I was born in South Korea and moved to Australia when I was nine. I had to frequently move between Korea and Australia, which was challenging growing up, but it enabled me to quickly adapt to new environments and embrace different cultures.

I initially wanted to become a psychiatrist, so I pursued an undergraduate degree in medical science at UNSW. While studying, I developed a stronger interest in research than in clinical practice, which prompted me to pursue a graduate diploma and honours degree in psychology at the University of Sydney. I was awarded first-class honours for my research investigating the visual processing of objects in the human brain using electroencephalography (EEG). I presented this research at two international conferences, and it is currently being prepared for publication.

After finishing my honours degree, I worked as a research assistant at various universities and research centres, primarily focusing on collecting and analysing neuroimaging data. I will be starting my PhD at the University of Melbourne in August 2024, where I’ll be investigating anxiety disorders using neuroimaging. I hope to make a significant contribution to understanding mental disorders and developing effective treatments.

Anxiety-related disorders (AD) affect millions globally, posing a significant mental health burden, especially in Australia, where they impact over 1 in 6 people. Exposure-based therapy is considered the gold-standard treatment for ADs, but half of the patients do not respond to the treatment. This necessitates a deeper understanding of the neurobiological underpinnings of AD to improve treatment outcomes and predict non-responders.

The underlying mechanism of exposure therapy is fear extinction, which involves gradually reducing or eliminating fear responses to aversive stimuli by learning their safety. Research has found that dysfunction in the neural circuitry involving fear extinction is linked to pathological anxiety, specifically pointing to impairments in brain regions such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus. However, limited research focuses on how the fear extinction neurocircuitry in anxiety patients changes before and after exposure therapy, and whether we can find neural markers for predicting treatment response.

This PhD project aims to fill these research gaps by investigating fear extinction circuitry in anxiety patients pre- and post-exposure therapy using 7-Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which has state-of-the-art imaging resolution. Our objectives include assessing structural and functional changes in fear extinction circuitry in anxiety patients before and after exposure therapy and correlating these changes with fluctuations in symptom severity. Additionally, we aim to identify neural markers of treatment response by examining differences in functional and structural neuroanatomy between treatment responders and non-responders.

Supervisors: Professor Ben Harrison, Professor Kim Felmingham and Dr Trevor Steward.