Yuen: The science of supernavigation — and of being hopelessly, forever lost

My husband's hidden power emerges every time we travel.

Like the time we made it to Seattle, years after our last visit there. With my parents in the front seat and us in the back, we were trying to recall how to get to a Thai restaurant that wowed us on our first trip to the area.

My husband perked up like a basset hound hot on the trail of chicken satay. Mind you, there were no GPS devices in cars back then. He called out directions, confident in the accuracy of the internal street grid populating his brain. As familiar landmarks appeared, I could hear the certainty grow in his voice because our surroundings clicked together just as he remembered.

The rest of us were astonished a few miles later as our rental car pulled up to the Thai restaurant. Flushed with pride, I made sure my parents acknowledged this wayfinding miracle. "See, Mom and Dad? This is why I married him!"

If you've ever noticed how some people can be phenomenal navigators while others are perpetually lost, my spouse and I embody that vast range of cognitive abilities.

I didn't realize how poor my sense of direction was until I learned to drive as a teen and couldn't intuit my way to the most frequent of destinations, even though I had lived in the same place my entire life.

Gather 'round, kids, because before there were smartphones, my solution was to write out directions on index cards that I stowed in a recipe box in the glove compartment. If you flipped over the index card, you'd find the reverse directions — because driving to a place one way was hardly a guarantee I could find my way back.

One day my high school friend T.J. was so bewildered by my spatial shortcomings that he asked me, "So, you mean to tell me that you don't know that the lake is on your left?"

The lake ... ?

It took a few seconds for me to grasp that he was talking about Lake Michigan, which was 30 miles east of our impossibly flat, ticky-tacky Chicago suburb. Seriously, I thought. Who's the freak now?

I found my people in Christopher Kemp, a Michigan State University molecular biologist and science writer whose own dreadful navigational abilities led him on a journey to understand how we move through the world. He spoke to leading researchers on the subject and shared many of their takeaways in his new book, "Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation."

Kemp says with the utmost admiration that his wife can pull off "supernatural feats of navigation," so much so that it's difficult for her to articulate how seamlessly she can integrate with her environment.

"We generally build this cognitive map in our brain," Kemp explained. "The thing is, not everybody does."

Why some people can build that map, and others circle the skyway for 30 minutes while having a panic attack as they search for their parking ramp, is still sort of a mystery.

"That's a question that we really just still don't have the answer to," Kemp told me. "But we do have some tantalizing threads of information."

What the science says

We inherit between 80 and 90% of our spatial abilities, Kemp said. That could explain why my parents' estimation of my husband soared when he magically guided us to the restaurant. If you've ever bombed on a cognitive test that presented a shape and asked what it would look like if it were rotated, you probably cannot navigate well, either.

"I can just feel my brain clenching like a fist, and people can do that without any trouble," Kemp said.

Technology has, of course, revolutionized how we navigate. With spring break upon us, I feel no shortage of gratitude that my family and I are going on a trip to California — our first major vacation since the pandemic began — without having to fret too much about getting lost.

But the smartphone has also made us dumber.

Researchers have scanned brain activity while asking their subjects to explore a virtual setting. The hippocampus lights up as people form their mental maps, Kemp said.

But when they are told exactly where to turn in this virtual word, "the hippocampus just goes completely silent. It's not doing anything anymore, because it's not engaged in the world," he said. "That is exactly what happens when we program our destination into our phones and just blindly follow whatever it tells us to do with turn-by-turn instructions. It is definitely eroding our abilities."

And the stereotype that women are poor navigators and men are naturals?

"That is a load of bunk," Kemp said, adding that gender differences do show up in countries where women have less freedom and aren't allowed to drive. They simply haven't been given the opportunities to practice building their mental maps, he said.

For other lost people, it could be that we were born this way. Working with neuroscientist Giuseppe Iaria, Kemp underwent a battery of spatial tests. The results of his performance were consistent with something known as developmental topographical disorientation. It's a condition in which regions of the brain that are involved with understanding space fail to communicate with one another. About 1 to 2% of the population is estimated to have it.

Iaria's assessment was no surprise to Kemp. Unlike many other skills, humans are exceptionally accurate in estimating their own navigational abilities, Kemp said.

"People who give themselves 2 out of 10 and say they're terrible — when you test them, they are terrible," he said. "If you think you're good at navigating, almost certainly you are quite good."

Self-acceptance for the hopelessly lost

If the results are already a foregone conclusion, I asked Kemp, why one should even take the test? Although there are treatments for his condition, he's not convinced someone like him can become a supernavigator.

But he said it was empowering to sit down at the computer, focus with all of his might on spatial concepts, and still do badly. Kemp said he's begun to embrace this side of him.

"Being a poor navigator is just another small part of what makes me who I am," he said.

My 8-year-old is already proving to have inherited his father's sense of direction. He rolls his eyes at me when I can't seem to find our way out of our dentist's office building.

On the other hand, his 4-year-old brother struggles. I've been quizzing him in the car on which way to turn to get to school or his friend's house. He points the wrong way almost every time.

After gleaning some pointers from Kemp, I know what I'll tell my younger son when he's old enough to set off on his own adventures:

Plug in your destination on your device and study the route ahead of time. But see if you can build your brain's map without relying on the device too much.

Pay attention and be present.

Give yourself time to get lost.

Don't hike in unfamiliar areas alone. We're not like other people. If you're in a desert or a canyon, you're taking a gamble.

The absence of an internal compass will be just a tiny piece of your identity, a piece of yourself that you can grow to accept. You may be lost, but you're not a loser.

If you need someone to commiserate with, just call your mom.