Saturday, January 7, 2012

Does This Knowledge Make My Rear Hippocampus Look Big?

Research has demonstrated that London cabbies have bigger rear hippocampuses than the rest of us, and it isn't because they sit all day.

The cabbies in London are a special group in that they are trained to master "the Knowledge," a mental map of 25,000 streets. The hippocampus, from the Latin for where large mammals go to get an education, is an otherwise small portion of the brain tucked just above the brain stem, which is the stalk that keeps the brain from snapping off the spine during heavy thinking. Cabbies that memorized all 25,000 streets also achieved a notable swelling in a small brain part, and no wonder--it's something to be proud of.

So I'm wondering if the same thing happened to me. As a letter carrier, I learned thousands and thousands of addresses over a wide territory. I spent my first years as a substitute carrier covering three zip codes, and picked up address numbers and streets and associated names and engraved them on my hippocampus such that they are still faintly legible there today. It's not an unusual feat. Most letter carriers can do it. We especially enjoy scaring people at parties with it, by learning their names and reciting highly personal information about them. "Oh! Wally Fitzknob! As I live and breathe, it's the rubber underwear guy, in the flesh. Did that 'special friend' of yours ever get out of jail?"

"You must be some kind of genius," they say, once they come to. Well, the word they are going for is actually "savant," and that sometimes comes with a prefix I won't quibble with, either.

I might have even been a little better at this than the average mailman because I am an excellent speller. Excellent spellinghood is a natural genetic gift that is unrelated to intelligence and yet still allows the owner to feel superior. The excellent speller has every word she has ever seen in print in her brain at all times, and it's simply a matter of riffling through the Rolodex and reading it off. So an excellent speller exposed to fifty different mail routes over a few years is able to acquire a buttload of useless information she is helpless to offload later. To this day, I can peruse the obituaries of people I had delivered mail to for two weeks in 1978 and think, "pity. Not sure which tower she lived in, but I know it was apartment #1325."

But, they say, the brain is capable of much more than we usually ask of  it. Does all this stray information really have the effect of clogging things up so that the postal-savant cannot learn anything new? Absolutely. I reached capacity in 1987 and haven't been able to figure anything out since. And now I know why. I must have overdeveloped my rear hippocampus. And once it gained weight, it tipped the rest of my brain up such that the front portions are rubbing their wrinkles smooth against the top of my skull.

I may not remember why I'm standing in the basement with a cube of butter and a lug nut wrench, but I have the entire map of SW Portland committed to memory. You can't take that away from me; I know, because I've tried. It's too late for me, but the London cabbies' experience does have a sobering corollary for the modern man. Reliance on GPS and other satellite-borne knowledge will have the effect of shrinking the brain until it rattles like a dry pea. Don't tell me that the upside is you can always google "brain-rattle" if you're curious about it; you're not going to like it.

51 comments:

  1. Gee, I'm a savant too, but I'm not full yet. If it's relevant to my work, it's there. (Of course, I'm too old to work now.) But my boss got a new client, and I remembered them from a previous company...including the first name of the purchasing agent.

    Remembering is a game, actually. And yes, it's genetic. My dad was wonderful at it, and so are my kids.

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  2. " Does all this stray information really have the effect of clogging things up so that the postal-savant cannot learn anything new? Absolutely."

    That explains so much! I can't remember my own phone number these days, but I know phone numbers of people I knew slightly many years ago. And I remember the license plate number of the car we had in 1953: U9064, British Columbia. So useful! I've needed that bit of data so often! Like never, not even back then.

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  3. I'm the same way. I used to work for Ma Bell as a long distance operator and to this day to this day I can look at a phone number and tell you what state it's from. And if it's in NE Ohio, I can prolly tell you what town. My friends call me the Almanac because I am a walking compendium of worthless information but I can't remember what I did yesterday but I'm still undefeated at Trivial Pursuit. Sigh.

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  4. It worries me that large areas of my brain's real estate seem to be occupied by the lyrics of Chubby Checker songs and recipes for foods we are told it is no longer safe to eat. I am just now going into my brain (it looks like that warehouse at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie ) and I am trying to find the "empty trash' button to free up a bit of space.

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  5. The problem here is hats. If you hadn't worn a hat everyday your skull would have had the room to expand and you would have maintained your frontal lobe wrinkles and by now bested Ken Jennings on Jeopardy!

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  6. Again I am at a loss for a quick repartee, having read the post AND the comments. So I'll just sit here in admiration for all the talented people and smile big.

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  7. I am just the first part of the compound -savant. I can win at Trivial Pursuit (except movies, for which I depend on my sister-in-law) but have not found any way to transform that into a living.

    The visual conjured by a cube of butter and a lug nut wrench is NOT for public consumption.

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  8. the floor of my brain is littered with dusty card board boxes, all open because I have been riffling through them for information I know I filed 'cause I would need it later. It looks like an episode of "hoarders". One thing I know for sure is my highschool locker combination (19/45/22), useless to me now as I am sure that lock landed in the landfill around 1967.

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  9. You could certainly liven up a party with a conversation opener like that. It is a fascinating mind that you have. More useless information that puzzles me is why I have to switch to Safari browser from Firefox browser in order to post a comment to some blogs, but not to others. Maybe someone with a big hippocampus could answer that one. I assumed the obvious that Apple products don't talk to rival company products.

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  10. I don't understand why my brain seems to know a bazillion songs but only the first couple of lines of each and then proceeds to force them out my mouth to drive me insane. over and over

    I might research this ...

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  11. Well that explains it. I know the license plate number of every car I've ever owned, Social Security numbers for my deceased dad and husband, my son, my mom and myself, phone numbers from my Camp Fire Group in 6th grade, but no earthly idea where my car keys are.

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  12. Oh, I don't know. I suspect that having some familiarity with who the rubber underwear guys in your town are, not to mention their 'special-sometimes-incarcerated-friends,' could have its advantages. Especially for a writer of fiction.

    I say accept and embrace your big rear hippocampus. Think of it as a huge asset. : )

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  13. You and me, babe...I'm glad that I can now blame the fact that I can't remember my own kids' names on my amazing spelling prowess.

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  14. I've separated my memory into two distinct camps: before children (BC) and after delivering (AD) - the BC i can remember just fine, everything after that is a foggy mess!

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  15. Well at least now when my friends tell me that I am full of "It", I know what they are talking about. I know absolutely that my Hippo is full, cause it hurts every time I try to think about something.

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  16. In the early 1980s London cabbie Fred Housego aced the season on the tremendously tough British quiz show Mastermind. His chosen topic was Shakespeare and he wiped the floor with Shakepearian scholars from Oxford and Cambridge. So, put your Portland postal route expertise to work and I shall expect to see you on Jeopardy.

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  17. "Reliance on GPS and other satellite-borne knowledge will have the effect of shrinking the brain until it rattles like a dry pea."

    I have seen similar effects in the engineering profession. We used slide rules when I started. (I am dating myself.) In other words, calculations were done by hand and you had to estimate numbers in order to get the right order of magnitude.

    Then came calculators which did things faster and more accurately. They allowed somewhat more detailed calculations and you began to lose "the feel" of the numbers.

    Finally came the computer. It allows a level of calculation never seen before. It also removes the human from the calculation.

    Now, when someone questions the results of a calculation, the first answer you often get is "that is what the computer says"...a completely worthless and mindless answer.

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  18. It has long been my theory that dreams are the brain ridding its file cabinet of useless data. Coming up on age 70 and always taking pride in being a constant learner, I have a lot of weird dreams. For days I have tried to thwart my natural curiosity and to resist looking up Higgs Boson. Last night I finally gave in. Which is scarier: the fact that I needed to know or the fact that there are people on the planet who actually understand it?

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  19. Interesting theory about being able to ask a computer to figure out everything for us. I'm trying to keep the old thing working so it doesn't dry out.

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  20. There was a wonderful Gary Larson cartoon which seems appropriate (as it so often is in my life). His usual dorky kid is sitting in a classroom with his hand up saying 'May I be excused please, my brain is full?' I so relate to that one.

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  21. Murr, you never cease to amaze and delight me.........brilliant ideas and brilliant prose.....and so funny too.

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  22. I am glad to have excellent spellinghood explained. I have it too, and have felt superior, but now that you've said it has nothing to do with intelligence. I'll have to find something else to feel superior about.

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  23. Yeah, I can remember all the words to White Rabbit but who was president before Nixon? I was there. I oughta know.

    Your enlarged hippocampus does not require bigger pants.

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  24. I laughed at your post and at almost all of the comments.

    My son had a Seattle Times paper route when he was about 12. He knew few of the names of his customers, but all of their dogs.

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  25. The Knowledge...I know chaps who failed, but who, nevertheless, are pretty handy at getting around London. And I worked with a woman whose husband was a knowledge-qualified taxi driver. Ask him get some milk on his way home? He'd bring tea bags or dog food.

    And engineers "losing their feel for numbers" is downright scary!

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  26. Well, that explains the dry pea rattling sound I've been hearing a lot lately. Not from my own head, mind you. No, really, it's not.

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  27. What am I to do? I have no memory and my spelling prowess is in the negative zone. Never could remember my kids names either.

    But when I was a teacher, my kids knew I never remembered who had behavior problems, and every one was an angel, in my book.

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  28. You could have revealed the bit about "excellent speller" before we started playing online scrabble.

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  29. My interpretation, circa 1995, of a paper in Nature by Polk and Farah, citing a different brain organization in mail sorters from the US & Canada--and why: In humans, the role of experience in reshaping the functional architecture of the adult brain is becoming better understood; for instance, new feature maps are built for statistically correlated types of images, such as letters as opposed to numbers, or combinations of letters and numbers (as acquired by sorters of foreign mail), or for the two languages of bilinguals; these are the kinds of linguistic areas that are not innate. "Late experience alters vision."
    Polk, T. A.;Farah, M. J. Nature 376(6542), Aug 1995, 648-649.

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  30. What part of the brain is responsible for being able to identify weird Southeast Asian prosimians, obscure todies and Madagascan lemurs by sight? Because I'm sure mine is engorged.

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  31. Hippocampus rejected my application so I just went to a state school and I'm pretty sure it shrunk all parts of my brain.

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  32. I'm guessing, but, if someone told you to go to Hell, you'd probably know how to deliver something there, too, and remember the address. You are such an amazingly clever woman.

    Blessings and Bear hugs for 2012. For you and Pootie.

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  33. Whew! Gone all day, but I'm glad to see everyone's playing nice together. Let's see: Susannah, I only remember the actual 1953 car (Studebaker, gray with suicide doors). Mr. Charleston, my head can't expand and it's very small, but dense. Djan, I live to make you smile. You're good at it. Cog Dis, true dat. I've known some characters. Jerry Critter, of course you're dating yourself. No one wants to date an engineer. Whoo hoo! I'm hot tonight. Come back, Jerry. B.J., no one understands the Higgs boson. Knittergran, that's just it. You can still feel superior about your spelling even though you shouldn't. Marilyn, a great teacher thinks her kids are angels, and then they have to live up to it. Vickie, I don't think you have cause to worry about Scrabble! Zick, and I only say this because I love you--your whole brain is fat. Now I'm taking my Bear hug and going to bed.

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  34. When I clicked on your blog name in Favorites, I thought, Is she gonna write about her butt, again?

    Lo! Nope. It's her brain! Lol.

    Let me know when you run out of body parts to write about; I'll lend you mine!

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  35. My brain holds little pockets of trivia. No use to anyone...not even me! I admire your ability, Murr!

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  36. My son tells me to stop using SIRI on my smart phone because it will make me dumber. Not possible. I can't even get SIRI to understand me.

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  37. You are funny! Love the "You might be as good as you are going to get" in the last post...certainly might apply to me ...makes things much simpler to think that way..

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  38. Oh, so you would have been my friend's postal person, as it were! Excellent!! They live on SW 37th Ave. Unlike you, who cannot erase their address from your brain, try as I might, I have never been able to remember theirs even though they've lived there for over 10 years and I've known them longer than that. Guess I'll just have to stick to my Excel spreadsheet.

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  39. Loved this one, Murr. I used to have eidetic recall - if I read it, I could remember it - but certain heart meds destroyed it. Now it's a hipposhoot what might come up out of that part of the brain. Blessed are the listmakers, for they shall remember the cat litter. But I can still remember our phone number from 1950: Dexter 1130. Handy, that.

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  40. p.s. just noticed the frontal lobe all worn smooth in the brain pic! Coffee everywhere. hahahahaha

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  41. I've been watching the USPS retiree pension system. Your prefrontal cortex looks pretty shiny and I'm thinking it might be possible to obtain some pension padding in the form of disability for dain bramage. I've been reading the odd stuff you post on the internet about snot otters and scatological matters for some time now. I think the lug wrench/butter moment is quite telling, and indicative of a worsening problem. I'd be glad to testify at the hearing as an expert witness and even discount my usual fee. You're welcome.

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  42. i can recite the phone number of my best friend in kindergarten, but could not possibly tell you the charge of an electron (which actually relates to my profession of 30 years...)

    and we wonder why "postal" happens...

    for what it's worth? you should see the play "Putnam County Spelling Bee", if you haven't already. i'm a speller. we are cursed.

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  43. Oh Gigi, when I run out of body parts to write about, I'll just start over. It's not like I'll remember. Tiffin, if you call up your 1950 number and you answer, what will you say to you?

    I was in a spelling bee a couple years ago. Came in second. Uh, out of five. That's not so good. Plus, I could totally spell the word I lost on just as soon as I got away from the microphone. And the worst part is, it was being held in a church. Which really put a crimp on my self-expression.

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  44. You know, every few years I go back to my little home town in Ohio. Used to get back oftener but that was when more people I knew were still breathing.
    Anyway, I always take a walking tour of the whole town (takes about half an hour) and as I go down Pearl and Benton and Mechanic and Court and Logan and Ohio and Main streets, as I look at each house I still recite to myself: Anderegg, Hassenaur, Zint, Mantle, Koenig, Armstrong. Corspeter, Phillips, Meinerding, Gurley, Wells, Hughes, Oen...etc., etc. I have no idea who lives in most of those houses today, but I recall to the letter every family that lived there when I was a paperboy, which was one of my wide variety of odd jobs when I was 12 and 13 (before I got a better-paying and easier job as the ticket-taker, marquee-changer and usher at the local movie theater). And I not only remember the names, but as I do, I see a mental picture of my collection book with a page of postage-stamp-size coupons for each customer and their names neatly typed at the top. So I know just what you mean.

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  45. Fascinating, truly fascinating! I was that excellent speller for years and somehow it fails me now, the words just don't look "right!" Mom is now in the later stages of dementia/Alzheimer's and I can't help but observe the lives of the patients. What is it that they have in common, a singular trait or lifestyle that possibly predisposed them to the disease? But there's nothing, some were homemakers like my near 90 Mom, others were teachers or lawyers or held busy jobs that juggled many tasks. No clue to help me prevent the disease that has robbed me of my Mom. Right now I' m typing on a new IPad , learning something new... This old dog!

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  46. Fascinating, truly fascinating! I was that excellent speller for years and somehow it fails me now, the words just don't look "right!" Mom is now in the later stages of dementia/Alzheimer's and I can't help but observe the lives of the patients. What is it that they have in common, a singular trait or lifestyle that possibly predisposed them to the disease? But there's nothing, some were homemakers like my near 90 Mom, others were teachers or lawyers or held busy jobs that juggled many tasks. No clue to help me prevent the disease that has robbed me of my Mom. Right now I' m typing on a new IPad , learning something new... This old dog!

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  47. Marvelous. I'm a champion speller too, and I've always been sneakily proud of it too. I've got a whole repository of useless junk in my brain, including a sizeable chunk of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Sad it can't be put to good use, but at least I'm in good company.

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  48. I'm betting your hippocampus is all swelled up right about now.

    Oh behave!

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  49. Flo from Regressive Insurance has a head lump on the back of her head that she covers with hair. Do you think she memorized all her customers account numbers?

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  50. I hereby declare you my favorite savant, Murr.

    Sadly, my memory capacity is wanting. I consider myself an intelligent person, but I'm hopelessly forgetful.

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  51. I am a fellow excellent excellent speller. I have to admit I am unable to pronounce a word that I cannot spell - because in order to pronounce it I have to "see" it spelled in my mind.

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