In Lecture 6, the final lecture of Seminar Series 2014-2015, Professor Bruce S. McEwen delivers a talk on how experience shapes the brain across the lifecourse; epigenetics, biological embedding and cumulative change. Professor McEwen is a neuroscientist at The Rockefeller University, New York. He studies the brain and in this lecture, discusses how the social environment affects the brain and through the brain, affects the rest of the body, health and disease through the lifecourse. He also introduces the concept of epigenetics which concerns how environmental factors regulate expression of genes and effect brain and body function.

Stress is a condition of the mind that differs among individuals and reflects not only major life events but also the conflicts and pressures of daily life that elevate physiological systems so as to cause a chronic stress burden. This burden reflects not only the impact of life experiences but also of genetic load and early life experiences that set life-long patterns of behaviours and physiological reactivity. While hormones associated with the chronic stress burden protect the body in the short-run and promote adaptation, in the long run they promote changes in the body that impair function, for the immune system and the brain. In this lecture, Professor McEwen will discuss how social ordering in human society is associated with gradients of disease, and describe the relationship between mortality, morbidity and socioeconomic status. Though these relationships are complex, Professor McEwen will argue that they are likely to reflect, not only differences in lifestyle, but also the cumulative burden of coping with limited resources and negative life events and the resulting chronic impact on physiological systems of adaptation.