Since the GPS appeared in our lives , it's over lost! When we have to go somewhere new, we arrive in a different city or we want to know the best route, we turn on the device or activate the mobile application and hope it will lead us to our destination, although sometimes we do not agree with its routes, We blindly trust him.However, scientists are studying a negative effect that this dependence has on our brain: GPS and the death of Directional Consciousness .Did you know?
GPS and the death of Directional Awareness
The sense of direction and the internalization of mind maps has been somewhat basic in the development of humanity.Primitive human beings needed to move from one place to another to get their livelihood, but then they had to return to their cave or hut, so that knowledge of the terrain, memorization of routes and places and the sense of orientation constituted the base of his supe survival .This directional awareness is still essential for modern man.However, the invention of GPS seems to make unnecessary in many occasions this brain skill cultivated for millennia.

Researchers have begun to analyze whether this fact is affecting us in some way.First of all they have observed that when we use the GPS r we are much less aware of the places we are going to visit and we practically do not create internal images of the world.
These internal images are known as "mind maps" and are schemes that we have in our brain.They allow us to go from one place to another and apparently they are completely different from one person to another, since in it each one places what they think is important.The existence and use of GPS means that we do not have the need to create ourselves these mind maps and this ability is atrophied .Until now we had the need to look at our surroundings and memorize the details of the route we followed, shops, river banks, roads...and on many occasions rectify and start the road again.All this seems like a waste of time it was actually an intense brain work that placed us in the world and made us relate to it.

GPS takes us from one place to another, but it also reduces the spontaneity and improvisation that makes us try new paths and makes our mind more flexible. Several investigations show that those who follow instructions automatically look less at the route and in the places they pass, even not recognizing a street they have passed several times if they are made to travel in the direction opposite.If they are to draw a map of the places they have gone through, they are much less accurate than those of those who have followed the traditional method.

Dr.Veronique Bohbot, a neuroscientist at the Douglas Institute and McGill University in Canada, in her studies has discovered that the images and maps that form Directional awareness is stored in the hippocampus and that not using it for the creation of mind maps can influence our cognitive health .
The researchers suggest that the use of the GPS should not cancel the formation of mind maps as they have always been done, but be a complement.Do you often use the GPS or prefer to orient yourself even at the risk of making a mistake?
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