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Taxi drivers offer a clue to Alzheimer's risk
- neonate 2y agohttps://archive.ph/9oqkn https://archive.ph/9oqkn
- iJohnDoe 2y agoMaze Runner premise? Stimulate brain activity.
- andsoitis 2y ago> Taxi drivers may have a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s because they are constantly using navigational and spatial processing. It would be interesting to know whether certain kinds of video game play have a similar effect. On the one hand, you don’t do it for 8+ hours a day every day (unlike cab drivers), but on the other hand, there might be a much higher volume of spatial and navigational decisions packed per minute in certain games.
- portaouflop 2y agoYou would be surprised how many people pack in more than 10 hours of Fortnite or similar games. On the other hand reality is much more complex than any game, so I am not sure if these nav decisions are equivalent.
- justin66 2y ago> On the other hand reality is much more complex than any game Untrue. A Taxi driver won't have to worry about elevation changes much at all. Zooming around a computer-generated space in a game might have a lot of that.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Muromec 2y agoPvP games can get pretty difficult. You need to remember the map, make a strategy, know which moves and counter moves exist, also make timing-precise input (e.g. active parry frames are 6 out of 30) and not forget to compensate for network latency you have judge by the vibes.
- ajuc 2y agoAs long as you disable the minimap in game. Which is the correct way to play open world games anyway. Other ways you look at the arrow instead of looking at the environment.
- chrisbrandow 2y agoI'm not sure it's equivalent to building a mental map of a 3D space. It certainly might be, but I can also imagine that it might have key differences.
- apsec112 2y agoHere's a link to the actual study, which is very readable: https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194 https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194
- wigster 2y agoso - switch off your sat nav
- m3kw9 2y agoNot sure how that compares to era where most people didn’t use google maps, but if you use google maps, you are using some part of your brain less especially memorizing or trying to reverse a route from memory. Or that if you can’t remember very well, you wouldn’t last long as a taxi driver(survivor ship bias)
- zerr 2y agoDoes navigating spaghetti code count as well?
- anadem 2y agoI think navigating code definitely has a relationship to navigating meatspace, and the ability to internalize a view of the code space makes for a good programmer. I'm long retired now, but attribute a lot of my programming ability to having had very poor sight in early childhood thus having to keep a mental map of my surroundings.
- fn-mote 2y agoNavigating it? How about writing it?
- ericmcer 2y agoSure hope so. Staying mentally sharp into old age is one of the things I comfort myself with when I am putting in long hours and just want to go outside.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoHaving a healthy cardiovascular system, like you might get from brisk walks, seems important for mental health
- throw0101d 2y ago> Taxi drivers may have a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s because they are constantly using navigational and spatial processing. A good reason to not use GPS/GNSS apps too much. Unless it's going to a location that's completely unfamiliar, I try to only check for red zones before I leave, and then use my familiarity of my city to get to my destination: know my starting point, know a major intersection near the destination, and avoid known-bad locations in between. If I get lost I can always pull out the app to re-orient.
- Aloha 2y agoAgreed - I use GPS to do the initial pathfinding - in much the same way I'd use a paper map in the old days. It's part of why I have a good sense of direction.
- tzs 2y agoEven when using it to go someplace unfamiliar you can pay attention and try to spot features of the area that you can use later to orient yourself if you ever want to navigate there again but without GPS. I wonder if that would sufficiently engage your navigation and spatial processing to give some of the same benefits the study found?
- c22 2y agoI like to leave the map open with no route set. Then I can look for shortcuts or check the traffic but I get to run my own routing algorithms (which I often find to be much more flexible and dynamic).
- maksimur 2y agoBefore GPS navigation apps (I was a kid), I had to either print the whole route or bring a map of my city. When I didn't use such aids I would get lost, and I still do.
- j7ake 2y agoA whole generation now uses navigation, is the prediction that there will be an increase in Alzheimer’s in this new generation due to reduced navigational processing?
- _3u10 2y agoAlzheimer’s is heart disease for the brain. Some even say it’s a form of diabetes. Using your brain less definitely increases risk.
- aeternum 2y agoVery flawed study. Looked at profession based on death certificate which is most recent profession. Those with Alzheimer's likely won't last long as taxi drivers so they find a new profession. And voila their profession from the viewpoint of this study is no longer taxi driver. Much surprise that our lauded peer review process didn't catch this.
- j45 2y agoDoes most recent profession have more impact than the profession with most years? It's likely that using ones brain on average more while driving may be a contributing factor. Wayfinding can be a neurally intense activity.
- jvanderbot 2y agoVery specious comment. From the actual article: > Additionally, death certificates included a field for reported usual occupation (the occupation in which the decedent spent most of their working life), generally completed by a funeral director with help from the decedent’s informant. So, not as closed-case as you suggest. Slam-dunking on studies is a top-tier trope on HN. All studies are flawed, but some are useful.
- atoav 2y agoI'd love it if the slam-dunkers occasionally went out and made their own, better, studies to show the world how to do it correctly.
- aeternum 2y agoI would love to and could do a better job, the barrier is the current system, it is immediately dismissed as unscientific if done outside of academia or an institution adjacent.
- atoav 2y agoHow do you know? Have you tried? It is certainly harder to get published as an independent researcher, but it is also not unheard of. See discussion at: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_a_individual_without_affiliation_to_a_university_or_research_institute_publish_research_papers_What_would_be_the_journals_stand_in_such_case https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_a_individual_without_a... Publishing your own study isn't the only way to critisise a hypothesis, you could also just write a rigouros blog post. Also: Scientists are humans, not godlike beings in ivory towers, thus science lives from participation. If you can find a methological flaw in a study that you are confident about, consider writing them. Who knows, maybe they already accounted for it (and you learn something) or they didn't (and they learn something). Either way they get a chance to clarify or correct. In the end the goal is to help figuring out what effective Alzheimers prevention looks like. Creating a good discourse around a study can be helpful, but it is also important to be rigorous and communicative when doing so. See as an example the discussion in the peer review of the discussed study, especially the section on survivorship bias: https://www.bmj.com/sites/default/files/attachments/bmj-article/pre-pub-history/alzheimers_drivers_bmj_r1_response_letter.pdf https://www.bmj.com/sites/default/files/attachments/bmj-arti... If I wrote a study that has a flaw I'd like to be the first to hear about it, just like I like to get a bug report when my software has a bug. Especially if it is a good cause.
- bgun 2y agoThis is basic "mind palace" theory, no? Human memory is linked to navigation; the more you associate memories with navigable places, the stronger your memories will remain.
- etrautmann 2y agoI have distinct memories as a kid of mapping things into abstract 3d spaces. The number line in my head is a weird 3D thing I still visually navigate whenever I think about numbers. what's weird is that even while I still use my representations formed as a kid, I don't seem to make new ones when I learn new info, which makes remembering things much harder.
- BjoernKW 2y ago> I have distinct memories as a kid of mapping things into abstract 3d spaces. The number line in my head is a weird 3D thing I still visually navigate whenever I think about numbers. I do the exact same thing! I wrote a blog post about how I visualise numbers: https://bjoernkw.com/2022/01/02/i-see-numbers/ https://bjoernkw.com/2022/01/02/i-see-numbers/ It's a specific type of synaesthesia called "time-space synaesthesia".
- toss1 2y ago>> I still use my representations formed as a kid, I don't seem to make new ones when I learn new info Very interesting; why do you think that is?
- gblargg 2y ago> the more you associate memories with navigable places, the stronger your memories will remain. Some of us have a location synaesthesia where thinking about particular topics often evokes a sense of being specific places, looking particular directions, each paired apparently randomly (but durably) with topics. Not sure if this is association (since it seems to form without any associating event with the location) or just signal "leakage" triggering the connection.
- phillypham 2y agoI wonder if this also applies to people that live urban environments that don't drive and have to navigate walking or using the subway. From my anecdotal evidence, it does seem that the average elderly person in NYC is way more active and social than an elderly person in the suburbs. But of course, it could be that people that live in cities self-select.
- netsharc 2y agoThe fact that they have physical exercise (i.e. walking) probably contributes a lot..
- nine_k 2y agoThey sort of self-select by the ability to earn enough to afford living in a city like NYC. There's enough low-income n-th generation inhabitants though to form a control group.
- noduerme 2y agoIs there a correlation between income and incidence of alzheimers? I wasn't aware of one.
- dgfitz 2y agoThe more money you have, the longer you live?
- noduerme 2y agoYes but I'm not talking about quantity of older people in total, I'm talking about what percentage of them get a disease. With cancer, which is also more likely the older you get, studies show that the chances of dying from it are about 12% higher in the poorest counties than wealthier counties in the US. That is despite people in those counties having a shorter lifespan from all other things as well. So my question in response to the parent's throwaway class warfare riff was: Given two people who survive to the same age, let's say 80, is one more likely to get Alzheimers than the other based on income? The article here would suggest otherwise, given that taxi drivers and ambulance drivers are among the least well compensated workers and yet strangely have 1/3rd the rate of Alzheimers. [0] https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2020/persistent-poverty-increased-cancer-death-risk https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2020...
- byyoung3 2y agoalso probably higher rates of social interaction
- lupire 2y agoThe study also shows that taxi drivers have very low lifespan, which of course is highly correlated to ower risk of death by Alzheimer's. They also ignored may other professions with similar or lower Alzheimer's risk. Overall, it feels suspicious that they ignored other potential explanations for the data.
- apsec112 2y agoThey adjust for overall lifespan in the study: https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194 https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194
- ShakataGaNai 2y agoWhen I read these headlines I wonder "Causation? Correlation?". Maybe it's addressed in the study but..... Is it that navigating with you brain is good to prevent Alzheimers? Or are you just more likely to die from something else as a cabbie. Statically speaking your more likely to die, than average, from a traffic related accident. Maybe the all the fumes cause something else terrible that kills you, etc. It does seem logical to me that using your brain more could help offset these dementia related diseases. But it also seems like if that made a huge difference, we'd see statistically vastly more alzheimers in "low thought" jobs like retail cashiers and people who don't work/retire early vs say... collegiate professors.
- lupire 2y agoMay be a simple as being poor and not retiring makes you less likely to develop Alzheimer's.
- chrisbrandow 2y agoThe correlation alone provides evidence of something worth pursuing and understanding. They do have some possible causation when considering hippocampus development observed in taxi drivers in other studies.
- apsec112 2y agoThey adjust for overall lifespan in the study: https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194 https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194
- JamesBarney 2y agoMy guess is it's correlational. It's almost always correlational. Remember the knowing a second language reduced risks of dementia, turned out it was correlational. The real cause was under diagnosis in immigrants who were disproportionately more likely to speak a second language. Still worth investigating further but dollars to donuts it's not causal.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- daedrdev 2y agoI do wonder though if its cause and effect are the wrong way. Perhaps the type of person who can remember enough to get the job and be good at it is already less likely to get Alzheimers, and we just selected for those people. I think this is not very likely though
- apsec112 2y agoYeah, I don't think the selection into being a taxi driver is that intense though (at least in 99% of markets), it's a fairly low wage job
- iLoveOncall 2y agoThey should replicate the study in the UK where the test to become a licensed taxi driver is extremely hard and requires years of study to memorize I believe close to 30,000 street names.
- ruined 2y agojust because it's low wage and a lot of people know how to do it, doesn't mean it isn't cognitively demanding and, driving is one of the most lethal activities that people commonly do in the modern world. according to osha 'transport incidents' represent 39% of all occupational fatalities https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-injuries/fatal-occupational-injuries-by-event-drilldown.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-inju... presuming an absence of any survival bias is probably a little cavalier.
- ivanche 2y agoTaxi drivers often have a shady side gig in being a police informer, drug dealer etc. Also practically all valuables which clients forget become theirs.
- blindriver 2y agoI think it’s more like those that were taxi drivers that got Alzheimer’s quit earlier than those that didn’t get it. So it’s more like survivor bias.
- mewpmewp2 2y agoI would be really interested in seeing an easily sortable and queriable dataset where you can sort also different causes of death and order them by all professions.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- sys32768 2y agoDid this study identify who had the APOE4 gene? Another study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-023-01627-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-023-01627-6 suggests the APOE4 gene may be preventing immune cells in the brain from switching to the defensive "clean" mode. I know my mother's hippocampus was smaller than something like 94% of people her age when she was diagnosed 11 years ago. First signs of AD generally show up in the hippocampus. Maybe with heavy spatial reasoning activity in that region, the AD mechanism is stunted or interfered with. I would be curious to know what activities outside of vehicle navigation stimulate the hippocampus equally. I still play a lot of 3D video games.
- noduerme 2y agoA study came out in 2000, back when I was driving a taxi, showing that London cabbies with "the Knowledge" had changes to their brain anatomy.[0] My girlfriend at the time spotted it in a college course and showed it to me. I remember her joking that she was only with me for the size of my hippocampus. I would hypothesize that it's more related to spacial/geographic memory than simply navigating spaces one visually perceives. My guess is the effect would be much less pronounced in people who drive for a living now relying on GPS maps. London taxi drivers, apparently, still must pass the notoriously difficult Knowledge test.[1] A similar (but less rigorous) test was required for Los Angeles cab drivers when I drove. And of course, if you weren't familiar with the street where your next call was (or where your passenger wanted to go), you had only seconds at a red light to leaf through the enormous Thomas Guide and memorize how you would get there.[2] [0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.070039597 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.070039597 [1] https://london-taxi.co.uk/the-knowledge/ https://london-taxi.co.uk/the-knowledge/ [2] https://archive.org/details/losangelescounty0000thom/page/n9/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/losangelescounty0000thom/page/n9...
- dang 2y agoThere have been a few HN threads about that over the years—here are some (I think there may be others?) Streetwise (1996) – BBC doc about The Knowledge (memorising every London street) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26581295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26581295 - March 2021 (1 comment) The Knowledge of London for cab drivers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25485509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25485509 - Dec 2020 (45 comments) The Guardians of London's Black Cab 'Knowledge' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10717003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10717003 - Dec 2015 (20 comments) London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585781 - Nov 2014 (105 comments) World's Hardest Geography Test - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8306536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8306536 - Sept 2014 (1 comment) For London's Cabbies, Job Entails World's Hardest Geography Test - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8295264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8295264 - Sept 2014 (68 comments)
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- DoingIsLearning 2y agoAm I interpreting the data correctly in that, whatever protective effect was found on Taxi drivers and Ambulance drivers, was actually aggravated on Ship Captains and Airline Pilots? My immediate thought went to the negative effect of sleep quality and work schedules, but I would expect the same sleep strain/stress for Ambulance drivers. A lot going on epidemiology wise but interesting study nevertheless.
- Qem 2y agoPerhaps because those go on autopilot most of the time?
- IAmGraydon 2y agoDoes anyone know how to download the data for the charts in the study? https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194 https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194 The last one (9/9) has a download link, but none of the others do.
- mkl 2y agoIt looks pretty easy to extract from the svg elements, as the aria-label attributes contain everything, e.g. "Urban and regional planners, Colour 2: Grey, Size: 1, Mean age at death, years: 76.82, Risk-adjusted % of Alzheimer's deaths: 1.92". The following seems to work (may need to be inspecting something in the plot iframe): a = []; document.querySelectorAll('path.data-point').forEach(e => { a.push(e.ariaLabel); }); console.log(a.join('\n'))
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoDoes this control for taxi driver ethnicity?
- bloomingkales 2y agoThat's a great question, since we also have this study: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/food-health/curry-and-alzheimers-disease https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/food-health/curry-and-alzh...
- yieldcrv 2y agoAs said the last time this was posted Its because taxi drivers with Alzheimer's will get complained about and ousted from the profession before their death Meaning there are no cognitive benefits to extrapolate from this reality of using your brain, from this study
- kacesensitive 2y agoOr taxi drivers with Alzheimer's get fired or quit
- thenerdhead 2y agoThis reporting feels a bit superficial, especially given the exciting direction Alzheimer’s research is taking. It might sound unconventional, but what if taxi drivers, through constant exposure to small amounts of pathogens from travelers worldwide, experience enough immune imprinting to help prevent diseases like Alzheimer’s? There’s an intriguing study suggesting that one type of Alzheimer’s might be linked to a chronic gut infection that eventually makes its way to the brain. https://news.asu.edu/20241219-health-and-medicine-surprising-role-gut-infection-alzheimers-disease https://news.asu.edu/20241219-health-and-medicine-surprising... We are likely on the verge of a scientific revolution that will redefine viruses as key drivers behind some of the most devastating diseases known to humanity.
- scotty79 2y agoI guess it might be hard to keep being a taxi driver when your brain gradually subsymptomatically deteriorates because of illness that will eventually kill you.
- 7e 2y agoMy DoorDash drivers can barely tie their own shoes. So yes, probably something to this.
- whimsicalism 2y agoCould we just be seeing selection effects for very early indicators of alzehimers?
- forgingahead 2y agoI remember a study as well where folks who were much more religious also had a lower rate of Alzheimer's. The purported cause was that remembering the hymns/chanting verses forces your brain to be more supple and active, staving off whatever causes it. Will try find it and link later.
- Unbefleckt 2y agoMy Partner has absolute dogshit spatial memory. I visit a city once and I remember my bearings instinctively, probably due to playing a lot of badly designed mazelike Video games, but she can visit a City several times and still get lost going somewhere she has been before. Should we be worried?
- this_steve_j 2y agoRecently related: Herpes virus and repeated head trauma linked to Alzheimer’s, study finds (2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42629076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42629076 Why Alzheimer's Scientists Are Re-Thinking the Amyloid Hypothesis (2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42628529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42628529 Herpes Virus Might Drive Alzheimer's Pathology, Study Suggests (2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42578383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42578383