Sat in a café in Shoreditch, reading books and articles about happiness and the neuroplasticity of the brain, I came across some research studies about the iconic London black cabs and their drivers. In a landmark study, Maguire et al scanned these taxi drivers’ brains and found that a specific part of their brains (the posterior hippocampus, believed to play an important role in spatial memory and navigation) was significantly larger compared to controls. Based on the findings of their research, Maguire concluded that ‘there is a capacity for local plastic change in the structure of the healthy adult human brain in response to environmental demands’. This is of extraordinary…