In this episode, Mallory talks with Dr. Louise Risher, Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine at Marshall University

Dr. Risher discusses her research in studying the long-term effects of binge drinking on the brains of adolescents, her love for curiosity and science, and the challenges facing young female scientists.

Transcript:

Welcome to West Virginia University’s Women in Science and Medicine podcast, brought to you by the Health Sciences Center’s Office of Research and Graduate Education. We will be talking to women with brewers in these fields, gaining their insight into what it's like operating in roles that are still mostly dominated by men.

I'm your host, Mallory Weaver. And today my guest is Dr. Louise Risher, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences in the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine at Marshall University here in West Virginia. Welcome Dr. Risher and thank you so much for chatting with me today.

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

So for listeners that may not be familiar with your work can you briefly describe your journey to your current role? So I started my undergrad training at Nottingham Trent university in England. I then transferred partly through to George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. I then did my graduate studies at the University of Georgia under the mentorship of Alvin Terry, and then went on to do my postdoc at Duke University within the Department of Psychiatry while it do I have to think about this.

In 2016, I was promoted to assistant professor and obtained a joint appointment in the dark Veteran Affairs Medical Center. And then in 2018 my husband who was also a neuroscientist and I went on the job market obviously two body problem then. Both trying to get our science jobs at the same time in the same place.

But we were lucky to land at Marshall University. So it all worked out in the end and yeah. So we've been at Marshall for four years. That's great. Me personally, I'm not, I'm not sure I love actually you can't see it here and our listeners can't certainly, certainly can't see it, but I have a, a four-piece canvas of the new river Gorge bridge.

I visited there and did the bridge walk underneath and I'm so fascinated by that area. Do you enjoy any of, sort of the outdoor escapes? But part of the state has to offer. We love it. We're really big into hiking. My daughter's still working on her endurance with her little legs. Yes, she, she loves the nature too.

We've we go down there. Not as often as I would like, but we, we went down last summer and played around a lot. And yeah, it's, if you love the outdoors, it's a great place to be. Yeah. Agree. So I always ask my guests the second question as well. What originally inspired you as a young girl or a woman to pursue a career in science?

Oh, it's such a convoluted story. So I'll start with my characteristics. I am, I was always, and still am immensely curious about everything. I want to know how everything works and why it works in a particular way. And if the. Answer is not good enough. I'm going to keep asking questions to the point where it drove my mother crazy.

And to this day it still drives my mother crazy. But I just always wanted to know more. And then. When I got to high school and, you know I got to do physics and chemistry and biology separately and kind of start to play around with experiments in the lab. It was, they were definitely my favorite subjects.

But it wasn't. So I knew. You know, the sciences was the direction that I wanted to go in. I just didn't really know what I was going to do with that. And then when I went to Nottingham for university, my major was physiology, pharmacology, and it was really heavy and bench work. Every course he took, had a bench component to it, and then I knew I loved it.

And that is what I wanted to do. But what, like I said, I just didn't really know. You know, I, I grew up in a coal mining town in a very blue collar plates. Yeah. So you know, being a scientist wasn't anything that anyone talked about? They were very. We were expected to have blue collar jobs. And I imagine very similar to West Virginia.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very similar. Yeah. So, you know opportunities weren't really, I guess really discussed. And then I So I was in Nottingham and I loved the course that I was taking, but I was also a swimmer and I was pretty highly ranked and moving to Nottingham meant that I needed to change teams and it just wasn't a great fit for me.

So I was looking for a change. And then I was offered a swimming scholarship to George Mason. So I was like, yeah, let's do it. Absolutely packed my two suitcases and came to the us for the first time in my life. And you know, continue to study biology George Mason and. After I graduated, I got a research technician position in Alvin Terry's lab at the university of Georgia.

And I fell in love with neuroscience. I would get to work early. I would leave late. I would read papers. I had like a million questions and eventually he just said, you need to go to graduate school. You know, and he said, you need to get your PhD. And the point at that point, you know, that never crossed my mind because no one ever told me that that was an option.

I didn't even know. Really know what a PhD was. You know, but he was like, this is something that you have to do, but he pointed you in that direction. That's great. That's phenomenal mentor to this day, a real, a true advocate for, for me and many others. But yeah, he saw something in me and you know, so I said, okay, I'll do it and remain in his lab for my graduate studies.

You know, now I have my dream jobs, so that's great. I do want to get into what you specifically research, because as we know, it's very relevant, particularly to student populations on campus. So you study long, the longer-term effects of binge drinking. Can you in layman's terms kind of let us know what your findings in your research role.

Yeah. So I think what I can do is kind of talk a little about two consortium's that national institutes of health put together. When I was a post-doc and so they kind of running parallel which I think is a really powerful way of looking at this problem of adolescent binge shrinking.

So one of them is. And Canada that actually look at the effects of adolescent alcohol use on the developing brain and they do structural and functional brain scans and cognitive testing in these volunteers. And then parallel to that. We have another consortium that I was passed off. Well, we use essentially a rodent model of adolescent binge drinking which allows us to look a little deeper at some of the functional things and protein changes that may be happening.

So in, I guess overall just a few of the things that we see is that while I, I guess I should back up just a second, so. One of the things that we do know is that the brain continues to mature through the teams, into the mid twenties, right? It's very some areas develop early. Some other areas developed much later and the areas that tend to mature much later are actually areas that are really important for, for.

For thinking out consequences of your actions. So impulse control, you know, thinking of the long-term consequences of the things that you're doing, and that kind of fits really nicely with what we see in teens and adolescents and young twenties that tend to take. More risks, really think of the car, someone in their forties.

So, you know, we're still seeing this. Brain maturation, which consists of essentially refining and stabilizing the communication and the network between these different brain regions to control these different elements of cognition. And what we essentially see is disruption of that maturation.

So the way that these brain regions connect is disrupted we see changes in the brain volume and various areas. And it really depends on the amount you drank and how early. So the more you drink and the earlier that UCaaS, the more the more obvious those changes. So that's kind of the human perspective, all that the, the great thing about using the rodent model is, and we can dig a little deeper and see whether these changes are happening at the functional level and look at the protein changes as well.

Sure. So what we were able to see in the rodent model is that this connectivity, once again, is disrupted and a lot of, a lot of what we're seeing is in this prefrontal cortex area that is involved in this forethought. Impulse control. And we know already that sensation seeking or novelty seeking, which is kind of controlled through this network is a really good predictor of alcohol consumption and risk taking behavior.

So whereas drinking the risk of becoming a heavier drinker even later in life. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So we're trying to did once again, a little deeper to try and understand We have a sense of what kind of neuronal circuit remodeling is happening. And some of our data, we have a sense of the changes in gene expression.

That seemed to be disrupted in ways that they shouldn't be. You know, is likely causing this circuit remodeling. But we're also seeing you know, these functional changes, but one of the things that we're particularly interested in, you know, everyone's heard of neurons. The one thing that people probably haven't heard of our beliefs.

So there are two types of blood on the brain. One is microglia that essentially helps with the immune system. The other one is astrocyte and the, the star shape cells that people just thought just hung out and supported the neurons, like physical. Like sponges, but what they actually do is they, when she has the connections between different neurons and essentially stabilize and keep these connections healthy and they also interact with the blood brain barrier.

So they do lots of different things and the neurons and the astrocytes talk to each other. And the astrocytes essentially can modulate neuronal function. So one of the things that we're really interested in is understanding how these non neuronal cells are impacted as well. And so some of the work that we have that we haven't published yet but I'm very excited, very, very excited about is that.

We're not only seeing previously seen changes in neuronal function, but we're also seeing changes in astrocyte maturation as well. So not only is the brain impacting the neurons, but also the non neuronal cells as are so critical for supporting overall brain function. So you know, and, and some of these studies have also being conducted in adult rodents same binge paradigm, and we don't see the same effects.

So it really seems to be critical. The timing seems to be really critical into when that drinking starts and how much they drank that. That is all very fascinating. One thing I thought to myself, you know, people assumed they were just sponges support and I I'd thought to myself, yeah. I'm not a scientist, but there is not a single thing in my body that I think is just kind of hanging out and has no purpose or limited purpose.

I'm going to skip my next question. And actually, because you mentioned the adult the adult population with drinking, and that really ties in nicely with this question in a research article, published in the internal journal of environmental research and public health. They did a study titled alcohol consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic at cross-sectional survey of us adults, they came to this following conclusion quote in some alcohol use in the U S is a public health problem that appears to have worsened since the onset of COVID 19 adults during COVID-19 reported high levels of alcohol consumption with those who reported high levels of impact from COVID-19 reports.

Significantly more alcohol, both more days. And total drinks then participants who were not as impacted by COVID-19. Additionally participants reported, perceived increases in their current alcohol intake compared to pre COVID 19 and quote. Do you think there's value in research? Studying, this kind of uptick population of folks who have reported heavier drinking during the pandemic.

And do you, do you have any thoughts on what they might find if they did? Yes, absolutely. You know, one of the things that we're beginning to understand more and more is the intersection between trauma, depression. Anxiety. I mean, the list goes on these adverse conditions and their relationship with drinking.

And you know, I think that the pandemic. You know, is a terrible thing, but I think that it really highlights that relationship. You know, one of the, I mentioned the in Canda consortium before. One of the great things was that they started to collect data years before the pandemic happened within the same population forum and what that meant that through the pandemic, they were actually able to see changes from baseline prior to the pandemic.

And one of the most striking things that they found was that depression symptoms tripled. Among late teens and young adults and was particularly apparent in females. So they saw worse sleeping habits increased alcohol intake, which, you know, kind of goes hand in hand because if you drink a lot of.

Asleep. Sure. You know, and then, you know, you tie in the, the depression plot and it becomes this big vicious cycle. And, you know, I really think that, I mean, it impacted me a lot too. In terms of just not feeling much of a sense of purpose during that period of time or I'm, I'm a very I love structured.

I like to plan my entire, when the pandemic was just a consistent, we don't know. We don't know. We don't know yet. Right. So it's like, do I mask, do I, I mean, we got the guidance, right. But it's more just I think in particular with the waves that are. You know, Delta on Macron, you know, you think, okay, this is where we're going to land.

And then as soon as you try to kind of plan your strategy, then another wave comes. So yeah, I totally get that. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, during the, the actual, like physical walk down not only was there suddenly a loss of sense of purpose for some people, because either. They were, they, you know, they want to work or they were trying to work from home, but, you know, suddenly they don't have to drive anywhere.

So maybe they can have a drink earlier in the day. And just all routine kind of goes out the window and I. People feeling and finding purpose in their life is so important to sense of self worth. Sure. And you know yeah, I think that looking into this, a specific group that did escalate in their drinking would be, would be really powerful you know, It's funny because you know, you talk to people and it's like the COVID 20, like the 20 pounds that you gained because also people weren't exercising.

I think the only person I know that increase their exercising was my husband and he committed a half an hour into a gym, but I just snacked a lot. So know. Exercise is disrupted. And we know how important exercise is for, you know, just feeling good and alleviating depression. And then you have the social interaction that, that does impact some people as much.

You know, if you're an introvert and you can, you know, you don't mean that social interaction. I think you're fine, but you know, teams are transitioning from. Period of seeking parental approval to seeking peer approval and rely so heavily on that, that peer interaction for their self-esteem and you know, in their teens, especially for females, their self-esteem drops dramatically.

Anyway. So you have this period in which. You know, they're meant to be transitioning towards more independence and relying more on peer approval and it's just gone. And then you have this subpopulation that just don't have. You know, good home lives and really depend on school to give them a sense of normalcy.

And that's gone too. So they're stuck in this far from appropriate environment, 24 7. Right. And I think that looking at those underlying factors would be. I think that they would really support this idea that the alcohol is a complicate alcohol, excessive alcohol consumption is complicated math.

It seems pretty simple on the, on the front, you know, drink a lot in, you're going to ask light and then you're going to, you know, it's going to become a problem, but you have all these other things that can, can contribute to that on so many levels. Absolutely. Absolutely. I saw on your CV that you have been, we're going to switch gears a little bit.

I saw that you've been mentoring Subaru students for over a decade. And we talked a little bit before we started recording about mentorship. Sponsorship. And, and, and I've talked about mentorship on this show before, but with that level of experience in mentoring students, what, what do you think makes some of the best mentor, mentee relationships?

What, what sort of sort of things and, and sort of trust or, or communications need to exist there for, for an ideal relationship? Yeah. That's. And that's, I feel like that's kind of a hard question. I'm sure. It certainly depends somewhat on the individuals too. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I would probably say The most important things would be openness and trust.

Yeah. But you know, also when you get a student that is enthusiastic and passionate and is that because they want to learn? Not because they have nothing better to do or you know, I, I find the entire process, like incredibly rewarding you know, They're all different. They all have their different personalities and you kind of have to meet them where they're at.

And, and that's the first step, right? Figuring out where they're at and then how to get them to where they need to be. And every journey for every student it is, is really unique, but it's just, you know, When they come into the program, they're usually excited, incredibly know. Oh yeah. And, but also typically really curious.

And then as they progressed in the program, you start to see old come together and you can start to see that they're starting to critically think and start to. Ask questions and not be afraid that the question might be stupid. Right. And there's never a stupid question, but they always have it in their head that there is a stupid question.

And you know, then they suddenly start to transition to leading the project that they were just following in. And it's so fun to experience, I think, is the mentor to watch that transition. It's an amazing, yeah, I just, I just love to see how they're they come in, so timid and then they leave with confidence and as an expert in this field, and you can throw questions at them and make them pretty much just handle anything.

I'd love it. And then it will, what we've also discussed on the show with a few of our guests is their mentors will come up as yours did. And the, and it's fascinating how the length of time, those relationships last well beyond graduation. Well beyond the next phase. And then sometimes into leadership roles, you know I've interviewed guests that are in leadership roles and they still have a very strong relationship with some of their earliest mentors.

So I think that's another super beneficial aspect. You know, it becomes kind of a lifelong friend in the industry or, you know, the, the. What do I want to say the discipline of science, which is just great. I think, yeah. I mean, I Def I definitely have that relationship with Alvin and a number of other people that kind of came into my life a little, a little later on that has just been incredibly supportive.

Yeah, they do stay with you. And that's actually something that I tell the new incoming graduate students. So usually we all meet in a room and they get to ask questions and we answer. And you know, one of the things that I like to tell them as the. You know, our role as mental as is not just to have you come in here, teach you and experiment and collect data and write a paper and be done.

Right. You know, our, our role is to be much more than that. And that if, and that you need to find a lab that. For you not, it's not just about the research. It's about the personality fit to find Bo it is incredibly rewarding for everyone and it becomes a joy like to go into work every day. It's. And it's no longer a tool when, you know, when a graduate student slacks me at 10 o'clock at night because they found a paper and then we ended up having this like, amazing conversation about the, the science and the potential of what we could do based on.

And it's like, it's not within normal, normal hours, but you know, we both love it so much that you know, those things can happen and it's, it's rewarding. I love your particular take on it because you really do identify the benefits to the mentor as well. Which I think people not, I, don't not in a bad way, but I don't think, I don't think a lot of people's brains go there directly.

Right. Because the mentor is. You know, they think of it transactionally a little bit more transactionally as the mentor is guiding the student, but you're identifying some very, very feel good rewards for the mentor as well, which I love. Yeah. I mean, you know, our goal is not to just teach them to critically think, but ultimately our goal is to have them replace.

Right. Point we're going to retire and they're going to be in our position. So our job is to provide them with all the tools necessary to get them to that stage. And obviously they're going to do a postdoc in between, but, you know and we can continue to guide them through that process as we continue to mentor them as they grow.

But yeah, we're. There are replacements and we want them to good, right. The next line. So I'm kind of, kind of in the same vein. I want to discuss diversity for a minute before we started recording, we had a nice conversation about around diversity and I found that you're a passionate advocate of that is that as I am myself Can you give me your thoughts on why you think training a diverse class is so important in that class?

So the next class, the next class, and just really pushing diversity up there through the years, I mean, I, I think that everyone brings strengths. Some of those strengths come from experiences. Some of them come from Some of them are cultural, right? Everyone is unique and can bring something new to the table.

And I think that that brings strength and allows growth. And having, having diversity at the table also means that you. You know, one of the things that I think we've, we've struggled with is this unconscious bias. Yes. Where, you know, one of the examples that was used a long time ago was sending out Job applications, the exact same job application.

The only difference was the name was changed. I've seen that. Yeah. So the name was sometimes very odd. You know, you could guess that the person was a white male versus a white female, but. You know, someone else. And the response to those identical applications were very different sometimes even just between man and woman let alone.

Right. Let's say a name. You, you know, you can't pronounce it, right? Yeah, for sure. I've seen that study too. And so I feel like if we can get to the point where we have good diversity and inclusion and all of these people, their table, we're much more likely to realize that everyone is just as tappable as everyone else.

And my hope is that that unconscious bias. Will diminish. Now I'm not a psychologist. I could be sure you wrong about that, but you know, I'm an optimist. You know, but it's also about people you know, for instance, you know, we have a rock star of a nicotine researcher in our department. He's fabulous.

And when we collaborate with him all the time He he's African-American and I know that there will be. I see how African American students that join our program will go to him for certain things. Because they understand kind of the. The challenges, the unique challenges that they face, and they know that he's going to understand.

And I have, you know, female students that come to me for the same shore things, because they're on a lot of female faculty you know you know, a man isn't going to necessarily understand. The extent of how frustrating microaggressions can be when you notice someone is a really nice person, but these things just kind of come out in your like really?

Yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. You know, you know, for. For my daughter she's decided she wants to be an industrial engineer. Wow. And I'm like, okay, you can get whatever you want to do, but for her to be able to see women in that role and see that it's possible is so important. It's so important for everyone to see yourself represented.

Sure. You're identify what you're identifying. Yeah, not just bringing in the class of students that are diverse for the, all the right reasons. Diversity is the tide that rises all boats, all the viewpoints, all the different viewpoints that you have, make everything better, but you also need to push those people.

Like you said before, there are replacements. You have to push those people up so that. And then that creates that flow then of the younger generation, like you said, seeing themselves represented and knowing yeah. It's why I told you before we started that's why did we do the podcasts out of the office?

We, you know, we want women and young girls in particular to know that yeah, there are ladies at these roles, in these roles doing science and doing very variable. So it is extremely important. Speaking of experiences as a female scientist, have you yourself faced in a unique challenges as a woman pursuing science or have female colleagues that have reported such challenges?

I know. And before we started, we also discussed this I've discussed with a few guests, that palpable feeling in K through 12 schools that girls just aren't as good at math, or aren't as good at science or just don't do it. And I know for myself, I felt that growing up. And it w it was never overt. I don't even know.

I can't even identify where that feeling comes from. And then an art the other thing that we've seen, particularly during the pandemic in an article published by the proceedings of the national academy of sciences or NAS in February of last year they stated quote with more time being spent on caregiving responsibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, female scientists, productivity dropped and quote.

So I think just by virtual being female, there are some things that happen from a very, very young age that are just, would definitely influence women or girls or young ladies and girls going into science. But also adult women. That I've already made it or that, you know, the pandemic has forced them to see a whole new set of challenges.

And so has that impacted you at all? Or female colleagues that you know of? Yeah, it has. I think that it's, it's interesting. So you have. Relationships, you know, marriages were very clearly, there's an imbalance that one of the. One of the careers, typically the man's career and in most cases is the most important.

Right. And you know, I was even told when my husband and I received our PhDs that we should do what was best for his career. Wow. You know, and it was. It was shocking and I was speechless, but you know, one thing that we have tried to do, and I truly appreciate my husband for everything that he does.

We went into our marriage with a quality that, you know, there, there isn't, there isn't like a, an official slit of duties. It's that it just fluctuates, right. If he had. A really busy week, then I will do more pickups and take care of more of the things that need to be taken care of at home. If I have a busy week and you know, I have a grant, you, then it shifts.

So it's constantly this really dynamic relationship in terms of You know, making sure that we get what we need to get done, and that actually never changed during the pandemic. It will remain the same which, you know, like I said, I'm incredibly grateful for that. But it's interesting because I saw other relationships around me where I thought that they had the same relationship, but when COVID hit there was suddenly a shift towards.

Well, you're the mother. So you should take care of more of the things in, in the home. And guys should spend more time in, in the workplace and building my career and where, whereas I thought that it was pretty equal. So yeah, I think that it varied tremendously depending on the relationship.

I, I was lucky, but you know, having said that, trying to homeschool child in elementary school, I can't even imagine. I can't tell you how many times during the COVID during this whole mess that I've been grateful that I do not have children and I'm sure they're a blessing, but I. Yeah. I can't even imagine trying to homeschool children right now.

I have much, much more appreciation for their educators. Yeah. Trying to teach an entire room of the,

she did a great job, but it's still, you know, it was a very hard balance. Yeah, absolutely. So I only have one final question for you and I always ask this my guests to what is it that you would most wish young women and girls to know about pursuing a career in science? It is challenging. But it is wonderful.

I, I feel incredibly grateful that I came across. Mentors during my journey that saw something in me that I didn't see in myself and really encouraged me and pushed me to you know, continue and see what I could achieve. It's if you like to, if you're curious and you like to ask questions and you're creative You know, it's a great place to be.

You get to, you get to solve problems every day. Some of them aren't necessarily enjoyable cause they're more administrative science. Part of it is you know, an absolute joy. And when you get good data, it feels, yeah, it feels really wonderful. You get to guide brilliant minds to achieve wonderful things and watch them grow.

And ultimately, even though it's not direct our goal is to help people, right. I've always wanted to help people, but I never wanted to necessarily interact with patients. I don't know. That would be my strong point either, but you know, ultimately the hope is that the science that we do will inform people of how to live healthier and happier lives and helps your disease or prevent disease.

And, you know, that's, that's the hope, right? The, ultimately we help people. So if, I think if you, if you check all those categories, even if it's just creativity and curiousness it will, it will be your drive and your passion, and it's a great career to be in.

What a fantastic conversation, Dr. Risher, thank you for joining me on the women in science and medicine podcast today.

Thank you. It's wonderful to be here.