Unit 2; Core Studies; Maguire et al
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- Created on: 13-03-17 17:59
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- Maguire et al
- Aim: investigate differences in the brains (especially the hippocampus) of London taxi drivers
- Sample: 16 male, right-handed Ldn taxi drivers aged 32-62, & 50 matched controls
- IV: taxi driver or not DV: hippocampus size
- Background: hippocampus helps navigation
- Results
- Correlational analysis: longer been a driver for, the bigger your posterior H-C & the smaller your anterior H-C
- VBM: taxi drivers had larger grey matter volume & more at back, less at front
- Pixel counting: no difference in overall size but drivers had larger posterior, non-drivers were more even
- Procedure
- MRI of taxi drivers to analyse brain anatomy then compared to controls
- Voxel based Morphometry
- measures grey matter volume & general differences
- Pixel Counting
- done on drivers & 16 matched controls.
- scan separates H-C into 26 slices & a blind researcher counts pixels: 2D area measurement
- Conclusion: H-C changes with demand on spatial memory
- posterior may control old info & anterior controls new
- Ethics: all kept
- Reliability & Validity
- IR: consistent results from 3 sources
- ER: can't generalise to women & children
- IV: accurate test of plasticity
- EV: uses real drivers
- Ethnocentrism: only used LDN drivers but applicable everywhere
- Summary
- Biological area: studied how brain shape changes with use
- Brain Plasticity: navigational skill use affects size of hippocampus
- Debates
- Nature vs Nurture: enviro changes shape of H-C
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