Dr. Jeansok Kim

Biography

Jeansok Kim is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington. His research primarily focuses on the neurobiology of fear and stress and their implications for psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, PTSD, and depression. He employs a sophisticated multi-level approach to investigate the innate and learned responses to fear and stress, utilizing techniques such as lesion studies, intracerebral drug infusions, and high-precision neural monitoring. Kim's lab creates ecologically valid models using predator-like robots to study decision-making and defensive behaviors in naturalistic settings. Alongside this, he explores the effects of neurodegeneration on fear responses using Alzheimer's disease mouse models, aiming to uncover circuit-level dysfunctions that may contribute to cognitive and emotional impairments in the early stages of the disease. His goal is to elucidate the neural mechanisms linking fear, stress, and decision-making, with the hope of clarifying adaptive behaviors that could mitigate psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.

Research Interests