51–60 of 146 posts
I worked as an EMT for about 4 months and for the first few weeks had to drive around while the Paramedic (we rode EMT/Paramedic pairs) quizzed me about "if we got a call at XYZ, how would you get there"
Talk about vivid dreams every night.
I would imagine the combo of spatial reasoning and mapping plus social stimulation could be a reason. You could also argue both are regularly training reflexes and fine motor movement. Or could be there some weird variable that's unaccounted for ? Do taxi drivers and ambulance drivers for some reason have more regular sleep patterns ? We know that is definitely helpful for Alzheimer's
The rate of fatality for Alzheimer’s among ambulance and taxi drivers is 3x lower than the general population. This is not observed in other transportation-related careers. The connection is believed to be the spatial reasoning involved in routing. No causative link is suggested.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The connection is believed to be the spatial reasoning involved in routing. This is triggering me lol. I was a Paramedic for 10 years and 3 of those years were before GPS existed and we had these awful 900 page 5" thick things we had to wield on the fly called Map Books. It was part of our probation period testing and they would time us to pick out the routes reliably within a certain deadline or not graduate from…
In a similar vein, to drive a black taxi in London you have to pass The Knowledge of London exam which requires becoming a human routing database for over twenty thousand streets and landmarks.
If I remember the story I read correctly, they just call it "The Knowledge". What a great name.
I immediately go to these two thoughts: - Is significant life-long usage of real-time mental spatial navigation protective? - Are those who end up in these positions self-selected for better than average real-time mental spatial navigation and that above average performance correlates with protection against Alzheimer's.
I think your 2nd point is less likely. Anecdotal, but I've spoken with many taxi and ride-share drivers, and my impression is that their decision to seek out and continue that line of work is almost always driven by outside economic considerations. I've never heard someone base their decision on their ability to perform the job.
The rate of fatality for Alzheimer’s among ambulance and taxi drivers is 3x lower than the general population. This is not observed in other transportation-related careers. The connection is believed to be the spatial reasoning involved in routing. No causative link is suggested.
Will we see a drop in alzheimers when the open world gaming population reaches that age? I mean, I can not just navigate my city, but multiple worlds!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The connection is believed to be the spatial reasoning involved in routing. This is triggering me lol. I was a Paramedic for 10 years and 3 of those years were before GPS existed and we had these awful 900 page 5" thick things we had to wield on the fly called Map Books. It was part of our probation period testing and they would time us to pick out the routes reliably within a certain deadline or not graduate from…
In a similar vein, to drive a black taxi in London you have to pass The Knowledge of London exam which requires becoming a human routing database for over twenty thousand streets and landmarks.
