Bruce S. Mcewen PhD

Dr. McEwen is the Alfred E. Mirsky Professor of Neuroscience at the Rockefeller University and the Director of the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from Oberlin College in 1959, and his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Rockefeller in 1964. He was a U.S. Public Health Service Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Neurobiology in Goteborg, Sweden, from 1964 to 1965, worked as an assistant professor in the Zoology Department at the University of Minnesota, then returned to Rockefeller in 1966 as Assistant Professor.

Dr. McEwen studies the mechanisms underlying stress and sex hormone actions on the brain using an interdisciplinary approach. Dr. McEwen’s lab is also studying neuroogenesis, or the proliferation of new neurons in the brain, in adult life. It is regulated positively by exercise, an enriched environment, and certain forms of learning; it is negatively regulated by certain types of stress and fear learning. His research has helped create a new understanding of how the brain changes in structure and function during development and in adult life, and his studies have implications for understanding the impact of stress on the brain in cases of depressive illness and post traumatic stress disorder.