Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers
Eleanor Maguire and colleagues used structural magnetic resonance imaging to compare the brains of licensed London taxi drivers with those of control participants who did not drive taxis. The drivers had significantly larger posterior hippocampi, and the controls had a larger anterior hippocampal region. Hippocampal volume correlated with time spent as a taxi driver, positively in the posterior hippocampus and negatively in the anterior. The authors argued that the posterior hippocampus stores a spatial representation of the environment and can expand regionally when navigational demands are high, and concluded that the structure of the healthy adult human brain can undergo local plastic change in response to environmental demands.
Eleanor Maguire and colleagues used structural magnetic resonance imaging to compare the brains of licensed London taxi drivers with those of control participants who did not drive taxis. The drivers had significantly larger posterior hippocampi, and the controls had a larger anterior hippocampal region. Hippocampal volume correlated with time spent as a taxi driver, positively in the posterior hippocampus and negatively in the anterior. The authors argued that the posterior hippocampus stores a spatial representation of the environment and can expand regionally when navigational demands are high, and concluded that the structure of the healthy adult human brain can undergo local plastic change in response to environmental demands.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-26 via Europe PMC.
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Maguire, E. A., Gadian, D. G., Johnsrude, I. S., Good, C. D., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S. J., & Frith, C. D. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(8), 4398-4403. doi:10.1073/pnas.070039597