Congratulations to Jiwan Kohli on attention garnered by his recent publication in Cerebral Cortex. A recent article in “Spectrum” a weekly newsletter reviewing scientific findings in the field of autism research, featured Jiwan’s paper and a related paper from another research group. The piece was also featured on the Scientific American website, gathering it national attention beyond the autism field. The study examined the local gyrification index (lGI) in 2 independent samples of 7-19 year olds with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and found that, whereas lGI tends to be greater in children with ASD in some cortical regions, it also decreases more steeply with age than in typical development in other regions. The areas of increased lGI were located mainly in Perisylvian regions with some additional effects in parietal and frontal areas. Many of the affected areas are also the first sites of cortical folding during normal prenatal cortical expansion, suggesting that lGI findings may reflect very early growth anomalies in ASDs. Other research in the field has shown that many children with ASD show abnormally rapid brain growth in early life, and Jiwan’s findings could potentially allow us to differentiate children with and without a history of overgrowth.
Jiwan is entering his 2nd year in the Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, and is also a 2017 graduate of the SDSU Master’s program in Psychology. His article “Local cortical gyrification is increased in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, but decreases rapidly in adolescents” was the culmination of his Master’s research with Dr. Ruth Carper, Assoc. Research Professor. Jiwan continues to work with Dr. Carper, Dr. Ralph-Axel Müller, and the rest Brain Development Imaging Laboratories as part of his JDP studies.
https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/cercor/bhy111
https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/brains-children-autism-show-unusual-folding-patterns/