What helps me learn to find my way around

When it comes to learning my way around, I don't learn well by doing. I have to use other methods. What helps me is to write down all of the steps that it takes to get somewhere (i.e. "make a left at the traffic light next to the shopping center, etc."), with all of the landmarks in order. Landmarks are important. I pretty much navigate by landmarks.

Another thing that helps me is map software. I find that map software helps me learn to find my way around better than paper maps. It has many useful features, like zooming in and out, searching by address, marking points of interest and route planning. I use Microsoft Streets and Trips. Here is a link to the official site:

http://www.microsoft.com/streets/default.mspx

Some links to relevant discussion boards

This board is for the discussion of difficulties learning to drive, which topographic agnosia can cause.

http://www.livejournal.com/community/drivingimpaired/

This board is for the discussion of prosopagnosia, (aka face blindness), which occurs commonly with topographic agnosia.

http://www.livejournal.com/community/faceblind/

A link to a webpage about spatial relations

The following link contains a vignette about someone who probably has topographic agnosia. Scroll down midway through the page for the part about Dorie Ryland.

http://www.newhorizons.org/spneeds/inclusion/teaching/stockdale.html

The story of Dorie Ryland in the above link illustrates how topographical agnosics navigate by landmarks rather than by routes, because topographical agnosia impairs the ability to visualize routes and their correspondences to real life surroundings.

Introduction

This is an online journal about a condition known as topographic agnosia.

What is topographic agnosia?
Topographic agnosia can be thought of as a neurologically based impairment in finding one's way around. People with topographic agnosia are not able to make maps of geographic space in their heads. As a consequence of this, topographical agnosics have an extremely poor sense of direction and tend to get lost very easily.

The phrase "topographic agnosia" means "place blindness". Topographic agnosia goes by many names. Among them are: getting lost easily, having an impaired sense of direction, being place blind, topographic disorientation, spatial disorientation, and topographic amnesia.

What causes topographic agnosia?
Some cases of topographic agnosia are acquired through neurological injury or stroke, and others are congenital (i.e. born with it). In either case, topographic agnosia is thought to result from damage to the "place processing module" in the brain, located in the right occipital cortex.

Comorbid conditions:
CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Disorder), Asperger's syndrome, prosopagnosia (an impairment in recognizing human faces), and nonverbal learning disabilities tend to co-occur with topographic agnosia, because they all affect closely related parts of the brain. In particular, the brain module that deals with faces is known to be located near the place
module, so it would make sense that prosopagnosia commonly occurs with topographic agnosia. If I find the link to the study relating the brain's face and place modules, I will post it here.

In this online journal, I plan to post news and information relevant to topographic agnosia, such as adaptive strategies for living with the condition, and information about assistive technologies, such as GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) systems.

Topographic agnosia is relatively uncommon, and not well known. I hope this site can help people understand the condition better.