BCCHR Researchers Find a Researcher

Rebecca Todd

PhD

Affiliate Investigator, BC Children's Hospital

The UBC Motivated Cognition lab’s research examines how things in the environment acquire emotional relevance, how the emotional relevance of objects and events influences what we become aware of and remember, and the brain systems underlying this affectively guided learning and attention. We measure brain and behaviour in and out of the lab to examine how these processes manifest differently in mood and anxiety disorders across the lifespan. In our translational research programs we collaborate closely with neuroscientists doing animal research on the one hand and psychiatrists on the other to better understand the precise brain circuitry and pharmacology underlying behaviour patterns associated with mood disorders to guide better clinical diagnosis and treatment.

Academic Affiliations

Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, University of British Columbia
Research Theme: Brain, Behaviour & Development
Research Group(s): Mental Health and Behaviour; Visualizing the Brain

Contact Information

Location

2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z4

becket.todd@psych.ubc.ca

The Motivated Cognition Lab

Beyond passivity: Depressive symptoms predict persistent active avoidance under ambiguity

Ryan Tomm and Liz Kal and Amanda C. Lee and Ashton Thorpe and Evan J. White and Luke Clark and Stan B. Floresco and Trisha Chakrabarty and Rebecca M. Todd

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/pqzfh_v1

03 / 2026

The Third Entity: Participatory Sense-Making, Agency, and Attentional Dynamics

Rebecca M. Todd and Evan Thompson

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/3q8j5_v1

10 / 2025

Short-term memory capacity and chronic stress levels predict cognitive effort choice as a function of reward level and effort demand

Biorxiv

Forys, B.J. and Winstanley, C.A. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1101/2025.07.24.666659

Depression Levels Are Associated with Reduced Capacity to Learn to Actively Avoid Aversive Events in Young Adults

Eneuro

Tomm, R.J. and Forys, B.J. and Kalenteridis, L. and Daly, I.D. and Terpstra, A.R. and Clark, L. and Floresco, S.B. and Chakrabarty, T. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0034-25.2025

When We Move Together

OSF

DOI: 10.17605/osf.io/w9th6

Relationship between the Rate of Perceived Stability, electrodermal activity and task performance during balance challenges in chronic stroke.

Medrxiv

Shenoy, A. and Schneeberg, A. and Tembo, T. and Todd, R.M. and Silverberg, N.D. and Eng, J.J. and Peng, T.-H. and Servati, P. and Pollock, C.L.

DOI: 10.1101/2025.03.31.25324940

Short-Term Memory Capacity Predicts Willingness to Expend Cognitive Effort for Reward

eneuro

Brandon J. Forys and Catharine A. Winstanley and Alan Kingstone and Rebecca M. Todd

DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0068-24.2024

07 / 2024

Hear it here: Built environments predict ratings and descriptions of ambiguous sounds

Brandon Jonathan Forys and Emily Qi and Rebecca M. Todd and Alan Kingstone

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/qtmx8

07 / 2024

Valenced tactile information is evoked by neutral visual cues following emotional learning

Imaging Neuroscience

Ehlers, M.R. and Kryklywy, J.H. and Beukers, A.O. and Moore, S.R. and Forys, B.J. and Anderson, A.K. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1162/imag_a_00320

Capturing spontaneous interactivity: a multi-measure approach to analyzing the dynamics of interpersonal coordination in dance improvisation

Frontiers in Psychology

Whitehead, P.M. and De Jaegher, H. and Santana, I. and Todd, R.M. and Blain-Moraes, S.

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1465595

Characterizing affiliative touch in humans and its role in advancing haptic design

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

James H. Kryklywy and Preeti Vyas and Karon E. Maclean and Rebecca M. Todd

DOI: 10.1111/nyas.15056

10 / 2023

Sharing Feelings via Mini Robot Gestures

Chen Ji and Lawrence Kim and Amori Mikami and Elizabeth Reid and Raquel Robinson and Rebecca Todd and Vasileia Karasavva and Karon Maclean and Katherine Isbister

DOI: 10.1145/3588967.3588968

04 / 2023

Gender Impacts the Relationship between Mood Disorder Symptoms and Effortful Avoidance Performance

eneuro

Brandon J. Forys and Ryan J. Tomm and Dayana Stamboliyska and Alex R. Terpstra and Luke Clark and Trisha Chakrabarty and Stan B. Floresco and Rebecca M. Todd

DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0239-22.2023

02 / 2023

Decomposing Neural Representational Patterns of Discriminatory and Hedonic Information during Somatosensory Stimulation

eneuro

James H. Kryklywy and Mana R. Ehlers and Andre O. Beukers and Sarah R. Moore and Rebecca M. Todd and Adam K. Anderson

DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0274-22.2022

01 / 2023

Participatory Sense-Making in Dance Improvisation

Repertrio

Lochlan Walsh and Paige Whitehead and Rebecca Todd

DOI: 10.9771/rr.v1i38.48558

01 / 2023

Cognitive-affective processes and suicidality in response to repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for treatment resistant depression

Journal of Affective Disorders

Terpstra, A.R. and Vila-Rodriguez, F. and LeMoult, J. and Chakrabarty, T. and Nair, M. and Humaira, A. and Gregory, E.C. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2022.10.041

Factors perpetuating functional cognitive symptoms after mild traumatic brain injury

Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology

Picon, E.L. and Wardell, V. and Palombo, D.J. and Todd, R.M. and Aziz, B. and Bedi, S. and Silverberg, N.D.

DOI: 10.1080/13803395.2023.2247601

Rate of perceived stability as a measure of balance exercise intensity in people post-stroke

Disability and Rehabilitation

Aishwarya Shenoy and Tzu-Hsuan Peng and Rebecca M. Todd and Janice J. Eng and Noah D. Silverberg and Towela Tembo and Courtney L. Pollock

DOI: 10.1080/09638288.2021.2022777

12 / 2022

Lateralization of Autonomic Output in Response to Limb-Specific Threat

eneuro

James H. Kryklywy and Amy Lu and Kevin H. Roberts and Matt Rowan and Rebecca M. Todd

DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0011-22.2022

09 / 2022

In the hands of the beholder: Wearing a COVID-19 mask is associated with its attractiveness

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Dudarev, V. and Manaligod, M.G.M. and Enns, J.T. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1177/17470218211037128

Predictive Value of Acute Neuroplastic Response to rTMS in Treatment Outcome in Depression: A Concurrent TMS-fMRI Trial

American Journal of Psychiatry

Ge, R. and Humaira, A. and Gregory, E. and Alamian, G. and MacMillan, E.L. and Barlow, L. and Todd, R. and Nestor, S. and Frangou, S. and Vila-Rodriguez, F.

DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.21050541

Lateralization of autonomic activity in response to limb-specific threat

James H. Kryklywy and Amy Lu and Kevin H. Roberts and Matt Rowan and Rebecca M. Todd

DOI: 10.1101/2021.11.24.469931

11 / 2021

Reactivation of hedonic but not sensory representations in human emotional learning

M. R. Ehlers and J. H. Kryklywy and A. O. Beukers and S. R. Moore and B. J. Forys and A.K. Anderson and R. M. Todd

DOI: 10.1101/2021.11.25.469891

11 / 2021

Sense and timing: Localizing objects during emotional distraction.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

James H. Kryklywy and Veronica Dudarev and Rebecca M. Todd

DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000931

08 / 2021

Warped rhythms: Epileptic activity during critical periods disrupts the development of neural networks for human communication

Behavioural Brain Research

Rebecca Reh and Lynne J. Williams and Rebecca M. Todd and Lawrence M. Ward

DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2020.113016

02 / 2021

Assessing the efficacy of tablet-based simulations for learning pseudo-surgical instrumentation

PLOS ONE

James H. Kryklywy and Chee Kong Chui and Victoria A. Roach and Rebecca M. Todd

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0245330

01 / 2021

Within and beyond an integrated framework of attentional capture: A perspective from cognitive-affective neuroscience

Visual Cognition

Kryklywy, J.H. and Manaligod, M.G.M. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2021.1935371

Pavlovian and Instrumental Conditioning and Their Mutual Influence in Major Depressive Disorder: The Mood and Emotional Learning Dynamics (MELD) Framework

Alex Terpstra and Rebecca M. Todd

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/zdt36

10 / 2020

Decoding representations of discriminatory and hedonic information during appetitive and aversive touch

James H. Kryklywy and Mana R. Ehlers and Andre O. Beukers and Sarah R. Moore and Rebecca M. Todd and Adam K. Anderson

DOI: 10.1101/2020.09.24.310383

09 / 2020

Affect-biased attention and predictive processing

Cognition

Ransom, M. and Fazelpour, S. and Markovic, J. and Kryklywy, J. and Thompson, E.T. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104370

Show me how you feel: Iconicity and systematicity in visual morphology

Iconicity in Language and Literature

Kendall, L.N. and Raffaelli, Q. and Todd, R.M. and Kingstone, A. and Cohn, N.

DOI: 10.1075/ill.17.13ken

From Architecture to Evolution: Multisensory Evidence of Decentralized Emotion

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Kryklywy, J.H. and Ehlers, M.R. and Anderson, A.K. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2020.08.002

Emotional objectivity: Neural representations of emotions and their interaction with cognition

Annual Review of Psychology

Todd, R.M. and Miskovic, V. and Chikazoe, J. and Anderson, A.K.

DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010419-051044

Affectively Biased Competition: Sustained Attention is Tuned to Rewarding Expressions and is Not Modulated by Norepinephrine Receptor Gene Variant

Collabra: Psychology

Kevin H. Roberts and Maria G. M. Manaligod and Colin J. D. Ross and Daniel J. Mller and Matthias J. Wieser and Rebecca M. Todd

DOI: 10.1525/collabra.202

01 / 2019

The influence of the noradrenergic/stress system on perceptual biases for reward

Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience

Ehlers, M.R. and Ross, C.J.D. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.3758/s13415-018-00657-0

Implicit guidance of attention: The priority state space framework

Cortex

Rebecca M. Todd and Maria G.M. Manaligod

DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.08.001

05 / 2018

Experiential history as a tuning parameter for attention

Journal of Cognition

Kryklywy, J.H. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.5334/joc.25

Episodic autobiographical memory is associated with variation in the size of hippocampal subregions

Hippocampus

Palombo, D.J. and Bacopulos, A. and Amaral, R.S.C. and Olsen, R.K. and Todd, R.M. and Anderson, A.K. and Levine, B.

DOI: 10.1002/hipo.22818

Political orientation and climate concern shape visual attention to climate change

Jennifer Carol Whitman and Jiaying Zhao and Rebecca M. Todd

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/8br26

12 / 2017

Emotion and the prefrontal cortex: An integrative review

Psychological Bulletin

Dixon, M.L. and Thiruchselvam, R. and Todd, R. and Christoff, K.

DOI: 10.1037/bul0000096

I saw mine first: A prior-entry effect for newly acquired ownership

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

Truong, G. and Roberts, K.H. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000295

Acute psychophysiological stress impairs human associative learning

Neurobiology of Learning and Memory

Ehlers, M.R. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1016/j.nlm.2017.09.003

SOAP Opera: Self as object and agent in prioritizing attention

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

Truong, G. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01083

The Blur of Pleasure: Appetitively Appealing Stimuli Decrease Subjective Temporal Perceptual Acuity

Psychological Science

Roberts, K.H. and Truong, G. and Kingstone, A. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1177/0956797617702698

Genesis and Maintenance of Attentional Biases: The Role of the Locus Coeruleus-Noradrenaline System

Neural Plasticity

Mana R. Ehlers and Rebecca M. Todd

DOI: 10.1155/2017/6817349

Alternation between different types of evidence attenuates judgments of severity

PLoS ONE

Whitman, J.C. and Zhao, J. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0180585

Tuning to the positive: Age-related differences in subjective perception of facial emotion

PLoS ONE

Picardo, R. and Baron, A.S. and Anderson, A.K. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0145643

What BANE can offer GANE: Individual differences in function of hotspot mechanisms

The Behavioral and brain sciences

Todd, R.M. and Ehlers, M.R. and Anderson, A.K.

DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X15001971

Iconic faces are not real faces: enhanced emotion detection and altered neural processing as faces become more iconic

Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications

Kendall, L.N. and Raffaelli, Q. and Kingstone, A. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1186/s41235-016-0021-8

Dynamics of neural recruitment surrounding the spontaneous arising of thoughts in experienced mindfulness practitioners

NeuroImage

Ellamil, M. and Fox, K.C.R. and Dixon, M.L. and Pritchard, S. and Todd, R.M. and Thompson, E. and Christoff, K.

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.04.034

The neural correlates of memory for a life-threatening event: An fMRI study of passengers from flight AT236

Clinical Psychological Science

Palombo, D.J. and McKinnon, M.C. and McIntosh, A.R. and Anderson, A.K. and Todd, R.M. and Levine, B.

DOI: 10.1177/2167702615589308

Soldiers with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder See a World Full of Threat: Magnetoencephalography Reveals Enhanced Tuning to Combat-Related Cues

Biological Psychiatry

Todd, R.M. and Macdonald, M.J. and Sedge, P. and Robertson, A. and Jetly, R. and Taylor, M.J. and Pang, E.W.

DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2015.05.011

Neurogenetic variations in norepinephrine availability enhance perceptual vividness

Journal of Neuroscience

Todd, R.M. and Ehlers, M.R. and Mller, D.J. and Robertson, A. and Palombo, D.J. and Freeman, N. and Levine, B. and Anderson, A.K.

DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4489-14.2015

Strengthening emotion-cognition integration

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Todd, R. and Thompson, E.

DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X14001022

Corrigendum to "Genetic differences in emotionally enhanced memory" [Neuropsychologia 49 (4) (2011) 734-744].

Neuropsychologia

Todd, R.M. and Palombo, D.J. and Levine, B. and Anderson, A.K.

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.09.001

Tuning to the significant: Neural and genetic processes underlying affective enhancement of visual perception and memory

Behavioural Brain Research

Markovic, J. and Anderson, A.K. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2013.11.018

Temporal-spatial neural activation patterns linked to perceptual encoding of emotional salience

PLoS ONE

Todd, R.M. and Taylor, M.J. and Robertson, A. and Cassel, D.B. and Doesberg, S.M. and Lee, D.H. and Shek, P.N. and Pang, E.W.

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0093753

Deletion variant in the ADRA2B gene increases coupling between emotional responses at encoding and later retrieval of emotional memories

Neurobiology of Learning and Memory

Todd, R.M. and Mller, D.J. and Palombo, D.J. and Robertson, A. and Eaton, T. and Freeman, N. and Levine, B. and Anderson, A.K.

DOI: 10.1016/j.nlm.2013.10.008

Erratum: Temporal-spatial neural activation patterns linked to perceptual encoding of emotional salience (PLoS ONE (2014) 9, 4 (e93753) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone. 0093753)

PLoS ONE

Todd, R.M. and Taylor, M.J. and Robertson, A. and Cassel, D.B. and Doesburg, S.M.

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0105648

Shared neural substrates of emotionally enhanced perceptual and mnemonic vividness

Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

Todd, R.M. and Schmitz, T.W. and Susskind, J. and Anderson, A.K.

DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00040

Genes for Emotion-Enhanced Remembering Are Linked to Enhanced Perceiving

Psychological Science

Todd, R.M. and Mller, D.J. and Lee, D.H. and Robertson, A. and Eaton, T. and Freeman, N. and Palombo, D.J. and Levine, B. and Anderson, A.K.

DOI: 10.1177/0956797613492423

KIBRA polymorphism is associated with individual differences in hippocampal subregions: Evidence from anatomical segmentation using high-resolution MRI

Journal of Neuroscience

Palombo, D.J. and Amaral, R.S.C. and Olsen, R.K. and Mller, D.J. and Todd, R.M. and Anderson, A.K. and Levine, B.

DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1406-13.2013

Affect-biased attention as emotion regulation

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Todd, R.M. and Cunningham, W.A. and Anderson, A.K. and Thompson, E.

DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2012.06.003

Withholding response in the face of a smile: Age-related differences in prefrontal sensitivity to Nogo cues following happy and angry faces

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience

Todd, R.M. and Lee, W. and Evans, J.W. and Lewis, M.D. and Taylor, M.J.

DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2012.01.004

Visual and emotional salience influence eye movements

ACM Transactions on Applied Perception

Niu, Y. and Todd, R.M. and Kyan, M. and Anderson, A.K.

DOI: 10.1145/2325722.2325726

Psychophysical and neural evidence for emotion-enhanced perceptual vividness

Journal of Neuroscience

Todd, R.M. and Talmi, D. and Schmitz, T.W. and Susskind, J. and Anderson, A.K.

DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0155-12.2012

Affective salience can reverse the effects of stimulus-driven salience on eye movements in complex scenes

Frontiers in Psychology

Niu, Y. and Todd, R.M. and Anderson, A.K.

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00336

Genetic differences in emotionally enhanced memory

Neuropsychologia

Todd, R.M. and Palombo, D.J. and Levine, B. and Anderson, A.K.

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.11.010

The changing face of emotion: Age-related patterns of amygdala activation to salient faces

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

Todd, R.M. and Evans, J.W. and Morris, D. and Lewis, M.D. and Taylor, M.J.

DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsq007

Neurophysiological correlates of executive function: A comparison of european-canadian and chinese-canadian 5-year-old children

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Lahat, A. and Todd, R.M. and Mahy, C.E.V. and Lau, K. and Zelazo, P.D.

DOI: 10.3389/neuro.09.072.2009

Group specific optimisation of fMRI processing steps for child and adult data

NeuroImage

Evans, J.W. and Todd, R.M. and Taylor, M.J. and Strother, S.C.

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.11.039

Through the lens of emotion: The role of the amygdala in emotionality, arousal, and attention to the visual world

Social Psychology of Visual Perception

Todd, R.M. and Anderson, A.K.

Six degrees of separation: The amygdala regulates social behavior and perception

Nature Neuroscience

Todd, R.M. and Anderson, A.K.

DOI: 10.1038/nn1009-1217

The neurogenetics of remembering emotions past

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Todd, R.M. and Anderson, A.K.

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0910755106

The time course of social-emotional processing in early childhood: ERP responses to facial affect and personal familiarity in a Go-Nogo task

Neuropsychologia

Todd, R.M. and Lewis, M.D. and Meusel, L.-A. and Zelazo, P.D.

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.10.011

Changes in the neural bases of emotion regulation associated with clinical improvement in children with behavior problems

Development and Psychopathology

Lewis, M.D. and Granic, I. and Lamm, C. and Zelazo, P.D. and Stieben, J. and Todd, R.M. and Moadab, I. and Pepler, D.

DOI: 10.1017/S0954579408000448

Event-related potential measures of emotion regulation in early childhood

NeuroReport

Lewis, M.D. and Todd, R.M. and Honsberger, M.J.M.

DOI: 10.1097/WNR.0b013e328010a216

The self-regulating brain: Cortical-subcortical feedback and the development of intelligent action

Cognitive Development

Lewis, M.D. and Todd, R.M.

DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2007.08.004

Getting emotional a neural perspective on emotion, intention, and consciousness

Journal of Consciousness Studies

Lewis, M.D. and Todd, R.M.

Toward a neuropsychological model of internal dialogue: Implications for theory and clinical practice

The Dialogical Self in Psychotherapy

Lewis, M.D. and Todd, R.

DOI: 10.4324/9780203314616

Examining the relationship between within-participant stability and between-participant similarity and social behaviour traits over development.

Brain development over childhood and adolescence has been associated with more stability over time between patterns of large-scale brain network activity measured at rest or during movie watching. At the same time, patterns of brain activation linked to certain individual characteristics, such as the capacity to engage skillfully in commonly encountered social interactions, solidify over development. In this case, an individual’s patterns of large scale brain network activity may become more like the brains of others with similar traits, and more unlike the brains of individuals with traits that differ. In this collaboration with Dr. Tamara Vanderwal, we are combing our labs expertise in functional brain imaging techniques to examine both patterns of brain activation stability and similarity over development. Using a large publicly available dataset, we will investigate whether these patterns are associated with individual differences in social interaction behaviours that are indices of autistic traits. Comparing whether interaction behaviour traits are more linked to sensorimotor network vs. social brain network stability and similarity will provide important insights into foundations of variation in these behaviours.

Translational research projects on avoidance and cognitive effort in mood disorders

There is more than one way to avoid an unpleasant event: We can either take direct action or passively do nothing. The neural circuitry and pharmacology underlying these behaviours has been well studied in rodents. In humans, depression and anxiety are both associated with tendencies towards avoidance, but avoidance is understudied in depression. Moreover, it is not known whether symptoms of depression are characterized by distinct patterns of active relative to inhibitory avoidance. This research program is a collaboration with behavioural neuroscience researchers and psychiatrists at UBC’s Mood Disorders Clinic. The goal is to build on rodent research to examine whether active/inhibitory brain and behaviour patterns predict depression levels in humans with a range of depression and anxiety symptoms, as well as characterize patients with major depression. This project works iteratively. In rodents, our collaborators can subsequently examine the neurochemicals that produce behaviours that characterize depression, which in turn can inform more effective treatment approaches.

Participatory Sensemaking through food and dance

In 2023, a group of 28 prominent researchers across the field of cognitive science published a manifesto titled Beyond single-mindedness: A figure-ground reversal for the cognitive sciences (Dingemanse et al., 2023). In it the authors point out that the field’s current focus on individual minds and brains, as isolated senders, receivers, and decoders of signals, is insufficient for understanding how the mind works. Drawing on research across the cognitive sciences, the authors claim that, rather, cognition is co-constituted in and by interaction. The call was to recenter the cognitive sciences around interacting minds.
Building on this premise, we further propose that to a large extent our attentional biases to what is relevant in the world are shaped by social interaction in adulthood as well as in childhood. The current SSHRC-funded research program seeks to take the study of social interaction out of the lab and into the community to focus on the patterns of interactions themselves in relation to subjective experience. Here we take a mixed method approach using dance improvisation and food preparation as laboratories for studying how the coordination dynamics, measured as movement and physiological coordination, influence attention, emotion, and sense of agency. Understanding how coordination dynamics shape attention and memory will have major implications for educational and therapeutic contexts.

Grants

Primary Investigator. Contextual guidance of attention by emotional information. Funding Source: NSERC Discovery Grant/NSERC Accelerator Grant

Primary Investigator. Neurophysiological and Behavioral Indices of Active and Inhibitory Avoidance in Health and Major Depressive Disorder. Funding Source: DMCBH Kickstart Research Award

Co-Investigator. Functional cognitive disorder after concussion. Funding Source: Worksafe BC

Co-Investigator. Reward and avoidance in major depressive disorder: Developing predictive markers of treatment response. Funding Source: UBC Health Health Innovation Funding Investment Award

Co-Investigator. Designing for subversion: Finding a framework for embodying teen social interaction in a robot swarm. Funding Source: New Frontiers in Research Funds Exploration

Honours & Awards

2018 - Scholar Award, Michael Smith Health Research BC

Our Research

At BC Children’s, we are making discoveries that save lives and transform health care for children in our province and around the world. Our research portfolio includes basic, clinical, population, and public health research.

EXPLORE OUR RESEARCH

Rebecca Todd

PhD

Affiliate Investigator, BC Children's Hospital

Academic Affiliations

Contact Information

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Publications

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Beyond passivity: Depressive symptoms predict persistent active avoidance under ambiguity

The Third Entity: Participatory Sense-Making, Agency, and Attentional Dynamics

Short-term memory capacity and chronic stress levels predict cognitive effort choice as a function of reward level and effort demand

Depression Levels Are Associated with Reduced Capacity to Learn to Actively Avoid Aversive Events in Young Adults

When We Move Together

Relationship between the Rate of Perceived Stability, electrodermal activity and task performance during balance challenges in chronic stroke.

Short-Term Memory Capacity Predicts Willingness to Expend Cognitive Effort for Reward

Hear it here: Built environments predict ratings and descriptions of ambiguous sounds

Valenced tactile information is evoked by neutral visual cues following emotional learning

Capturing spontaneous interactivity: a multi-measure approach to analyzing the dynamics of interpersonal coordination in dance improvisation

Characterizing affiliative touch in humans and its role in advancing haptic design

Sharing Feelings via Mini Robot Gestures

Gender Impacts the Relationship between Mood Disorder Symptoms and Effortful Avoidance Performance

Decomposing Neural Representational Patterns of Discriminatory and Hedonic Information during Somatosensory Stimulation

Participatory Sense-Making in Dance Improvisation

Cognitive-affective processes and suicidality in response to repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for treatment resistant depression

Factors perpetuating functional cognitive symptoms after mild traumatic brain injury

Rate of perceived stability as a measure of balance exercise intensity in people post-stroke

Lateralization of Autonomic Output in Response to Limb-Specific Threat

In the hands of the beholder: Wearing a COVID-19 mask is associated with its attractiveness

Predictive Value of Acute Neuroplastic Response to rTMS in Treatment Outcome in Depression: A Concurrent TMS-fMRI Trial

Lateralization of autonomic activity in response to limb-specific threat

Reactivation of hedonic but not sensory representations in human emotional learning

Sense and timing: Localizing objects during emotional distraction.

Warped rhythms: Epileptic activity during critical periods disrupts the development of neural networks for human communication

Assessing the efficacy of tablet-based simulations for learning pseudo-surgical instrumentation

Within and beyond an integrated framework of attentional capture: A perspective from cognitive-affective neuroscience

Pavlovian and Instrumental Conditioning and Their Mutual Influence in Major Depressive Disorder: The Mood and Emotional Learning Dynamics (MELD) Framework

Decoding representations of discriminatory and hedonic information during appetitive and aversive touch

Affect-biased attention and predictive processing

Show me how you feel: Iconicity and systematicity in visual morphology

From Architecture to Evolution: Multisensory Evidence of Decentralized Emotion

Emotional objectivity: Neural representations of emotions and their interaction with cognition

Affectively Biased Competition: Sustained Attention is Tuned to Rewarding Expressions and is Not Modulated by Norepinephrine Receptor Gene Variant

The influence of the noradrenergic/stress system on perceptual biases for reward

Implicit guidance of attention: The priority state space framework

Experiential history as a tuning parameter for attention

Episodic autobiographical memory is associated with variation in the size of hippocampal subregions

Political orientation and climate concern shape visual attention to climate change

Emotion and the prefrontal cortex: An integrative review

I saw mine first: A prior-entry effect for newly acquired ownership

Acute psychophysiological stress impairs human associative learning

SOAP Opera: Self as object and agent in prioritizing attention

The Blur of Pleasure: Appetitively Appealing Stimuli Decrease Subjective Temporal Perceptual Acuity

Genesis and Maintenance of Attentional Biases: The Role of the Locus Coeruleus-Noradrenaline System

Alternation between different types of evidence attenuates judgments of severity

Tuning to the positive: Age-related differences in subjective perception of facial emotion

What BANE can offer GANE: Individual differences in function of hotspot mechanisms

Iconic faces are not real faces: enhanced emotion detection and altered neural processing as faces become more iconic

Dynamics of neural recruitment surrounding the spontaneous arising of thoughts in experienced mindfulness practitioners

The neural correlates of memory for a life-threatening event: An fMRI study of passengers from flight AT236

Soldiers with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder See a World Full of Threat: Magnetoencephalography Reveals Enhanced Tuning to Combat-Related Cues

Neurogenetic variations in norepinephrine availability enhance perceptual vividness

Strengthening emotion-cognition integration

Corrigendum to "Genetic differences in emotionally enhanced memory" [Neuropsychologia 49 (4) (2011) 734-744].

Tuning to the significant: Neural and genetic processes underlying affective enhancement of visual perception and memory

Temporal-spatial neural activation patterns linked to perceptual encoding of emotional salience

Deletion variant in the ADRA2B gene increases coupling between emotional responses at encoding and later retrieval of emotional memories

Erratum: Temporal-spatial neural activation patterns linked to perceptual encoding of emotional salience (PLoS ONE (2014) 9, 4 (e93753) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone. 0093753)

Shared neural substrates of emotionally enhanced perceptual and mnemonic vividness

Genes for Emotion-Enhanced Remembering Are Linked to Enhanced Perceiving

KIBRA polymorphism is associated with individual differences in hippocampal subregions: Evidence from anatomical segmentation using high-resolution MRI

Affect-biased attention as emotion regulation

Withholding response in the face of a smile: Age-related differences in prefrontal sensitivity to Nogo cues following happy and angry faces

Visual and emotional salience influence eye movements

Psychophysical and neural evidence for emotion-enhanced perceptual vividness

Affective salience can reverse the effects of stimulus-driven salience on eye movements in complex scenes

Genetic differences in emotionally enhanced memory

The changing face of emotion: Age-related patterns of amygdala activation to salient faces

Neurophysiological correlates of executive function: A comparison of european-canadian and chinese-canadian 5-year-old children

Group specific optimisation of fMRI processing steps for child and adult data