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Dr. Michelle Karth
PhD Behavioral Neuroscience | Autism Advocate and Scientific Advisor
Areas of Expertise
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Behavioral Neuroscience & Brain Research
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Autism & ADHD Science Communication
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Neurodiversity Advocacy & Public Education
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Research Translation (Making Complex Science Accessible)
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Life Experience
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Late-diagnosed autistic adult whose diagnosis reshaped her understanding of lifelong experiences
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Former competitive figure skater with a deep appreciation for discipline, body awareness, and hyper-focus
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Experienced burnout during doctoral training while navigating the illness and loss of her mother
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Passionate about helping others access accurate science and compassionate understanding of neurodivergence
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Animal lover with rescue pets Saquon Barkley, Jinkx Monsoon, and Sir Paul McCartney
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Enjoys coffee shops, music, nature, and figure skating
Research & Academic Background
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PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience, Purdue University
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M.S. in Experimental Psychology, Villanova University
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M.A. in Media Industries, University of Leeds (England)
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Dual B.A. Degrees in Media and Psychology, Penn State University
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Clinical research internship at Temple University’s Eating Disorders Program Laboratory
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Research spanning addiction science, eating behavior, psychiatric disorders, brain chemistry, and neuroscience of mental health
Academic Background
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Dr. Michelle Karth holds a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience from Purdue University. Her academic path is unusually rich and wide-ranging: she completed dual undergraduate degrees at Penn State in media and psychology, then pursued a master's degree in media industries at the University of Leeds in England — where her research examined how emerging forms of alcohol advertising, including social media and branded lifestyle content, influence youth drinking behavior globally.
Back in the U.S., she earned a second master's degree in experimental psychology from Villanova University, where her thesis used molecular biology techniques — including real-time PCR and behavioral assays — to investigate how a high-fat diet impacts hippocampal gene expression and anxiety-like behavior. For her PhD work, she focused on studying novel “non-addictive” pharmaceuticals to treat pain and alcoholism.
The Human Behind the Science
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If you look past the PhD and the science videos, you’ll find that Michelle’s work is driven by something far more powerful than just academic curiosity: her own lived experience.
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Long before she was a neuroscientist, Michelle was a competitive figure skater. It’s a sport that demands an intense kind of hyper-focus, relentless discipline, and a highly attuned relationship with your own body. These qualities helped her survive the grueling demands of scientific research later in life.
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But the true turning point in her story was receiving her autism diagnosis as an adult. Like so many late-diagnosed individuals, it was a life-altering moment that finally provided a lens for a lifetime of experiences that never quite fit the mold. For her, the burnout happened during her PhD, which was also the time when her mother was beginning to show signs of a rare blood cancer. Like many late-diagnosed adults, the burnout eventually became unbearable, and Michelle chose to get assessed for autism. This was after she was attending therapy sessions for her anxiety and depression.
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She knows exactly what it feels like to look back at your past and finally understand your own life. That deep, personal relief is exactly why she works so hard to ensure others don't have to wait decades to finally understand their own minds.
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Her warmth as an advocate is also born from navigating deep personal loss. The passing of her mother intimately shaped her understanding of grief, resilience, and the very real ways trauma physically roots itself in the body and brain. That quiet, hard-won empathy shows in everything she does. Her goal is to create a community of understanding, empathy, and compassion. Michelle has the ability to deeply tap into personal experience, even when covering the densest academic research.
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During her free time, Michelle loves trying new coffee places, nature, figure skating, music, and spending time with her furbabies. Her 2-year old rescue cats, Saquon Barkley (identifies as a Bombay without official papers) and Jinkx Monsoon (a partially deaf Torbi with a head tilt) are tributes to her late mother. They’re named after her mother’s favorite Eagles football player and a drag queen on her favorite show, ‘Dr. Who’. Her 10-year old rescue dog, Sir Paul McCartney, is named after her mother’s favorite Beatle. These family members make frequent, highly anticipated appearances on her social media. To her followers, they’re practically co-hosts. But to Michelle, they’re just family.
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Watch Dr. Karth's videos:
Follow on Youtube: @AdultAutismAssessmentCenter
Follow on Instagram: @adult_autism_assessment
Research Experience
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Dr. Karth's research career spans an impressive range of disciplines. She has worked in labs studying addiction and substance misuse, eating behavior and psychiatric disorders, feeding behavior and brain chemistry, gender and social inequality, media effects and communications, and the neuroscience of mental health.
She completed a clinical internship at Temple University's Eating Disorders Program Laboratory, where she worked directly with patients experiencing addiction, mental health challenges, stroke recovery, and eating behavior disorders — gaining hands-on experience in grant writing, literature review, and clinical research.
This breadth of training gives her something rare: the ability to connect the dots across neuroscience, behavior, culture, and lived experience in ways that are both scientifically grounded and deeply human.
Science Communication & Advocacy
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Dr. Karth does important and needed work as an autism science communicator. Through her short-form videos, she translates cutting-edge neuroscience research into language that is clear, accurate, and genuinely accessible — no jargon, no condescension, just good science explained well.
Her content takes on some of the most persistent and damaging myths in the autism and ADHD space, including the "everyone masks" myth, the gender bias that has led generations of women and girls to go undiagnosed, the ADD vs. ADHD confusion, and the neuroscience of why getting accommodations and medication can be so needlessly hard.
She also covers topics with direct clinical relevance to our work at AAA: eating behavior and autism, racial disparities in diagnosis, sensory accommodations, alcohol use among neurodivergent subtypes, and the genetic differences between early and late autism diagnosis. What sets her apart is that she brings a researcher's rigor and a communicator's instinct to every topic she touches.