Going Forward - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 198

technology package combining cameras, sensors, gps, and software, to auto-
makers after it wins certification from the National Transportation Safety Board
and its international counterparts. 110 The first driverless cars could hit show-
rooms within five years, and members of the Institute of Electrical and Elec-
tronics Engineers (ieee) predict that autonomous cars will make up
three-quarters of those on the road by 2040. 111
Some wonder if the changes in how we navigate are ruining our natural sense
of direction or may cause unintended physiological or psychological side effects.
As car navigation units became popular, contrarians noted that users were pay-
ing more attention to their gadgets than the scenery. 112 Researchers at Cornell
University studied drivers using gps and found evidence of disengagement
with the environment. Drivers became “immersed more in the virtual-
technological environment,” and some treated their gps units like another
occupant in the car, even giving them names. However, the researchers noted
new opportunities for engagement, as drivers discovered landmarks otherwise
invisible from the road but displayed in digital searches for particular points
of interest, such as a type of restaurant. 113
Brain research has established a connection between using spatial naviga-
tional skills and gray-matter density of the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped
region of the brain associated with memory and spatial orientation. 114 Eleanor
Maguire, a neuroscientist at University College London, found in a 2000 study
that part of the hippocampus of London taxi drivers was larger than that of the
general population, even bus drivers. 115 S he linked the physical change to the
cabbies' intimate knowledge of London's twenty-ive thousand streets built
up over years, as a muscle grows with use. Follow-up studies with brain scan-
ners showed increased hippocampus activity as taxi drivers neared their des-
tinations (driving cars in video games) but also revealed that a driver who
suffered brain damage from a viral infection lost his superior ability to navigate
the city's winding secondary streets. 116
Muscles—and gray matter—atrophy with disuse, and the role of the hip-
pocampus in memory and Alzheimer's disease has researchers concerned
about gps. Véronique Bohbot, a professor of psychiatry at McGill University
and Douglas Institute in Montreal, focuses her brain research on human spa-
tial memory, navigation, and plasticity. She has found that different naviga-
tional strategies use different parts of the brain. 117 People who use spatial
memory to form mental maps—learning the relationships between environ-
mental landmarks—have more gray matter in the hippocampus. Following