Rebecca Todd

Rebecca Todd is an Associate Professor in UBC's Department of Psychology within the Faculty of Arts, and a member of the Centre for Brain Health. She specializes in cognitive neuroscience with a focus on the interaction between emotion and cognition in health and psychopathology. Her research employs brain imaging methods and laboratory experiments to investigate how we process affective salience and how this influences perception, learning, and memory.

Dr. Todd earned her PhD in Developmental Science and Neuroscience from the University of Toronto in 2008. Prior to her academic career in neuroscience, she was a contemporary dance choreographer and journalist, which has informed her unique interdisciplinary approach to studying cognition through movement and interaction.

Her research program focuses on neurocognitive processes underlying the interaction between human emotion and cognition. She investigates how we process affective salience (emotional/motivational importance) of objects and events, and how this influences perception, learning, and memory. Her work examines individual differences in how we filter the world to perceive specific categories of salient events (threatening vs. rewarding), how such filters develop over time, and their consequences for emotional health. Specific programs include investigation of neurocognitive processes underlying effects of acute stress on attention, learning, and memory, and attentional biases predicting treatment outcomes in depression.

Dr. Todd's recent publications show an evolving research trajectory that increasingly integrates participatory sensemaking, ecological approaches to cognition, and multidisciplinary perspectives. Her work spans cognitive neuroscience, clinical applications, dance cognition, and embodied approaches to understanding how we interact with our environment. The breadth of her research demonstrates a commitment to understanding cognition as embedded in real-world contexts rather than isolated laboratory settings.

• Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar Award (2017)
• CIHR New Investigator Award (2016)

Dr. Todd leads the Motivated Cognition Lab at UBC, where she employs a multi-method approach including EEG, fMRI, psychophysiology, eye tracking, and genotyping to assess how common genetic variations interact with life experience to shape brain activity. Her lab investigates how these interactions influence emotional filters for perceiving and remembering. She is affiliated with MATRIX-N: Multidisciplinary Alliance for Translational Research and Innovation in Neuropsychiatry, reflecting her commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration. While she is not currently accepting graduate students, her research continues to advance understanding of the neurocognitive basis of emotional experience and its impact on cognition.