Finding the way Cultura/REX/Shutterstock
People from Finland have a particularly good sense of direction. That鈥檚 according to a study of 2.4 million people who downloaded a phone game designed to test people鈥檚 ability to find their way around. Out of the 193 countries where the game was downloaded, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark scored among the top six countries that did best at the game.
It was created to help researchers develop a test for Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, as one of the first symptoms of this condition is getting lost, says of University College London. 鈥淚t鈥檚 seen as a memory condition but the first thing to go is loss of spatial orientation.鈥
So far the team have only tested the game on healthy volunteers. To try the game out on as many people as possible, they made a free phone version called , which systematically tests people鈥檚 navigation abilities.
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After setting off in a boat and making several twists and turns through icebergs, the player has to aim a flare back to their starting point, which they can no longer see.
Young versus old
Analysing people鈥檚 scores, the team found that accuracy declined with age, even in young adulthood. 鈥淚 thought it was going to decline once people got older because that鈥檚 what memory does,鈥 says Spiers. 鈥淚t was surprising that navigation abilities are worse when you are 30 than when you鈥檙e 19.鈥
The team presented their findings at the conference in San Diego, California, this week. They also found that men scored higher than women, and people did better if they had more experience playing computer games.
Adjusting their results to take account of such trends, the team found that people from Finland, who came top, did about 20 per cent better than UK participants, for example.
Spiers speculates that the high scores among Nordic nations may be a result of selection for good navigation abilities in their Viking and seafaring pasts. However, there could be alternative explanations – for example, people in Nordic countries may spend more time doing outdoor activities.
The team鈥檚 next step is to try the game with people diagnosed with Alzheimer鈥檚. A test for the early stages of the condition would be helpful in efforts to develop drugs that can slow its progression.
Read more: Cells that help you find your way identified in humans
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