Rebecca Silton

Dr. Rebecca Silton is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience in the Psychology Department at Loyola University Chicago. She leads the Well-being and Emotion Lab at Loyola (WELL LAB), conducting research at the intersection of affective neuroscience, clinical psychology, and positive psychology. Her work focuses on understanding how positive emotions influence cognitive function, resilience, and overall wellbeing across the lifespan.

Education:

• Doctorate: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Bachelors: Macalester College

Dr. Silton's research program is guided by a salutogenesis framework that emphasizes optimizing affective and cognitive function to cultivate positive health outcomes. Her lab investigates embodied positive emotions and examines how positive emotions bolster resilience, restoration, and revitalization while fostering acts of resistance and rebellion. She strongly supports open and transparent science practices and values creating diverse research teams that promote wellbeing. Her multi-method approach combines neuroimaging, behavioral assessments, and longitudinal designs to address complex questions about emotional processes.

Analysis of Dr. Silton's recent publications reveals a consistent focus on the dimensional structure of psychopathology, neural mechanisms of emotional processing, and the role of positive emotions in mental health. Her work spans multiple domains including inhibitory control, response inhibition, visual processing in chronic pain, and technology-delivered interventions for depression. Recent publications demonstrate increasing attention to dimensional approaches to understanding mental health conditions and the integration of positive psychology principles into clinical research.

Dr. Silton teaches across multiple levels of the psychology curriculum including PSYC 100 Psychological Perspectives of Globalization, PSYC 331 Abnormal Psychology, PSYC 332 Affective Neuroscience, PSYC 390 Internship in Psychology, PSYC 446 Psychopathology and Problems in Living, and graduate courses in neuropsychology and neuropsychological assessment. She appears deeply committed to mentoring students through research opportunities and internship placements.

Dr. Silton directs the Well-being and Emotion Lab at Loyola (WELL LAB), which takes a multi-method approach to researching positive emotions and wellbeing. The lab's program of research emphasizes supporting diverse research teams whose work promotes positive health outcomes. Current projects focus on understanding embodied positive emotions and investigating how positive emotions contribute to resilience, restoration, and acts of resistance. The lab maintains an active website at www.siltonlab.org where additional information about ongoing research can be found.