Jessica Foley Spasticity and pain are major complications of neurological disorders including multiple clerosis, cerebral palsy, and the long-term effects of stroke or traumatic injury to the brain or spinal cord. Signified by uncontrollable muscle contractions, spasticity is difficult to treat effectively. Current treatments such as oral medication, intramuscular blocks, nerve blocks, and sugical interventions often provide only short-term or partial benefit and can be invasive and high risk. Bioengineering Ph.D. candidate Jessica Foley is pursing research to use high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), guided by ultrasound imaging, to quiet overactive nerve reflexes that are involved in spasticity and pain. In their early work she and her advisor, Senior Engineer and Associate Professor of Bioengineering Shahram Vaezy, developed ultrasound image-guided HIFU devices and treatment protocols to non-invaseively target and block the sciatic nerves of animal models in vivo. Long-term studies indicate that the HIFU-induced conduction block persists at least 14 days after treatment. Future work wil linvestigate the threshold HIFU dose for conduction block and whether HIFU of different doeses could produce varying effects on the nerves ranging from temporary conduction block to permanent degeneration. Jessica was accepted as a graduate student to the UW Department of Bioengineering in 2001, and during the recruitment weekend activities she visited with Vaezy. Her undergraduate research at Duke University on three-dimensional ultrasound imaging of the heart and her goal to advance medicine through bioengineering research made her a natural fit with the Center for Industrial and Medical Ultrasound (CIMU) and Vaezy's lab. The idea to treat spasticity and pain with HIFU originated through discussions among Jessica, Vaezy, and Dr. james Little, a neurologist who works with spinal cord injury patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Seattle. Jessica notes, "I had become interested in using HIFU to treat complications of neurological disorders, particularly those related to spinal cord injury, so I contacted Dr. Little after reading about his research and clinical experience." Vaezy says that Jessica's thesis research topic opened up a new area of research at CIMU. "Although we didn't have an active project on nerves, she pursued her interest, assembled an expert team, did preliminary studeis, and now is on her way to do some seminal experiments. She is a model student with ambition, vision, and persistence to take a project from incpetion to completion." Now that the team has collected promising reults from in vivo studies, they are preparing to seek approval for a small clinical study using HIFU to treat patients with spasticity resulting from spinal cord injury. Further, their ideas have resulted in a full patent application that has been filed by the UW.