Petrie Dish

Essential tremor affects up to 10 million U.S. adults, and for about half of patients, medication doesn’t control the shaking. UT Health San Antonio neurosurgeon Dr. Alexander Papanastassiou explains how MRI-guided focused ultrasound uses heat to target the part of the brain causing the tremor, typically reducing it by 80%.

A measles infection can damage the body's defenses against pathogens to which it had built immunity through vaccination or infection. Immune amnesia can leave a person vulnerable for up to three years. An infectious diseases expert explains how you can protect yourself.

Alcohol use disorder affects millions of Americans, but treatment options remain limited, and relapse is common. A UT Health San Antonio researcher is studying two unconventional approaches that he hopes could one day be combined into a single, more effective treatment.

Eighty-five percent of combat veterans who received robot-guided magnetic stimulation with prolonged exposure therapy saw significant symptom relief, a substantial improvement over therapy alone.

Kirsten Eom studies everything that goes into getting a cancer survivor from their front door to a doctor's office: insurance, transportation, follow-up care, and more. The UT Health San Antonio researcher has found that a surprising number of survivors stop seeing doctors once initial treatment ends. Now she's working to build a statewide registry to track the barriers keeping them away.

Only about 30% of Texans who need mental health support are getting it, and the shortage of providers is projected to worsen dramatically over the next decade. A UT Health San Antonio psychologist has developed a program that teaches counseling skills to non-specialists like community health workers, faith-based practitioners, and even doulas.

A visit to a neighborhood library reveals what a loneliness researcher calls a "third place" in action: ESL classes, new parents bringing their toddlers to storytime, remote workers on their laptops, and neighbors who show up just to be around other people. It's one solution to the crisis explored in our two-part series on loneliness that you can 'check out' with nothing more than a library card.

In the second part of Petrie Dish’s exploration of loneliness, host Bonnie Petrie looks at what it takes to fight isolation, from teen gathering spaces to libraries and “chatty cafes,” and how communities can be designed to bring people together.

In rural Texas, severely injured patients often wait more than two hours to reach specialized trauma care. A UT Health San Antonio trauma surgeon is co-leading an effort to change that with an AI tool designed to help emergency doctors make faster transfer decisions that can mean the difference between life and death.

The UT Health San Antonio professor who is leading an effort to increase the number of South Texas teens who are vaccinated against the human papillomavirus hopes to see cervical cancer eliminated in the United States in her lifetime.