Jeansok Kim

Research

Stress and fear play important roles in our lives, from influencing daily behaviors to precipitating symptoms of mental health disorders. My laboratory is performing multi-level analyses toward understanding the neurobiology of stress and fear. Specifically, we investigate how stress alters hippocampal plasticity and multiple brain-memory systems, and how fear memories are formed. These investigations consist of employing lesion, intra-cerebral drug infusion, and in vitro and in vivo neurophysiological recording techniques. Recently, we began employing 'predator-like' robots and 'closed economy' (self-contained living setting comprised of safe nest and dangerous foraging zones) to investigate defensive behaviors of rats in semi-naturalistic, dynamic risky environments. These ecologically-relevant studies address the neuronal basis of the basic approach-avoid conflicts that contribute to human psychopathologies.