Maybe She Has Topographical Disorientation?

[Snowshoe]

This poor woman who asked me for directions today, I just have to tell you. She nabbed me at the
Community Centre just as I stepped in the door. How did she get to a parking lot to meet others in her group for a bike ride on the trail?

I stepped out and pointed west, not very far, you can see the first road on the right from here, the only way it's possible to turn at all, go down a bit, see the big snowmobile cover all, there's the parking lot.

She expresses doubt since she's already been down there and missed the road on the right where she was supposed to turn. She has a map, she shows it to me, it has her parking lot marked in the correct place right where I told her to go. I repeat my instructions.

I go in to my fitness class, look out the window, she's gone maybe a couple of hundred feet west and now she's stopped asking somebody who was walking along the road.

Now we're all watching, she drives on west, she makes the right turn, doesn't even go as far as the first driveway and she stops again. Then she backs up. Then she stops again. Really, at this point I'm wondering if I should leave my fitness class and run down the road to rescue her. Nope, then she drives forward and we don't see her again so I guess she finally got there. I heave a sigh of relief when I see another car with bike rack on the back turn down the same road, wondering, if she got there, was the only car there yet, would she still think she was not in the right spot?

Poor thing. But, we do know a woman who has this topographical disorientation thing so badly she has never been able to drive herself to work. She got lost once when her husband couldn't pick her up to drive her home and she was unable to give her co-worker the proper directions. I think it must have been an unexpected drive home with the co-worker or else her husband would have sent her prepared with a map.

How about you? Good at directions and finding your way? Funny story?

[Scoutpout]

oh dear.... yup, have met several people that can get lost going around the block. and lots that have no idea which way north, south, east or west is in relation to their home or major streets in their area. friends of mine, he is a pilot, good sense of direction, she was learning to fly, but horrible sense of direction, got lost trying to get back to the airport from a short training flight. she loves her gps, he programs it for her when she has to go somewhere out of town, or new.

i am blessed with a good sense of direction. i can be in a new place, and somehow know which was is north south east west, and be able to navigate away from and back to the airport (like for lunch, or go sightseeing) without great difficulty. the only time i got "lost" was inside a large exhibition hall, full of travel trailers, i had a really hard time figuring out (without simply walking around the perimeter of the building) how to get back to the entrance i had come in. it was like a huge maze, where id been plopped down in the middle with no idea where "out" was. it wasnt a pleasant feeling, i can only imagine someone being really and truely lost how they must feel

[Sandra]

I didn't know there was a name for it. I think my husband has it.

[Jax's Mom]

I always doubt myself with directions. If I didn't I'd get places a lot faster. As it is i usually make one wrong turn and have to back track. Ill say that I do use my GPS now - alot.

[Snowshoe]

My OH is funny. He's flown, boated and worked in remote bush areas of N. Ontario and is very good at reading a map, using a compass, navigating and getting where he's supposed to go. Yet we will leave our house to go to This Town north of us and he will go west. It seems to be that in his mind he confuses the location of This Town with That Town. If we are not in a big hurry I will sometimes just sit and wait to see how long it will take for him to clue in.

My sister is bad. I gave her explicit directions and a map to meet me at a doggy function last weekend and she was late because they got lost. Not too badly but enough to be 45 minutes late. I think she inherited Mum's inability to follow any kind of written instruction, recipe, map, music, whatever.

I'm pretty good and have had to do extensive driving and mapping using topographical maps. I did get pretty mixed up one low light, overcast day when I was right at the juncture of four top maps. The roads were dirt and winding and in going from one map to the other I got all turned around. And there was no sun so I couldn't tell N. from S. or anything. I dithered for a while but found a landmark and re-oriented myself.

[Snowshoe]

Well, how about this? It's in the news today.

Nobel prize in medicine awarded for discovery of brain GPS - The Washington Post

[Scoutpout]

the stuff they've discovered and are working further on are fundamental parts of how the brain operates, and have such amazing, far-reaching ties to soooo many other parts of the brain and human function. The tie to Alzheimers is one obvious one. amazing.

[POPTOP]

While I have a good sense of direction, I try to always plan out a route if it is new. If I get off track, generally don't have a problem with figuring out how to get back to the right direction.

Poor lady, that's a real handicap.

[Mr Kleb]

Like POPTOP I'm blessed with a pretty good sense of direction, and also try to plan a new route. I repeatedly recite road names/numbers, turns, etc. to try to fix them in my brain.

I bought a Garmin handheld GPS several years ago. Used it for about year and concluded that, for me, it was an interesting toy but not that useful. Wound up giving it to an environmental NGO that had a GPS on its wish list.

Two years ago we took a trip out east to the Maritimes then back through Maine, NH, VT, and NY. We had a loaned GPS and grew to find it more irritating than helpful so we turned it off. Once in Maine I got off track onto a road not on the CAA map. We stopped for a few minutes, I thought about things, found the sun, sorted through what seemed and felt right, and were off again. We were shortly back on our route.

Ever since childhood I've enjoyed poring over maps - road maps, topos, political, airway (Scoutpout I get much of their symbology), you name it. They fire my imagination of places I'd like to go, places I may never go, and evoke memories of places I've been.

[Snowshoe]

These links say it's better for the health of your brain to use maps than to use GPS units.

Study suggests reliance on GPS may reduce hippocampus function as we age

DailyTech - Study: GPS Units Cause Memory and Spatial Problems