Can I improve my sense of direction?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2021
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Do you find your bearings quickly or are you easily disorientated? Do your friends trust you with the directions in a new city? Finding our way in the physical world – whether that’s around a building or a city - is an important everyday capability, one that has been integral to human survival. This week CrowdScience listeners want to know whether some people are ‘naturally’ better at navigating, so presenter Marnie Chesterton sets her compass and journeys into the human brain. Accompanied by psychologists and neuroscientists Marnie learns how humans perceive their environment, recall routes and orientate themselves in unfamiliar spaces. We ask are some navigational strategies better than others?
Marnie also hears that the country you live in might be a good predictor of your navigation skills and how growing up in the countryside may give you an wayfaring advantage. But is our navigational ability down to biology or experience, and can we improve it?
With much of our modern map use being delegated to smartphones, Marnie explores what implications an over-reliance on GPS technology might have for our brain health.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Melanie Brown
(Photo:Lost man with map. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.5 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.8 | Do I go that way or do I go that way? Well I'm already a bit start on the path. |
| 0:37.0 | Doubting myself now. Oh there's a fence. I'm going to go this way. |
| 0:40.0 | Try to work out where I am. I feel that I'm going south. |
| 0:43.2 | It's hard to work out. |
| 0:45.3 | Getting lost, it's humiliating. More than that, it's annoying and occasionally scary or even |
| 0:52.1 | dangerous. And the thing that protects us from all of that or fails to is our sense of |
| 0:57.8 | direction but what is that part of our brain, a special sense. |
| 1:03.0 | Two crowd science listeners have been in touch, wanting answers, |
| 1:06.0 | and on this show you ask we deliver. |
| 1:09.0 | First up is Nicole. |
| 1:21.0 | Hello, my name's Nicole. I'm from the UK and my question is why are some people so much better at navigating and getting around than other people is it a skill |
| 1:25.6 | that people who are worse at it can improve over time if it is how would one improve? Now I think if someone's emailing us with that question it's |
| 1:36.1 | for one of two reasons either they're really good or they're really bad so which are you? |
| 1:41.5 | I'm good I don't want to show off. |
| 1:44.0 | But go on, this is your showcase. |
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