Tour of a Map-Reader's Brain, Part 1: Location

This is the first in a series of six articles about how spatial reasoning can help children "read" maps, graphs, and geographic texts. Since the late 1900s, neuroscientists and psychologists have used new brain-scanning and eye-tracking technologies to do a "lot" of research about visual perception and spatial thinking. One key conclusion is that human brains use a number of separate networks to perceive and process different aspects of a visual image (like a map). This view of brain function - as a "massively parallel visual brain" rather than a step-by-step image processor - has implications for many aspects of geography education. This first article will look at how the research could influence teaching about the concept of "location," the first of the Five Themes of Geography.