Suk-Ju Kim
Sungkyunkwan University · Psychology
About the Lab
Professor Suk-Ju Kim's research lab specializes in neuropsychiatry and behavioral neuroscience, focusing on the neural and psychological mechanisms underlying sleep disturbances, substance use disorders, and neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD and PTSD. The lab employs advanced neuroimaging techniques—particularly MRI and fMRI—to investigate structural and functional brain changes associated with psychiatric and cognitive disorders. Key research directions include the impact of chronic sleep restriction on mental health, neurocognitive deficits in methamphetamine use, and the neural basis of psychophysiological insomnia and attentional dysfunction. The lab also explores circadian phenotypes, such as morningness-eveningness, in relation to psychiatric symptomology, emphasizing translational approaches to improve clinical assessment and intervention strategies.
Research Overview
Research Output Trend
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
Selected Papers
15STUDY OBJECTIVES: To investigate the association between the behaviorally induced insufficient sleep and suicidality among adolescents. DESIGN: A population-based, cross-sectional survey. SETTING: General community. PARTICIPANTS: A sample of 8,530 students (grades 7-11) was recruited in the Republic of Korea. The participants were 8,010 students who completed all questionnaires. INTERVENTION: N/A. MEASUREMENTS: The survey included the Beck Scale for Suicidal Ideation (SSI), the Beck Depression I
Authors explored grey-matter density in 29 methamphetamine abusers and 20 healthy comparison subjects using voxel-based morphometry. Grey-matter density changes and performances on the Wisconsin Card Sorting test (WCST) were also compared between 11 short-term (<6 months) and 18 long-term (>or=6 months) abstinent methamphetamine abusers. Methamphetamine abusers had lower grey-matter density in the right middle frontal cortex (corrected p<0.05) and more total errors in the WCST (p<0.01) relative
Previously, our group reported the altered white matter tract integrity of the left anterior cingulate in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in whole-brain exploration. Current study intended to explore whether the alteration was more prominent in any specific regions of the cingulum bundle. Diffusion tensor images of 21 PTSD subjects and 21 healthy comparison subjects were acquired. Eight isocubic regions of interest (ROIs), i.e. bilateral rostral, subgenual, dorsal, and upper cingulum bundle
Increased weekend catch-up sleep as an indicator of insufficient weekday sleep is associated with poor performance on objective attention tasks. Assessment of catch-up sleep and sleep duration may be useful for physicians to evaluate sleep insufficiency and its adverse effects on attention in adolescents.
Psychophysiological insomnia (PI) includes arousal to sleep-related stimuli (SS), which can be treated by cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I). The present study was an exploratory, prospective intervention study that aimed to explore brain response to visual SS in PI before and after CBT-I. Blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal differences in response to SS and neutral stimuli (NS) were compared between 14 drug-free PI patients and 18 good sleepers (GS) using functional magnet
We aimed to investigate the association between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and morningness–eveningness in adulthood. Subjects without psychiatric comorbidity on the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (n = 344) completed the Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) and the Adult Self-Report Scale for ADHD. MEQ showed an independent and negative association with ADHD symptoms (P < 0.0001). In male subjects, both inattention (P < 0.0001) and hyperactiv
BACKGROUND: This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between patterns of temperament and character and self-reported psychopathology in adolescents from the community. SAMPLING AND METHODS: The Junior Temperament and Character Inventory (JTCI) and Youth Self-Report (YSR) instruments were administered to 623 Korean middle school students (boys/girls = 331/292; age = 13.3 +/- 0.9 years old). Multiple linear regression analyses were used to evaluate the relationship between temperam
Refugees affected by multiple traumatic stressors are at high risk for developing trauma-related mental disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and insomnia, which is sometimes overlooked. The present study examined the effectiveness of narrative exposure therapy (NET) on trauma-related symptoms in a sample of North Korean refugee youth. We focused on sleep patterns in addition to changes in symptom severity for PTSD, depression, and internalizing and externalizing
In posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), functional connectivity (FC) between the thalamus and other brain areas has yet to be comprehensively investigated. The present study explored resting state FC (rsFC) of thalamus and its associations with trauma-related features. The included subjects were North Korean refugees with PTSD (n = 23), trauma-exposed North Korean refugees without PTSD (trauma-exposed control [TEC] group, n = 22), and South Korean healthy controls (HCs) without traumatic experi
Research Areas
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