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New research has claimed that using a sat-nav to reach a destination can switch off areas of the brain that would otherwise be used to work out routes and that people pay less attention to the surrounding area when following the electronic lead.
The study was conducted by University College London and involved 24 volunteers navigating a computer simulation of Soho in London with the academics monitoring activity in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex - areas of the brain involved with memory, navigation, planning and decision-making.
When the participants navigated manually, spikes of activity were recorded when they entered new streets, with the brain recording more action when the number of options was increased.
However, the researchers found that no additional activity was detected when people followed the sat-nav's directions.
The findings ties in with a number of reports over several years of motorists getting into sticky situations as a result of blindly following instructions from a sat-nav, and could explain the cause of a number of these accidents.
Previous research by the university found the hippocampi of London taxi drivers expand as they learn 'the knowledge' - a test drivers need to pass in order to show they know the streets of the capital.
UCL's researchers also claimed the results from the latest study shows that drivers who follow directions do not engage that area of the brain, thereby limiting the learning of the city network.
The team also analysed the street network of major cities to work out how easy they are to navigate, finding that London - with a large network of small streets - is taxing in the hippocampus in comparision to the likes of the Manhattan district of New York, which is mainly formed of a grid network.
"Entering a junction such as Seven Dials in London, where seven streets meet, would enhance activity in the hippocampus, whereas a dead-end would drive down its activity. If you are having a hard time navigating the mass of streets in a city, you are likely putting high demands on your hippocampus and prefrontal cortex," said Hugo Spiers, senior author of UCL Experimental Psychology. "When we have technology telling us which way to go, however, these parts of the brain simply don't respond to the street network. In that sense our brain has switched off its interest in the streets around us."
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