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Self Knowledge
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Before being allowed to light their for hire sign, London's taxi drivers must pass a series of rigorous exams to prove they have committed to memory every street, major building and open space within a 10-km radius of the city center and be able to
recite
a set litany of 320 routes or "runs" in both directions. This feat of memory is so daunting that it is capitalized as "the Knowledge," and scientists have found that in order to accommodate such a vast mental map, the posterior hippocampus of a London cabbie's brain, the bit responsible for spatial memory and...