Pocket Science

• What If Sound Could Heal?

  Sound has been harnessed for uses from medical imaging to SONAR. Now, scientists are exploring how ultrasound can be focused and used to treat conditions as varied as chronic pain, addiction, and cancer. Wynn Legon explains the evolution of focused ultrasound and how his lab is contributing to the growing list of whats the technology can benefit our health.Wynn Legon is an assistant professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC in Roanoke. His lab studies the use of low-intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU). LIFU is an emerging form of noninvasive neuromodulation that uses mechanical energy to affect neuronal activity. The technology combines high spatial resolution with deep focal lengths providing unprecedented non-invasive access to the human brain. The enormous potential of low-intensity focused ultrasound stems from the ability to focus it through the intact skull to a millimeter-sized focal spot virtually anywhere in the brain. This makes it a powerful alternative to both invasive neurosurgical procedures and other non-invasive brain stimulation techniques.

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• Why Don’t I Slosh When I Walk?

  Human beings are mostly water, and about a fifth of that water is interstitial fluid, flowing in the spaces between our cells. ⁠Jenny Munson⁠, a world leader in the study of interstitial fluid flow, explains how fluid flow changes in diseases like brain cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, and how that understanding is being used to improve treatments of those conditions and others. Munson is a professor and director of ⁠Fralin Biomedical Research Institute's⁠ Cancer Research Center in Roanoke, Virginia. Part of her lab’s research focuses on brain cancer, and how fluid flow increases between cells within the tissue at the edge of the tumor where cancer cells mix with neighboring brain cells and evade typical therapies. Munson and her team believe fluid flow can alter how a tumor responds to drug therapies. The lab is also translating many of its methods and hypotheses to understand the role of fluid flow in immunity, aging, and women's health.

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• What Makes a Heart Stop?

  Your heart will beat billions of times, with incredible reliability, if you live a typical lifespan. But a handful of abnormal beats could be fatal. ⁠Steve Poelzing⁠, a groundbreaking cardiovascular scientist, divulges the complex mechanism behind a single heartbeat, how it can go awry, and what his research is discovering about identifying conditions that can disrupt healthy heart rhythms in order to head off fatal arrythmias. Dr. Poelzing is a professor and associate director of faculty affairs at the ⁠Fralin Biomedical Research Institute⁠. He studies the processes of electrical conductivity between heart muscle cells, the proteins that connect them, and how mutations are linked to sudden cardiac death. He also studies diseases such as heart failure, ischemia, and diabetes. Poelzing's research has demonstrated that the spread of electricity across the heart, which makes it beat, is conducted not only by proteins, but also electrical fields between heart muscle cells, a phenomenon called ephaptic coupling.

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• Welcome to Pocket Science

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• Are We Eating Ourselves to Death?

  More than half of the calories consumed in the United States are ultra-processed. At the same time, food-related ailments, including heart disease and diabetes, are on the rise. Yet we struggle to resist foods that are the worst for us.⁠Alex DiFeliceantonio⁠, an assistant professor and interim co-director of the Center for Health Behaviors Research at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, and leader of the DONNUT Lab, investigates our food choices, how what we eat can change our brains, and whether our relationship with food can actually be an addiction. In the inaugural episode of Pocket Science, she explores those questions, and whether we can behave our way out of unhealthy eating when major food manufacturers have so effectively stacked the deck against us.The DONNUT Lab seeks to understand the basic mechanisms of food choice, by both isolating the properties of foods in our modern food environment to evaluate their effect on physiology, brain function, and brain-physiology interaction, and trying to understand how individual differences in response to these food properties can confer risk or benefit for disease outcomes.

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