← Giant Brain Candy
Giant Brain Candy: The Taxi Drivers’ Brains. London taxi drivers, who memorise the city’s maze of streets, had a larger rear hippocampus than people who didn’t drive taxis, and the longer they had driven a taxi, the larger it was. Source: Navigation and the hippocampus.
Strong evidenceThe research
  1. Maguire, E. A., Gadian, D. G., Johnsrude, I. S., Good, C. D., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S. J., & Frith, C. D. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(8), 4398–4403.

Journey 1 · Non-Consciousness

The Taxi Drivers’ Brains

London taxi drivers, who memorise the city’s maze of streets, had a larger rear hippocampus than people who didn’t drive taxis, and the longer they had driven a taxi, the larger it was.

Source: Navigation and the hippocampus · Strong evidence

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Giant Brain Candy: 86 Billion Neurons. Your brain holds about 86 billion neurons. Scientists counted them by dissolving brain tissue into a ‘soup’ of cell nuclei and tallying samples of it. Source: Counting the brain’s cells.
Giant Brain Candy: The Other 85 Billion. Neurons have partners: about 85 billion other cells, mostly glia — astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and microglia. The old claim of ten glia for every neuron turned out to be a myth. Source: Neurons and glia, counted.
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