Relying on GPS for directions makes your brain lazy. Here’s how to give it a workout

Perhaps, she decided, it was time to rely less heavily on GPS for navigation.

In the decade since making that decision, the Ontario-based travel writer for Travel with TMc has criss-crossed much of the world. Now, when she lands in an unfamiliar city, she’ll turn to Waze or Google Maps for directions as she drives or walks to her destination.

On the way back, though, it’s up to her.

“That’s my way of kind of straddling the super tech side of things and also working the cognitive muscles that I realize have declined with use of GPS,” said McAndrew. “Tech has its place … but, especially when it comes to travel, I’m very much about talking to people and getting lost and making mistakes.”

The numbers suggest McAndrew may be an outlier. Roughly two billion users a month have Google Maps direct them, while hundreds of millions turn to Apple Maps or Waze.

But research suggests getting lost is actually great exercise for your brain, as is limiting the guidance you get from satellite-navigation (sat-nav) tools — whether you’re heading to the cottage this summer, hitting the trails or exploring a new city.

A 2020 study of 50 participants, conducted at McGill University and published in Scientific Reports, found that people who habitually used GPS for directions had poorer spatial memory — the brain’s internal map of our surroundings. It also found the skill declined over time as GPS use increased.

The part of the brain responsible for spatial memory, the hippocampus, also governs episodic memory — our ability to remember events and the order in which things happened — as well as emotional regulation and stress management, said Louisa Dahmani, a neuroscientist who co-authored the study and is now a researcher at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

If we use our hippocampus less frequently for navigation, it can begin to atrophy like an unused muscle and reorganize itself, said Dahmani.

“There is a possibility that, you know, all of these functions might be affected,” she said, referring to all of the responsibilities of the hippocampus.

“In the long term, it might put us at greater risk of Alzheimer’s because hippocampal atrophy is an important risk factor.”

To help prevent spatial-memory loss and cognitive decline, Dahmani suggests people keep track of their surroundings while driving or walking, even when using a phone for directions. She also recommends following McAndrew’s example and trying to navigate home without technological support.

“Getting lost is not a bad thing,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be seen as a failure of your spatial memory but rather like a challenge, you know, like something that’s going to allow you to exercise that spatial memory muscle.”

Connecting with the landscape

Out in the bush, Brenda Holder teaches a similar lesson: Don’t panic if you feel lost. One of the most crucial elements of navigating the land, she said, is regulating the fight, flight or freeze response.

“Once you’ve calmed down, you know, spend a few moments really looking around you and see: Are there any natural handrails I can see or hear or smell,” she said. “So if you would imagine that as a handrail on a set of stairs, as long as I keep that by my right shoulder or my left shoulder or whatever, I know I’m going to go somewhere specific.”

For more than three decades, the Cree traditional knowledge keeper of plant medicine has shared how to read the land through Mahikan Trails, the tourism operation she co-founded. She has led everyone from tourists to film professionals into the bush around Banff and southwestern Alberta.

Nature provides many clues for wayfinding, Holder said, from the position of the sun, stars and moon to a chain of mountains that can serve as a directional reference point.

Walking alongside a river will keep you from going in circles, she said. And while guides may say moss grows on the northern side of trees, she cautions against using that as the sole basis for navigation, because “in a really shady spot, it’s going to grow in the south, too.”

That’s why it’s best to use at least three navigational clues, she said, so you have more certainty.

Although technology is useful, Holder said it has contributed to “a nature deficit disorder” and eroded the connection between people and the land.

“Sometimes it’s just really following your own gut instinct,” she said. “You might know more deep down inside than you really realize about where to go, but you just have to get into that calmer state.”

A return to old technology

Technology is not infallible, as McAndrew discovered at the edge of that forest.

It can also fail for other reasons. The ability to jam GPS satellite signals from the ground has become more sophisticated, affecting infrastructure and civilians in conflict zones, notably in Ukraine and in Russia.

Katherine Dunn, author of Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the Modern World, told CBC’s The Sunday Magazine that authorities across Europe are returning to technology that predates the Second World War as a safeguard against GPS failure or interference.

They are installing atomic clocks on the ground and investing in a long-range, land-based radio system known as LORAN as a backup for shipping and naval navigation.

There’s also a renewed push to teach celestial navigation at naval academies, she said.

“There’s this idea that you need to be able to rely on your eyes and ears,” Dunn said. “They’re not infallible either, but you can’t let these skills completely degrade, because the moment when you need them is going to be quite high-stakes potentially.”

McAndrew said she has noticed that her ability to visualize streets and landmarks in her home city of Kitchener has declined since she was a child.

Back then, her dad made her direct him using a map as he drove her to a friend’s house. When she began driving herself, she relied on printed MapQuest directions.

That foundation has given her confidence as she reduces her reliance on GPS tools while travelling.

“I feel very grateful that I have had the experience to start with paper maps,” she said. “Now, I feel like I’m coming a little full circle.” — Laura Fraser