From Here to There: The Art and Science of Finding and Losing Our Way

The mind has its own map mapping potential, a study that is gaining new momentum as scientists isolate and recognize the workings of place cells, boundary cells, head direction cells, grid cells, and other brain units yet to be identified. This is an engrossing area of study that science writer Michael Bond so deftly describes in this engrossing story of how we find our way and the overriding panic that engulfs those who get lost. Navigation skills are learned, perhaps like language, through exploration when young. Travel maps can be embedded through directional markers, using compasses, the stars, or by memorizing familiar settings as the Eskimo and Indians did. Through practice, navigation skills can be honed as evidenced by the British cabbies memorizing the baffling geography of London streets. This feat demonstrably showed increased growth in the brain hippocampus. The reader is taken on the Polynesian voyages, where the winds, ocean swells, and migrating birds served to chart the route. Unfortunately, the use of GPS systems now reduces the modern user’s navigational skills. Also, aging and dementia diminish the ability to find one’s way. Stories of the terror that seizes the lost individual may remind the reader of their own feelings of anguished helplessness when lost while skiing, hiking, or in the midst of a strange city. This is a mesmerizing book engagingly written about the science, history, and importance of gaining the skills of learning how to find our way.