Université de Montréal News Digest
Stories from the Novenber 15th 2004 edition of Forum
UdeM's French-language weekly

See the original story in French by clicking on the link at the end of the summary.

This week:

Turning violently inward
Young delinquent women may be able to reduce their violent outbursts when they get a bit older. But their rate of suicide attempts is remarkably high. More >>>

Putting a name to that colour
An interior design class helped give 2,400 names to various shades of blue for paint giant Sico in a unique brush with industry. More >>>

Seeing from the back of the brain
Why do the blind have superior hearing? A doctoral student has found out where all those sounds they’re seeing are coming from. More >>>

A healthy exchange
A sub-Saharan university recently launched a new population health program, with help from UdeM and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. More >>>

For media inquiries on any of the stories below, please contact:

Sophie Langlois
Media Relations Director
Université de Montréal
514 343-7704
sophie.langlois@umontreal.ca

 

Turning violently inward
Young women who had been delinquent teenagers are three and half times more likely to attempt suicide than others in their age group, according to new research out of the department of Criminology.

The study to be published next month in the journal Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, draws figures from a group of 400 young women between the age of 18 and 23 who had been in trouble with the law as teenagers. Twenty-one per cent of them had attempted suicide, which is far above the six-per-cent average of that demographic.

The longitudinal study of 23-year-old men and women, a group that has been followed since the age of 15, helped doctoral student Mélanie Corneau find gender differences and focus on internalized and externalized violence.

She found the female cohort have internalized their violence, i.e. attempting suicide, long after their bouts with more externalized behaviours. The group’s male subjects showed a much lower frequency of attempted suicide, at 12 per cent, though still double the average for that demographic.

To see the longer version of the story in French: Click here

 

Putting a name to that colour
Ever wonder how paint companies think up a colour name like Garden Party Green or Olive Butter Yellow? Interior Design Professor Tiiu Poldma could offer some insight. She and her students conducted studies for paint giant Sico and came up with 2,400 new names for various shades of blue.

A few years ago, Sico came knocking on her (Portobello coloured?) door, seeking out her advice. They then came up with names.

She and her students can be found in their (beach-house beige?) classroom, where they are available for more work in the field of colour naming. Poldma has also put out a research paper describing the study.

“I created the project, involved industry, faculty, colour experts and students and did it using a fairly interesting approach that brought together industry and academia,” she told the News Digest. 

Part of their collective minds is now part of Sico’s current colour collection, including Ball Gown Blue, part of the family of colours that the company says suggests a sense of wide-open spaces and is thus perfect for small rooms.

To read a profile on Tiiu Poldma in French: Click here

 

Seeing from the back of the brain
UdeM has put together another piece of the puzzle in understanding the fascinating brain activity of blind people.

For more than five years, the Centre for Neuropsychology and Cognition Research (CERNEC) has been looking at the way blind people use their hearing to ‘see’ sounds, uncovering clues about their amazing hearing capacity.

Past experiments have helped show that congenitally blind people find it easier to identify the precise location of a sound.

In blind people, the occipital region, generally associated with sight, is converted to hearing. In other words, the blind may hear what others see. Now doctoral student Frédéric Gougoux has shown even more precisely where the activity is taking place.

Directed by Prof. Franco Lepore, who has made tremendous gains in this area, Gougoux used positron emission tomography, better known as a PET-Scan to record the brain’s electric activity.

Gougoux’s work demonstrated that the region situated at the back of the brain became exceptionally active when the blind subjects localized sounds.

The work helps to piece together exactly what is happening in the brains of blind people when they show these superior skills in locating sounds.

 

To see the longer version of the story in French: Click here

To see the longer version of the story in English from Forum Express: Click here

 

A healthy exchange
An African university and the UdeM have teamed up in an effort to improve public health in the Sub-Saharan region. On Oct. 29 th, the University of Ouagadougou launched a program that will help local leadership improve health statistics and sanitary conditions.

Joseph Paré, the university’s president, visited UdeM last week and participated in a roundtable discussion on health issues in Africa. The program has been realized through a C$16 million (US$11.7 million) grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

To see the longer version of the story in French: Click here