Rationality doesn’t equal efficiency: Cellphone data shows how we navigate cities

Think of your morn­ing walk to work, school or your favorite cof­fee shop. Are you tak­ing the short­est pos­si­ble route to your des­ti­na­tion? Accord­ing to big data research that my col­leagues and I con­duct­ed, the answer is no: People’s brains are not wired for opti­mal nav­i­ga­tion. Instead of cal­cu­lat­ing the short­est path, peo­ple try to…

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Brain teaser to exercise your mental rotation cognitive abilities

Men­tal self-rota­­tion is the cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty to imag­ine your­self in dif­fer­ent loca­tions in space, and to imag­ine your body mov­ing in space. We need it for every­day activ­i­ties such as find­ing a place or read­ing a map. The abil­i­ty involved is tech­ni­cal­ly called ego­cen­tric spa­tial trans­for­ma­tions (yes, that is the sci­en­tif­ic expres­sion) or men­tal self rota­tion, and the brain…

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