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About

Mi-Seon Kong is a neuroscientist whose research sits at the compelling intersection of fear, memory, and survival behavior, with a particular focus on how the brain processes naturalistic predatory threats. Rather than relying solely on conventional Pavlovian fear conditioning paradigms, Kong has pioneered the use of ethologically realistic foraging tasks to investigate how animals navigate genuine danger — an approach that has yielded rich insights into the neural architecture of fear. Her most influential work examines how key brain regions, including the hippocampus, lateral amygdala, prelimbic cortex, and periaqueductal gray, dynamically encode predatory threat information. Her 2015 study on hippocampal place cell alterations under predatory threat (70 citations) and her 2018 investigation into prelimbic cortex–amygdala communication during foraging (63 citations) established her as a leading voice in predator-fear neuroscience. More recently, her work has illuminated how the dorsal periaqueductal gray drives antipredatory responses in the amygdala, extending classical fear memory frameworks into naturalistic contexts. Kong's research has collectively garnered over 150 citations, offering the field a more ecologically grounded understanding of how fear circuits evolved and operate — knowledge with meaningful implications for anxiety and trauma-related disorders.