Researchers believe the association between navigation-heavy work and lower Alzheimer’s risk centers on the hippocampus, a part of the brain that governs memory and spatial navigation. It’s one of the first brain regions that Alzheimer’s damages: Problems with spatial navigation and orientation are among the earliest signs of the disease, sometimes surfacing before obvious memory loss.
Oof, my mental maps have always been bad; I memorize specific routes, but aside from those routes, I’d get lost in a heartbeat if I took a wrong turn
I hope mental maps when playing video games still count