معرفی
Hilary Richardson is a Lecturer in the Psychology division of the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, where she joined in August 2020. Her research investigates the relationship between social cognitive development and brain development in childhood using child-friendly neuroimaging methods.
Education:
- PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience, MIT (Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences, advisor: Dr. Rebecca Saxe)
- BS in Brain, Behavior, and Cognitive Science, University of Michigan
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children's Hospital & Harvard Medical School (with Dr. Charles Nelson)
Research Focus: Dr. Richardson's work centers on theory of mind development and the emergence of specialized brain regions for social cognition. She examines when specialized neural circuits develop, what computations they perform, how neural changes support cognitive development, and which environmental/genetic factors influence these processes. Her lab employs innovative approaches including naturalistic fMRI paradigms with child-friendly stimuli to study typically and atypically developing children.
Publication Trends: Recent work (2019-2024) spans theory of mind in sensory-deprived populations (blind/deaf children), preterm birth effects on brain structure, socioeconomic status interactions, and the development of specialized neural networks for faces/places/objects. She emphasizes open science through shared datasets and reproducible methods.
Teaching & Supervision: Dr. Richardson serves as personal tutor for 3rd/4th year undergraduates, runs tutorials for Psych 2 and General Paper Exam, and advises undergraduate/MSc dissertations. She is Course Organiser for Brain Imaging in Cognitive Neuroscience and teaches fNIRS/fMRI modules. She currently supervises PhD student Katie McKinnon.
Lab Leadership: She directs the Laboratory for Brain & Cognitive Development (part of Edinburgh's Wee Science group), which actively shares data/stimuli, pre-registers analyses, and investigates brain-cognition relationships in childhood through projects like the Theirworld Edinburgh Birth Cohort.
