Calgary teen off to Brain Bee nationals after snagging regional title

A 17-year-old Westmount Charter School student is headed Ontario to compete in a national competition that focuses on everything about the brain, after taking a regional title just last month.

"It's a competition that encompasses all spheres of brain science," said Michael Potemkin in describingthe Canadian Institutes of Health Research's Canadian National Brain Bee to The Homestretch on Wednesday.

"They test you on neuroanatomy, psychiatry, general neuroscience."

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After winning the Calgary event, Potemkin says the national competition goes deeper.

"It's a little bit more complex. You have the same multiple-choice and oral rounds, but you also have a station with 20 locations and they have slices of brain. You have to identify the structures where the pins are located. Then they have professional actors who are portraying a disease. You have five minutes per station to diagnose each one of them," he said.

"It's a lot of studying and books. I met up with some doctors and psychiatrists so I can get some tips and tricks to figure out how to diagnose and get the structures for the neuroanatomy down."

The brain sciences have always intrigued the young man.

"It's you. When you think of brain disorders you never realize that they are the ones that affect your consciousness, that affect how you interpret the surrounding environment. They affect your outlook onto the world and how you think and how you feel."

Potemkin heads to Hamilton for the Canadian National Brain Bee this weekend.

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With files from The Homestretch