Dr Jeehyun Kim, VIC : "Understanding the development of emotional memory to treat anxiety and addiction"
Speaker:
Dr Jeehyun Kim,
Lab Head, Developmental Psychobiology Laboratory –Behavioural Neuroscience, The Florey Institute, Parkville VIC 3052
Title: "Understanding the development of emotional memory to treat anxiety and addiction"
Abstract:
My vision is to discover the role of memory across the lifetime in mental disorders, namely anxiety and substance abuse. I believe the key to finding effective treatments lies in how we remember and forget emotionally significant events during our development. This is because the vast majority of anxiety disorders and substance abuse have an onset during childhood or adolescence. We use various rodent models that closely resemble human behaviours, and manipulate them using different drugs, viruses, and cognitive-behavioural approaches to find potential therapeutics. We discovered that behavioural training that normally reduces anxiety and drug seeking in adult rodents are not effective during adolescence. We have translated some of our findings in humans and we are now investigating how to reverse such impairments by manipulating the neuropharmacological basis of adolescent vulnerability in anxiety and addiction.
About Neuroscience Seminars
Neuroscience seminars at the QBI play a major role in the advancement of neuroscience in the Asia-Pacific region. The primary goal of these seminars is to promote excellence in neuroscience through the exchange of ideas, establishing new collaborations and augmenting partnerships already in place.
Seminars in the QBI Auditorium are held on Wednesdays at 12-1pm, which are sometimes simulcast on Zoom (with approval from the speaker). We also occassionally hold seminars from international speakers via Zoom. The days and times of these seminars will vary depending on the time zone of the speaker. Please see each seminar listed below for details.
