Alexandre Carter
Visiting Scholar
Dr. Carter is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Stroke and Traumatic Brain Injury in the Department of Neurology and sees patients at the Comprehensive Outpatient Stroke Clinic in the Center for Advanced Medicine and at The Rehabilitation Institute of Saint Louis. Stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability in the United-States and the third leading cause of death at a cost of over $70 billion a year. For a long time it has been thought that nothing could be done to enhance a stroke patient’s recovery. This nihilistic view was fed by many long held beliefs about the brain that are oversimplifications, and by a lack of tools to measure and modulate brain activity. We now know that the brain is organized as a set of interconnected, distributed networks, that it is capable of self-repair and of adaptive plasticity when repair is not possible. Dr. Carter’s work is centered on understanding the mechanisms of brain plasticity at the network level to help promote better recovery after stroke. Different techniques that are being used to understand distributed brain networks include resting state functional connectivity MRI, non-invasive brain stimulation, as well as more traditional activity-based therapies. This work will also help clinicians better determine which patients are more likely to benefit from which therapies, and promote more of an evidence-based approach to neurorehabilitation. Dr. Carter is also active in promoting stroke awareness and the message of primary and secondary stroke prevention through his involvement in The Rehabilitation Institute’s Patient and Family Stroke Education Series and in the wider Saint Louis community.
Primary Recipient Awards
Alexandre Carter – International Visiting Research Scholars – 2013
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