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LONDON — London taxi drivers aren’t like the rest of us. Researchers have known for more than a decade that these elite cabbies — who train for years to master “the Knowledge,” a mental map of 25,000 streets — have a larger than average rear hippocampus, a brain region linked to learning and navigation.
Scientists found that the brains of qualifying trainees were no different from those of nonqualifying trainees or non-taxi drivers before beginning training. But as the cabbies learned the Knowledge, their hippocampi grew, literally changing their minds, the researchers report online in Current Biology.
