Which study showed posterior hippocampus enlargement in London taxi drivers?

• A. O'Keefe and Nadel
• B. Squire
• C. Maguire et al. (2000)
• D. Rosenzweig and Bennet

Answer: (C)

Neuroplasticity in the hippocampus driven by real-world navigation experience. London taxi drivers rely intensely on spatial memory to navigate and memorize routes, so researchers scanned their brains and compared them with non-t taxi drivers. The findings showed a larger posterior hippocampus in the drivers, and importantly, the size there correlated with how many years someone had spent driving taxis. This region is linked to spatial processing and memory, so the enlargement reflects structural changes associated with the demanding navigational tasks these drivers perform. The study provided direct evidence that adult brain structure can adapt to experiential demands, illustrating hippocampal plasticity.

Other figures in the field contributed foundational ideas—one proposed the hippocampus as a cognitive map, another mapped memory systems, and another demonstrated effects of enriched environments in animals—but Maguire and colleagues are the ones who demonstrated posterior hippocampal enlargement in human navigators.