I was visiting a primary school in England with a group of teachers from various countries. In a classroom there were students’ works on display, pinned on a board. One teacher commented with dismay, “The spelling is wrong, why don’t you take it down?” The classroom teacher smiled and asked, “Can you make out the words?”. “I can, but…”. “If the message goes through, it’s fulfilled its purpose”.

So true. We can’t and don’t have to be accurate all the time. We have to simplify things to make them understood. Nit-picking is acceptable when you do scientific work, but it might become an obstacle when you want to explain a concept. The level of complexity matters. When you are overly accurate, you might lose the message in the jungle of words.

Let’s see an example.

Many sources refer to a famous study on the memory of cab drivers in London. Most of them state that the hippocampus, which plays a crucial role to form memories, are significantly greater in their brain than in others. It is because they had to memorise all the streets in London. I saw plenty of images, too, showing a bigger hippocampus, or videos playing an evenly growing hippocampus.

Some biology teachers might scream by seeing stuff like that because this interpretation is simplified and inaccurate. We should know that not the whole hippocampus grows bigger.

In a scholarly article it goes this way: Structural MRIs of the brains of humans with extensive navigation experience, licensed London taxi drivers, were analyzed and compared with those of control subjects who did not drive taxis. The posterior hippocampi of taxi drivers were significantly larger relative to those of control subjects.

Wow. What is its message for a lay person? Not much. It takes for a while to get the gist of it. Even after, we learn that the posterior hippocampi in taxi drivers’ brain are bigger. It means nothing for us.

Third attempt: Studies of London cab drivers have found that navigating complex mazes of big city streets is linked to the growth of the rear region of the hippocampus.

Now it is more understandable and accurate, but I still have to translate: taxi drivers memorise the streets and it makes a part of their brain grow.

What about the first interpretation, where the whole hippocampus gets bigger? It is a mistake, but who cares? The message is not about which part of our brain stores memories but how learning changes our brain. Talking about what grows and how it grows takes the focus away from the bottom line, namely that the brain grows. Maybe even the word ‘hippocampus’ is unnecessary.

The message of the study for lay students would be: when you use your brain, when you learn new things, it will have an effect on your brain. Certain parts will grow. So train your brain, learn something new every day. Build your “brain muscle”.

We don’t need fancy words to deliver strong messages. Scientific facts are to use them, not to remember.