• Washington Post, Monday, June 7, 2010 11:17 AM

Nicholas Carr points to Lauren Rosenberg's experience of getting hit by a car while crossing a four-lane highway on foot as an example of our growing, possibly dangerous dependence on technology rather than innate navigational skills. Rosenberg used Google Maps to track her route, and she's now suing Google.

"Blaming Google seems like a stretch," writes Carr -- but there is evidence "our growing reliance on automated GPS directions could end up altering the circuitry in our brains."

Carr quotes a neuroscientist who speculates such technology could lead to the shrinking of the hippocampus, the part of the human brain that plays a role in long-term memory and spatial navigation -- which puts people more at risk for Alzheimer's disease. Her evidence for that claim? A study done in the late '90s that showed London cab drivers, who navigated around town on their own, actually had enlarged hippocampi.

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