey matter volume. Several studies have found that reduced grey matter in the hippocampus is associated with cognitive deficits of aging like memory impairment, and increases the risk of atrophy, dementia, and Alzheimer's disease.

"There is a use it or lose it thing about the brain," said Nadel, who cited studies showing that London taxi drivers, who are required to memorize vast amounts of spatial information and create new routes on a daily basis to zip passengers around the British capital, have more grey matter in their hippocampus.

Bohbot says research so far is changing scientific understanding on how hippocampal volume relates to disease and aging.

"In the past we may never have had to go on autopilot," said Bohbot. "With GPS, you might have even less of a reason to pull out that cognitive map. The hippocampus may be lacking this requirement to work for decades when you only use it once in a while."

Maura R. O'Connor is a fellow at MIT's Knight Science Journalism Program and is currently working on a book about neuroscience and human relationships to space, time, and memory. Her first book, "Resurrection Science: Conservation, De-Extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things," was named one of Amazon's Best Books of 2015. O'Connor has written for Slate, the New Yorker, and Harper's.

[ZOA NOM]

I consider it natural selection. I encourage widespread usage and reliance on the technology in the hope that the herd will be culled.

[giantkiller]

I like GPS. For when I just take off and ride with no destination. End up driving a lot of gravel roads. And when I'm done. I use the GPS on my phone, to look up the way back.

[Pat Conlon]

GPS is a life saver. It's nice to find the closest gas station in BFE when you're on reserve and it's raining....at night....and you're tired....and wet....and cold.

My GPS routine is in the morning with my bacon and eggs and a map....and sticky notes for the window of my tank bag.

[Earl Svorks]

  The GPS is not the only device which may have such an effect . Some folks with whom I have discussed this subject opine that we are far "smarter" than our predecessors by virtue of all the information available to us at the touch of a button, ie; the internet. Like many members of our virtual community, I grew up without the high level of technology that surrounds us today. I do agree that some of that tech. is very useful some of the time ,I think it has not made us any more intelligent.
  There was a time ,not long ago when 90% of what I needed to know was kept between my ears.
As a tradesman, it was accumulated over the course of decades.  Some will say this is ancient history.
They may be right. The rate at which things are changed by today's technology would make it impossible to stay up to date without access to that virtual world.
    That's my 2 cents on the subject.
    Cheers
    Simon

[fj johnnie]

  The GPS is not the only device which may have such an effect . Some folks with whom I have discussed this subject opine that we are far "smarter" than our predecessors by virtue of all the information available to us at the touch of a button, ie; the internet. Like many members of our virtual community, I grew up without the high level of technology that surrounds us today. I do agree that some of that tech. is very useful some of the time ,I think it has not made us any more intelligent.
  There was a time ,not long ago when 90% of what I needed to know was kept between my ears.
As a tradesman, it was accumulated over the course of decades.  Some will say this is ancient history.
They may be right. The rate at which things are changed by today's technology would make it impossible to stay up to date without access to that virtual world.
    That's my 2 cents on the subject.
    Cheers
    Simon

Absolutely right. I also think that with information so easily accessed there is no need to retain it.

[movenon]

I still use a dumb phone and have an car rated GPS in the tank bag. I have no interest in looking at anything but the road while riding but I find it extremely useful for finding food/fuel/shopping etc when traveling.  On rare occasion it is nice to stop and take a look at where the hell I am and how to get where I want.  Also used it to plot out routes for trip miles and est travel time. Just a tool never a substitute for the brain.  Someday I might upgrade to a smart phone and use it for the same purpose. There some good apps.
George

[krusty]

Reminds me of the days when calculators were banned from examination rooms.
Before EFTPOS was available I would often see a store clerk pull out a calculator to add two numbers. Nowadays no mental effort is required to tally and work out change, magic chips at work but certainly not brains.

[pdxfj]

It seems there is a special kind of stupid here in Oregon.  It even effects people who come and visit the state.

This is not the first time this has happened and won't be the last.  A few years ago a family got stuck and the father ended up dying after trying to go for help.  If you're really that stupid to blindly follow your GPS and not use your better judgment or common sense, I think it's natural selection at work.

http://www.kptv.com/clip/12961247/oregon-city-family-stuck-in-snow-overnight-after-gps-led-them-astray

[airheadPete]

AGAIN?!?!  WTF?!
That's not far from where the Kim family got stuck & he died a few years back.
I've driven that area quite a bit, where they placed their little red "stuck" dot, there aren't any roads worthy of the name. Although this family didn't open a "road closed" gate, they do have a  Chihuahua, which speaks volumes...
Sheesh.