Cyclist Magazine: Cycling is better without GPS
Cyclist Magazine
February 2023
An opinion piece published first in the magazine and then on the website
Do you ever go on a ride and see an enticing-looking road? You wonder what might be down there, but your GPS device informs you that it’s not on your route, so you obediently pedal on by without even thinking.
Studies have shown that when people use GPS they engage less with their hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for navigation, and this can then lead to the hippocampus shrinking. London taxi drivers famously have greater grey matter volume in the hippocampus because of how much they use this part of the brain to memorise the city’s labyrinth of streets.
Thus, sacking off digital directions and actually using our brains is not only good for our sense of freedom, it’s good for our intelligence. We are forced to pay attention, take heed of where we are, read signs – manmade or natural – and develop our own internal compass.
Plus, it also means we can appreciate things that aren’t marked on a map, like the towering old oak tree in the centre of a village, a chocolate-box thatched cottage nestled at the start of a climb, or the rhododendron-lined avenue that signals the road home.
Instead of being entirely at the behest of a device and obsessed with knowing exactly where we are, we could be paying attention to our surroundings, learning about a place and, most importantly, using our brains.