众所周知，爱因斯坦的大脑与一般人不同；如果说的哥的大脑也和你不一样，你信吗？然而英国伦敦的出租车司机可能和我们其他人真的都不一样。
研究人员在10多年前便已知道，那些出租车司机中的精英们——他们经过长期的训练而掌握了一门绝技：由25000条街道构成的心理地图——拥有一个大于平均值的后海马，这一大脑区域与认知及导航有关。
而科学家所不知道的是，这些出租车司机是经过训练才形成了更大的海马，抑或他们的这一大脑区域在一开始就很大——因而具有先天的导航优势。
因此一个研究小组在4年的时间里，对3个受试组进行了跟踪调查——一组是成功获得了“绝技”并成为出租车司机的学员，一组是不具备从业资格的学员，最后的对照组则是非出租车司机。
研究人员对受试者进行了测试，并在训练之前、过程中以及结束后对他们的大脑进行了扫描。
研究人员发现，在开始训练之前，具有从业资格的学员的大脑与那些没有从业资格的学员、或非出租车司机的大脑并没有差别。
然而随着出租车司机掌握了更多的信息，他们的海马区也在不断增大，并逐渐改变了他们的大脑。
英国伦敦大学学院的神经学家Katherine Woollett和Eleanor A. Maguire在12月8日的《当代生物学》杂志网络版上报告了这一研究成果。
而不成功的学员的大脑海马区从始至终都是相同的大小，这可能意味着，成功的出租车司机真的拥有一种与生俱来的优势——他们的大脑比别人具有更大的可塑性。（生物谷Bioon.com）
>>延伸阅读：PANS：忆往昔展未来 海马区新发现
>>延伸阅读：大脑海马区功能减退是老年痴呆症的征兆
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doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.018
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Acquiring the Knowledge of London's Layout Drives Structural Brain Changes
Katherine Woollett, Eleanor A. Maguire
The last decade has seen a burgeoning of reports associating brain structure with specific skills and traits (e.g., [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]). Although these cross-sectional studies are informative, cause and effect are impossible to establish without longitudinal investigation of the same individuals before and after an intervention. Several longitudinal studies have been conducted (e.g., [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]); some involved children or young adults, potentially conflating brain development with learning, most were restricted to the motor domain, and all concerned relatively short timescales (weeks or months). Here, by contrast, we utilized a unique opportunity to study average-IQ adults operating in the real world as they learned, over four years, the complex layout of London's streets while training to become licensed taxi drivers. In those who qualified, acquisition of an internal spatial representation of London was associated with a selective increase in gray matter (GM) volume in their posterior hippocampi and concomitant changes to their memory profile. No structural brain changes were observed in trainees who failed to qualify or control participants. We conclude that specific, enduring, structural brain changes in adult humans can be induced by biologically relevant behaviors engaging higher cognitive functions such as spatial memory, with significance for the nature versus nurture debate.
