Ruth Carper
San Diego State University, CA·Neuroscience
Hundreds of thousands of autistic people in the US will reach their 50s and beyond in coming decades. Yet almost nothing is known about how their brains and thinking change in later life.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
autism spectrum disorder
aging
older adults
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Track changes in brain anatomy, function and connectivity in autistic and typical adults aged 40–70 using multimodal MRI, and relate them to motor, executive and emotional changes.
- Test for group and age differences in GABA concentration, measured with MR spectroscopy, and in brain network integration and segregation, reflecting excitation–inhibition balance in aging.
- Identify neural and behavioral risk factors for poor or good outcomes, such as loss of daily living skills, and define autism subgroups by GABA levels or rates of change, using machine learning.
More about the research
Earlier snapshot studies hint at new problems with cognition, movement and mental health, faster brain tissue loss, and altered brain wiring. This project follows autistic adults over time to map these changes and find who is at risk of decline.
Why it matters
Autistic adults entering middle and older age have almost no data to guide their care. Identifying brain and behavioral signs that predict decline, such as falling GABA levels or faster brain change, could help clinicians spot people at risk earlier. It is a first step toward interventions that protect thinking and daily living skills.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Zheng Wang
University of Florida, FL·Neuroscience
Quantify verbal memory retention and executive function impairments in autistic adults aged 40–65 compared with age- and sex-matched cognitively normal controls, as early signs of dementia.
David Warren
University of Nebraska Medical Center, NE·Neuroscience
Provide MRI data collection for human cognitive neuroscience studies of children and adults, using a research-dedicated 3T Siemens Prisma scanner that can image brain structure, activity, white-matter connections and chemistry (spectroscopy).
Guoshi Li
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Neuroscience
Predict which brain regions have disrupted excitation-inhibition balance in 3xTg-AD Alzheimer's model mice versus normal mice, by applying the Multiscale Neural Model Inversion (MNMI) framework to ZTE resting-state fMRI and diffusion MRI.
The school
San Diego State University: 13 labs on PI Pages, $182M a year on research, 142 research doctorates a year.
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