Some previous studies have suggested that experience shapes brain structure and function. For example, the cultural and geographic characteristics of an environment can have profound effects on cognition and mental health. Just as studies have found that living closer to green spaces is better for us, urban living is associated with a higher risk of some mental illnesses.
Although there is a lot of research like this, we know very little about the impact of a person’s upbringing on later cognitive abilities. On the evening of March 30, Beijing time, the top academic journal “Nature” published a new study online, which found that people who grew up in rural or suburban areas had better spatial navigation ability than those who grew up in cities, especially Compared to someone who grew up in a city with gridded streets. 
The study involved people from 38 countries 397,162 participants, all playing a mobile game called Sea Hero Quest. Developed by Deutsche Telekom in collaboration with Alzheimer’s Research UK, University College London, University of East Anglia and game developer Glitchers, the game is a science adventure game designed for neuroscience research.
“Growing up in a place with a more complex layout of roads or paths,” said Dr. Antoine Coutrot of the University of Lyon, the study’s corresponding author , may help improve your navigation skills as you need to keep track of your direction as you are more likely to make multiple turns at different angles, and you may also need to remember more streets and landmarks on each leg .”
In the study, participants were asked to pilot a boat in a virtual environment to find checkpoints shown on a map. They found that where participants grew up affected their performance in the game after controlling for factors such as age, gender and education level, while current residence did not affect their scores. 
1000 random trajectories of Chicago (grid city). Provided by the research team
The research team compared the home cities of these participants by analyzing the entropy (disorder) of the street network to measure the complexity and randomness of street layouts. Those who had lower entropy in their hometowns, such as those who grew up in places with ordered grid layouts like Chicago or New York, performed worse at wayfinding tasks. And those from places with less orderly city streets, such as Prague, fared only slightly worse than those from rural areas.
1000 random trajectories of Prague (less irregular city).
To test whether people from cities can more effectively adapt to environments similar to the ones they grew up in, the researchers also developed a city-themed version of Ocean Hero Quest called City Heroes. The City Hero Quest, which asked participants to drive around city streets in a virtual environment, ranging from simple grids to more winding street layouts. They found that in cities with grid layoutsPeople who grow up do perform better in similar environments. 
A network of streets in cities with varying regular grid layouts and irregular layouts.
In their paper, the research team concluded that people are better at navigating in environments that are topologically similar to where they grew up. The link was independent of age, gender, video game skills and education.
Overall, participants who grew up in low-entropy cities performed better on low-entropy game levels, while participants who grew up in high-entropy cities performed better on game levels. Players are better at navigating complex game levels. Similarly, players who grew up in cities generally performed better on game levels in smaller spaces than those in larger spaces, while players who grew up outside cities performed better in game levels in larger spaces than in larger spaces. Performs better in game levels with smaller spaces.
These results, they argue, support the idea that humans develop navigation strategies based on the type of environment they are in, and that such strategies are less optimal in other environments Excellent. The results of this study suggest that the environment in which a person grows up is associated with cognitive ability, and that this link is stable throughout life. The
research team noted that future research will need to explore how these differences arise during childhood.
It’s worth mentioning that the Heroes of the Seas project is actually designed to help research Alzheimer’s disease by revealing differences in the ability to navigate through space well-known Alzheimer’s disease. According to the research team, more than 4 million people have played the game, contributing to numerous studies throughout the project.
One of the study’s authors, Professor Michael Hornberger of the University of East Anglia, is a dementia researcher. He mentioned that spatial navigation impairment is a key symptom in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, “We are looking to use the knowledge we have gained from Mission Heroes of the Seas to develop better disease monitoring tools, such as diagnostics or tracking drugs. Trial results.” Hornberger believes that judging how well a person navigates based on characteristics such as age, education and birthplace is critical for testing whether he is showing signs of decline.
Of course, says Dr Susan Kohlhaas, Director of Research at the Alzheimer’s Research Institute UK, “In this study, researchers found that people who grew up in rural areas were better at navigating through space. There are differences, but we cannot conclude that living in rural areas helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease.” She reminded that Alzheimer’s disease risk is a complex combination of factors such as age, genes and lifestyle.
Further research is needed to unravel these complex risk factors, she believes. “However, Mission Heroes of the Seas is an amazing example of how mass participation in research can help scientists get one step closer to breakthroughs.”
Link to paper: https:// www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04486-7