1. Effects of Early Adverse Social Experiences on Emotional Development
Our experiences in the first few years of life exert a disproportionate influence on brain development and subsequent social and emotional behavior. We are currently conducting longitudinal behavioral and fMRI research to examine the effects of early adversity, including international orphanage care, on emotional development.
Example publications:
Guassi Moreira, J.F., Méndez Leal, A.S., Waizman, Y.H., Saragosa-Harris, N., Ninova, E., & Silvers, J.A. (2022). Early caregiving adversity differentially shapes behavioral sensitivity to reward and risk during decision-making. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. In press.
Méndez Leal, A.S., & Silvers, J.A. (2021). Neurobiological Markers of Resilience to Early Life Adversity During Adolescence. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. PDF
Silvers, J.A., Goff, B., Gabard-Durnam, L., Gee, D.G., Fareri, D.S., Caldera, C., & Tottenham, N. (2017). Vigilance, the amygdala, and anxiety in youth with a history of institutional care. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 2, 493-501. PDF
Silvers, J.A., Lumian, D.S., Gabard-Durnam, L., Gee, D.G., Goff, B., Fareri, D.S., Caldera, C., Flannery, J., Telzer, E.H., Humphreys, K.L. & Tottenham, N. (2016). Previous institutionalization is followed by broader amygdala-hippocampal-PFC network connectivity during aversive learning in human development. Journal of Neuroscience, 36(24), 6420-6430. PDF
Waizman, Y.H., Méndez Leal, A.S., Guassi Moreira, J.F., Saragosa-Harris, N.M., Ninova, E., & Silvers, J.A. (2020). Effects of Emotion Regulation Strategy Usage on Internalizing Symptoms Following Early Institutional Care. Developmental Psychobiology. PDF
2. Development of Emotion Regulation
Our emotions give our lives meaning, but sometimes they can get the best of us. We use a combination of behavioral (questionnaires, observation, and computer tasks) and neuroimaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how children, adolescents, and adults can use cognitive strategies to take control of their emotions.
Example publications:
Guassi Moreira, J.F., McLaughlin, K.A., & Silvers, J.A. (2021). Characterizing the network architecture of emotion regulation neurodevelopment. Cerebral Cortex. PDF
Guassi Moreira, J.F., McLaughlin, K.A., Silvers, J.A. (2019). Spatial and temporal cortical variability track with age and affective experience during emotion regulation in youth. Developmental Psychology, 55(9), 1921-1937. PDF
Guassi Moreira, J.F., Parkinson, C., & Silvers, J.A. (2017). Performance and belief-based emotion regulation capacity and tendency: Mapping links with cognitive flexibility and perceived stress. PsyArXiv. PDF
Guassi Moreira, J.F., Sahi, R.S., Calderon Leon, M.D., Saragosa-Harris, N.M., Waizman, Y.H., Sedykin, A.E., Ninova, E., Peris, T.S., Gross, J.J., & Silvers, J.A. (2021). A Data-Driven Typology of Emotion Regulation Profiles. PsyArXiv. PDF.
Guassi Moreira, J.F., Sahi, R., Ninova, E., Parkinson, C., & Silvers, J.A. (2020). Performance and belief-based emotion regulation capacity and tendency: Mapping links with cognitive flexibility and perceived stress. Emotion. PDF
Guassi Moreira, J.F. & Silvers, J.A. (2018). Emotion Regulation A Matter of Time. P.M. Cole & T. Hollenstein (Eds.), Burlington, MA: Taylor & Francis. PDF
Martin, R.E., Silvers, J.A., Hardi, F., Stephano, T., Helion, C., Insel, C., Franz, P.J., Ninova, E., Lander, J.P., Mischel, W., Casey, B.J. & Ochsner, K.N. (2019). Longitudinal changes in brain structures related to appetitive reactivity and regulation across development. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. PDF
Méndez Leal, A.S., & Silvers, J.A. (2021). Neuroscientific Approaches to the Study of Self and Social Emotion Regulation During Development. Oxford Handbook of Emotional Development. Ed. Dukes, D., Samson, A., Walle, E. PDF
Saragosa-Harris, N.M. & Silvers, J.A. (in press). The Neural Bases of Emotion Regulation within a Process Model Framework. Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience, Second Edition. PDF
Silvers, J.A. (2022). Adolescence as a pivotal period for emotion regulation development. Current Opinion in Psychology, 44:258–263. PDF.
Silvers, J.A. (2020). Extinction learning and cognitive reappraisal: Windows into the neurodevelopment of emotion regulation. Child Development Perspectives. PDF
Silvers, J.A., Insel, C., Powers, A., Franz, P., Helion, C., Martin, R.E., Weber, J., Casey, B.J., Mischel, W., & Ochsner, K.N. (2017). vlPFC-vmPFC-amygdala interactions underlie age-related differences in cognitive regulation of emotion. Cerebral Cortex, 27(7), 3502-3514. PDF
Silvers, J.A., Insel, C., Powers, A., Franz, P., Casey, B.J., Mischel, W., & Ochsner, K.N. (2014). Curbing craving: Behavioral and brain evidence that children regulate craving when instructed to do so but have higher baseline craving than adults. Psychological Science, 25(10), 1932-1941. PDF
Silvers, J.A., McRae, K., Gabrieli, J.D.E., Gross, J.J., Remy, Katherine A., & Ochsner, K.N. (2012). Age-related differences in emotional reactivity, regulation and social rejection in development. Emotion, 12(6), 1235-1247. PDF
Silvers, J.A., Shu, J., Hubbard, A.D., Weber, J., & Ochsner, K.N. (2015). Concurrent and lasting effects of emotion regulation on amygdala response in adolescence and young adulthood. Developmental Science, 18(5): 771-784. PDF
3. Social influences on emotion
We, humans, are social creatures and our relationships with our friends and family have significant effects on our emotional experiences. However, relatively little is known about how our parents, partners, and peers influence our emotions at the level of the brain. We are currently conducting a series of laboratory and neuroimaging studies to examine how other people shape our decision making and change the way we interpret risky, rewarding, and stressful experiences.
Example publications:
Deno, M., Yamagata, S., Silvers, J.A., Tonegawa, A., & Toshihiko, E. (2021). Age and sex differences in the differentiation of anger expression strategies and interpersonal contexts among Japanese adolescents. International Journal of Emotion Education, 13(2), 40-58. PDF.
Guassi Moreira, J.F., Méndez Leal, A.S., Waizman, Y.H., Saragosa-Harris, N.M., Ninova, E., & Silvers, J.A. (in press). Revisiting the Neural Architecture of Decision-Making: Univariate and Multivariate Evidence for System-Based Models in Adolescence. Journal of Neuroscience. PDF.
Guassi Moreira, J.F., Tashjian, S.M., Galván, A.G., & Silvers, J.A. (2020). Computational and motivational mechanisms of human social decision making involving close others. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. PDF
Guassi Moreira, J.F., Tashjian, S.M., Galván, A., & Silvers, J.A. (2019). Social decision making is consistent across domains and within individuals. PsyArXiv. PDF
Guassi Moreira, J.F., Tashjian, S.M., Galván, A., & Silvers, J.A. (2018). Parents versus peers: Assessing the impact of social agents on decision making in young adulthood. Psychological Science, 29(9), 1526-1539. PDF
Korom, M., Callaghan, B.L., VanTieghem, M., Silvers, J.A., Choy, T., Kalter, J., Blumenthal, E., & Tottenham, N. (2021). Shifting children’s attentional focus to emotions during art museum experiences. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 40: 73-91. PDF
Méndez Leal, A.S., & Silvers, J.A. (2020). The Developing Social Brain. In J. B. Benson (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development (Second Edition) (pp. 410–416). Elsevier. PDF
Sahi, R., Ninova, E., & Silvers, J.A. (2020). With a Little Help From My Friends: Selective Social Potentiation of Emotion Regulation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. PDF
Silvers, J.A., Callaghan, B.L., VanTieghem, M., Choy, T., O’Sullivan, K. and Tottenham, N. (2020). An exploration of amygdala‐prefrontal mechanisms in the intergenerational transmission of learned fear. Dev Sci. PDF
4. Emotion Regulation in Physical and Mental Health
The ability to manage our emotions is critical for physical and emotional health. Although our research participants are primarily healthy children, adolescents, and adults, we strive to link normal inter-individual variability (e.g., differences in body mass and trait anxiety) to emotion regulation processes and to translate this work to clinical populations (e.g., individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder).
Example publications:
Guassi Moreira, J.F., Parkinson, C., & Silvers, J.A. (2020). Emotion regulation capacity and tendency: Mapping links with cognitive flexibility and perceived stress. PsyArXiv. PDF
Saragosa-Harris, N. & Silvers, J.A. (under review). The brain science of emotions (and how to control them). Frontiers for Young Minds. In press.
Silvers, J.A., Guassi Moreira, J.F. (2019). Capacity and tendency: A neuroscientific framework for the study of emotion regulation. Neuroscience Letters, 693, 35-39. PDF
Silvers, J.A., Hubbard, A.D., Biggs, E., Shu, J., Fertuck, E., Chaudhury, S., Grunebaum, M.F., Weber, J., Kober, H., Chesin, M., Brodsky, B.S., Koenigsberg, H., Ochsner, K.N., Stanley, B. (2016). Affective lability and difficulties with regulation are differentially associated with amygdala and prefrontal response in women with Borderline Personality Disorder. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 254, 74-82. PDF
Silvers, J.A., Hubbard, A.D., Chaudhury, S., Biggs, E., Shu, J., Grunebaum, M.F., Fertuck, E., Weber, J., Kober, H., Brodsky, B.S., Chesin, M., Ochsner, K.N., & Stanley, B. (2016). Suicide attempters with Borderline Personality Disorder show differential orbitofrontal and parietal recruitment when reflecting on aversive memories. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 81, 71-78. PDF
Silvers, J.A., Insel, C., Powers, A., Franz, P., Casey, B.J., Mischel, W., & Ochsner, K.N. (2014). Curbing craving: Behavioral and brain evidence that children regulate craving when instructed to do so but have higher baseline craving than adults. Psychological Science, 25(10), 1932-1941. PDF
Silvers, J.A., McRae, K., Gabrieli, J.D.E., Gross, J.J., Remy, Katherine A., & Ochsner, K.N. (2012). Age-related differences in emotional reactivity, regulation and social rejection in development. Emotion, 12(6), 1235-1247. PDF