BU Research Blog

I am absolutely delighted to be part of the amazing Sea Hero Quest team. Sea Hero Quest is a game for mobile phones in which users solve navigation tasks. With more than 4 million contributors/players it is one of the largest citizen science projects ever. We  used Sea Hero Quest to analyse navigation performance of several hundred thousand participants. In this Nature paper – which came out today – we showed that people who grew up in rural areas have better spatial navigation skills that those raised in cities.

Follow the links below for more information about the paper and Sea Hero Quest:

Excellent thread by @antoine_coutrot on our new @nature article:
"Entropy of city street networks linked to future spatial navigation ability"
With co-lead @m_hornberger
& @edthink @GoodroeSarah @cgahnstrom @demetyesiltepe @Ruth_C_Dalton @Jan_Wiener https://t.co/RZ0TptUfBY

— Prof Hugo Spiers (@hugospiers) March 30, 2022

People who grow up in gridlike cities like New York seem to struggle to navigate as easily as those who come from rural areas or intricate cities, researchers reported. The findings one day may lead to better tests for early dementia. https://t.co/Eqg5idfCdu pic.twitter.com/sB3nS8drZz

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 30, 2022