Professor Bruce McEwen describes the endocrine system, which regulates hormones, the autonomic nervous and immune systems.

Neuroendocrinology is the study of how the brain regulates the hormone system of the body, but in a certain sense it also includes the other things that the brain regulates, such as the autonomic nervous system, and even the immune system, or at least the so-called cytokines, or immune system hormones. The idea is that the brain regulates, stimulates the production – helps to determine the shutoff of the production – of these systems, such as cortisol (a stress hormone) or adrenaline (the other stress hormone). But it also influences the production of inflammatory molecules, and, of course, it regulates sex hormones, growth hormone, many hormones that have, it turns out, effects back on the brain, because it’s not just a one-way street. The brain regulates the production of these substances, and they have ways of affecting brain function, both in the short-term and the long-term.

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