Tuesday
March 5th
Attention
How does it work? What do people pay attention to? What happens as attention changes?
9.15-9.45am
Welcome
https://youtu.be/zEVzgpHRa9s
Creative Brain Week’s daily start included a check in, a musical moment and the introduction of the Neuroscience Chorus.
Neuroscience Chorus: we invited diverse experts to draw on their multiple forms of neuroscientific knowledge by reflecting on presentations throughout Creative Brain Week like a wise council or the Greek Chorus in drama. We were joined this morning by Agustin Ibanez and Lorina Naci.
Musical Moment with Sylvia O’Brien of the RIAM. A beautiful note to start the day on.
Contributors
Regarded as one of Ireland’s leading sopranos, Dr Sylvia O’Brien has impressed audiences in her performances of opera, oratorio and chamber music.
Since her critically acclaimed debut as the Governess in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw in 2004, Sylvia has performed numerous leading roles such as The Countess (Le Nozze di Figaro), Konstanze (Die Entfuhrung), Anne Trulove (The Rake’s Progress), Fiordiligi (Cosi Fan Tutte), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Jenůfa (Jenůfa), and most recently the title roles in Turandot and Lucia di Lammermor.
As a concert performer, Sylvia is a regular guest soloist with orchestras, chamber ensembles, recital halls and festivals throughout Europe. Her vast repertoire includes Chausson, Berlioz, Mozart, Bach, Verdi, Shostakovich and Wagner and the lighter repertoire of Strauss, Lehar, Novello and Gilbert and Sullivan. Sylvia’s oratorio repertoire highlights include Verdi’s Requiem, Mozart’s C Minor Mass, Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots, Dvořak Requiem, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle.
Her vocal and musical skills make her an important singer in her contemporary repertoire. Significant contemporary performances include Feldman’s Neither conducted by Stefan Asbury and Gerald Barry’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant conducted by Gerhard Markson. Sylvia has commissioned, collaborated on, and premiered many works. Her most notable collaboration include Seóirse Bodley, Raymond Deane, Siobhán Cleary, Brian Irvine and Benjamin Dwyer. Sylvia is a founding member of the Irish chamber ensemble Evlana.
Recently awarded Doctor of Music from Trinity College Dublin, Sylvia is a member of the vocal faculty of the Royal Irish Academy of Music where she lectures in voice, specialising in French song and contemporary vocal techniques. She also teaches voice at Dublin City University and at Sylvia O’Brien Voice Studio.
Websites:
https://www.sylviaobriensoprano.com
https://www.riam.ie/about/our-people/sylvia-obrien
Social:
https://twitter.com/SylviaOBrienSop
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylvia-o-brien-494aaa16
Agustín Ibáñez is a neuroscientist interested in global approaches to dementia and social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience. He is the Director of Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat) at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI) in Chile. He also holds international positions from the USA/Ireland [Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at the University of California San Francisco and Trinity College Dublin)] and Argentina [Cognitive Neuroscience Center]. Agustín holds a track record of +300 publications (+120 in the last five years), including top-ten journals (e.g., Lancet Neurology, World Psychiatry, Nature Reviews Neurology, Nature Human Behavior, JAMA Neurology, Alzheimer’s & Dementia, Brain, Neuron). He has received funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), ANID (Chile), COLCIENCIAS (Colombia), DAAD (Germany), MRC (United Kingdom), CONICET (Argentina) and Alzheimer’s Association, Tau Consortium, GBHI, Takeda, and NIH/NIA (USA). He is the founder of critical regional initiatives, such as the multi-partner consortium to expand dementia research in Latin America (ReDLat) and the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium on Dementia (LAC-CD). His work has been highlighted in the BBC, Nature, Nature News, Discovery Channel, Popular Science, Daily Mail, Newsweek, Le Monde, and Oxford University Press, among others.
Websites:
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6758-5101
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/agustin-ibanez-0
Social:
https://twitter.com/AgustinMIbanez
https://www.instagram.com/dr.agustinibanez/
Lorina Naci is Associate Professor and leader of the Cognition and Consciousness Group at the School of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. Her work focuses on developing novel biomarkers of healthy and disordered cognition in brain-injured and aging populations. Her work has made ground-breaking contributions to the understanding of cognition and consciousness for individuals with severely limited motoric output, such as severely brain-injured, anaesthetised or advanced Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients. Concurrently, she explores the medico–ethical and societal implications of these applications. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge as a Cooke Fellow in 2011. In 2017, she received the L’Oréal – UNESCO International Rising Talent Award. Professor Naci serves as a member of the Governing Board of the Global Brain Health Institute, at Trinity College Dublin and University of California San Francisco, USA. She is funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Irish Research Council, and Enterprise Ireland.
Website:
Social:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorina-naci-04a4a037/
10.00am-12.00pm
On Attention
How are you paying attention?
What are you paying attention to?
Why is it important?
Professor Ian Robertson introduced:
- Paul Dockree – Associate Professor in the School of Psychology and Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience – Attention and Decision Making
- Tanisha Hill Jarret – author of The Black radical imagination: a space of hope and possible futures
- Susan Magsamen – founder of The Neuro-Arts Blueprint and New York Times bestselling co-author with Ivy Ross of Your Brain on Art
Contributors
Ian Robertson is a Founding Director of the Global Brain Health Institute and Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. He is co-leader of the BrainHealth Project (Center for BrainHealth UTDallas) and is a Member of Academia Europaea and of the Royal Irish Academy. He is widely known for his research on neuropsychology and his science writing has included books aimed at the general reader: Mind Sculpture (2000), The Mind’s Eye (2003), Stay Sharp (2005), The Winner Effect (2012) and The Stress Test (2016), all of which have been widely translated. His most recent book How Confidence Works was published by Penguin in 2022.
Websites:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/ian-robertson
Social:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-robertson-4480502/
Paul Dockree is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology and Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. Paul is a cognitive neuroscientist interested in mechanisms of attention, memory and awareness through investigation with neuropsychological and electrophysiological methods. His work has a clinical emphasis to understand changes in functioning caused by brain injury and aging but also a strong interest in developing rehabilitation techniques to improve patient recovery from cognitive disabilities.
Websites:
https://people.tcd.ie/Profile?Username=dockreep
https://psychology.tcd.ie/people/dockreep/
Social:
X: @drdockers
Tanisha Hill-Jarrett, PhD, is a neuropsychologist, Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health, and an Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of California San Francisco Memory and Aging Center. Her research applies intersectionality theory to understand how psychosocial stressors and structural racism and sexism impact Black women’s cognitive aging and confer risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). She is additionally interested in improving the measurement and tracking of adverse social exposures to better understand how they shape cognitive aging trajectories and association with incident ADRD among Black older adults. As a scientist and clinician, she is committed to making wellness and brain health accessible and participates in the Memory and Aging Center Black/African American Community Outreach Team. Dr. Hill-Jarrett uses Afrofuturism in her community-based work with Black women as a framework to create counternarratives and reimage the future through a lens of hope. She seeks to incorporate Afrofuturism and creative practices as tools for brain health among community-dwelling Black elders and a praxis that drives social change and centers on aging Black women.
Websites:
https://www.tanishahilljarrett.com
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/tanisha-hill-jarrett
Social:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanisha-hill-jarrett-ph-d-5b258aba/
Susan Magsamen is the founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab), Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, a pioneering initiative from the Pedersen Brain Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her body of work lies at the intersection of brain sciences and the arts — and how our unique response to aesthetic experiences can amplify human potential.
Magsamen is the author of the Impact Thinking model, an evidence-based research approach to accelerate how we use the arts to solve problems in health, well-being, and learning. In addition to her role at IAM Lab, she is an assistant professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins and serves as co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint initiative in partnership with the Aspen Institute.
Susan’s newest book with Random House is Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, written with Ivy Ross, Vice President of Design for Hardware at Google. It is a journey through the science of neuroaesthetics that offers proof of how our brains and bodies are transformed when we participate in the arts and aesthetic experiences, and how this knowledge can improve our physical and mental health, help us learn and flourish, and build stronger communities.
Prior to founding IAM Lab, Magsamen worked in both the private and public sector, developing social impact programs and products addressing all stages of life — from early childhood to the senior years. Magsamen created Curiosityville, an online personalized learning world, acquired by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2014 and Curiosity Kits, a hands-on multi-sensory company, acquired by Torstar in 1995.
An award-winning author, Magsamen has published eight books including The Classic Treasury of Childhood Wonder, The 10 Best of Everything Families, and Family Stories.
Magsamen is a Fellow at the Royal Society of the Arts and a strategic advisor to several innovative organizations and initiatives, including the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, the American Psychological Association, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, Brain Futures, Learning Landscapes, and Creating Healthy Communities: Arts + Public Health in America.
Website:
Social:
12.15-1.00pm
Creative Brain Week Living Labs
Daily sessions offered attendees an opportunity to discuss, develop and reflect on the themes of the day through a practice of their choice. Dive deep with peers trying out a new-to-you way to make knowledge.
These sessions reflected the engaged nature of the event Sessions were In Person only and included:
Sue Mayo – “Breaks and Joins”
Artist and a facilitator lead a creative daily session at Creative Brain Week informed by her work on the repair of our stuff, ourselves and our communities
Trudy Meehan “This is What Love Feels Like?”
Lecturer in Positive Health Science invited participants to explore art based research and practice by supporting them to make body maps of their experiences of love and care in, on and across our bodies
Neuroscience at Noon
Global Brain Health Institute Cohort host guests and conversations explored the themes of the day by weaving diverse disciplines and experience. Today we were joined by Rob Whelan.
Mike Hanrahan – Music as Sense Making
As a professional musician with expertise in musical note, pitch, tone, rhythm, melody and frequency Mike’s long been aware of music’s ability to calm or stimulate. Newly informed by neuroscience he wondered how it can articulate the life of someone living with a diagnosis of dementia. If music reflects the first senses to form, can if reflect them as they change? Participants joined this Living Lab for a practical journey in music and sound.
Irish Museum of Modern Art – Slow Art Experience
Participants joined Irish Museum of Modern Art Curator Bairbre-Ann Harkin to experience a taste of IMMA’s Slow Art Sessions. This Lab explored how slowing down to engage with an artwork encourages us to be present and opens us up to different perspectives.
Bairbre-Ann discussed what IMMA has learned from working with people living with dementia and how this has informed the IMMA Horizons programme. IMMA Horizons Lifelong Creativity for the Curious aims to contribute to new thinking on how creativity can positively impact health and wellbeing through programming and partnerships.
Contributors
It was 1977, Ennis and Doolin were alive with new music. He was in a room on the top floor of a house in Abbey Street creating a new sound with Maura O Connell. They were Tumbleweed. Stocktons Wing were creating a movement down the road on O Connell Street. It was exciting. Maura went to Nashville, he jumped on The Wing Wave ……. It has been a rollercoaster.
As an Atlantic Fellow at the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College he has been learning about Dementia and ways he can contribute as an artist to promote equity and care for brain health.
Websites:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/mike-hanrahan
Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-hanrahan-66780946/
Instagram: @mikehanrahanmusic/
Bairbre-Ann Harkin is an art-educator with a particular interest in accessible programming, who facilitates art-looking tours, trainings and workshops for organisations nationally and internationally. Currently IMMA’s Art & Ageing Curator, Harkin formerly completed an internship at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), worked as Access Officer at Dublin Contemporary 2011 and spent six years as Butler Gallery’s Education Curator, where she established one of Ireland’s first dementia-inclusive art-looking programmes and developed and delivered arts education programmes for audiences of all ages and backgrounds. During this time, she became a founding partner of the European Project, ‘Museums, Art & Alzheimer’s’ and the national Azure Network, alongside the Alzheimer Society of Ireland, Age & Opportunity and IMMA.
Websites:
https://imma.ie/learn-engage/families-community/dementia-inclusive/
Social:
X: @IMMAIreland
Sue Mayo is a freelance creative artist and researcher, with a specialism in community based and intergenerational co-creation. Sue has worked with many arts organisations, including the Royal Court, The Young Vic, Magic Me, Tamasha, People United, The Lyric Theatre Belfast, Bealtaine, The Royal Albert Hall, Bristol Old Vic. Her own research-led creative projects include The Gratitude Enquiry, and Breaks & Joins, a project exploring the repair of our stuff, our selves and our communities. Her podcast, Breaks & Joins is now into its 5th series. Sue led the MA in Applied Theatre at Goldsmiths, University of London, from 2012-2022.
Website:
Social:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sue-mayo-2714b116/?originalSubdomain=uk and https://linktr.ee/breaksandjoins
X: @sue_mayo
Instagram: www.instagram.com/breaks_and_joins
Dr Trudy Meehan is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist with over two decades of experience. Her career spans various life stages, from therapeutic work in Child and Adolescent Mental Health to neuropsychological assessments of older adults.
Currently, as a Lecturer and Director of the Professional Diploma in Positive Health with the RCSI Centre for Positive Health Sciences, Trudy is shaping the future of positive health practices. She is supervising doctoral candidates, fostering the next generation of thought leaders in the application of the arts for health and wellbeing.
Trudy’s innovative approach to research and practice, intertwines the arts with health, and wellbeing, underscoring the transformative power of experiential engagement. Currently delving into the nuances of positive emotions, her research offers fresh perspectives on harnessing our senses to enhance vitality and promote sustained purpose and interconnection. She has made scholarly contributions to the field of clinical formulation and diagnosis in mental health. Trudy has also published on topics such as, tools for positive health, the role of positive emotions, purpose and meaning, and the essential nature of play.
Her tenure as Director of Stanford University’s Overseas Study Programme in Cape Town was marked by her ability to weave connections across continents, integrating academic rigor with real-world applications through partnerships with NGOs, hospitals, and corporations. Her passion for asking the right questions, challenging the boundaries between art and science, and forging collaborative paths is a testament to her commitment to excellence in the field of arts and health.
She is a visual artist and creative writer who has curated and exhibited visual art at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa. She led an art studio and research project in collaboration with the late Mark Hipper from the School of Fine Art at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. She has collaborated with the Drama Department at Rhodes University in co-creating a performance about trauma and community for the National Arts Festival. She has also trained in Forum Theatre with Julian Boal and continue to develop her work in this area.
Website:
https://www.rcsi.com/people/profile/trudymeehan
Social:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trudy-meehan-phd-a1762b47/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trudymeehan/
Rob Whelan was awarded a first-class honours undergraduate degree in Applied Psychology in 2001 from University College Cork, followed by a PhD in psychology in 2004 from National University of Ireland Maynooth. He subsequently obtained a wide range of post-doctoral experience – in psychiatry, neurology, and neural engineering – at University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin and the University of Vermont. He was appointed as Lecturer in the School of Psychology at University College Dublin in mid-2013. In mid-2016 was appointed as Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin and the Global Brain Health Institute.
Websites:
https://psychology.tcd.ie/people/whelanr3
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/rob-whelan
Social:
2.00-3.00pm
“I’ve walked a mile in their shoes”
Living with an Acquired Brain Injury in Ireland: Panel Discussion
A panel discussion hosted clinicians who were working in the field of brain injury, when they acquired a brain injury (ABI), talk about their own lived experience of ABI. The members of the panel shared their highly unique clinician-patient perspectives. They shared their stories about the diagnosis and a new life with brain injury, with heightened compassion and empathy, given their professional backgrounds. Panellists also explored the personal and systemic challenges faced by survivors of brain injury in Ireland, and the role of neuro-rehabilitation in supporting them to rebuild their lives and regain their independence.
Panel discussion was MC’ed by Grainne McGettrick.
Contributors
Majella Cassidy is a senior Occupational Therapist working in the field of acquired brain injury and Dementia. Graduating from University of Brighton with an MSC in Occupational Therapy, she has worked predominately in the field of Stroke, TBI and neurological conditions. Her first degree was in Social Care Practice after which she worked with young adults in residential care. Currently, she is working in the Cottage Hospital in Drogheda, Co. Louth as the Senior Occupational Therapist in Care of the Older Person clinic. Previous experience includes Acute stroke, stroke rehab, neuro rehab and palliative care. In September 2018, Majella had a stroke. Lucky enough to make a full recovery she now acts as a patient representative on the Acquired Brain Injury Ireland Research Ethics Committee. In addition to this, Majella has had the opportunity to present at various conferences and university courses as an advocate for the lived experience of having an acquired brain Injury.
Dr. Niamh Lowe is a graduate from the Clinical Doctoral Programme in Trinity College Dublin. She has worked in Child, Adolescent, and Adult Mental Health Services since graduating in 2018. Niamh is currently on maternity leave and is due to start a senior psychology post in adult mental health services on her return. In 2010 Niamh was involved in a road traffic accident and has a resulting brain injury. She attended the National Rehabilitation Hospital and was a client of Headway and ABI Ireland. This personal experience led Niamh to become interested in neuropsychology and brain injury, doing placements and thesis research into this area at both Master’s and Doctoral level.
Alison is a senior occupational therapist at the National Rehabilitation Hospital, Dublin, Ireland. Her specialist area of clinical experience is the assessment and rehabilitation for people with people with prolonged disorders of consciousness. She has 20 years’ experience working in acute and post-acute rehabilitation of people with acquired brain injury. She holds a master’s degree in research. Alison is currently experiencing, first hand, the impact of brain illness as she recovers from autoimmune encephalitis. This process has broadened her understanding of the ‘lived experience’ and provided her with new insights into the niche areas of neuro-immunology and the epilepsies. Alison has interests in occupational science, and the moral, ethical, social and legal aspects of care for people who survive with profound brain injury. Alison has co-authored and published several research articles and a book chapter.
Grainne is the Policy and Research Manager with Acquired Brain Injury Ireland where she leads the strategic development of the organisation’s policy and research agenda. With a background at the intersection of policy, research, and advocacy in the Irish NGO sector, Gráinne is dedicated to addressing health inequalities and championing the human rights of those facing exclusion due to ageing, dementia and disability. She has played a key role in leading successful national policy advocacy campaigns, forming alliances and coalitions, engaging stakeholders, and fostering collaborations at national, European and international levels. Gráinne is a Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health, Global Brain Health Institute, Trinity College Dublin. She holds a Bachelor of Social Science degree and a Master of Arts in Social Policy.
Websites:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/grainne-mcgettrick
Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gráinne-mcgettrick-77129121/
X; @ABIIreland and @GBHI_Fellows
3.30pm-5.00pm
'Chop wood, move water’: Exploring the mind of the extreme swimmer’
Attention changes with context. As a bridge to Wednesday’s sessions on Connection, we asked what happens when the environment changes?
Diving into the Arctic sea at -1o Celsius. Swimming for 13 hours between Northern Ireland and Scotland amidst jelly fish, waves and freezing temperatures. Crashing through the world’s most treacherous waves where the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Southern Oceans meet.
This is the world of extreme swimming. But what drives these swimmers and what does it take to succeed?
Professor Iracema Leroi, of the Global Brain Health Institute, herself an accomplished open water swimmer, will engage these swimmers in conversation to explore the motivation behind this fascinating world, and together with Professor of Psychology, Ian Robertson, delve into the neuroscience that drives such activity.
Speakers included:
- Iracema Leroi – convener
- Ram Barkai
- Nuala Moore
- Barry Murphy
- Ian Robertson
Contributors
Ram Barkai is a 66-year-old Israeli-born Living in Cape Town South Africa is an extreme swimmer, Open Water swimmer and ice swimming administrator/Founder He has inspired people through his extreme swims and extraordinarily positive view of life and its challenges. He took on swimming as a sport at the age of 40 years after damaging both knees in aikido training in Tokyo. Ram started Ice Swimming in 2008 after achieving his firstGuinness World Record in Antarctica. In 2009, after a 2.3km swim in Lake Zurich at temp of 4C he decided to create Ice Swimming as a sport and established a safety, rules foundation and defined Ice Swimming and Ice Miel and many more. Barkai vision is to take Ice swimming to the winter Olympic. He also started Ice Swimming Adventures, taking swimmers from all over the world and introduce them to what he considers as “the most beautiful places on our planet”. Antarctica, North Pole and more. All for Ice Swimming. Barkai spent most of his professional career in the finance industry and ended up as a CEO of publicity listed financial services company in South Africa. He decided to retire from finance in 2012 and dedicate his life to Ice Swimming and his adventures.
He is the co-host of The ICE Series.
Ram wrote an autobiography telling about his diverse life, Ice Swimming and the creating of IISA: https://www.austinmacauley.com/book/from-fire-to-ice
Websites:
https://internationaliceswimming.com
https://www.openwaterswimming.com/swim-community/ram-barkai/
Social:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ram-barkai-1a0a7152/
X: @IceSwimming
Iracema is an academic geriatric psychiatrist with a special interest in pragmatic interventions for the cognitive and neuropsychiatric aspects of neurodegenerative disorders, particularly Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Iracema is also an accomplished open water swimmer, with swims including the 44km Manhattan Island Marathon.
Websites:
Nuala Moore is an Irish Open Water Swimmer and an adventurer on a wider scale, mostly known for her extreme ice swims. Over the last decade, Nuala has pushed the boundaries in some of the most dangerous icy waters and remote locations in the world. Nuala is self-coached, develops her own training plans for tackling the ice; forging a path into pushing human limits without coaches, focusing on what she believes is possible for herself. Pain was – and is – part of her journey. Also pushing to be the best version of herself. Nuala holds two Guinness World Records for extreme cold-water swimming – the first for her part in the first and only international relay team to swim from Russia to the USA across the Bering Strait, and the second for her pioneering cold-water swim in the notorious Drake Passage, the body of water between South America's Cape Horn, Chile and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. She is the first swimmer in the world to swim from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, the Drake passage, as well as being the first woman in the world to swim south of remote Cape Horn, Nuala is also the first Irish swimmer to complete 1000m @ 0 Degrees in 2013 and the 3 rd woman in the world, she then set about creating standards and procedures on risk for both ice and marathon swimming.
The Round Ireland Swim in 2006 with the support of the Rescue Unit of the Sheephaven Sub Aqua Club, marine coordinators from Co Donegal was a world first. Nuala with her five teammates swam around the island of Ireland, which tallied over 56 days and 720 nautical miles. This gruelling expedition of back-to-back cold water immersions which included travelling up to 20-miles off-shore in 300m deep waters , swimming up to six hours a day,was undoubtedly one of the most courageous swims ever achieved in the world of open-water swimming.
The Bering Strait Relay in 2013 , swimming over six days in the world’s most remote freezing waters, was awarded the World Performance of the Year 2014 and labelled the most dangerous open water swim in the world and one of her favourite swims. Nuala has been three times listed in the top 50 of the Most Adventurous Women in the World of Open water as well as being nominated in the top 12 on two occasions as the world open water woman of the year 2014 and 2016. Red Bull recognised her as one of Ireland’s most adventurous women in 2017 and the Lifesaving Foundation recognised Nuala with the Frank Golden award for her work on cold water swim safety. Through her decades as a Scuba diving professional Nuala recognised the need for both safety and standards in the sport, this has always been her priority, and from 2012-2015 she worked developing standards and procedures for the North Channel Swim and Ice swimming as well as other safety initiatives. Her recent memoir Limitless documents her journey through the extremes. Her goal was always to redefine her understanding of success and failure, of winning and losing, of life. Nuala is a pioneer, a cold-water safety specialist, coach, author, mentor, and an incredible endurance swimmer who has pushed the boundaries for women in extreme sports. Mostly she is a normal person fighting the daily fight to be the best version of herself and helping others along the way.
‘In life sometimes we can cover up for our weaknesses, but the minute you’re exposed to anything in the extremes you can’t. That’s why, sometimes, we go to the extremes – to meet the best version of ourselves. And every now and then, that is a wonderful place to be.’
Limitless
Website:
Social:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nuala-moore-45901395/
X: @numoorepain
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/numooreswim/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nuala.moore.7
Blogspot: http://iceswimmingdreams.blogspot.ie
Barry is the oldest man to complete the Original Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming, consisting of crossing the English Channel between England and France, the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland and, of course, the Wales to England Bristol Channel swim
Ian Robertson is a Founding Director of the Global Brain Health Institute and Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. He is co-leader of the BrainHealth Project (Center for BrainHealth UTDallas) and is a Member of Academia Europaea and of the Royal Irish Academy. He is widely known for his research on neuropsychology and his science writing has included books aimed at the general reader: Mind Sculpture (2000), The Mind’s Eye (2003), Stay Sharp (2005), The Winner Effect (2012) and The Stress Test (2016), all of which have been widely translated. His most recent book How Confidence Works was published by Penguin in 2022.
Websites:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/ian-robertson
Social:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-robertson-4480502/
5.15pm-6.00pm
Reflection on Attention
Each day of Creative Brain Week drew to a close with active reflection through poetry and neuroscience.
- Morag Anderson – supported by the Scottish Poetry Library
- Autumn Brown and Amelia McConville – The Arts + Science Salon Podcast
- Neuroscience Chorus
Contributors
Morag Anderson is a Scottish poet based in Highland Perthshire. Her debut chapbook, Sin Is Due to Open in a Room Above Kitty’s is published by Fly on the Wall Press (2021) and her second chapbook, And I Will Make of You a Vowel Sound, will be published in May 2024. Exploring the many contradictions of life lived in the female body, Morag’s poetry navigates womanhood and its attendant desires and abuses, permitting the reader to embrace the power and vulnerability encased in the female form.
Her poetry has appeared in literary journals and anthologies including Butcher’s Dog, Finished Creatures, Gutter, The Scotsman, Popshot Quarterly, Beyond the Swelkie, Cruinneachadh, and Best Scottish Poems 2021. The Scottish Poetry Library commissioned Morag to respond to the life and works of Nan Shepherd and Robert Burns.
She won the Aryamati Poetry Chapbook Prize 2023, was placed in the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition 2021, the Edwin Morgan Trust Competition 2021, the Blue Nib Chapbook VI Contest, was twice shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize, won Over the Edge New Poet (2018) and the Clochoderick Prize 2018. In 2021, she collaborated with three other poets on How Bright the Wings Drive Us, which won the Dreich Alliance Chapbook competition.
In 2023, Morag was the Makar of the Federation of Writers (Scotland) and poet-in-residence for the Birnam Book Festival. She was featured poet at the 2022 Emily Dickinson Museum Phosphorescence Poetry Reading Series, the 2019 Yehuda Amichai International Poetry Festival in Galway.
Morag is currently working on her first poetry collection.
Website:
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/morag-anderson/
Social:
Instagram: @morag_caimbeul
Dr. Autumn Brown is a transdisciplinary postdoctoral scholar at University College Dublin. She has published across numerous fields including science education, science and society, and equitable access to education. Her research interests include the history of scientific knowledge and immigration, cold war art-science innovations, and STEAM pedagogies. She is the co-founder and co-host of the podcast series, The Art-Science Salon. Her current work explores the transfers and transformations of knowledge regarding silencing technologies as part of the Spectres & Camouflage project at University College Dublin and transdisciplinary non-formal learning with the Science and Society research group at Trinity College Dublin. She holds a masters degree in Science Communication and Public Engagement from The University of Edinburgh and a PhD in Education from Trinity College Dublin.
Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/autumn-brown-558884139/
X; https://twitter.com/fairytalesci and www.twitter.com/ArtPlusSciSalon
Instagram: www.Instagram.com/dr.fairytalescience
Dr Amelia McConville obtained her PhD in 2023 from Trinity College Dublin, where she conducted interdisciplinary research on visual poetry and poetics with Neurohumanities, funded by the Irish Research Council’s Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship, and was jointly supervised across the School of English and Institute of Neuroscience. She is the co-founder and co-host of the podcast series, The Art+Science Salon, and is interested in public engagement and cultural criticism: she was recently involved with the inaugural Beta Festival in an assistant curatorial role. She works for DARIAH-EU, the European Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts & Humanities, and is currently based in Berlin.
Website:
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/whats-on/details/2020/art-and-science-reading-group.php
Social media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amelia-mcconville-phd-874157138
X: @ameliamcconv and @ArtPlusSciSalon
Instagram: Instagram @artplussciencesalon
The Art + Science Salon is a virtual group where researchers, artists, thinkers, and revolutionaries come to share ideas. Co-founded and co-hosted by Dr Autumn Brown and Dr Amelia McConville, and originally supported by Science Gallery Dublin and the Trinity Long Room Hub, this evolving podcast and event series explores the ways art and science shape one another and society.
The website is under development and will be available shortly. You can connect on Twitter and Instagram.
In the meantime, the playlist of their previous recordings (2020-2021) hosted by Trinity Long Room Hub is available here: https://soundcloud.com/
Their most recent episode (2023) featuring Aisling Murray of Beta Festival is here: https://soundcloud.com/
