People hear with their skin
Research by UBC’s Bryan Gick and Donald Derrick flips the traditional view of how we perceive the world on its head, news service LiveScience reported this month.
The researchers found that people can hear with their skin, suggesting our brains take in and integrate information from various senses to build a picture of our surroundings.
“[That’s] very different from the more traditional ideas, based on the fact that we have eyes so we think of ourselves as seeing visible information, and we have ears so we think of ourselves as hearing auditory information. That’s a little bit misleading,” Gick said.
The New York Times, US News and World Report, Fox News, the Toronto Star, BBC, Boston Globe and others reported on the research.
New hope for MS patients
UBC made headlines across Canada when it announced plans to begin patient trials to test a potentially groundbreaking method of diagnosing and treating multiple sclerosis, a disease that afflicts up to 75,000 Canadians.
The Globe and Mail reported that it’s the first research proposal in Canada to suggest evaluating the findings of Italian doctor Paolo Zamboni, whose early studies indicate that multiple sclerosis might be caused by vein blockages.
Anthony Traboulsee, medical director of the UBC MS Clinic, said Zamboni’s studies have caused both hope and anxiety among people with MS. “MS is a lifelong disease. Young people are hungry for hope,” he said. The Vancouver Sun and CTV also covered this story.
Psychotropic drugs boost fall risk in the elderly
Certain types of widely prescribed drugs, such as antidepressants and sedatives, can increase the risk of falling in older people, reported Carlo Marra of UBC and his colleagues in a study for the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Reuters, The Canadian Press, CTV and the Globe and Mail picked up on the team’s findings, which analyzed the risk of falling associated with nine classes of drugs by reviewing 22 studies published between 1996 and 2007.
Falls often have serious consequences for older people, such as injuries leading to disability, or even death. Older people who are taking any of the drugs associated with falls should talk about the medication with their physician and their pharmacist, Marra told Reuters.
The impact of the Games
The latest Olympic Games Impact report, which measures the effects of the Olympic Games on its host city and region, garnered headlines around the world last month.
The New York Times, The Canadian Press, Associated Press and Reuters UK were among the media outlets that seized on the findings by UBC Prof. Rob VanWynsberghe and his multidisciplinary team of researchers.
Their report is the second of a four part study required by the International Olympic Committee. It found “a very slight positive impact” on Vancouver by the lead-up of the Games while cautioning that much of the data analyzed is inconclusive.
Clumsy kids’ brains work differently
UBC researchers are shining a new light on a condition called developmental co-ordination disorder (DCD) that affects children’s ability to print, tie their shoes or play sports, CBC reported.
Researchers performed scans to see how the brains of children with DCD were functioning while trying to trace objects on a piece of paper.
“We can see that the children with developmental co-ordination disorder are not activating the same brain areas as typically developing children,” said Jill Zwicker, a PhD candidate in rehabilitation sciences at UBC.
