Barcelona, Wu-Tang wisdom & cognitive maps

Last month my girlfriend and I went to Barcelona. We covered a lot of it by foot. When I'm in a place/city I like to be able to memorize its geography. I have realised that one of my abilities is forming a strong, reliable cognitive map of my surroundings.

This reminded me of something the RZA wrote about in his book, THE TAO OF WU, where he made reference to a British study about cab drivers in London who by 'mastering the streets in that city, they actually increased the size and changed the structure of their brains.' This enlarged 'the hippocampi - which is part of the brain that handles memory.' He makes a good point that practicting this gives 'a sense of perspective-of the size of the world, the scale of the universe, the place of man.'