Scientists have found that city dwellers orient themselves in space worse than villagers

To find out how the environment in childhood affects the ability to navigate, scientists studied data

about 400 thousandpeople from 38 countries around the world who played the mobile video game Sea Hero Quest. This game was developed in 2016 to study Alzheimer's disease. During the game, participants had to navigate a boat in virtual space, avoid all obstacles and find control points shown on the map.

The researchers processed the data to rule outthe effect of age, gender, and education level on game outcomes, and found that the place in which study participants grew up correlated with the number of points scored. At the same time, the place of current residence did not affect the success in the game. The analysis showed that, in general, participants who were born in rural areas performed better on the task.

“We discovered that growing up is beyondcities appears to be beneficial for developing navigational abilities. This, we think, is influenced by the excessive simplicity of many street networks in the city,” says Hugo Spears, a professor at University College London and co-author of the study.

Scientists compared participants' hometownsresearch by analyzing the entropy of street networks to assess the complexity and randomness of layouts. It turned out that people who grew up in cities with low entropy, in which the street system is an ordered grid, cope worst with the game.  This is how the road system is organized, for example, in Chicago and New York. And those participants who were born in cities with an unstructured street organization (for example, Prague) were only slightly inferior to rural residents.

“If you grow up in a place with a complex layoutroads or trails, you are constantly training your spatial orientation skills. In such conditions, you need to turn at different angles, change direction and memorize more streets and landmarks for each trip, ”says Antoine Cutrot, co-author of the work from the University of Lyon.

Researchers note that disorientationin space is one of the key signs for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Therefore, understanding what factors determine the development of this skill will help doctors detect this disease in a timely manner.

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