Answer to Question #235401 in Psychology for Nen

Question

compare and contrast the evidence that exist for brain differences between taxi drivers in london who have passed the knowledge and non taxi drivers

Answer 1

There is no significant difference between those who qualified and those who did not in terms of the total time they had spent in training. Taxi drivers do not differ from the non-taxi drivers in terms of the amount of experience driving in London. This is because the two groups only differ in the times of their knowledge of London’s layout, and this seems to support the idea that the structural differences in taxi drivers may relate to spatial memory.

On the other hand, London taxi drivers show that humans have a remarkable capacity to acquire and use knowledge of a large complex city to navigate within it. It is therefore evident that compared with non-taxi drivers, taxi drivers had greater gray matter volume in mid-posterior hippocampi and less volume in anterior hippocampi.

In 2000, Maguire showed that one particular part of the brain (the hippocampus) is much larger in London cab drivers than in other people. This seahorse shaped area lies in the core of the brain, and animal studies had linked it to memory and longitudinal awareness.

Taxi drivers undergo extensive training, known as 'The Knowledge' and therefore make an ideal group for the study of spatial navigation with an aim to examine whether structural changes could be detected in the brain of people with extensive experience of spatial navigation.