Alice studied Biomedical Science at the University of Sheffield (2018-2021) before successfully applying for the MRC-ITND PhD fellowship in Neurodevelopmental Disorders at King’s College London (October 2021).

She completed her PhD with Dr Nicolaas Puts (Sensory InputsLab; started October 2022) and Professor Tomoki Arichi (Perinatal Imaging Group), where her research investigated neurodevelopment and sensory processing in autism using neuroimaging methods, particularly magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), combined with vibrotactile psychophysical techniques.

Alice is now a Postdoctoral Researcher within EU-AIMS, an international research consortium, where she explores the neurodevelopmental and genetic factors that contribute to clinical and mental health outcomes in autism.

Key Publications

Thomson, A. R., Pasanta, D., Arichi, T., & Puts, N. A. (2024). Neurometabolite differences in Autism as assessed with Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 162, 105728. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105728

Thomson, A. R., Hwa, H., Pasanta, D., Hopwood, B., Powell, H. J., Lawrence, R., Tabuenca, Z. G., Arichi, T., Edden, R. A. E., Chai, X., & Puts, N. A. (2024). The developmental trajectory of 1H-MRS brain metabolites from childhood to adulthood. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y.: 1991), 34(3), bhae046. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhae046

Thomson, A. R., Pasanta, D., Edden, R. A. E., Arichi, T., Chai, X., & Puts, N. A. (2025). Characterising the association between posterior parietal metabolite levels and cortical macrostructure in a cohort spanning childhood to adulthood. Imaging Neuroscience, https://doi.org/10.1162/IMAG.a.1041

Thomson, A. R., Hollestine, V., Goodwin A., et al. (2025). In vivo Glx measurements from GABA-edited HERMES at 3T are not consistent with those from short-TE PRESS across scanners, brain regions, diagnostic and age groups. NMR in Biomedicine (2025).

Research interests

• Autism

• Atypical and typical brain development

• Neuroanatomy

• Magnetic resonance spectroscopy

• Sensory processing

Research Groups

Group: EU-AIMS-2-TRAILS

Projects: LEAP