Dark and Magical Places

Within our heads, we carry around an infinite and endlessly unfolding map of the world. Navigation is one of the most ancient neural abilities we have – older even than language – and in this book, Christopher Kemp embarks on a journey to discover the remarkable extent of what our minds can do. From the secrets of supernavigators to the strange, dreamlike environments inhabited by people with ‘place blindness’, he will explore the myriad ways in which we find our way, explain the cutting-edge neuroscience that is transforming our understanding of it – and try to answer why, for a species with a highly-sophisticated internal navigation system that evolved over millions of years, do humans get lost such a lot?