“Taxi and ambulance drivers are less likely than workers in almost any other job to die of Alzheimer’s disease.” The key difference: “the constant work of locating yourself in space, tracking a destination and updating a mental map as conditions change.”
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Probably harder to test, but another activity that potentially boosts the same brain pathways would be travel to novel locations.
Paris is my favorite example: No matter what journey I was on by foot, I'd constantly orient to key landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, Montparnasse Tower, or Sacre Cour, depending on where I am in the city. Being there as a traveler and seeking out numerous novel destinations means none of the paths were really repeated; constant wayfinding, correcting, learning, and improvising. With croissants as a reward.
And of course it's felt the same in other destinations.
If anyone is offering a grant to compare this study's results with the brains of those who travel, I'm willing to be a test subject. Just pay me in croissants and I'll sign anything you want.
I'm curious whether increasing reliance on GPS directions may erode that protective effect?
I wonder if huge amounts of time playing video games with especially large and dynamic spaces - like Minecraft - will produce similar experiences of continuous real-time navigation.
Yeah this was my thought as well.
It's interesting that the article says things like "The researchers concluded that..." and "Researchers believe..." If you read the original paper, the researchers suggested a hypothesis and also noted a number of other possible explanations for the results of their analysis that have nothing to do with the health benefits of continuous real-time navigation. Saying they concluded an effect is a correlation vs causation error. The paper notes a correlation and suggests a hypothesis to be tested for causation. They haven't tested that hypothesis. They have not concluded anything and they do not believe anything at this point. There is correlation between pool drownings and the number of times Nicholas Cage appeared in a movie in the year of death and between death by bedsheet entanglement and per capita consumption of cheese. Correlation does not mean causation. But I guess "scientists believe" gets more clicks than "scientists note untested correlation". Beware the false prophets of causation (and journalists).
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