HSHatim Sharif

1. Article · Sep 22, 2026 · Hatim Sharif, The University of Texas at San Antonio

   Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer’s – how complex mental maps and spatial reasoning protect your brain (opens the original)

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   Taxi and ambulance drivers are less likely than workers in almost any other job to die of Alzheimer’s disease. That was the surprising result of a 2024 study examining the death certificates of nearly 9 million people in the U.S. These findings stopped me in my tracks because those two jobs rely on the same thing as my own work: maps. I have spent more than two decades staring at maps. Not paper maps on a wall, but digital ones with multiple layers: flood boundaries draped over census blocks,

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