Research &amp; Innovation

Psychology

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Subheadline

“Don’t get mad at the little boy who’s doing jumping jacks while you’re reading a book"

Are you a parent or teacher frustrated that the children in your life can’t seem to pay attention when you’re trying to teach them something? You don’t need to be, say psychologists at the ��߲ݴ�ý.

New research from the department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science finds children learn just as much whether they’re trying to or not – adults, on the other hand, tend to ignore information that they aren’t paying attention to.

The findings are outlined in a new study published in the journal Psychological Science.

“Don’t get mad at the little boy who’s doing jumping jacks while you’re reading a book,” says the study’s senior author Amy Finn, associate professor in the department of psychology who leads the Learning and Neural Development lab. “He’s probably still listening and learning even though it doesn’t necessarily look like it.”

For the study, the research team – which included U of T alumni Marlie Tandoc, Bharat Nadendla and Theresa Pham – tested how much children and adults learned about drawings of common objects after two different experiments.

In the first, they told participants to pay attention to the drawings. In the second, participants were told to ignore the drawings and complete an entirely different task. After each scenario, participants had to identify fragments of the drawings they saw as quickly as possible.

They found that children learned about the drawings just as well across both scenarios, while adults learned more when told to pay attention to the drawings – in other words, the children’s learning wasn’t negatively impacted when they weren’t paying attention to the information they were tested on.

Children’s selective attention, or their ability to focus on a specific task and tune out distractions, develops slowly and doesn’t fully mature until early adulthood.

Previous research has found that unlike adults, a child’s brain treats information that they are told to pay attention to similarly to information they are not told to attend to. That is likely one of the reasons why children are so good at picking up languages spoken around them.

“As adults, we really filter what we’re learning through our goals and task demands, whereas kids are absorbing everything regardless of that – seemingly without even trying,” says Tandoc, former lab manager of the Learning and Neural Development lab and a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.

Although returning to a child-like state of learning might sound appealing, selective attention does hold several benefits. Across experiments, attentional instruction was found to boost learning in adults. In other words, adults learn better when told what information is most important.

The research has the potential to influence how parents, teachers and curriculum designers think about how children and adults learn. For instance, for children, the findings underline the benefits of play and immersive learning. For adults, defining a clear task or goal at the beginning of a class or workshop is important for learning outcomes.

“For me, when I’m hanging out with my five-year-old, I’m less worried now than I was otherwise about whether or not he is learning something if it doesn’t seem like he is paying attention,” says Finn.

U of T to host new national hub to advance life sciences breakthroughs

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 17:20:31 +0000

U of T to host new national hub to advance life sciences breakthroughs

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 01/15/2025 - 12:20

Cutline

The new health hub will build on the university's track record of supporting research commercialization including events such as AcceleratorFest (pictured above), held in September 2024 (photo by Alyssa K. Faoro)

Betty Zou

Topic

Our Community

Entrepreneurship

Health Innovation Hub

Subheadline

The hub will be hosted at the Health Innovation Hub (H2i) accelerator based in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine

The ��߲ݴ�ý and its partners are receiving $4.25 million over the next five years to establish a national hub aimed at accelerating the commercialization of life sciences discoveries.

The funding is part of a $32-million grant awarded to Dalhousie University by the Government of Canada through the Lab to Market program, administered by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) in collaboration with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

The grant will expand Lab2Market – Canada’s national network for innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship skills training – through the creation of a national health hub based at U of T’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine and six regional hubs.

“This funding support will play a critical part in our drive to translate research for the public good,” says Justin Nodwell, vice dean, research and health science education at Temerty Medicine. “There is an incredible wealth of important science happening at Temerty Medicine and we are committed to seeing as much of it as possible incorporated into new diagnostics, therapies and other technologies that can be scaled and distributed globally.

“As the new home for the national health hub, we look forward to building on the university’s stellar track record in research commercialization and working with our partners to strengthen the life sciences innovation economy across the country.”

The hub will develop and deliver programs to help students and faculty bring breakthrough ideas to market, with a focus on addressing regulatory challenges facing health and medical startups.

It will be hosted at Temerty Medicine’s Health Innovation Hub (H2i), a campus-based accelerator that helps early-stage entrepreneurs turn their discoveries and innovations into problem-solving designs, products and services. Since 2014, H2i has supported more than 750 ventures along the commercialization pathway. Collectively, these startups have generated over $520 million in investments, sales and other revenue sources.

“With a comprehensive scope from ideation all the way to regulatory validation, H2i will bring unparalleled expertise and experience to support life sciences entrepreneurs through the national health hub,” says Paul Santerre, co-founder and director of H2i and a professor of biomedical engineering and dentistry at U of T.

Leveraging H2i’s network of 118 partner organizations and over 130 industry mentors, the hub will provide opportunities for students to build their entrepreneurship and business acumen while strengthening Canada’s innovation sector through the development of highly skilled workers and life sciences startups.

“Our trainees understand that they don’t only want to do outstanding research, but they also want their research to impact society,” says Santerre.

“I hope that this new funding will be culture-changing because if we want to keep those young people in Canada, we need a thriving innovation ecosystem where they can apply their knowledge, and we need to give students opportunities to expose themselves to the commercial innovation sector while they are still training.”

Over five years, Lab2Market will scale nationally, growing its network of 150 partners and collaborators including more than 50 universities, colleges and research hospitals, which collectively generated nearly $7.8 billion in research funding income in 2022–23.

The national health hub includes 38 university, hospital and organizational partners and will be guided by a steering committee comprising representatives of the eight university partners – Dalhousie University, McGill University, McMaster University, Toronto Metropolitan University, Université de Montréal, University of British Columbia, University of Calgary and U of T.

Global activist - now a U of T PhD student - uses AI to combat sexual violence

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 16:52:22 +0000

Global activist - now a U of T PhD student - uses AI to combat sexual violence

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 01/14/2025 - 11:52

Cutline

PhD student Bukky Shonibare's research at the intersection of law, policymaking and technologies such as AI aims to ensure justice for women and girls, particularly as it relates to sexual violence (supplied image)

Adam Elliott Segal

Topic

Global Lens

Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies

Kelly Hannah-Moffat

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Subheadline

Bukky Shonibare co-founded the #BringBackOurGirls movement after 276 school girls were abducted by Boko Haram in 2014 in Northern Nigeria

Nigerian activist Bukky Shonibare is hoping the ��߲ݴ�ý can help her bring an international fight for justice into the age of artificial intelligence.

As co-founder of the #BringBackOurGirls movement, launched after 276 Chibok schoolgirls were abducted in northern Nigeria by Boko Haram in 2014, Shonibare brought worldwide awareness to the issue by holding up a placard every day for five years – no matter where she was in the world.

Her efforts garnered global media attention, earned her an invitation to speak at the UN General Assembly and helped draw high-profile supporters to the cause, including former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai.

Shonibare holds a placard for the #BringBackOurGirls campaign (supplied image)

“One of my supervisors called it affective justice,” says Shonibare, who completed a master’s degree in international human rights law at the University of Oxford and is now pursuing her PhD at U of T’s Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

“We used emotions as sentiment to galvanize the world to pay attention to the young girls who had been abducted.”

At U of T, Shonibare is studying criminology and policy making, law and state power and research methods – and her research at the intersection of law, policymaking and technologies such as AI is focused on ensuring justice for present and future generations of women and girls, particularly as it relates to sexual violence. Her supervisors include Kelly Hannah-Moffat, a professor of criminology and sociolegal studies, and sociology, who is U of T’s vice-president, people strategy, equity and culture, and Kamari Maxine Clarke, a distinguished professor in the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies and the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies.

“One of the problems for survivors of sexual violence is sometimes you don't want to talk to a human being who will judge you,” says Shonibare, who grew up in Lagos and is a survivor of sexual abuse herself.

Her plan? Gather and preserve survivors' testimonies via an AI-powered virtual assistant she has named Keepit. That way they have the option of pursuing legal action in the future, she says.

“Keepit will rely on natural language processing, machine learning and cloud computing to understand, respond and provide support to survivors of sexual violence,” says Shonibare. “For example, a survivor might say, ‘Hey Keepit, I need to talk about what happened last night,’ and Keepit would respond with, ‘I'm here to listen. Take your time. You can start whenever you're ready.’”

Beyond voice and text empathetic conversation, Keepit will support evidence preservation, legal preparation and referrals for survivors.

In addition to her work with #BringBackOurGirls, which vows to continue its 10-year-old campaign until all of the women have been released, Shonibare is the executive director of Invictus Africa, a social enterprise that promotes human rights and gender equality through data-driven advocacy, while leveraging digital technology, engaging stakeholders and building capacity.

She also developed SheTV, an online TV and podcast platform dedicated to women and girls, and Adopt-A-Camp, which provided humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons.

The years of field work have taken their toll.

“I was going to a whole lot of dangerous places until one time when I had a near-death experience – and professionals advised me to pull back from the northeast because, at that time, Boko Haram was abducting a lot of humanitarian aid workers.”

In Chibok, they call her “Kwatuwa,” or female warrior, she adds.

Shonibare says goodbye to a group of schoolchildren at an internally displaced people camp in Nigeria (supplied image)

Hannah-Moffatt says Shonibare’s dedication to social justice and community betterment is inspiring.

“Bukky’s profound desire to make a positive social impact is reflected in her research on how digital technologies can empower and ensure the safety of women and girls,” says Hannah-Moffatt. “Her development of Keepit is a critical initiative that offers survivors a safe and empowering platform to share their stories through AI-powered, voice-activated technology.

“Her work not only advances technology but also uplifts and empowers women and girls by building a community that supports recovery and strength.”

Clarke adds that Shonibare’s work is not only on the cutting edge of new social justice developments but also offers important avenues for understanding the place and limitations of AI in a changing world.

“This work is at the cutting edge of sociolegal studies and provides ways to think about not only violence but the importance of information, inquiry and political action,” she says. “Her work has the potential to transform justice possibilities for women and underserved communities around the world.”

Shonibare, for her part, sees it as an evolution of her years working on the front lines.

“The impact of my research will be to show ... how technology, particularly AI, can be used to ensure justice for survivors of sexual violence.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Bukky Shonibare (@bukkyshonibare)

Researchers develop biodegradable electrodes that may help repair damaged brain tissue

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 14:57:52 +0000

Researchers develop biodegradable electrodes that may help repair damaged brain tissue

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 01/13/2025 - 09:57

Cutline

From left: Professor Cindi Morshead, PhD student Tianhao Chen and Professor Hani Naguib led research to develop a flexible, biodegradable electrode capable of stimulating neural precursor cells in the brain (supplied images, Chen by Qin Dai)

Qin Dai

Topic

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Graduate Students

Subheadline

“Our plan is to further develop this technology by creating multimodal, biodegradable electrodes that can deliver drugs and gene therapies to the injured brain”

��߲ݴ�ý researchers have developed a flexible, biodegradable electrode capable of stimulating neural precursor cells (NPCs) in the brain – a device capable of delivering targeted electrical stimulation for up to seven days before it dissolves naturally.

By harnessing the body’s innate repair mechanisms, the researchers’ approach represents a potential step forward in the treatment of neurological disorders that are a leading cause of disability worldwide. While neurological disorders often result in irreversible cell loss, stimulating NPCs – rare cells capable of repairing neural tissue – has shown promise when it comes to expanding limited treatment options.

However, existing methods such as transcranial direct current stimulation lack precision and can damage tissue. The electrode developed by U of T researchers, on the other hand, provides precise, safe and temporary stimulation without requiring subsequent surgical interventions.

“Our findings demonstrate that this electrode can stimulate neural repair in a controlled, temporary manner, which is crucial for avoiding complications associated with permanent implants,” says Tianhao Chen, a PhD student in biomedical engineering who is the study’s lead author.

The research, published in a recent issue of Biomaterials, was led by Hani Naguib, a professor in the departments of materials science and engineering and mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, and Cindi Morshead, a professor of surgery in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine who is cross-appointed to the Institute of Biomedical Engineering.

“Neural precursor cells hold significant potential for repairing damaged brain tissue, but existing methods for activating these cells can be invasive or imprecise,” Morshead says.

“Our biodegradable electrode provides a solution by combining effective stimulation with reduced patient risk.”

To design the biodegradable neural probe, the team focused on materials that provided both biocompatibility and tunable degradation rates.

Poly(lactic-co-glycolic) acid (PLGA), a flexible material approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, was chosen for the substrate and insulation layer due to its predictable degradation based on monomer ratios and minimal inflammatory effects.

Molybdenum was selected for the electrode itself due to its durability and slow dissolution – both qualities essential for maintaining structural integrity during the intended one-week stimulation period.

The electrodes were implanted in pre-clinical models and demonstrated the ability to stimulate NPCs effectively, increasing their numbers and activity without causing significant tissue damage or inflammation. This testing ensured the electrodes’ safety and efficacy for neural repair stimulation within the targeted time frame.

“Our plan is to further develop this technology by creating multimodal, biodegradable electrodes that can deliver drugs and gene therapies to the injured brain,” says Morshead.

“We have exciting data to show that activating brain stem cells with our electrical stimulation devices improves functional outcomes in a preclinical model of stroke.”

Why do we prefer curves over straight edges? Researchers probe the brain for clues

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 17:06:08 +0000

Why do we prefer curves over straight edges? Researchers probe the brain for clues

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 01/10/2025 - 12:06

Cutline

Researchers found regions in the brain that are sensitive to scenes people perceive to be curvy, but only when they are judging its beauty (supplied image)

Michael Pereira

Topic

Graduate Students

Psychology

Faculty of Arts & Science Staff

Subheadline

“Artists and designers are way ahead of scientists. They already use organic, curvy lines to evoke a sense of comfort, aesthetic pleasure and hominess”

For over 100 years, psychologists have known that most people prefer curviness over angularity in practically everything – from lines and shapes to faces, paintings and interior spaces.

Moreover, the phenomenon has been observed across cultures, in infants and even in great apes.

Yet, it remains unclear what it is about our perception of curvature that translates into this widespread preference.

“Now we have this advantage that we can probe the brain to see the mechanisms that are really driving this process,” says Oshin Vartanian, an associate professor in the department of psychology at the ��߲ݴ�ý who is appointed to Defence Research and Development Canada.

Using brain imaging data and computational measures of curvature, Vartanian worked with U of T PhD student Delaram Farzanfar, Dirk Bernhardt-Walther, a U of T associate professor of psychology, and an international group of collaborators to solve the mystery.

For the study, published recently in Scientific Reports, participants completed two tasks when presented with images of curvy and angular interior spaces. They judged each as either “beautiful” or “not beautiful” and decided whether they would choose to “enter” or “exit” the space.

Researchers found that there are regions in the brain that are sensitive to scenes participants perceive to be curvy, but only when they are judging its beauty. When a participant is asked to decide whether they would enter or exit the space, those regions are not sensitive to perceived curvature.

This observation suggests that the context within which we perceive curvature makes a difference in how our brain responds to it.

The regions of the brain that lit up to scenes participants perceive to be curvy, in the fusiform gyrus, are involved in higher-order visual processing like object recognition. They are also sensitive to the perception of faces.

In other words, these findings suggest that the region of our brain that specializes in distinguishing one face from another might also be sensitive to processing curvature in other contexts – such as looking at architectural spaces.

Examples of the experimental stimuli (n = 200). The stimuli in the top and bottom rows were categorized as “curvilinear” and “rectilinear” respectively by the two experts in Vartanian et al. The number underneath each stimulus represents its associated computational curvature value (supplied image)

Researchers also found that images of spaces that participants perceived as curvy did not always match with computational measures of those same spaces. However, a region in the primary visual cortex shows sensitivity to computational curvature, regardless of the task.

“It’s entirely possible that when a person looks at an image, they form a mental representation that’s three-dimensional,” Vartanian says. Such a representation eludes mathematical measurements of two-dimensional images.

Bernhardt-Walther adds that, going forward, researchers need to have a broader view of what parts of an image translate into a sense of curviness that people perceive as aesthetically pleasant.

“Artists and designers are way ahead of scientists. They already use organic, curvy lines to evoke a sense of comfort, aesthetic pleasure and hominess,” says Bernhardt-Walther. “Our work provides a scientific underpinning for their intuitions and may guide them on using curvature more deliberately as a design element to generate aesthetically pleasing forms or, alternatively, to use angularity to challenge and engage the viewers.”

Farzanfar, meanwhile, says the research is not only relevant to the work of neuroscientists and psychologists, but to artists, designers, architects and city planners.

“I think as we understand how spaces impact our mood and cognition, we can create better environments for our health and enrich the experience of modern life for many people,” she says.

Astronomers discover actively forming galaxy that may resemble a young Milky Way

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 16:38:22 +0000

Astronomers discover actively forming galaxy that may resemble a young Milky Way

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 01/09/2025 - 11:38

Cutline

A massive cluster of galaxies called MACS J1423 includes a young galaxy, nicknamed Firefly Sparkle, that may resemble our own Milky Way in its early life (photo by NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Chris Willott of NRC-Canada, Lamiya Mowla of Wellesley College and Kartheik Iyer of Columbia University)

Topic

Our Community

Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics

Milky Way

Space

Subheadline

U of T astronomer Roberto Abraham says a galaxy nicknamed "Firefly Sparkle" by researchers likely has the same mass as our Milky Way galaxy did in its infancy

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected and “weighed” a galaxy – seen 600 million years after the Big Bang – that is similar to what our Milky Way galaxy might have looked like at the same stage of development.

Nicknamed the Firefly Sparkle, this young galaxy is gleaming with star clusters – 10 in all – that may be signs that early galaxies form by fragmenting into giant star clusters, with some surviving today as globular clusters.

The lead co-authors of the study, published in Nature, are Wellesley College’s Lamiya Mowla and Columbia University’s Kartheik Iyer – both former postdoctoral researchers at the ��߲ݴ�ý’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Roberto Abraham (supplied image)

Roberto Abraham, professor and chair of the David A. Dunlap department of astronomy and astrophysics in U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science, is also part of the CAnadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS) team behind the research.

He recently shared his insights on the new discovery with the Faculty of Arts & Science news team.

How is Webb helping us understand things about the universe that we didn’t know before?

Webb’s resolution and sensitivity allows us to study extremely distant objects – like those gleaming star clusters that initially drew us to the Firefly Sparkle galaxy – in crisp detail. We’re also able to “zoom in” due to a natural effect known as strong gravitational lensing. In this case, a galaxy cluster in the foreground enhanced the Firefly Sparkle galaxy behind it, acting like a giant magnifying glass.

With Webb, we can go back in time and look at distant objects like the Firefly Sparkle and see objects in it that may be young globular clusters, which are seen today as dense groups of millions of ancient stars. Witnessing things that are ancient today being born in the distant past is mind-blowing. Seeing 10 of them forming this way makes the Firefly Sparkle a goldmine for understanding the earliest phases of formation and growth in galaxies.

Using Webb’s images and data, the researchers concluded that the Firefly Sparkle had the same mass as our Milky Way galaxy would have if we could “turn back time” to weigh it as it was assembling.

For the first time, astronomers have identified a still-forming galaxy that weighs about the same as our Milky Way if we could “wind back the clock” to weigh our galaxy as it developed. The newly identified galaxy, the Firefly Sparkle, is in the process of assembling and forming stars, and existed about 600 million years after the Big Bang (photo by NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Chris Willott of NRC-Canada, Lamiya Mowla of Wellesley College and Kartheik Iyer of Columbia)

Why is knowing the “weight” of the Firefly Sparkle galaxy important?

It gives us a glimpse of how much young galaxies weighed when the universe was very young. Today’s galaxies are way more massive. We’ve known this for a while, but Webb lets us figure out how they get more massive and how they get so many stars within them. In some models, the stars form slowly via internal processes, while in other models they form in small galaxies that crash together and grow bigger. Galaxies like the Firefly Sparkle tell us that both things are happening, but the latter process is probably dominant.

In 2022, the CANUCS team used Webb to identify the most distant globular clusters known in what they dubbed “the Sparkler galaxy.” How does this new discovery build upon the previous one?

The little points of light – “sparkles” – seen in the Sparkler galaxy we studied in 2022 were four billion years old when their light was emitted, which was similar to the age of the universe then. Nine billion years later, in today’s universe, we know exactly what they look like: today’s globular clusters. With the new Firefly Sparkle galaxy, we’re closer to the starting point of growth, so we’re not 100 per cent sure what the little points of light in the galaxy evolve into.

You could say that looking at the Sparkler galaxy was like looking at a toddler: you’re pretty sure a toddler is going to eventually grow up to look like an adult. But with Firefly Sparkle, it’s like looking at an embryo: all sorts of animals have similar-looking embryos, so in this case what those sparkles turn into is more ambiguous.

What are you excited to look for next with Webb?

It’s more like, what am I not excited to look at next with Webb? All the data and images coming from Webb fill me with a sense of giddy joy – it feels a bit like the universe is letting us in on some pretty big secrets and we’re lucky to be alive right now.

In this case, we need to find more examples of systems similar to the Sparkler and the Firefly Sparkle to be totally confident that these little points of light in the Firefly Sparkle are indeed very young globular clusters. What we’ve got now is a spectacular starting point. Canada has a long history of galaxy formation and globular cluster research, so I look forward to seeing us continue along that path. 

With files from Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA

Timing exercise around meals can affect women's blood sugar, appetite: Study

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 19:17:35 +0000

Timing exercise around meals can affect women's blood sugar, appetite: Study

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 01/08/2025 - 14:17

Cutline

(photo by Milorad Kravic/Getty Images)

Jelena Damjanovic

Topic

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Subheadline

In healthy females, a post-meal rise in blood sugar was lower if they waited until after breakfast to exercise

Researchers at the ��߲ݴ�ý have found that in healthy females, a post-meal rise in blood sugar was lower if they waited until after breakfast to exercise.

The researchers in the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education (KPE) also measured perceptions of appetite before and after exercise – and once every hour in the post-exercise period.

They found that study participants who exercised after eating breakfast had lower appetite immediately before and after the exercise session, compared to those who exercised before eating.

“It’s normal for blood sugar to increase after eating carbohydrate-containing meals,” says Alexa Govette, a PhD candidate in KPE who co-wrote the study published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism with Assistant Professor Jenna Gillen. “However, exaggerated spikes in blood glucose concentrations after eating are associated with increased risk for cardiometabolic diseases, like type 2 diabetes.”

While low-volume, high-intensity interval exercise has been shown to reduce the increase of blood sugar in laboratory settings, these protocols often involve specialized exercise equipment, says Govette. A novel aspect of this study was that the interval exercise protocol was equipment-free, consisting of only bodyweight movements such as jumping jacks, burpees and mountain climbers.

The timing of when you eat around exercise has also been shown to influence blood glucose concentrations and perceptions of appetite, but this has not been studied in the context of interval exercise or in an at-home setting.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate how exercise-meal timing influences blood glucose responses to high-intensity interval exercise in females,” says Govette. “It is also the first study to assess the influence of exercise-meal timing on appetite perceptions in healthy females following bodyweight interval exercise.”

Govette says very few studies have examined the effects of exercise-meal timing in a female population, so this study in healthy young women provides much needed evidence for how blood glucose concentrations are influenced by the timing of exercise around meals.

From a practical perspective, the study offers new insight into the effect of exercising around meals on blood glucose regulation and perceptions of appetite in an at-home/non-laboratory environment.

“This study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic when research restrictions precluded us from conducting in-person exercise studies in our laboratory,” says Gillen. “In the end, this allowed us to investigate how the timing of exercise around meals influences blood sugar control in an at-home setting, which hadn’t been done previously.

“Given the growing popularity of at-home and virtual workouts, our findings may be of interest to individuals who prefer to exercise at home or those that do not have access to exercise equipment.”

Next, the researchers hope to investigate the effects of exercise-meal timing on blood sugar regulation in females who are at-risk or who are living with type 2 diabetes, given that exercise-induced reductions in blood glucose increases have more clinical relevance in these populations.

“We currently have ongoing work that is comparing at-home bodyweight interval exercise to other forms of exercise in females with cardiometabolic risk factors to help address this question,” says Govette. “Additionally, it would be interesting to explore the influence of meal timing around bodyweight interval exercise over the course of several weeks to months, to assess the long-term effects on blood glucose regulation.”

FOMO is about who you're with - not what you're doing: Study

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 16:35:17 +0000

FOMO is about who you're with - not what you're doing: Study

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 01/08/2025 - 11:35

Cutline

Fans share a moment during a Taylor Swift concert in the Netherlands earlier this year (photo by Aldara Zarraoa/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)

Ken McGuffin

Topic

Global

Rotman School of Management

U of T Scarborough

Subheadline

Researchers say the idea of FOMO, or "fear of missing out," has more to do with potential for social bonding than it does with the opportunity to participate in a fun activity

Think of FOMO – fear of missing out – and you might think of missing the concert of the year, an epic party or a big family gathering.

But research published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that FOMO has far more to do with people, social status and belonging – and is not just a social media-fuelled phenomenon.

“FOMO refers to the anxiety that people feel when they miss out on a social group experience – and, specifically, the bonding that their group shared at the experience – because they worry that missing out will negatively affect their connection and future belonging with the group,” says Cindy Chan, an assistant professor of marketing at the ��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management.

Cindy Chan (photo by Ken Jones)

Chan and fellow researcher Jacqueline Rifkin, assistant professor of marketing at Cornell University, say the study sprung from their curiosity about what was behind the acronym’s growing popularity in the early 2010s.

“The term FOMO was being used more often and we wondered what this meant,” says Chan. “What were people afraid of missing out on? What situations or events might make someone feel FOMO?”

Joined by University of Pennsylvania marketing professor Barbara Kahn, the group set up multiple experiments, including with teenaged summer camp attendees and online participants, using scenarios such as missed concerts, group retreats and group initiation events, as well as exposure to participants’ own social media feeds.

They found that while FOMO was initiated by worries about missing a social bonding experience with a valued group, it got its fuel from a sometimes exaggerated sense of the potential relationship consequences for missing out and was worse for people who already tended to be socially anxious. Distinct from disappointment about missing an enjoyable experience, FOMO could even be felt in relation to potentially unpleasant scenarios such as a team-building event with demanding, stressful activities.

While the researchers did not specifically study whether FOMO is a byproduct of social media engagement, they note that the key mechanism that underpins FOMO can be experienced without the use of technology like a mobile phone or social media platforms.

“It’s possible that social media may mean we are reminded more of social events we miss, because others may make social media posts about the event,” Chan says. “So this could mean we experience FOMO more, or more often.”

It may be possible to bring people back from the FOMO brink. Negative feelings were reduced for people whose FOMO was triggered by exposure to social media posts about events they had missed but who were then invited to reflect on a past valued group event they did attend, thereby reaffirming their sense of belonging.

“This research reveals how central social relationships are in people’s experience of FOMO and reinforces how important these relationships are to our personal and emotional well-being,” says Chan.

The researchers are currently working on a paper about how FOMO can enhance customer engagement with corporate brands.

One in four Canadian women unaware of folic acid's importance during pregnancy: Study

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 20:10:40 +0000

One in four Canadian women unaware of folic acid's importance during pregnancy: Study

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 01/07/2025 - 15:10

Cutline

(photo by Oscar Wong/Getty Images)

Matthew Tierney

Topic

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Subheadline

“We are currently experiencing a crisis of family doctors in the country. The shortage makes me worry about what may happen to awareness levels in the coming years”

Approximately one in four women in Canada are unaware of the benefits of taking folic acid before and during pregnancy to prevent certain birth defects – a percentage that has not improved in more than a decade.

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada, researchers at Sinai Health and the ��߲ݴ�ý analyzed data from the Canadian Community Health Survey conducted by Statistics Canada in 2017 and 2018.

“We compare this data to the last national study on prevalence of folic acid supplementation awareness in 2006–2007, which utilized data from the Canadian Maternity Experiences Survey,” says Vrati Mehra, a fourth-year medical student in U of T’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

“We see almost no change in awareness levels from then till now. The numbers have essentially remained the same.”

Mehra is lead author of the paper along with Ellen Greenblatt, John Snelgrove and Claire Jones – all clinicians in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at Mount Sinai Hospital and faculty members in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology in U of T’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine. Professor Hala Tamim from York University also contributed to the study.

Researchers Claire Jones, left, and medical student Vrati Mehra are study co-authors (supplied images)

“Vrati had worked on a previous project of ours, a prenatal program design that involved interviewing pregnant participants,” says Jones, who is also the program director for gynecologic reproductive endocrinology and infertility residency at U of T.

“Hearing many admit they did not know about supplementing with folic acid inspired her to look further into it – a good example of how anecdotal evidence can suggest fruitful research paths.”

In the early 1990s, researchers showed that folic acid could prevent open neural tube defects. The neural tube is formed in the third and fourth weeks of pregnancy and develops into the nervous system: the spinal cord and brain. Defects lead to higher incidence of miscarriages, or debilitating conditions such as spina bifida or anencephaly at birth.

“Although we typically get enough folic acid for daily functioning, the requirement increases significantly during pregnancy to support the development of a growing baby,” says Mehra. “So, in the early 2000s, the government mandated that companies fortify pasta, breads, cereal and other grain foods with folic acid.”

The folic acid fortification came with targeted public ad campaigns that successfully raised awareness levels among Canadian females from between 25 and 50 per cent in the early 2000s to between 70 and 75 per cent in 2007.

“However, since then, the public campaigns have become more passive,” says Mehra. “Posters by the Public Health Agency of Canada are available online for those seeking information about folic acid. However, to my knowledge, there are no active campaigns targeting people who might be completely unaware of its importance.”

The study also found that certain socioeconomic patterns had persisted over the decade. People who were younger were more likely to be unaware of folic acid, as were people with lower income or less education. Landed immigrants were three times more likely to be unaware, on average.

Some of the disparities may be explained by how health information circulates, says Mehra.

“People get info from their family doctors, or from a public campaign poster in a health-care provider’s office. Those who only see a doctor after finding out that they are pregnant, or don’t have regular follow-up, have fewer chances to learn about folic acid,” she says.

“We are currently experiencing a crisis of family doctors in the country. The shortage makes me worry about what may happen to awareness levels in the coming years.”

Possible solutions include incorporating information about folic acid’s benefits before and during pregnancy to the high school sexual health curriculum, which already covers content on contraception and pregnancy. The addition would emphasize the importance of folic acid for pregnant individuals and advise those planning to become pregnant to begin taking supplements at least three months prior to conception and during their pregnancy.

The researchers say it may also be beneficial to target newcomers to Canada.

“I was once an immigrant,” says Mehra. “I remember accompanying my parents to the ServiceOntario Centre to get our health cards. Including a simple line in multiple languages about folic acid, either in the paperwork or displayed on posters, could help.

“We also visited other public spaces like libraries and community centres, which are ideal for informative posters.

“A collective effort from the government, health-care providers, the education system and the immigration system would make a big difference.”

Forests may be more resilient to climate change than previously thought: Study

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 14:23:54 +0000

Forests may be more resilient to climate change than previously thought: Study

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 01/06/2025 - 09:23

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(photo by Photo Image Library)

Topic

Climate Change