Hormones are crucial for health and disease. In our research we focus on the action of hormones released after stress. These stress hormones program in early life brain circuits that underly emotion and cognition, they protect the brain and regulate the ageing process. Stress hormones determine vulnerability and resilience to depression and schizophrenia depending on genetic predisposition, and are of importance for the onset and progression of neurodegenerative processes. To understand how this enormous diversity in action of stress hormones occurs a unique integrated experimental approach from gene to behaviour is used.

The title of his inaugural lecture was 'Evenwicht in een veranderende wereld'.

De Kloet ER, Joëls M, Holsboer F (2005)  Stress and the brain: from adaptation to disease. Nature Rev Neurosci. 6: 463-475. 

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