[HN Gopher] Taxi drivers offer a clue to Alzheimer's risk
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Taxi drivers offer a clue to Alzheimer's risk
Author : julienchastang
Score : 61 points
Date : 2024-12-24 16:23 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/9oqkn
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Maze Runner premise? Stimulate brain activity.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| You 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| ajuc wrote:
| As 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| Here's a link to the actual study, which is very readable:
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194
| wigster wrote:
| so - switch off your sat nav
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Not 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 wrote:
| Does navigating spaghetti code count as well?
| anadem wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Navigating it? How about _writing_ it?
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _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 wrote:
| Agreed - 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 wrote:
| Even 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?
| j7ake wrote:
| A 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 wrote:
| Alzheimer's is heart disease for the brain. Some even say it's
| a form of diabetes. Using your brain less definitely increases
| risk.
| aeternum wrote:
| Very 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 wrote:
| Does 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 wrote:
| Very 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 wrote:
| I'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.
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| Brutal
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| How confident do you have to be to make a comment like this?
| Not only point out a problem, but make a snarky comment about
| the larger system in top of it. What happens to your psyche if
| you're wrong? Is the risk of being wrong outweighed by the
| emotional boost of being right? Did you even consider you might
| be wrong? I'm genuinely curious
| lupire wrote:
| After making a bad comment, don't come back to check replies.
| apsec112 wrote:
| The study doesn't show the same effect for airline pilots, who
| definitely can't work while having Alzheimer's.
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194
| bgun wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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 wrote:
| > 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/
|
| It's a specific type of synaesthesia called "time-space
| synaesthesia".
| toss1 wrote:
| >> 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?
| phillypham wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| The fact that they have physical exercise (i.e. walking)
| probably contributes a lot..
| nine_k wrote:
| They 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 wrote:
| Is there a correlation between income and incidence of
| alzheimers? I wasn't aware of one.
| dgfitz wrote:
| The more money you have, the longer you live?
| noduerme wrote:
| Yes 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...
| skybrian wrote:
| Even among people who live in NYC, the elderly people who are
| outside going for walks and taking public transport are going
| to be healthier. If they're sicker or weaker, they would be
| more likely to take a cab or stay indoors and have things
| delivered.
| eduction wrote:
| If they're sicker or weaker, they would be more likely to
| leave the city.
|
| It is a difficult place for anyone, but especially for those
| with trouble climbing lots of stairs, handling icy surfaces,
| repeatedly shedding and putting on clothes, etc.
|
| Or who are too old to sustain the illusion that their income
| is on an upward trajectory, and the current difficulties thus
| temporary.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| What about navigating all those Walmarts and parking lots?
| byyoung3 wrote:
| also probably higher rates of social interaction
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| When 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 wrote:
| May be a simple as being poor and not retiring makes you less
| likely to develop Alzheimer's.
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| They adjust for overall lifespan in the study:
| https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194
| JamesBarney wrote:
| My 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.
| lupire wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| They adjust for overall lifespan in the study:
| https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194
| daedrdev wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Yeah, 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 wrote:
| They 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 wrote:
| just 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-
| inju...
|
| presuming an absence of any survival bias is probably a
| little cavalier.
| blindriver wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| sys32768 wrote:
| Did this study identify who had the APOE4 gene?
|
| Another study 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 wrote:
| A 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
|
| [1] https://london-taxi.co.uk/the-knowledge/
|
| [2]
| https://archive.org/details/losangelescounty0000thom/page/n9...
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Am 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.
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