Rate My Professor Louise Risher

Louise Risher, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, Marshall University, where she joined the faculty in March 2018. She initiated her undergraduate training in Physiology and Pharmacology at Nottingham Trent University, England, before transferring to George Mason University on a full athletic scholarship for swimming to complete her B.Sc. in Applied Biology. Risher earned her Ph.D. in Clinical and Experimental Therapeutics from the Medical College of Georgia in the laboratory of Dr. Alvin Terry, with a focus on small animal behavioral neuropharmacology and toxicology. She conducted postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Scott Swartzwelder in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center, contributing to the Neurobiology of Adolescent Drinking In Adulthood (NADIA) consortium by studying the long-term effects of binge drinking on learning and memory processes.

The research in the Risher Lab investigates how adolescent binge drinking influences brain function and contributes to the development of alcohol use disorder using rodent models of chronic intermittent ethanol exposure. The lab explores astrocyte contributions to ethanol-induced changes in neuronal structure, synaptic connectivity, function, and cognition, employing techniques such as intracranial surgeries, immunohistochemistry, confocal microscopy, 3D image analysis, and behavioral assays. Key publications include "Adolescent intermittent alcohol exposure: persistence of structural and functional hippocampal abnormalities into adulthood" (Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 2015) and "Repeated exposures to low-level chlorpyrifos results in impairments in sustained attention and increased impulsivity in rats" (Neurotoxicology and Teratology, 2010). Risher has received an NIH grant to study binge drinking (2023) and a VA Merit Review grant for related research (2021). Her work elucidates glial roles in addiction pathology and has been cited over 1,300 times, impacting neuroscience research on underage drinking consequences.