Bruce S Mcewen
Biographic Data
| ID | 391738 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bruce S Mcewen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bruce S |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcewen |
| SIGNATURE | MCEWEN B S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rockefeller University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5288-7892 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 143 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Paper Party
The Publicity Department of the Austrian Fatherland Front served the Ständestaat regime (1933–38). An elaborate organization on paper, the Fatherland Front's actual work was bound up in the performance of para-fascism and the surveillance of opposing parties. Each of these modes of being mutually reinforced the need for the other and created a unique self-awareness of failure within the movement. As such, the Publicity Department offers a microco…
Framework for a Community Health Observing System for the Gulf of Mexico Region
The Gulf of Mexico (GoM) region is prone to disasters, including recurrent oil spills, hurricanes, floods, industrial accidents, harmful algal blooms, and the current COVID-19 pandemic. The GoM and other regions of the U.S. lack sufficient baseline health information to identify, attribute, mitigate, and facilitate prevention of major health effects of disasters. Developing capacity to assess adverse human health consequences of future disasters …
Determining the Optimal Outcome Measures for Studying the Social Determinants of Health
Americans have significantly poorer health outcomes and shorter longevity than citizens of other industrialized nations. Poverty is a major driver of these poor health outcomes in the United States. Innovative anti-poverty policies may help reduce economic malaise thereby increasing the health and longevity of the most vulnerable Americans. However, there is no consensus framework for studying the health impacts of anti-poverty social policies. I…
Midlife reversibility of early-established biobehavioral risk factors
Objectives: Epidemiological evidence links exposure to early life adversities --such as childhood maltreatment-- with impaired health and wellbeing in adulthood. Since these effects are usually unrecognized or untreated in childhood, preventive and remediating interventions in adults are needed. We asked, first, can we validly ascertain childhood adversity through retrospective assessments in adulthood? Second, what dimensions of childhood advers…
Psychological Stress and Mitochondria
Psychological Stress and Mitochondria
BACKGROUND: The integration of biological, psychological, and social factors in medicine has benefited from increasingly precise stress response biomarkers. Mitochondria, a subcellular organelle with its own genome, produce the energy required for life and generate signals that enable stress adaptation. An emerging concept proposes that mitochondria sense, integrate, and transduce psychosocial and behavioral factors into cellular and molecular mo…
The Neuroscience of Resilience
Although the surge in research into the neuroscience of resilience is relatively new, it has been able to elucidate the brain structures that underlie resilience and identify strategies for supporting brain health and mental health across the lifespan. Despite advances, neuroscientists need the input of social work clinicians and clinical researchers to continue to move the field forward. This article provides a narrative review of the recent lit…
Uncertainty and stress
The term 'stress' - coined in 1936 - has many definitions, but until now has lacked a theoretical foundation. Here we present an information-theoretic approach - based on the 'free energy principle' - defining the essence of stress; namely, uncertainty. We address three questions: What is uncertainty? What does it do to us? What are our resources to master it? Mathematically speaking, uncertainty is entropy or 'expected surprise'. The 'free energ…
Neurobiological and Systemic Effects of Chronic Stress
The brain is the central organ of stress and adaptation to stress because it perceives and determines what is threatening, as well as the behavioral and physiological responses to the stressor, which promote adaptation (“allostasis”) but also contribute to pathophysiology (“allostatic load/overload”) when overused and dysregulated. The adult as well as developing brain possesses a remarkable ability to show structural and functional plasticity in…
Mitochondrial Nexus to Allostatic Load Biomarkers
Picard, Martin PhD; Juster, Robert-Paul PhD; Sloan, Richard P. PhD; McEwen, Bruce S. PhD Author Information
Social Structure, Adversity, Toxic Stress, and Intergenerational Poverty
Why are children of poor parents more likely to be poor as adults than other children? Early-childhood adversities resulting from social structures and relationships impact children's bodily systems and brain development through recurrent stress. These socially patterned biological processes influence social reproduction. Social support and interventions can prevent or compensate for the early biological effects of toxic social environments. This…
Social, Psychological, and Physiological Reactions to Stress
Emerging research examines biological processes not as primary causes of social outcomes but rather as mechanisms that themselves depend on social environments. In particular, environments that produce toxic stress help shape brain development and brain and body function throughout the lifespan. Early life stress, in particular, has serious consequences for life‐long health and affects cognitive performance, emotional intelligence, and self‐regul…
Reaction Time in Adolescence, Cumulative Allostatic Load, and Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression in Adulthood
OBJECTIVE: To examine the relation between reaction time in adolescence and subsequent symptoms of anxiety and depression and investigate the mediating role of sociodemographic measures, health behaviors, and allostatic load. METHODS: Participants were 705 members of the West of Scotland Twenty-07 Study. Choice reaction time was measured at age 16. At age 36 years, anxiety and depression were assessed with the 12-item General Health Questionnaire…
Social influences on neuroplasticity
Adverse childhood experiences, allostasis, allostatic load, and age-related disease
Brain on stress
Stress is a state of the mind, involving both brain and body as well as their interactions; it differs among individuals and reflects not only major life events but also the conflicts and pressures of daily life that alter physiological systems to produce a chronic stress burden that, in turn, is a factor in the expression of disease. This burden reflects the impact of not only life experiences but also genetic variations and individual health be…
Stress- and Allostasis-Induced Brain Plasticity
The brain is the key organ of stress processes. It determines what individuals will experience as stressful, it orchestrates how individuals will cope with stressful experiences, and it changes both functionally and structurally as a result of stressful experiences. Within the brain, a distributed, dynamic, and plastic neural circuitry coordinates, monitors, and calibrates behavioral and physiological stress response systems to meet the demands i…
Critical Biological Pathways for Chronic Psychosocial Stress and Research Opportunities to Advance the Consideration of Stress in Chemical Risk Assessment
Emerging evidence suggests that psychosocial stress and toxicants may interact to modify health risks. Stress–toxicant interactions could be important in chemical risk assessment, but these interactions are poorly understood and additional research is necessary to advance their application. Environmental health research can increase knowledge of these interactions by exploring hypotheses on allostatic load, which measures the cumulative impacts o…
Central role of the brain in stress and adaptation
The brain is the key organ of stress reactivity, coping, and recovery processes. Within the brain, a distributed neural circuitry determines what is threatening and thus stressful to the individual. Instrumental brain systems of this circuitry include the hippocampus, amygdala, and areas of the prefrontal cortex. Together, these systems regulate physiological and behavioral stress processes, which can be adaptive in the short‐term and maladaptive…
Allostatic load biomarkers of chronic stress and impact on health and cognition
Socio‐economic differentials in peripheral biology
This chapter focuses on evidence linking socio‐economic status (SES) to “downstream” peripheral biology. Drawing on the concept of allostatic load, we examine evidence linking lower SES with greater cumulative physiological toll on multiple major biological regulatory systems over the life course. We begin by reviewing evidence linking lower SES to poorer trajectories of aging in multiple, individual physiological systems, followed by evidence of…
Modeling multisystem biological risk in young adults
Although much prior research has focused on identifying the roles of major regulatory systems in health risks, the concept of allostatic load (AL) focuses on the importance of a more multisystems view of health risks. How best to operationalize allostatic load, however, remains the subject of some debate. We sought to test a hypothesized metafactor model of allostatic load composed of a number of biological system factors, and to investigate mode…
Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behaviour and cognition
Neuroscience, Molecular Biology, and the Childhood Roots of Health Disparities
A scientific consensus is emerging that the origins of adult disease are often found among developmental and biological disruptions occurring during the early years of life. These early experiences can affect adult health in 2 ways--either by cumulative damage over time or by the biological embedding of adversities during sensitive developmental periods. In both cases, there can be a lag of many years, even decades, before early adverse experienc…
Central effects of stress hormones in health and disease
Social Structure, Adversity, Toxic Stress, and Intergenerational Poverty
Why are children of poor parents more likely to be poor as adults than other children? Early-childhood adversities resulting from social structures and relationships impact children's bodily systems and brain development through recurrent stress. These socially patterned biological processes influence social reproduction. Social support and interventions can prevent or compensate for the early biological effects of toxic social environments. This…
Social disadvantage and adolescent stress
Embodying Psychological Thriving
In addition to the context of psychological health, thriving can be measured in the context of physical health. Moreover, thriving may be ope rationalized at a macro level (e.g., improved functional health status following acute illness or injury) or at a micro level (e.g., hormonal balance). The goal of this article is to examine physical thriving at the micro level, by investigating hormonal responses to stressful situations. In addition, we ex…
Sexual orientation after prenatal exposure to exogenous estrogen
Critical Biological Pathways for Chronic Psychosocial Stress and Research Opportunities to Advance the Consideration of Stress in Chemical Risk Assessment
Emerging evidence suggests that psychosocial stress and toxicants may interact to modify health risks. Stress–toxicant interactions could be important in chemical risk assessment, but these interactions are poorly understood and additional research is necessary to advance their application. Environmental health research can increase knowledge of these interactions by exploring hypotheses on allostatic load, which measures the cumulative impacts o…
Midlife reversibility of early-established biobehavioral risk factors
Objectives: Epidemiological evidence links exposure to early life adversities --such as childhood maltreatment-- with impaired health and wellbeing in adulthood. Since these effects are usually unrecognized or untreated in childhood, preventive and remediating interventions in adults are needed. We asked, first, can we validly ascertain childhood adversity through retrospective assessments in adulthood? Second, what dimensions of childhood advers…
The Neuroscience of Resilience
Although the surge in research into the neuroscience of resilience is relatively new, it has been able to elucidate the brain structures that underlie resilience and identify strategies for supporting brain health and mental health across the lifespan. Despite advances, neuroscientists need the input of social work clinicians and clinical researchers to continue to move the field forward. This article provides a narrative review of the recent lit…
Sexual orientation after prenatal exposure to exogenous estrogen
Estrogen potentiates the satiety effect of exogenous CCK-8 in ovariectomized rats
Stress and the Individual
OBJECTIVE: This article presents a new formulation of the relationship between stress and the processes leading to disease. It emphasizes the hidden cost of chronic stress to the body over long time periods, which act as a predisposing factor for the effects of acute, stressful life events. It also presents a model showing how individual differences in the susceptibility to stress are tied to individual behavioral responses to environmental chall…
Stress and cognitive function
Impact of Social Environment Characteristics on Neuroendocrine Regulation
OBJECTIVE: This article reviews evidence relating social environment characteristics to patterns of neuroendocrine regulation. To date, although there has been considerable interest in the effects of social ties and support on health and longevity, less attention has been given to the effects of such social environment characteristics on actual physiologic parameters. METHOD: Animal and human studies from 1960s to the present are reviewed for evi…
Protective and Damaging Effects of Stress Mediators
Over 60 years ago, Selye1 recognized the paradox that the physiologic systems activated by stress can not only protect and restore but also damage the body. What links these seemingly contradictory roles? How does stress influence the pathogenesis of disease, and what accounts for the variation in vulnerability to stress-related diseases among people with similar life experiences? How can stress-induced damage be quantified? These and many other …
Stress, Adaptation, and Disease
A bstract : Adaptation in the face of potentially stressful challenges involves activation of neural, neuroendocrine and neuroendocrine‐immune mechanisms. This has been called “allostasis” or “stability through change” by Sterling and Eyer (Fisher S., Reason J. (eds): Handbook of Life Stress, Cognition and Health . J. Wiley Ltd. 1988, p. 631), and allostasis is an essential component of maintaining homeostasis. When these adaptive systems are tur…
Chronic social stress
Subordination constitutes a natural and often chronic stress condition for males of virtually all species of social mammals. Subordinate male rats of mixed-sex groups maintained in visible burrow systems show high-magnitude changes in adrenal and gonadal steroid hormones and, in a subpopulation, disruptions in hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis function. Changes in brain serotonin systems have been extensively documented in both colony subordina…
Embodying Psychological Thriving
In addition to the context of psychological health, thriving can be measured in the context of physical health. Moreover, thriving may be ope rationalized at a macro level (e.g., improved functional health status following acute illness or injury) or at a micro level (e.g., hormonal balance). The goal of this article is to examine physical thriving at the micro level, by investigating hormonal responses to stressful situations. In addition, we ex…
Protective and Damaging Effects of Mediators of Stress
A bstract : Stress is a condition of human existence and a factor in the expression of disease. A broader view of stress is that it is not just the dramatic stressful events that exact their toll but rather the many events of daily life that elevate activities of physiological systems to cause some measure of wear and tear. We call this wear and tear “allostatic load,” and it reflects not only the impact of life experiences but also of genetic lo…
Psychological Stress and Lack of Cortisol Habituation Among Women With Abdominal Fat Distribution
s of Papers for 1999 Annual Meeting: Symposium: Stress, Abdominal Fat Distribution, and the Metabolic Syndrome
The neurobiology of stress
Stress and Body Shape
OBJECTIVE: Excessive central fat puts one at greater risk of disease. In animal studies, stress-induced cortisol secretion has been shown to increase central fat. The objective of this study was to assess whether women with central fat distribution (as indicated by a high waist-to-hip ratio [WHR]), across a range of body mass indexes, display consistently heightened cortisol reactivity to repeated laboratory stressors. METHODS: Fifty-nine healthy…
Stress may add bite to appetite in women
Allostatic load as a marker of cumulative biological risk
Allostatic load (AL) has been proposed as a new conceptualization of cumulative biological burden exacted on the body through attempts to adapt to life's demands. Using a multisystem summary measure of AL, we evaluated its capacity to predict four categories of health outcomes, 7 years after a baseline survey of 1,189 men and women age 70–79. Higher baseline AL scores were associated with significantly increased risk for 7-year mortality as well …
Allostatic load as a predictor of functional decline
The concept of allostasis in biology and biomedicine
Mood disorders and allostatic load
Protection and Damage from Acute and Chronic Stress
A bstract : Stress promotes adaptation, but prolonged stress leads over time to wear‐and‐tear on the body (allostatic load). Neural changes mirror the pattern seen in other body systems, that is, short‐term adaptation vs. long‐term damage. Allostatic load leads to impaired immunity, atherosclerosis, obesity, bone demineralization, and atrophy of nerve cells in the brain. Many of these processes are seen in major depressive illness and may be expr…
Social Inequalities in Biomarkers of Cardiovascular Risk in Adolescence
OBJECTIVE: Cardiovascular disease, which begins early in life but often is not manifest until adulthood, is the nation's leading cause of mortality. Social inequalities in cardiovascular disease are pervasive, yet the process by which they accrue is poorly understood. The objective of this study was to explore the associations between socioeconomic status, a range of biomarkers reflective of cardiovascular risks, and a cumulative physiological ri…
Social disadvantage and adolescent stress
Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators
The mind involves the whole body and two-way communication between the brain and the cardiovascular, immune, and other systems via neural and endocrine mechanisms. Stress is a condition of the mind-body interaction, and a factor in the expression of disease that differs among individuals. It is notjust the dramatic stressful events that exact their toll, but rather the many events of daily life that elevate and sustain activities of physiological…
Physiology and Neurobiology of Stress and Adaptation
The brain is the key organ of the response to stress because it determines what is threatening and, therefore, potentially stressful, as well as the physiological and behavioral responses which can be either adaptive or damaging. Stress involves two-way communication between the brain and the cardiovascular, immune, and other systems via neural and endocrine mechanisms. Beyond the “flight-or-fight” response to acute stress, there are events in da…
Central effects of stress hormones in health and disease
Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behaviour and cognition
Psychology (42 works) · Stress Responses and Cortisol (34 works) · Medicine (33 works) · Neuroscience (25 works) · Allostatic load (24 works) · Allostasis (18 works) · Psychiatry (17 works) · Developmental psychology (15 works) · Chronic stress (14 works) · Birth, Development, and Health (12 works)