Posts Tagged ‘montreal’

Fact or fiction? Losing one’s ability to use a particular sense will heighten the other senses. Neuroscientists at McGill University, home of the world-renowned Montreal Neurological Institute, set out to test this idea and discovered that in certain circumstances blindness can, in fact, heighten the other senses. By testing blind and sighted subjects for pitch perception and their ability to locate sounds, researchers found that blind subjects generally scored higher, not surprisingly. However, they also discovered that those who were born blind performed the best, while those who became blind as young children were slightly worse, and those who lost their vision after age 10 did no better than the sighted subjects. The theory is that a young brain could be rewired so that visual-processing areas were used for other purposes. And sure enough, by looking at MRI scans of subjects’ brains, they discovered that blind subjects who performed the best were using both the visual and auditory regions of their brains. [via New York Times]

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Energy drinks, such as Red Bull, have been increasing in popularity among adolescents and young adults in recent years. The most common reasons for consumption of these sugar and caffeine-laden drinks are to improve concentration and athletic performance. Just like coffee, however, energy drinks cannot properly hydrate the body because sugar and caffeine promote excretion of water. As well, studies have demonstrated that strong doses of caffeine can increase hypertension, cause heart palpitations, irritability, anxiety, headaches and insomnia. Approximately 1.5 billion cans of Red Bull were sold in the US alone in 2004.

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New research concurrently published by Montreal’s major medical centers in the International Journal of Obesity show that kids who are surrounded by peers and family who are overweight are more likely to misperceive their own weight. “When children’s parents and schoolmates are overweight or obese, their own overweight status may seem normal by comparison. The higher the BMI of their friends and family, the more kids are likely to underestimate their weight – a trend consistent for both sexes, regardless of the socioeconomic levels of their school or family,” said lead author Katerina Maximova. This is an important issue because “Accurately perceiving oneself as overweight or obese is an important cue to take action,” says Jennifer J. McGrath, director of the Pediatric Public Health Psychology Lab at Concordia University. Full story.