Full Bladders, Wasabi Alarm Earn Lg Nobels

BOSTON (AP) - Driving while desperately needing to urinate isn't a crime, but maybe it should be.
Peter Snyder and his colleagues found that having a bladder at its bursting point reduced attention span and the ability to make decisions to the same degree expected with low levels of alcohol intoxication or 24 hours of sleep deprivation. The research earned them the 2011 Ig Nobel prize for medicine.

"When people reach a point when they are in so much pain they just can't stand it anymore, it was like being drunk," said Snyder, a professor of neurology at Brown University in Providence, R.I.

"The ability to hold information was really impaired," he said.

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