Human brains are not optimised to navigate cities

When it comes to getting from A to B on foot, it turns out we're wired not to take the shortest route but rather the'pointiest path'. The reason for this, researchers say, is because human brains are not optimised to navigate cities. Instead, pedestrians appear to choose paths that seem to point most directly toward their destination, even if those routes end up being longer. Researchers at MIT, who based their study on a dataset of more than 14,000 people going about their daily lives, called this the'pointiest path'. An MIT study suggests our brains are not optimized to calculate the shortest possible route when navigating on foot.