Dr. Jee Hyun Kim - Emotional Learning & Memory in Childhood

Jee Hyun Kim, is an Australian behavioral neuroscientist whose work focuses on emotional learning and memory during childhood and adolescence. She is an Associate Professor at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne, Australia. 

Kim is an active science communicator, and has given public lectures at TEDx Melbourne, Australian Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Victorian Science Week, City of Melbourne (Melbourne Conversations, and the Wheeler Center. She has also interviewed for ABC Radio, Radio New Zealand, SBS TV, Channel 10 (The Project).

You’re a neuroscientist specializing in the effects of childhood trauma. Why does this subject interest you?

I always found people’s different personalities and experiences fascinating. Life is a library and each person is a book I can learn from, even if the knowledge may not have any practical implications. I am quite curious about everything, I find understanding for the sake of understanding very satisfying, and the most fascinating subject for me is the human. So getting to know people by talking and listening to them has naturally made me realise that much of who we are come from our memories from childhood and adolescence. Also, I realised that many of us had some traumatic experience while growing up but for some it is merely an acknowledged event while for others it is very much present and haunting them day to day. This fascinates me, and I thought that if we can understand why early life experiences are so important and why some are more vulnerable or resilient, we can help many unhappy people. Then it saddened me to find out that almost no resources and efforts were placed into answering those questions that are so relevant to so many people I meet. This motivates me to devote my life to study early life memories. It should be noted that I directly study mostly rodents, and sometimes humans.

Have you found that there are significant differences between childhood and adult trauma? For instance, do children handle/cope with trauma differently than adults?

There isn’t a whole lot of research done on that topic in general. Some have definitely shown a stronger link between childhood interpersonal trauma (e.g., emotional neglect and abuse, physical neglect and abuse, sexual abuse) and later mental disorders compared to adult trauma. However, they did not compare the childhood interpersonal trauma with adult interpersonal trauma, so it is yet unclear whether it’s the trauma age that is important or the nature of the trauma that is important. 

In terms of coping, studies suggest that the lack of experience in children may lead to stronger emotional memories to be formed. Experiences tend to be more novel for children compared to adults. When a novel event is accompanied with strong emotions, there is no previous similar non-emotional event to cushion the strong emotions in children, which may lead to stronger emotional reaction and subsequent emotional memory of the event. For example, an experienced driver can recover from a traumatic accident readily because she/he has driven safely so many times and therefore the driving memory is non-emotional. This is termed ‘latent inhibition’ – when previous non-emotional experience can reduce the emotional impact of later experience.  However, children are naturally more inexperienced, so they are like a novice driver who may have a traumatic accident, and because their only experience of driving is traumatic, she/he can’t ever drive again.

But it is not all bad news for children. My and others’ work actually suggest that children may be more resilient if debriefed after a traumatic experience. In fact, childhood memories are more malleable and how they interpret an event depend much on their caregivers. The biggest difference between children and adults may be that children look to caregivers to feel safe and interpret ambiguous situations. Following trauma, if not given the right treatment or even neglected by the caregivers, the trauma may shape their future forever. But if given the right treatment, they are actually more robust than adults and can recover from the trauma. This is why I advocate early treatment and counselling for children and adolescents.

In one of your video interviews, you spoke about the importance of having diversity among the ranks of STEM researchers? Could you elaborate?

Diseases affect everyone, regardless of race, gender, and age. Therefore it is ridiculous to think that important decisions such as where the research funding is spent, what sort of experiments we should do, how to interpret the data etc can be made well by a group that is not diverse in its representation. For example, there aren’t many developmental scientists like me around the world, and we speculate that it is the disproportionately small amount of funding we have access to that discourages many people not to enter or stay in developmental research. Perhaps the disproportionately small amount of funding is due to the fact that the decision makers tend to be ageing people with family and friends suffering from dementia, stroke, cardiovascular disease etc. Therefore, they bring those personal experiences to the table and as a consequence our youths become neglected. I do not blame that people make decisions based on emotion – I do, too. We are not logical when it comes to decision-making, and passionate, emotional arguments can win the day. But if we can have diverse people making decisions and problem solving together, then we can represent, understand, and address the needs of the people better.

I have an anecdote – I was on of the board for a new psychology college to train clinical psychologists. I was the only woman, only non-white ethnicity, and only one under 50 years of age out of 6 people on the board. We were reviewing one of the construction plans for our main building and I noticed that the women’s toilet was slightly smaller than men’s and argued the reverse needs to happen because in Australia most of clinical psychology students are female (during my own Honours degree, there were 3 males out of 65 total students). None of the others had my own experience as a Psychology student to even notice, and did not actually know first-hand what would address the needs of students the best. My anecdote reflects a relatively benign situation, but imagine the devastating impact on people if important decisions on health and science policies are made by a homogeneous group. It will take far longer to solve problems because the represented problems likely not to reflect reality.

Given your background, I’m curious if you see any connection between childhood trauma and the series of mass school shootings in the US?

Not really. Australia and the US have extremely similar prevalence of anxiety, substance use, and mood disorders in children and adults. However, we haven’t had any mass shootings since 1996. Not just for schools, but nowhere. I won’t say that childhood trauma plays ‘zero’ role. Relative to gun control, however, it plays a negligible role.   

What do you see as possible solutions to avoid such shootings from happening in the future?

Ban automatic and semi automatic guns completely. Studies have shown over and over again the availability of automated guns is the greatest factor to mass shootings.  

As an Australian resident and as a neuroscientist do you wonder if there could be a cultural explanation for the number of school shootings in the US?

Having lived in both countries, I find that Australia and US are surprisingly similar in culture. Both countries value individualism, independence, honesty and hard work. But our government policies are very different on many things, and I really do think it is the gun laws that separate us in terms of the number of school shootings.

Following a mass shooting episode in 1996 in Tasmania, the Australian government quickly came together to formulate an effective response. The government banned automatic and semiautomatic firearms, adopted new licensing requirements, established a national firearms registry, and instituted a 28-day waiting period for gun purchases. It also bought and destroyed more than 600,000 civilian-owned firearms. As a resident of Australia, what can you tell us about the effectiveness of this approach?

Super effective. Despite the similarities in our culture, every year the US has 10 times more gun-related deaths per capita than Australia. For every 100,000 people, Australia only has 1, and the US has more than 10.

I personally have friends who enjoy hunting and own rifles (non-automatic guns). They all need to be locked up but they can choose where they are locked up. So people do have freedom to own guns, just not the automatics that easily lead to killing.  

In your opinion/experience, why is it harder for women to succeed in STEM careers?

Time and again studies have shown that there are subconscious biases against women. These subconscious biases downgrade women’s abilities and discredit their success. Subconscious biases are difficult to combat because they are subconscious. However, we can consciously put in rules to be more aware of the biases by openly discussing the biases and then presenting facts showing how there is not a single academic measure in children and adolescents that show sex differences.

There is also a cultural definition of what is feminine or masculine that is neither logical nor representative of reality. I have been told (by both males and females) that I am too assertive or too confident or too loud and I wonder whether if I was a male or not Asian, whether my assertion, confidence or volume would be so offensive. So in a way I am ‘punished’ for being who I am, which discourages me from being assertive, confident, or loud (of course I consciously fight against this and try my best to be myself). Conversely, then I wonder when a female is passive or modest they are more rewarded for that behaviour, which encourages the female to continue being passive or modest. Further, so many of us scientist women have experienced unsolicited advice on our specialisation from other males who have no expertise on the subject. This happens to me all the time. Even for public speaking, I have so many random men without any experience in public speaking telling me how to do better next time. And I’ve won so many prizes on public speaking! Of course this does not mean I can’t learn from others, so I always listen. But it is intriguing that women don’t give me unsolicited advice but men do. So I wonder whether men have been rewarded with saying random advice in the past, so they are encouraged to repeat this behaviour. And whether they have been punished for being quiet or humble, so they are discouraged to be quiet or humble.

Lastly, there is lack of mentoring for women. Again, this is because leadership groups typically involve males rather than females, so looking after and mentoring women can go neglected. I actually believe in the ‘quota’ system – demand a certain level of representation in leadership. Then people will be more exposed to the benefits of diversity, which will lead to mentoring of more junior culturally diverse people, which will lead to even more representation of diversity in leadership in future.

In another video interview, you talked about the importance of your faith. Could you talk about your own faith journey?

I am nothing without Jesus. Seriously. My mum was physically and emotionally abused by my dad’s family as soon as she was married. So my mum was already depressed and anxious when I was born. Also my dad worked long hours, so she was often alone. I was the only living thing around that did not abuse her, so I think for her the only outlet was to abuse me. I was hit weekly if not daily. I remember mum complaining when I was six about how all the long household objects (vacuum cleaner shaft, broomstick, shoe horn etc.) were broken because I made her hit me. So I was a super quiet scared child. I found it difficult to make friends. I was shy and anxious. I worried all the time, I don't really remember about what. I cut myself, and thought about killing myself a lot because I could not see how life was worth living because if my own mum doesn’t love me, who could possibly love me (I no longer think my mum hates me and know that she loves me very much, but I used to think differently).

Then we moved to Sydney for my dad’s work. Because we were away from his family, mum was less stressed and treated me much better, although she relapsed every now and then when she was stressed or when she and dad fought. But the real turning point was meeting Jesus for me when I was 16. It is the first time to experience unconditional acceptance and love. To have someone so perfect love me exposes my own sin and selfishness, but that makes his love and grace so much greater, because he still loves me despite my selfishness and mistakes. This gave me strength to worry less about punishment and what others think of me, which gave me the courage to be more myself. To be more comfortable with my own desires, emotions, and failures. I always knew I was a born extrovert – I love sharing my thoughts and feelings, making decisions together, and listening to other people. Before Jesus I felt too scared to share, but to know and be loved by God gave me the strength to be myself. To my surprise, it turned out that the less I care about what people think of me, the more I was genuine and authentic, and the more people loved me anyways, although that was not my motivation. The bible told me that being genuine makes God happy and in return for His love, I wanted to be more genuine. More myself. Solomon also said in the bible that nothing is new and history repeats itself and everything is meaningless but because how we live in this life determines our eternity, we need to follow our heart. So having Jesus as my Lord and Saviour reminds me to follow my heart. Not what others say, not what my sinful nature tells me to do to impress others or to save myself and be cowardly and selfish, but what my heart really says. What my spirit that God designed tells me to feel, think, and do. So I am a slave to Christ but I truly feel free to be myself in his love. 

My work actually suggests that the wrong beliefs I held in childhood cannot be erased because the counter-belief came too late as a teenager. It’s true. Relapse is a part of adult life. When I am tired or hurting, I do relapse into thinking that no one loves me and that my life is not worth living. But from my work, I also know that I am not the only one who feels this way. If feeling this way is the norm, then surely it is not a failure to relapse but rather every day when I don’t relapse shows success. So I choose not to give up. I choose to sleep and wake up and re assess how I feel. I always feel better the next day.

Has your faith had any influence in your research career?

Daily. Daniel had a spirit of excellence because he served God. So I try to do my job excellently. Do not get me wrong, there are plenty of non-Christians who are very excellent in their job and are more selfless than I am, so that is not what I think makes me a Christian at work. However, I do think that there are things that may distinguish me as a Christian time to time, and I think that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We all start from different places in these qualities, some are born better some are born worse. But when family and friends observe that I am getting better, progressing, I think it is evidence that Jesus lives within me. Of course I fail, but thankfully in Christianity we are not expected to be perfect. But we are expected to try again and not give up and run this race until we see Jesus face to face. I can’t wait. Hopefully he will tell me ‘well done good and faithful servant’. This motivates me to keep going even when I’m hurting and tired, even when I’ve been used and disappointed.

Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

None of my work achievements are actually mine. I always say ‘the universe’ or ‘luck’ but I do mean God. I don’t say ‘blessed’ though, sometimes ‘blessed’ sounds like God chose you because you were good or something. God chooses what He chooses, I am sure it’s not our works, and we cannot comprehend in our limited brain His wisdom and also His justice. This also means that none of my work failures are mine. Jesus carries me in the vision he has placed in my heart. So I am not afraid of the future. I am not afraid because I cannot own the failures, just as I cannot own the successes. But I live as a child of God responding to His love by trying to be more like Jesus. This gives me freedom. I hope as many people as possible to experience this freedom.  

To watch Dr. Jee Huyn Kim's TED Talk, click here.

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Photo Credits: TEDEx, Florey Institute, Research Gate.