Roadgeeking makes your brain grow!

[dgolub]

From In Search of Memory, the autobiography of the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel:

Unlike cabbies elsewhere, those in London must pass a rigorous examination to obtain their license.  In this test, they must demonstrate that they know every street name in London and the most efficient routes for traveling between two points.  Functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that after two years of this rigorous orientation to the streets of the city, London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus than other persons the same age.  Indeed, the size of the hippocampus continues to increase with time on the job.  Moreover, brain-imaging studies show that the hippocampus is activated during imagined travel, when a taxi driver is asked to recall how to get to a particular destination.

In other words, roadgeeking makes your brain grow!

[adventurernumber1]

That is indeed quite fascinating. I remember learning about how the cab drivers in London must go through such rigorous training like nowhere else. They must have the map of the entire huge city memorized in their heads, and they must have speedy, efficient ways of getting from place to place. That is truly intriguing. While the training must be very difficult, these cab drivers must definitely be the highest-quality in the world, as a result. It is definitely soothing to know that engulfing oneself in such a road-related academic journey will make your brain grow so much. 

[Brandon]

And my coworkers wonder why I don't use a GPS.

[Max Rockatansky]

Hell I like reading up on weird little towns, places, and other during road travel.  It's way different to go on the road and read about something you saw versus just reading about it alone.  That's one of the big appeals for road travel to me is that I get to learn things I didn't know before.  Old alignment research is fun too since you usually can find a copious amount of weird things like ghost towns or other minor places of value. 

[epzik8]

I really think it does.

[GaryV]

I would imagine they'd find similar results in any population that has to remember vast quantities of information, and be able to recall and process it.

[Roadgeekteen]

Well, not working for me!

[US71]

Well, not working for me!

Practice, young padawan

[Hurricane Rex]

I feel like it is working for me.

[SSOWorld]

I'm not going to know every street in either Chicago or Milwaukee - I don't know every street in my little dinky town here. I don't care.  The direction I travel just plain gets me there. 

[index]

Hell I like reading up on weird little towns, places, and other during road travel.  It's way different to go on the road and read about something you saw versus just reading about it alone.  That's one of the big appeals for road travel to me is that I get to learn things I didn't know before.  Old alignment research is fun too since you usually can find a copious amount of weird things like ghost towns or other minor places of value.

I also really enjoy reading up and looking at small towns, albeit on street view. (because of my age doing it as you would do is not an option) I'm fascinated by all these ghost towns, old alignments, and other small towns.

[Max Rockatansky]

Hell I like reading up on weird little towns, places, and other during road travel.  It's way different to go on the road and read about something you saw versus just reading about it alone.  That's one of the big appeals for road travel to me is that I get to learn things I didn't know before.  Old alignment research is fun too since you usually can find a copious amount of weird things like ghost towns or other minor places of value.

I also really enjoy reading up and looking at small towns, albeit on street view. (because of my age doing it as you would do is not an option) I'm fascinated by all these ghost towns, old alignments, and other small towns.

Its kind of amazing how much stuff has really disappeared to time given the improvements in rail and road based transportation.  Out west and even in places like Florida you can follow lines in former state highways or even railroads to find a ton of former places.  Rail Sidings were a huge thing when trains still ran on steam, many of them became places for people to stop during the era of the Auto Trails or even early US Routes (see Amboy through Goffs along US 66 as an example in California).

Regarding the Google Car, it is interesting to consider how ballsy the drivers really were back in 2007-2010.  The Google Street views include much of the really haggard mountain roads on the west coast or really stuff most people would never consider because of the danger associated with traveling on it.  I think Google has a policy against getting street views of unpaved roadways by car these days, I would speculate liability became a concern.

[index]

Hell I like reading up on weird little towns, places, and other during road travel.  It's way different to go on the road and read about something you saw versus just reading about it alone.  That's one of the big appeals for road travel to me is that I get to learn things I didn't know before.  Old alignment research is fun too since you usually can find a copious amount of weird things like ghost towns or other minor places of value.

I also really enjoy reading up and looking at small towns, albeit on street view. (because of my age doing it as you would do is not an option) I'm fascinated by all these ghost towns, old alignments, and other small towns.

Its kind of amazing how much stuff has really disappeared to time given the improvements in rail and road based transportation.  Out west and even in places like Florida you can follow lines in former state highways or even railroads to find a ton of former places.  Rail Sidings were a huge thing when trains still ran on steam, many of them became places for people to stop during the era of the Auto Trails or even early US Routes (see Amboy through Goffs along US 66 as an example in California).

Regarding the Google Car, it is interesting to consider how ballsy the drivers really were back in 2007-2010.  The Google Street views include much of the really haggard mountain roads on the west coast or really stuff most people would never consider because of the danger associated with traveling on it.  I think Google has a policy against getting street views of unpaved roadways by car these days, I would speculate liability became a concern.

On the topic of rail, there are also a lot of towns in West Virginia and Kentucky during the same era whose main street was railroad tracks, rather than a road. The main street that cars drove on was usually a narrow gravel path. I found the partial ghost town of Thurmond, WV to be very interesting. Main access into the town was on a one lane bridge cantilevered off of a truss bridge, it carries a county route. That, too, shows how train was a priority back then. The town of Matawan, WV, is similar.

On the topic of hazardous routes, there are a few of them with more new street view, (or at least I think) and if you check around Tom Town/Midway, TN, there are some new street views of gravel roads. What I find funny is that, on the two of NC's partially unpaved state highways, the street view goes into the unpaved route, turns off, (there is no street view), then it comes back at the other end of the unpaved segment, and it's the same street view, date/time, all that. I wonder why they chose not to capture imagery of that particular stretch. They have newer imagery of other gravel roads that are worse, why not this one?

[Max Rockatansky]

Hell I like reading up on weird little towns, places, and other during road travel.  It's way different to go on the road and read about something you saw versus just reading about it alone.  That's one of the big appeals for road travel to me is that I get to learn things I didn't know before.  Old alignment research is fun too since you usually can find a copious amount of weird things like ghost towns or other minor places of value.

I also really enjoy reading up and looking at small towns, albeit on street view. (because of my age doing it as you would do is not an option) I'm fascinated by all these ghost towns, old alignments, and other small towns.

Its kind of amazing how much stuff has really disappeared to time given the improvements in rail and road based transportation.  Out west and even in places like Florida you can follow lines in former state highways or even railroads to find a ton of former places.  Rail Sidings were a huge thing when trains still ran on steam, many of them became places for people to stop during the era of the Auto Trails or even early US Routes (see Amboy through Goffs along US 66 as an example in California).

Regarding the Google Car, it is interesting to consider how ballsy the drivers really were back in 2007-2010.  The Google Street views include much of the really haggard mountain roads on the west coast or really stuff most people would never consider because of the danger associated with traveling on it.  I think Google has a policy against getting street views of unpaved roadways by car these days, I would speculate liability became a concern.

On the topic of rail, there are also a lot of towns in West Virginia and Kentucky during the same era whose main street was railroad tracks, rather than a road. The main street that cars drove on was usually a narrow gravel path. I found the partial ghost town of Thurmond, WV to be very interesting. Main access into the town was on a one lane bridge cantilevered off of a truss bridge, it carries a county route. That, too, shows how train was a priority back then. The town of Matawan, WV, is similar.

On the topic of hazardous routes, there are a few of them with more new street view, (or at least I think) and if you check around Tom Town/Midway, TN, there are some new street views of gravel roads. What I find funny is that, on the two of NC's partially unpaved state highways, the street view goes into the unpaved route, turns off, (there is no street view), then it comes back at the other end of the unpaved segment, and it's the same street view, date/time, all that. I wonder why they chose not to capture imagery of that particular stretch. They have newer imagery of other gravel roads that are worse, why not this one?

Hell those are interesting, looks like they just ran out of room to widen things for automobile traffic.  Interesting to consider that foot, horse, and wagon traffic didn't really need a ton of room next to the train.

Put it this way, there was a guy who drove the Google Car partially up Blackrock Road out here in California during the 07-10 era for Street View.  I'm honestly surprised that they didn't get stuff like Mineral King Road or even Kaiser Pass Road back in those days.  The driver who was in Arizona obviously was comfortable with unpaved roadways, I want to say the imagines on AZ 88 go back quite a ways. 

[inkyatari]

I just saw the movie Paddington 2, and one character in the film, a garbage truck driver, is studying for some sort of geography test about London. Like how to get places.

[kphoger]

I feel like it is working for me.

Then it must be true.

[Roadgeekteen]

Well, not working for me!

Practice, young padawan

Well, I do know the roads in America well.

[adventurernumber1]

Well, not working for me!

Practice, young padawan

Well, I do know the roads in America well.

You know the roads in the world so well that you already have it planned out what they will be in 1,000 years, including between other planets. 

But on a serious note, you'll get there. I still have much to learn. We are both young, and a lot of times, knowledge comes with time. As the saying goes, you may learn something new every day. 

[MNHighwayMan]

Regarding the Google Car, it is interesting to consider how ballsy the drivers really were back in 2007-2010.  The Google Street views include much of the really haggard mountain roads on the west coast or really stuff most people would never consider because of the danger associated with traveling on it.  I think Google has a policy against getting street views of unpaved roadways by car these days, I would speculate liability became a concern.

What's really interesting is that they did send a Google car to drive the Yungas Road in Bolivia, perhaps the most dangerous road in existence.

[OrangeLantern]

I would imagine they'd find similar results in any population that has to remember vast quantities of information, and be able to recall and process it.

this is true for vast quantities of *spatial* information

I took a cognitive science class once so i'm pretty much an expert

[sparker]

Got a pretty good memory for numbers; probably came from my poring over road atlases (primarily Gousha) when I was a kid growing up in the '50's, as well as road maps snagged from local gas stations (yes, kids, maps were available and free back then even without a AAA membership!).  A lot more positives than negatives to the pastime (unless you as a kid think your acquired knowledge is of broad interest -- a notion rather readily disabused in elementary or middle school!).