Neurons called place cells inside the hippocampus fire individually while a person makes their way through an environment.
Sense of direction can be measured with the Santa Barbara Sense-of-Direction Scale,[4] a self-assessed psychometric test designed in 2002.
It has also been validated through a series of four studies which suggest that the SBSOD is related to tasks that require one to update location in space as a result of self-motion.
The SBSOD cannot, however, reliably predict deficits of the peripheral vestibular system, which commonly cause spatial impairment.
[8] However, for the cardinal directions scale, age-related differences favoring the oldest age group were medium (women) and large (men).
[12][13] The use of standardised measures in research has helped observe a gender dynamic on an individual and a group level: men self-rate themselves as better navigators with respect to women.
Researchers Nori and Piccardi (2015) report however, that the performance of highly competent women on a masculine task predicts better overall wayfinding ability.
Thus, the more unequal a country in terms of gender gap, the greater the overconfidence of men in self-estimating their performance on spatial tasks.
However, despite the higher scores in self-reported navigation abilities, the wayfinding performance (based on tasks using a mobile videogame) seems to be getting worse with the increasing age.
In further across-lifespan studies females self-reported going out less and not using navigation aids, such as maps and GPS, preferring the use of verbal directions with respect to males.
In this study they also examined the relationship between age and sense of direction, and they found that older people are also less likely to go out and reach places, but because of this they also got lost less in unfamiliar environments.