There is a lot more to the idea of one having a 'sense of direction.' All animals, even humans, have some sort of a sense of direction. If you are my grandmother, it's weak, you may not be able to find your way out of a wet paper bag. If you are an avid outdoors person, your sense of direction is probably more developed and acute. Weak or strong, we all have a sense of direction. But where does that come from, and how does it work?
Today, Neuroscientists believe that our brains work as a bunch of modules and networks of neurons or maps. Modules are group areas like the "lizard brain" we often hear people talk about when referencing our base, primal emotions, and fears. That module is also accountable for the unconscious mechanisms that keep us breathing without thinking about it. Other modules are related to long-term memory and the short-term memory centers of the brain. These modules overlap and connect uniquely in each of us.
Going deeper into what's inside those modules are neural maps. Memories are stored in multiple places in the brain, connected by neural maps. When Idea 1 and Idea 2 are connected, the brain makes a map connecting the two. A map is a connection between neurons. Imagine a chaotic looking bunch of nets connected at the knots. These maps deepen and strengthen as our skills increase or knowledge on a subject deepens. Maps make connections both while we sleep (yes, dreaming as odd as they seem are our brain's way of making connections to things while we sleep) and awake. While awake, we bring memories up from long term memory to the pre-frontal cortex, literally the area behind your forehead. Connections are made and strengthened, other links come up, and eventually, the new relationships and resulting maps return to our memory centers.
Ok, those are the basics of how our brains make connections to things and where they roughly happen. But one critical spot needs more attention, the hippocampus. The hippocampus, located almost dead center of the brain, just on top of where the spinal cord comes to the brain, is part of our limbic system (source and controller of emotions and memories).
Since this little essay is about navigation and the brain, it's inside the hippocampus where scientists have recently discovered dedicated cells call dentate granule cells, which encode memories for specific places. Think of it as the geolocation data on a photo you took with your smartphone. These cells connect location with the memories of those locations.
From his book "The Lost Art of Finding Our Way," by John Huth, further detail shows that these cells are arranged in a grid pattern and light up (seen on brain scanning equipment) as we move through space. It turns out that navigational skills are a dependent relationship between memory, perception, and the mental maps we create in our brains. Literally.
In a study by Dr. Caswell Barry, "It is as if grid cells provide a cognitive map of space. In fact, these cells are very much like the longitude and latitude lines we're all familiar with on normal maps, but instead of using square grid lines, it seems the brain uses triangles.
These grids in our brains work in several ways. First, if you lose your car keys, it's probably because you put them down in the not so usual place. In our homes, we place things in specific locations, and we arrange our spaces for living. Our brains remember these spacial relationships. If you routinely place your keys in a bowl on the kitchen counter, but tonight you put them on your fireplace mantle, you increase your chances of forgetting where they are in the morning. Your brain will eventually remember where they were placed, but it will have to expend a lot of energy to pull up more recent and weaker mental maps from the night before, just to find your keys. Lots of science has been done around how one ought to organize a home to reap how the brain naturally puts things in category and location.
But what about navigating the wilderness? Turns out, the same cells help your brain place your body in the bigger world as well. I may venture to say that those who have had a life of outdoor recreation will have stronger skills in this way. The good news is that these skills can be grown. What skills did you say? Well, the skills to know where you are on a map when looking out over a desert landscape. Skills related to being able to look down at a 2D topo map and connect a feature seen in the distance. As well, the ability to know how far you have moved in space over that landscape.
What interested me in this topic starts with the Rebelle Rally (www.rebellerally.com), an amazing six-day offroad romp through California and Nevada's deserts. But with one catch, no GPS allowed; just good old map and compass skills and your own mental skills in knowing where you are in the world. My curious mind wanted to understand why some people were really good at knowing where they were on the map vs. others who struggled and often made faults in decision making about where to go next as teams hunt for flags with points.
It turns out that many people are studying these same skills and applying them to disciplines such as Geology. Geology as a discipline is connected to our landscape, not just what we can see while sitting atop a vista. The spatial skills needed have to also help understand, with the mind, deep into what may be below the surface. The gist, Geology educators, wanted to come up with a way to strengthen the mapping skills of students, helping them continue through their degree paths. As a result, they have started to scratch the surface of how we may skill up our mapping game in events like the Rebelle Rally, backpacking, hunting, offroading, or even knowing where the exit to the mall is.
In this study, The Spatial Thinking Workbook: A Research-Validated Spatial Skills Curriculum for Geology Majors (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.5408/16-210.1?src=recsys) the researchers have determined that spatial reasoning skills (these skills in navigation we are talking about) are not genetic, meaning you aren't born able to do it or not. Males appear to have more developed skills in this area than females (maybe societal in creation?), but both males and females can increase the skills at the same rate, one sex isn't better than the other in this regard. The bottom line is that these skills can be improved.
The same researchers sought out to find a way to build skills in Geology students, you can read more details here: "The Spatial Thinking Workbook: A Research-Validated Spatial Skills Curriculum for Geology Majors https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.5408/16-210.1?src=recsys". However, here are some specific exercises we can do to improve our location awareness.
Exercises:
Use gestures and your body (like pointing, using your hand to follow a ravine shape, drawing shapes in the world with your hand in the air that correspond to features on a 2D topographic map.) Use your body and brain together
Take an orange and practice drawing what it looks like in its slices, which helps bring a 3D object in translation into a 2D world such as paper and pencil.
Use gestures to describe how to tie a bow or give directions through town.
Sketch land features in 3D; ripples in the sand, sand dunes, mountains, etc.
Some exercises I've built over the years (from my days as a Geology student, avid backpacker, and offroader):*
While driving or hiking, verbalize, and gesture what I'm seeing.
Draw progress on a topographic map while hiking or driving, noting land features on a map, and drawing where I may be in relation. (Also very good for when you have to triangulate your location with a compass and map.)
Along with gesturing land formations like mountain ranges, gesturing with your hands what features in 3D look like. Say I'm looking at a big bowl cut in a mountain from a long-gone glacier; it's one thing to trace the mountain ridges, but what I'm talking about here is maybe using your flat open hand to sculpt the bowl made by the glacier.
Ok, this article is a little "heady," pun intended. Let's sum things up. Our brains create maps of neurons to form memories, and we have cells in a grid pattern to help us know where we are in physical space. We can improve our skills in knowing where we are in the wilderness or on a map by basically using our whole body to strengthen where we are with how we see the world and as move through it. The brain is incredibly complex, and we still lack knowledge on how it works. But science is continually learning about how our brains store information, call up information and find our way home from Starbucks.