Investigator, Other, Ext Fund Psychiatry, Mass General Research Institute

Lecturer on Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, Part-time Harvard Medical School

PhD Harvard University 1997

amygdala; anxiety disorders; emotions; facial expression; fear; gyrus cinguli; neural processing; pet; positron emission tomography; post traumatic stress disorder; prefrontal cortex; ptsd; stress disorders post-traumatic; tomography emission-computed Dr. Shin received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology at Dartmouth College and a PhD in Psychology at Harvard University. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and has been a faculty member at Tufts since 1998. She conducts her neuroimaging research in the Department of Psychiatry, Division of Psychiatric Neuroscience. 

Dr. Shin's research involves examining brain function and cognitive processing associated with stress and in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Specifically, she uses positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study brain function while participants perform attention and memory tasks in the scanner. The goal of this research is to determine whether brain structures such as the amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus function normally in stress and PTSD.  In collaborative research at MGH and at Tufts, Dr. Shin and her colleagues are examining the brain networks associated with psychosocial stress, including chronic stress related to racial discrimination, and their role in increasing risk for adverse health conditions.