Cabbies are helping Alzheimer’s researchers thanks to their amazing memory and recall of routes around the capital.
The Black Cab drivers have been given MRI scans while remembering the quickest routes through London in a bid to find out how their brains store the information.
Previous research has shown that London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus - the region of the brain which looks after learning and memory - than the general population, and it continues to grow the longer they are on the job.
The hippocampus is known to shrink in people who have Alzheimer’s so it is thought the latest work will lead to a breakthrough in detecting dementia earlier so patients can receive treatment sooner.
Scientists hope the latest work will lead to the development of diagnostics for detecting dementia earlier so patients can receive treatment sooner. They will share the results with the charity Alzheimer’s Research UK
Since 1865 London cab drivers have been required to complete “the knowledge” which involves memorising 100,000 landmarks and 26,000 streets and is said to be the most challenging memory test in the world.
Professor Hugo Spiers, inset, from University College London, who is carrying out the study, called Taxi Brains alongside PhD students, said: “London cabbies have unique brains. You can’t study these people in New York. There is no other city in the world that has that kind of similarity.”
He added: “One of the key things that happens in the early stages [of Alzheimer’s] is that people become disorientated.
“When they step out of the house they don’t know where they really are or which way they need to go. They’re lost.
“What we’re hoping to understand better is the potential impact of certain lifestyles, in this case navigating every day for most of your adult life using your own memory and not Google, and what is that doing to the brain.”
Mike Lewis, 64, a father of four from Chingford, Essex, who has been a cab driver for 38 years, volunteered for the project after reading about it on Twitter.
Asked about doing the knowledge, he said: “The only way I can describe it is you become obsessed.
“You just have to keep doing it until you’re word perfect and everything is just automatic.”
