A 2025 study suggests that the brain's navigation system doesn't work like GPS.

Heavier GPS use predicted worse spatial memory years later.

Kids allowed to roam farther without adults report lower wayfinding anxiety as adults.

I used to keep getting lost until I turned on GPS. Then, I got lost only rarely, and more specifically, when there was recent construction on the road and the GPS got confused. But once I came to rely almost exclusively on GPS and my battery died, I got lost, and I didn't have the skills to recover. “Where am I?” I wondered, looking out at an unfamiliar landscape. Over time, I noticed I was paying less attention to the landscape as well, assuming the GPS was doing the work for me.

What I had noticed in myself turns out to have a neurological counterpart. A recent study found it by looking at what happens in the brains of mice as they move through space.

For decades, we’ve assumed that the brain’s navigation system operates similarly to an internal GPS. We ask for directions internally, and the system responds, telling us “north” or “northwest.” But a team at the German Cancer Research Center, led by Hannah Monyer and Kevin Allen, has found that the analogy may be wrong. GPS and our internal navigation systems seem more different than alike.

In their study, the researchers recorded from more than 10 grid cells at once in mice moving around freely, then used a model to read their direction and speed from the pattern of neurons. While GPS relies on a fixed reference system, grid cells can switch between reference frames, such as a wall or a landmark, as the animal moves. Without reliable cues to correct against, the animal’s sense of direction can gradually drift even while it remains confident about where it is.

Implications for Alzheimer's Disease and Navigation Skills

Monyer thinks this may help explain why people with Alzheimer's lose their bearings. Equally, this research direction raises the question: could changes in navigation skills eventually help detect Alzheimer's earlier?

Cultural anthropologist Claudio Aporta noticed a........

© Psychology Today