Hormones, Brain and Behavior

Donald W. Pfaff heads the Laboratory of Neurobiology and Behavior at The Rockefeller University. He received his scientific training at Harvard College and MIT. He is a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Pfaff's laboratory focuses on steroid hormones and brain function, genes influencing neuronal functions, and generalized CNS arousal. He is the author or coauthor of over 10 books and more than 900 research publications. Marian Joels obtained her PhD degree in Utrecht (1984) with David de Wied. She carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla California. Between 1991 and 2009 she was appointed at the University of Amsterdam, first as associate professor and subsequently as full professor in neurobiology. Since 2009 she is (full) professor of neuroscience in Utrecht. Currently she is scientific director of the Brain Center Rudolf Magnus. Her research focuses on the effects of stress in the brain. With patch clamp technology, she studies how corticosteroid hormones change cellular function of limbic neurons. This is linked to the underlying molecular mechanism and the consequences at the circuit level. As a final step, the effects of stress on functional connectivity and behavioral outcome are studied, both in rodents and humans. In her work, she pays particular attention to the influence of stress during early life and the result of prolonged periods of stress in adulthood. The relevance of such critical periods of stress -in interaction with a vulnerable genetic background- for the development of brain disorders are investigated in various patient cohorts. Her work was published in >275 publications and to date has been cited >15,000 times. Marian Joels was elected as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. She served as President of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies between 2012 and 2014.