By: Jesus Fuentes
I have always been pretty amazed with memory. Although we
often forget things and are commonly limited with exact details, the mere fact
that we are able to process and retain moments of our life is amazing to me.
That is one of the things that drew me to neuroscience. Another thing that
amazes me is people with incredible memory. A prime example is London taxi
drivers, as their memorization process of the intricate streets of London
stands of such great depth and complexity that is usually takes 3-4 years to
complete. The process is known as acquiring “The Knowledge”.
In the
study, they sought to further investigate what seemed a contradictory result.
For their incredible ability to memorize London streets and have superior
navigational skills, these same drivers found significant difficulties in
attaining new object-location knowledge containing a spatial component. . I
learned that as the hippocampus is associated with memory, there is also a give
and take with its capacity to processing new information. As the taxi driver’s
acquired “The Knowledge”, there was an increase in posterior hippocampal grey
matter but also a decrease in anterior hippocampal grey matter. Hence, the
drivers had difficulties with anterograde memory involving spatial component. What
the study proposed that there was two possibilities to the taxi drivers’
difficulties in incorporating new memory: 1) they had a general problem with
forming new association in general 2) had a primary problem with processing new
spatial information. Their results confirmed that compared to the controls
after a variety of rigorous tests, the drivers had significantly lower results
than controls in the tests regarding location-object memorization. Hence, they
were able to rule out that the first possibility, but still left with many
questions. However, there is still no confirming evidence that the hippocampus
had a limited capacity for memory, nor a direct explanation for the give and
take of memory associated with the hippocampus grey matter. As with a lot of
neuroscience, there is still so much left to be discovered.
When I first read this, it seemed really abnormal. How could
people with the ability to memorize something so complex have worse memory than
non-taxi drivers about memorizing new things? One would think that having been
able to memorize something so detailed and demanding would find acquiring new
knowledge relatively easy. However, I realized it made sense in way. As amazing
our brains are, there are always limitations to our natural abilities. Just as
every action has a consequence, every gain has a cost. The idea and intrigue
provoked by the unknown in neuroscience is amazing, and this particular example
concerning hippocampus plasticity is a perfect reflection of that.
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