> The connection is believed to be the spatial reasoning involved in routing.

This is triggering me lol. I was a Paramedic for 10 years and 3 of those years were before GPS existed and we had these awful 900 page 5" thick things we had to wield on the fly called Map Books. It was part of our probation period testing and they would time us to pick out the routes reliably within a certain deadline or not graduate from being a probie.

While your partner drove to the call you'd put the book on your lap and flip to the big large grid which would tell you which map your location would be on (page 770), then you'd look up the street in the back appendix to get the coordinates for the specific house (P5, C2) and then find the cross street on another page (P5, C3), go to the grid and find the closest appropriate hospital for the purpose of the call (different ERs have different functions- for gunshots go to Highland, for amputations go to CalPac Davies, for heart attacks go to UCSF, etc) (page 815), the street location for that (A6, C4) and then make your route while flipping back and forth between all the pages while simultaneously telling your partner where to turn as you go.

When I went to a better ran company, dispatch would give us map page and grid coordinates over the radio when we got the call.

Within a few months you learn most of the neighborhoods and routes, and road hazards and preferences- for example if going to UCSF from the Peninsula take O'Shaughnessy because there's no traffic and is a smooth ride. And if you're going to Seton Hospital from 101 slow down around the turn on the on ramp onto 280 because there is a GIANT bump that will knock your partner in the back's head into the ceiling and not be comfortable for the patient on the gurney.

Map books were no fun but some of the dudes I worked with definitely became route-finding savants.

In a similar vein, to drive a black taxi in London you have to pass The Knowledge of London exam which requires becoming a human routing database for over twenty thousand streets and landmarks.

This is such a great anecdote, thanks for sharing!

>> for gunshots go to Highland, for amputations go to CalPac Davies, for heart attacks go to UCSF, etc

Oooft. My utmost respect. I could not do this job.