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Comment by andsoitis | Hacker News Reader

> Taxi drivers may have a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s because they are constantly using navigational and spatial processing.

It would be interesting to know whether certain kinds of video game play have a similar effect. On the one hand, you don’t do it for 8+ hours a day every day (unlike cab drivers), but on the other hand, there might be a much higher volume of spatial and navigational decisions packed per minute in certain games.

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You would be surprised how many people pack in more than 10 hours of Fortnite or similar games.

On the other hand reality is much more complex than any game, so I am not sure if these nav decisions are equivalent.

> On the other hand reality is much more complex than any game

Untrue. A Taxi driver won't have to worry about elevation changes much at all. Zooming around a computer-generated space in a game might have a lot of that.

PvP games can get pretty difficult. You need to remember the map, make a strategy, know which moves and counter moves exist, also make timing-precise input (e.g. active parry frames are 6 out of 30) and not forget to compensate for network latency you have judge by the vibes.

As long as you disable the minimap in game. Which is the correct way to play open world games anyway. Other ways you look at the arrow instead of looking at the environment.

I'm not sure it's equivalent to building a mental map of a 3D space. It certainly might be, but I can also imagine that it might have key differences.

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