Jeansok Kim

Image of Jeansok Kim

Jeansok Kim, Ph.D.

Professor
(206) 616-2685
Guthrie 321
Advising: Not accepting new graduate students in 2025-2026.
Interests: Neurobiology of Fear, Stress, and Aging Brain
Links:

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.

Education

University of California, Los Angeles (1991)

  • Kim EJ & Kim JJ (2023) Neurocognitive effects of stress: a metaparadigm perspective. Molecular Psychiatry 28: 2750-2763.
  • Zambetti PR, Schuessler BP, Lecamp BE, Shin A, Kim EJ & Kim JJ (2022) Ecological analysis of Pavlovian fear conditioning in rats. Communications Biology 5:DOI 10.1038/s42003-022-03802-1.
  • Ahn S, Kang Y, Lee JW, Jeong SJ, Lee YJ, Lee S, Kim J, Koo JW, Kim JJ & Jung MW (2021) A role of anterior cingulate cortex in the emergence of worker-parasite relationship. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (48) e2111145118.
  • Kong M-S, Kim EJ, Park S, Zweifel LS, Huh Y, Cho J & Kim JJ (2021) 'Fearful-place' coding in the amygdala-hippocampal network. eLife 10:e72040.
  • Kim EJ, Kong M-S, Park SG, Mizumori SJY, Cho J & Kim JJ (2018) Dynamic coding of predatory information between the prelimbic cortex and lateral amygdala in foraging rats. Science Advances 4:eaar7328.
  • Kim EJ, Park M, Kong M-S, Park SG, Cho J & Kim JJ (2015) Alterations of hippocampal place cells in foraging rats facing a 'predatory' threat. Current Biology 25: 1-6.
  • Kim E, Kim EJ, Yeh R, Shin M, Bobman J, Krasne FB & Kim JJ (2014) Amygdaloid and non-amygdaloid fear both influence avoidance of risky foraging in hungry rats. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281: 20133357.
  • Kim EJ, Horovitz O, Pellman BA, Tan LM, Li Q, Richter-Levin G & Kim JJ (2013) Dorsal periaqueductal gray-amygdala pathway conveys both innate and learned fear responses in rats. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110: 14795-14800.
  • Choi J-S & Kim JJ (2010) Amygdala regulates risk of predation in rats foraging in a dynamic fear environment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107: 21773-21777.