Amy Walsh

Amy Walsh is a post doctoral researcher who started working in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience with Professor Andreas Olsson, and the Aging Research Centre with Dr. Marc Guitart-Masip, in October 2019. Amy completed her PhD in Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience, supervised by Associate Professor Gina Grimshaw, at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) in 2019. Her PhD research investigated the influence of motivation on our ability to ignore emotional distractions, using behavioural and pupillometry methods. She is currently working on two lines of research, using behavioural, fMRI, and computational modelling methods: the first examines fear learning in social contexts; and the second examines the effect of uncontrollable versus controllable stress on decision-making.

Selected publications

Walsh, A. T., Carmel, D., & Grimshaw, G. M. (2019). Reward elicits cognitive control over emotional distraction: Evidence from pupillometry. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 19(3), 537-554.

Walsh, A. T., Carmel, D., Harper, D., & Grimshaw, G. M. (2018). Motivation enhances control of positive and negative emotional distractions. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 25(4), 1556-1562.

Walsh, A., McDowall, J., & Grimshaw, G. M. (2010). Hemispheric specialization for emotional word processing is a function of SSRI responsiveness. Brain and cognition, 74(3), 332-340.