Study: Using Satellite Navigation Shuts Down Parts of Your Brain

A new study suggests drivers who follow GPS directions regularly do not engage their hippocampus, highly limiting the development of an internal map and making them more dependent on navigation devices. We’ve all heard accounts of London cabbies with juicy, swollen central lobes, stemming from the requisite training and memorization of city streets and landmarks. It turns out the inverse may also be true. This may be another classic case of if you don’t use it, you lose it.

The University College London discovered the hippocampus (used for direction and memory) and the prefrontal cortex (used for decision-making) both saw elevated levels of activity whenever drivers turned down unfamiliar streets or had free-choice to follow along their route. However, those making use of navigational systems produced no additional activity in those areas whatsoever. Zero, zilch, nada.

The researchers’ experiment monitored the brains of 24 volunteers during driving simulations of central London, some with fixed routes to a destination and some without. Those without may have made it to their destinations on-time, but the extreme lack of mental energy exerted by those two areas was on par with someone watching an episode of The View.

“Our results fit with models in which the hippocampus simulates journeys on future possible paths, while the prefrontal cortex helps us to plan which ones will get us to our destination,” said Hugo Spiers, director of science at Centric labs. “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.”

Even getting lost exercises these parts of the brain, Spiers said, meaning even if you are flummoxed or frustrated, you are still exercising your mind strengthening your gray matter.

Of course, the upside of allowing your hippocampus and prefrontal cortex to wither and die through the use of electronic navigational assistance is smoother sailing through traffic or convoluted roadways. There are some places where tapping your GPS for guidance could shave an hour off the trip and, for those areas, asking for a little help is a no brainer. The downside is that you’ll never get any better at traversing that particular zone without a digital aid and have a frontal lobe resembling a half piece of chewed-up gum.