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Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer’s – how complex mental maps and spatial reasoning protect your brain (theconversation.com)
submitted 4 weeks ago by to c/science@hexbear.net
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Researchers believe the association between navigation-heavy work and lower Alzheimer’s risk centers on the hippocampus, a part of the brain that governs memory and spatial navigation. It’s one of the first brain regions that Alzheimer’s damages: Problems with spatial navigation and orientation are among the earliest signs of the disease, sometimes surfacing before obvious memory loss.

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[–] 7 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Alzheimer’s causes loss of grey matter in the brain, but taxi drivers in the most complex cities are among the people with the most grey matter in the brain to start with due to that work.

IIRC the two groups of people with off the charts levels of grey matter in the brain are London/NYC taxi drivers, and professional jazz musicians.

I would think the protective aspect is primarily just that they have way more grey matter that they can afford to lose before they are ever as bad off as the average person who suffers from Alzheimers

It would be interesting to see if jazz musicians also have less occurrences or less intensity of Alzheimers than the average person. I think Louis Armstrong ended up having Alz, but he also continued to make music and smoke marijuana daily up until he died. His music from that time in his life is definitely a little odd. Like his song Cheesecake for example

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