Jun-Hyeong Cho
University of California-Riverside, CA·Neuroscience
Animals survive by learning which places signal danger, while not fearing every place. When this discrimination breaks down, fear spreads to safe settings, as in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which affects about 7% of Americans.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
Physiology
- Topics
fear memory
contextual fear conditioning
memory engram
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Oct 2026
What they work on
- Determine how contextual fear memory is encoded through synaptic strengthening in the hippocampus–amygdala pathway, combining engram cell labeling, optogenetics and electrophysiology.
- Determine how contextual fear memory is consolidated for permanent storage through excitatory connections between engram cells in the prefrontal neocortex.
- Map the input-output connectivity of fear memory engram cells, linking them to neurons conveying context and threat signals and to neurons generating defensive behavior, using trans-synaptic tracing.
- Test whether selectively weakening engram cell pathways prevents conditioned fear responses to a context that predicts danger.
More about the research
This project asks how the brain forms specific, lasting memories of a dangerous context. It focuses on a network linking the hippocampus, the neocortex and the amygdala, which drives fear responses.
Why it matters
People with post-traumatic stress disorder suffer persistent fear that spreads beyond the original threat. Understanding how specific fear memories are encoded and stored in engram pathways could clarify how this overgeneralized fear develops. It could also inform new strategies to weaken pathological fear while leaving normal emotional memories intact.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Christa McIntyre
University of Texas at Dallas, TX·Neuroscience
Test in rats whether pairing exposure with vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) produces fear extinction memories that last longer and generalize to related cues, compared with exposure alone.
Roger L Clem
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Neuroscience
Test whether somatostatin interneurons in the ventral hippocampus are recruited during recall of extinguished context fear, using intersectional genetics and calcium imaging to monitor distinct groups of these cells.
Sydney Trask
Indiana University, IN·Neuroscience
Compare UCS deflation, presenting weaker versions of a feared stimulus, with standard extinction in renewal, spontaneous recovery and reinstatement tests, predicting that only deflation reduces all three forms of fear relapse.
The school
University of California-Riverside: 21 labs on PI Pages, $232M a year on research, 328 research doctorates a year.
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