We are interested in the pathways of how cognitive processes degenerate or break down and how they can be protected or recovered in the context of aging, psychosis, and affective distress. We investigate how dementia diverges from normal cognitive aging with neuropsychological tasks, structural and functional neuroimaging methods, and physiological tests. We also investigate decision-making impairment and its underlying information processing deficits observed in schizophrenia and stress-related psychiatric disorders, such as PTSD, utilizing experimental psychology and/or fMRI paradigms. Developing neuropsychological tools has been one of our lab’s earliest missions in order to make valid neuropsychological assessment possible in Korea.  We collaborate with researchers in many fields believing that a multi-level approach is the best way to understand complex phenomena such as the human mind and its neural correlates.

In the next decade we expect to have better understanding of the risks of dementia in Korea and other societies, the neural correlates of cognitive reserve, and the pathways of how stress and depression can impair cognition and decision-making.  At the same time, we hope to develop intervention strategies and techniques that can boost cognitive reserve and its related brain functions, so that they can reduce the risks of dementia and other psychiatric and neurological disorders.