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Artist

Gina Lynch

The premise of Dr Hilary Richardson’s research programme is that we each have inner lives that are ultimately unobservable to others. Our thoughts, hopes, and feelings are our own, and we have the power to shape how others see us by choosing which parts of ourselves to share. Our brain enables this: it supports our ability to construct and maintain a self-image, and our ability to try to understand the minds of those we care about. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these abilities are at the core of building and maintaining social relationships, which in turn impact our mental health. Hilary’s research investigates the development of the neural mechanisms behind these abilities. 

In their conversations together, Gina and Hilary spoke about how when images from fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) studies are shared with the public, they are ‘shinier’ cleaned up versions of noisy, blurry data collected from several different individuals.

Researchers clean the images up in order to deal with noise – they want results that go past all the small things that can affect a single datapoint. They also process the images to present something that is engaging and easy for their audience to understand. This process – of deciding how to present brain images to communicate scientific results – has some parallels to the process of deciding how to present oneself to others, in order to ease social interactions.

 

Biography

Gina is a Galway born artist living in West Cork. Her work is predominantly in Watercolour, centred around the dramatic Irish landscape, our flourishing sea life and iconic objects of the past and present.

She has exhibited works in Kenny's Gallery, Lahinch, Outset Gallery Galway and has works on permanent display in outlets in Dublin.

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