farmdoc's blog post number 154

Since 1982 the core of my work has been the complex relationship between people’s health and their work. Adjunctively I’m spellbound by how some people’s surnames link to their occupations. For example I’ve heard of medicos named Killer, Blood and Hacker; and the Tasmanian Manager of Timber Communities of Australia, a loggers’ lobby group, is a Mr Chipman. Did these people consciously or subconsciously choose their vocations because of their names? I don’t know; but it’s an interesting question. It’s much more likely, however, that people choose their work because of their personalities, predispositions, standards and experiences. I’m certain I do the work I do because of who I am – which in turn determines what I’m interested in and what I’m good at. And the same probably holds true for most people, and therefore their occupations aren’t determined purely by random chance: Politicians have a penchant for power, police for authority, entertainers for extraverted showmanship, accountants for fastidiousness, etc. What about taxi drivers? Recent studies of London cabbies (‘expert human navigators’) show that compared with non-cabbies, their brains have a larger hippocampus – a brain region with an important role in navigation. The question is whether cabbies are cabbies due to their larger hippocampuses, or whether their hippocampus size starts normal but increases because of their work. The likely answer is both. How fascinating is that.