Where you grew up can shape your navigation skills

A large navigational study found that people born outside the city were better at navigating than urbanites. These results also suggest that learning to process environmental complexity at an early age strengthens the mental muscles for spatial awareness skills.

Nearly 400,000 people from 38 countries around the world played the video game Sea Hero Quest, designed by neuroscientists and developers, as a fun way to collect data about the brain. of everyone. Accordingly, the player will have to steer a boat to search for different targets.

The environment in childhood determines the difference in determining the direction of each person.

On average, people who said they grew up outside of cities, where they would likely encounter many twisty roads, were better targeted than those who grew up in cities.

"Moreover, the difference between city-dwellers and non-city dwellers is most prominent in countries where cities are located," says cognitive scientist Antoine Coutrot of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). tend to have simple, grid layouts, such as Chicago, where the streets are positioned at 90 degrees". 

However, from these video game data, scientists cannot say with certainty that childhood environment determines the difference in determining direction of each person.

However, Coutrot also asserts: 'As a child, if you are exposed to a complex environment, you will learn to find your way and develop the right cognitive processes to do it.

Other demographics are associated with navigational performance, including age, gender, education level, and even superior sense of smell. Figuring out these details will give doctors a more accurate basis for a person's ability to navigate. That, in turn, can help reveal when these skills slip, such as they occur in early-stage Alzheimer's disease.