Featured GPS use bad for your brain?

I love my GPS, but you still need to keep your eyes on the road signs, and use your common sense.

 

I was noticing just the other day that my hippocampus was atrophying. Now I know why! Thanks!!

I will send this, with glee, to a friend who champions GPS usage.

 

I've found the mapping app. in my SmartPhone to be pretty good, although it will seeming get confused occasionally, which is why I never totally rely on it, in other words I research any prospective route beforehand, and have even been know to use paper maps as a backup!

 

if your hippocampus gets smaller, you won't need rhinoplasty.

 

When I started driving, we didn't have any GPS. It must have been...

RECALCULATING

Let's see. I just traveled 455 miles and filled up with 8.87 gallons of....

RECALCULATING

....wait, where was I again?

 

I recall that for our first overseas road trip (to Portugal) many years ago, before GPS even existed, I spent weeks preparing for the trip and printing off strip maps in the (futile) hope that Lady Navigator would be able to keep me on the right track.

Today I wouldn't dream of doing such a trip without GPS. We have used it in many countries around the world where it has kept us out of serious trouble. Certainly makes for a calmer atmosphere in the cockpit!

 

So if I use the GPS for navigating, my brain's ability to navigate will be negatively affected? Isn't that like saying a persons musical playing ability is negatively impacted if they don't play the piano? Who is to say my spatial cognitive senses are not flawed in finding my way from point A to point B? What if arriving at the destination on time robs me from experiencing life? I.e. arriving on time to my take my test or to make a flight?

 

What it is saying is that there are two types of navigation: following a series of directions versus using a spatial sense of where things are in relation to each other. As just one example, my former girlfriend relied totally on her Garmin. As a result, she thought that Boston was on the way from my place in CT to Vermont. Boston is well east of the direct route. She lacked a mental spatial map of where the places were with respect to each other.

Probably the best tactic is to use both, each supporting the other: for example, if a direction seems wrong, you check it on a map.

Having a spatial sense of where things are can enrich your experiences: going from A to B you may know that you will pass close to C if you have a spatial sense, you might never know this if you relied totally on a NAV system.

Strictly speaking GPS just tells you where you are, a NAV system provides the routing (and may record where you have been).

 

Couldn't the same be said about calculators and slide rules before them?

After using GPS nav for a route a few times, I tend to remember it on my own. I think the Magellan is onto me though. Visiting to a friends new place, it used a different route going there and coming back.

 

Yes, in a way. With a slide rule, you knew that you had to figure out where the decimal point went. In essence, you had to have an idea, perhaps through a rough mental calculation, how big a number to expect as a result. With a calculator, you just punch in some numbers and write down the result, and the tendency is to not think whether that result makes sense (maybe you entered the numbers wrong?).

I think it was Richard Feynman who pointed out that mathematicians develop a "feeling" for numbers as more than just a collection of digits: how big they are, what their properties are (odd or even, a product of two primes for example), etc. And develop mental shortcuts based on that. A very simple example: if you want to deduct 15% from a number, take a tenth of the number (easy), add half of that (also easy), and subtract the resulting sum from the number.

This doesn't seem all that different from developing a spatial sense of where things are in relation to each other.

 

I seem to remember something learning something similar to what you're describing back in my early days of learning Mathematics - I think the teacher called it "scaling" and "dimensioning", and said that it should always be done before any calculation was attempted.

 

I find GPS is safer than trying to manhandle a map or street directory while driving, particularly across a part of the city I'm not familiar with. Additionally, a street directory on the passenger's seat requires me to change glasses to see clearly (and in the dark ...).

You could be right, as with GPS, you have a verrry small map showing, with a street directory, it's a suburb or 2 in view, giving a much broader aspect of the trip.

But I think deterioration of the brain is more involved than just using GPS. When I went to work, there were many minor mathematical calculations, time, estimates, quotations, composing correspondence which HAD to be perfect, thinking through computer programs etc. And when there were 5 here at home, there was much more thought required with budgeting, help with children's homework, adjusting agendas to fit in everyone's activities. Now, in retirement, life just goes on, doesn't need much fore-thought and planning for one person.

 

You've reminded me of an article I read in the NYT:
Nuns Offer Clues to Alzheimer's and Aging - NYTimes.com
(…wow - 15 years ago!) - but an interesting article, food for thought, nothing about GPS, but significant when examined in the context of what seems to be the world's current malaise!

 

simple, use it or lose it.

 

Rand MacNally hates GPS. I tossed our collection out 10 years ago and never looked back.

Bob Wilson

 

does priuschat count?

 

Wait until autonomous dirving, we will be that fat guy in Wall-e.