I recently learnt about spatial cognition and got captivated. The research, which has become a hot topic in neuroscience, is focused on how our human brain builds knowledge about space and how this helps us navigate our surroundings. As we move around in our cities, we are able to find our way even when we walk down unfamiliar streets, equipped with a sense of direction, and can make shortcuts and return to recognisable areas. We can even recognise places that we revisit after having been away for many years.
Michael Bond has written a fascinating book, Wayfinding, which explores how we find and lose our way, and the behaviours associated with navigating the world around us. He highlights that this ability to map the environment around us is a remarkable achievement, and a skill we would be wise to keep nurturing, as we become increasingly dependent on satellite navigation.
If you are walking to a new destination in the city using Google maps on your phone to follow your movements, you are most likely to reach your destination. But if you do not pay attention to the landmarks, buildings and features you pass on your way, you might struggle walking back again without the help of your phone. However, if you pay attention to the surroundings on your way out, you will also know your way back. We have this amazing ability to paint a cognitive map based on what our brain observes along the way. Obviously, some of us are better at this than others, but it is a skill that can be nurtured.
Sometimes this sense of direction can be disrupted, for instance when visiting another city, where you suddenly find yourself disorientated. You think you are walking North, when you are heading South. A similar thing happened to me many years ago before mobile navigation technology. On my first visit to Paris, I got confused about the orientation between two different parts of the city, and it influenced my behaviour and exploration of the city as I continuously moved awkwardly between these two places. Even though I eventually got it properly mapped in my head, and was able to enjoy knowing where I was, I made the same mistake in the beginning of my second visit to Paris. It was, as Bond describes it, as if my head-direction was determined to stick with the wrong orientation it had set in the beginning of the first visit, and it took quite a lot of effort to reset it. After many subsequent visits to Paris, I now know my way around the city, but I can still get inklings of that initial confusion from that very first visit.
Interestingly, Paris is an easier city to navigate compared to London, due to the layout of the city with its long straight boulevards, whereas London, where I lived for many years, is more challenging to get to know, because it is built on old village layouts that do not marry up. London is a ‘wayfinder’s nightmare’ as Bond describes it.
Obviously, getting a bit disorientated in a big city is not unusual, or upsetting, but it can be frightening to really feel lost, for instance in a dense forest, where you have little or nothing to orientate yourself by. Bond describes how a sudden realisation that you are lost can fill you with absolute terror and can feel as if you are losing your mind. When we get completely disoriented in our physical surroundings, our cognitive processes can break down and lead to hallucinations and anxiety. Such a dramatic reaction can result in people behaving in a panic, by running away, or walk in circles, which is what you should never do. If you have not experienced this, you should not seek it, as it can be traumatising, and people who find themselves utterly lost in the wilderness, run the risk on not getting out alive. The sheer panic they go through, can make them unable to think clearly, stay put to wait for a search party, or rationally try to retrace their steps. Bond describes a moving and horrifying story about a woman, who went missing on the Appalachian Trail in the US and tragically died approximately 19 days later. She left the trail to relieve herself in the forest, but then lost her direction and was unable to find her way back onto the trail. When they found her body at her camp site two years later, she was only half a mile away from the trail!
The way we build cognitive maps are helped by using natural lines in the landscape, such as a row of trees, or a long wall, as these assist in creating boundaries. These boundaries help to anchor us and make us feel secure. For instance, if you think of big urban spaces, often in large cities, many people are more comfortable around the edges that in the middle of that space. We hug such boundaries.
I think there is an added dimension to knowing your surroundings, and our ability to draw accurate cognitive maps of the environment, which is the possible positive affect it can have on our well-being. By allowing us to map our physical world, we may also be better at creating mental maps of how we see the world in a wider perspective. In other words, one thing is knowing my way around Paris, but another thing is how I experience myself in the city. The two may well be highly correlated.
Bond’s intriguing book has started to influence my own behaviour. I am now paying more attention to the environment when I walk or cycle around in my new home city, Copenhagen, and relying more on my gut feel to tell me where I am, instead of checking my phone for directions. As a result, I find that I am becoming more confident about my movements, enjoy my surroundings more, and I feel happier as my mental maps are getting stronger.
Sources:
Bond, Michael (2020): ‘Wayfinding’, Picador.